2022 End-of-Year Survey: PERK SKILL Suggestions

[Mister Master]

I filled out the end-of-year survey and wanted to share some specifics as to why I gave certain perk skills the scores that I did. The balances made this past year to perk skills have been great changes, and I appreciate the devs for listening to some of my suggestions! Here are a few more to help us all work towards well-balanced skill trees.

You can also find my Weapon Suggestions thread here.

My favorite is in bold.

1. Berserker
   • 10 - Vampire/Butcher: It looks odd when both sides of the skill tree give the same bonus. In this case, "Attack 20% faster with perk weapons" should be removed from both of these skills and become a passive Berserker bonus (+1%/level) for a maximum of 25%.
2. Commando
   • 25 - ZED TIME - Tactician: Way too weak. I have yet to find Tactician helpful, as the sped-up reload takes just a bit too long and almost always causes me to lose the ability to extend ZED time. As a result, Tactician almost always loses out to Machine Gunner. To buff Tactician, it should switch perk weapons 3x as fast (instead of 2x) and/or make it so you don't run out of ammo during ZED time.
   • 25 - ZED TIME - Machine Gunner: Slightly too powerful. The 3% bonus damage should be removed from Machine Gunner (why is that 3% bonus damage even there?).
3. Support
   • 10 - Fortitude: Maybe instead of 50% health increase, you start with 25% armor AND give an additional 20% armor to teammates whenever they interact with you once per wave.
   • 25 - ZED TIME - Penetrator: Way too weak. I have tried using this skill many, many times, but it is never as good as its Barrage counterpart since I get one shot in (at most) and have to either reload (slowly) or pump the shotgun before firing again. To buff this skill, add that any ZED hit by a pellet gets knocked down or all pellets have immense gun hit power during ZED time.
4. Field Medic
   • 15 - Acidic Rounds: Slightly too weak. This skill is not straightforward in its application and doesn't add value to weapons that already deal toxic damage, including healing grenades. Instead of adding toxic damage to non-toxic weapons, make all sources of toxic damage (from toxic weapons, grenades, darts, and perk skills) deal more toxic DOT. At least that way, healing darts and healing grenades can be used more effectively as weapons.
5. Demolitionist
   • 10 - High Impact Rounds: Too weak. The amount of times that this perk skill comes in handy is small since it only affects the impact damage of explosive shells. Can the damage increase be higher or it affect explosive damage as well if a direct hit is made?
   • 10 - Extra Rounds: An ammo increase of 10 is very inconsistent. For example, it is helpful for the RPG (16 max ammo) but not as much for the Seeker 6 (90 max ammo). As such, this would better serve as a percentage increase of about 20%. The max ammo for weapons would have to be adjusted a bit to account for this. This skill should then apply to C4 (giving only +1 spare ammo).
   • 15 - Sonic Resistant Rounds: Way too weak. Sonic Resistant Rounds are much less useful than Fragmentation Rounds. A great buff for Sonic Rounds would be that projectiles explode at any range. This feature makes perfect sense in contrast the added area of effect of Frag Rounds. Plus, it would be nice to have projectiles explode at any range despite damage to yourself, as a dud can be quite disappointing when surrounded by trash ZEDs.
   • 15 - Fragmentation Rounds: There is a sweet spot between having more explosive area of effect and the area of effect being so large that it hurts you too often. Increased area of effect of all explosives by 50% is too high. 40% is a good sweet spot (also change this for Survivalist's Make Things Go Boom).
   • 20 - Armor Piercing Rounds: Too weak. The amount of times that this perk skill comes in handy is small since it only affects the impact damage of explosive shells. Can it add some sort of armor shredding/ignoring ability, similar to the G36C?
   • Extra Explosive Ammo: This passive skill of +5 max ammo should be changed to +2% every 5 levels (see the Extra Rounds skill mentioned above as well).
6. Firebug
   • 5 - Bring the Heat: Too powerful. I did the math on this, and from a DPS perspective, the 35% damage bonus is almost always better than the increased mag size of High Capacity Fuel Tank (the only notable exception being with Spitfires). To balance this, a 20% or 25% damage bonus balances fairly well against the +100% fuel tank capacity.
   • 20 - Firestorm: Way too weak. Compared to Heat Wave, Firestorm doesn't stand a chance. As such, in addition to the increased range, a great buff for this skill could be that ground fires have 50% larger area of effect or that ground fires have stumble power (ZEDs will stumble if standing in ground fire for too long).
   • 25 - ZED Time - Inferno: Too weak. I have found it hard to get value from this perk skill. Perhaps, this perk skill also resets the fire DOT of nearby ZEDs currently on fire or ZEDs close to fire puddles also catch fire.
7. Gunslinger
   • 25 - ZED TIME - Whirlwind of Lead: Way too weak. Whirlwind of Lead always loses out to Fan Fire. A great buff to Whirlwind would be to add a 100% recoil reduction to perk weapons during ZED Time. If that buff isn't enough, a damage bonus would also be welcomed.
   • 25 - ZED TIME - Fan Fire: This skill should definitely have its "reload in real time" bonus removed, as the Gunslinger already has faster ZED time reload (I understand why "reload in real time" was added to this perk skill, but adding it here feels clunky and a bit unnecessary as the passive faster ZED time reload skill is completely negated).
8. Sharpshooter
   • 5 - Sniper: Too weak. Marksman's speed increase is very valuable, so Sniper needs a slight buff. +10% recoil reduction while stationary and using perk weapons would be a great addition.
   • 20 - Always Prepared: Too weak. The benefit of extra ammo always comes just short of the Dead Eye skill benefits. A +25% max armor bonus would be a welcomed addition to Always Prepared, as the Sharpshooter needs something to help with survivability.
   • 25 - ZED TIME - Assassin/Ranger: "Any head shots with perk weapons have a 5% chance to trigger ZED Time" should be linearly applied to the Sharpshooter as a passive skill (1% increase every 5 levels). The Sharpshooter has always been lacking a bit in value on a team, and doing this would help non-level 25 Sharpshooters gain some of that much-needed value. Perhaps this value should even be increased to 10% to increase the Sharpshooter's value to the team (5% +1% increase every 5 levels).
9. SWAT
   • Armor Backpack: It could be logical and fun for the SWAT to passively allow other players to get 25% armor from them once per round, just as the Resupply Pack skill does for the Support (the armor of Resupply Pack for Support would then be replaced with more ammo instead of giving armor).
10. Survivalist
    • 5 - Tactical Reload/Heavy Weapons Training: These should be combined into one skill, Tactical Reload (so Tactical Reload would increase reload speed for Commando, Gunslinger, SWAT, Demolitionist, Sharpshooter, Support, Firebug, and Survivalist weapons). Then Heavy Weapons Training would be replaced with a High Capacity Magazines skill, which would increase magazine capacity by 50% for Commando, Support, Field Medic, Firebug, SWAT, and Survivalist weapons. This would allow for more versatility with Survivalist loadouts and make the Survivalist more fun and enjoyable (also, in case you didn't notice, both of these new level 5 perk skills should apply to all Survivalist perk weapons as well).
    • 15 - Weapon Harness: Too weak. This skill should definitely give a different grenade, as a Molotov cocktail does not come close to being as helpful as the healing grenade given with Ammo Vest. I would suggest that the Molotov cocktails be replaced with freeze grenades.
    • 20 - Make Things Go Boom: There is a sweet spot between having more explosive area of effect and the area of effect being so large that it hurts you too often. Increased area of effect of all explosives by 50% is too high. 40% is a good sweet spot (also change this for Demo's Fragmentation Rounds), but keep explosive resistance at 50% (or maybe even increase to 60%).
    • All Skills: Now that specific grenades can be chosen among a variety, it could be fun for all of the first 8 perk skills chosen to allow one grenade or another to be chosen (for example, Spontaneous Zed-plosion would allow the player to choose to use the Nail Bomb, and Make Things Go Boom would allow the player to choose to use Dynamite).

Thanks for reading!

 

[Aleflippy]

Vampire/Butcher : what's the matter really? Both skills are still sufficiently different that even with both having extra attack speed, they don't feel redundant. And yet both are about healing ! It is however true that considering the bonus is shared between skills, it already kinda acts like a passive you unlock at level 5.

Commando ZED skills : I have to say I agree on both. Although I do believe Machine Gunner feels probably more powerful because Tactician is underwhelming. As you point out yourself : 3% extra damage is not a whole lot.

Fortitude : well, again, the skill itself isn't weak, it's the counterpart that's way too efficient (I'm not saying it needs a nerf, just that's it's better). It does make sense for a short-to-medium perk always in the front line to have an HP boost however. Your idea is arguably worse, because 25% of armor is quickly gone. And you wouldn't benefit from it for the remaining 3-6-9 waves.

ZED Penetrator : I agree on this !

Acidic Rounds : I'm a strong believer that medic skills should be ALL about supporting the team rather than buffing oneself. And Acidic Rounds is probably the worst because it can actually be detrimental, as zeds begin to panic and move around as the poison takes hold. It's a nightmare for precision perks.

High Impact Rounds : too weak?? Maybe it's a placebo effect of some sort, but it's been part of my loadout since the very beginning. It always felt like my explosive got more oomph as a result. Granted, I also use Bombardier, but I'm fairly sure HIR is meaningful too. I should test it around.

Extra Rounds : Fully agreed ! Same for Extra Explosive Ammo

Sonic Resistant Rounds : I don't know... Again I've been using it since forever. It's just way too convenient not to worry about Sirens anymore, especially since a lot of your weapons are single-shot, quite costly, zed-deleters. Maybe it could have a little something extra? Though exploding at any range sounds stupidly dangerous. On the flipside, I never found Fragmentation Rounds to be particularly appealing... it's good against trash zeds I guess, but even them tends to group up. So I rarely need extra range anyway. Just shoot in the middle of the crowd and look at the guts flying away.

Armor Piercing Rounds : it really feels like we're not playing the same perk... It's also one of my go-to choice. More damage is always welcome, especially for the designated nuker perk. But again, maybe a placebo effect if it simply adds to the impact damage (but even then, it makes Scrakes even MORE threatened by the RPG-7, so it's still a good thing !)

Bring The Heat : it's no secret that the firebug became a goddamn powerhouse. It mostly stems from its generous arsenal of weapons, but I do believe some skills (namely ground fire!) are also to blame. But in that particular case, I also believe that it's mostly because more damage is far more attractive than having more ammo, especially considering it's (yet again...) inconsistent between weapons. And most of them already have generous mags to begin with.

Firestorm : I agree that it's far too weak compared to Heat Wave, but again, it's because it's too inconsistent (why does it apply to only a few weapons?). I dislike your idea however, because not only does it requires you to pick Ground Fire (although everybody does it), but it buffs an ability that clearly doesn't need it.

ZED Inferno : I clearly haven't tried it enough to know if you're right or not. If it merely lights up zeds, then it's indeed a bad skill considering how weak DOT is in the game. If it SHARES your damage output, then I can picture it being pretty powerful ! And yet again, Pyromaniac is a straight-up increase in DPS... You can rarely do better than that.

Gunslinger ZED Skills : agreed on both ! It's especially insulting that Whirlwind is a mere "you never run out of ammo" considering most perks who got similar skills also have a little extra added on top. Then again, the GS is a precision perk... If you got a quick aim, being able to pop a great number of caps
(especially with Rack'em up!!) is already pretty generous.

Sniper : some forums' veterans (and sharpshooter enthusiasts) recently discussed the perk and its skills, and how they're probably the best perk in the entire game. And while it's difficult to go against their insight, I must admit that I hate both Sniper and Stability with a passion. I believe breaking the flow of the game is absolutely not fun, despite having some very generous bonus tied to it. I'd gladly take a passive increase in damage in exchange for a lower bonus (15% would already be neat). But then I guess you'd open up the perk to casuals who don't bother aiming for the head... Oh well.

Still, I do believe Sniper has its use, but it really depends on your loadout. Marksman is better if you plan to be a more mobile, versatile Sharpshooter (with the LAR/Centerfire/M14 for example), while Sniper is better if you want to be a pure nuker (with the Railgun/M99 for example)

Always Prepared : to be fair, both skills are underwhelming in that case. An extra 10% damage is not a whole lot for Dead Eye. On the flipside, 25% more ammo can definitely be useful for some weapons (like the Compound Bow... I always run dry with that one!). And while one extra grenade doesn't seem like much, Cryo grenades are probably among the most useful and powerful nades in the game. So while neither are game-breaking skills, I'd say they're cool to have in most situations.

Sharpshooter ZED Skills : the SS is a goddamn assassin ! It can make short work of any potential threat. Not only big zeds, but also group of trash assuming you got a weapon with a decent ROF (LAR/Centerfire/M14 as I mentioned above). If you're a crackshot, no zed should stay alive longer than a couple of seconds in front of you. That's your team-based role ! I also believe that the Sharpshooter benefits far too much from the ZED-time already (considering it can use it to inflict tons of damage and/or increase the Rack'em Up counter) that it doesn't need a buff in that regard. Plus, it would feel redundant with the Commando's passive.

Armor Backpack : I could have sworn that was already the case ! But I must have been dreaming it very hard then ha ha. I obviously agree.

Tactical Reload (Surv) : I fully agree, but it's pretty damn hard to make something equally or more attractive than reloading faster to be honest. It's almost as meta as picking more DPS. And that clearly shouldn't happen in the Survivalist's case, considering it's already stupidly powerful for a perk that's supposed to be a worse version of every other perk.

Weapon Harness : Yeah, I agree. It's just way too rare that you might need those extra 5 kgs of weight. It's good when you **** around with wacky loadouts, but not in a more serious game. I believe the issue is to be found elsewhere than the mere grenade it offers though... The whole skill should be reworked.

Make Things Go Boom : Naaah, it's just too specific. Most zeds DON'T have any explosive damage output, and the skill itself only applies to Demo's weaponry. Compared to the perk of having ANY of your weapon potentially exploding zeds, there's just no way to compete.

All Skills (Surv) : I don't know... It sounds kinda gratuitous and unneeded. It's already baffling that the Surv didn't come out with the possibility to choose your T1 and grenade, considering it's the jack-of-all-trades. I believe it should have access to everything from the get-go.

 

[OnionBubs]

I noticed you copied a hefty chunk of this from the last one you posted.

Not everything will ever be perfectly balanced because so many skills are just bad where the meta is concerned. Or just bad period.

Assume 6P HoE.

• 25 - ZED TIME - Tactician: Way too weak.
• 25 - ZED TIME - Machine Gunner: Slightly too powerful.

Tactician could make me a cappuccino for every extension and I still wouldn't use it because Machine Gunner elevates Commando's skill ceiling (and floor) so much that there's no reason to not take it. MG doesn't even give you unlimited ammo, but the unlocking of extensions that would be impossible with Tactician makes it too good to not use. Ever. That you can use it to chain Scrakes and Fleshpounds to death is the icing on the cake.

10 - Fortitude: Slightly too weak. The 50% health increase sounds nice, but the increased damage of Salvo wins out almost every time. Maybe instead of 50% health increase, you start with 25% armor AND give an additional 20% armor to teammates whenever they interact with you once per wave.

Salvo means you hit earlier breakpoints. Fortitude means you get to take extra hits that you wouldn't have taken if you had more damage to kill things faster. If Salvo didn't hit earlier breakpoints, it would be useless.

Fortitude loses. Choose Salvo.

25 - ZED TIME - Penetrator: Way too weak. I have tried using this skill many, many times, but it is never as good as its Barrage counterpart since I get one shot in (at most) and have to either reload (slowly) or pump the shotgun before firing again. To buff this skill, add that any ZED hit by a pellet gets knocked down or all pellets have immense gun hit power during ZED time.

That would still be pretty bad. Not completely useless, just bad. Still no reason to not pick Barrage.

15 - Acidic Rounds: Slightly too weak. This skill is not straightforward in its application and doesn't add value to weapons that already deal toxic damage, including healing grenades. Instead of adding toxic damage to non-toxic weapons, make all sources of toxic damage (from toxic weapons, grenades, darts, and perk skills) deal more toxic DOT. At least that way, healing darts and healing grenades can be used more effectively as weapons.

This skill doesn't need to exist. It should be completely reworked into something else. Poison damage DoT sucks and the main reason it kills things is because medic gas churns out a surprising amount of damage on their own.

I don't want people picking Medic in team games to blow grenades all over the Zeds instead of their teammates.

10 - High Impact Rounds: Too weak. The amount of times that this perk skill comes in handy is small

( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡° )

HIR is what lets the RPG one-shot Scrakes. Which anyone playing Demo should be doing to begin with. Because Demo's job is anti-HVT. Building it for trash is just Firebug but worse.

10 - Extra Rounds: An ammo increase of 10 is very inconsistent. For example, it is helpful for the RPG (16 max ammo) but not as much for the Seeker 6 (90 max ammo). As such, this would better serve as a percentage increase of about 20%. The max ammo for weapons would have to be adjusted a bit to account for this. This skill should then apply to C4 (giving only +1 spare ammo).

That is because the skill was designed for the RPG, because the Demo was designed around, well, the RPG.

Yes, I'm going to make a pattern here.

15 - Sonic Resistant Rounds: Way too weak. Sonic Resistant Rounds are much less useful than Fragmentation Rounds.

SRR is what stops Sirens from ruining instadelete combo setups on Demo, because that's Demo's strongest kit (running RPG + C4). Anyone who says it's not useful hasn't had a setup completely ruined by, say, a Berserker setting off a Siren early while the Siren was hiding behind the Fleshpound or Scrake you were about to kill.

A great buff for Sonic Rounds would be that projectiles explode at any range.

( ´ ･_･`)

Plus, it would be nice to have projectiles explode at any range despite damage to yourself, as a dud can be quite disappointing when surrounded by trash ZEDs.

Dud rounds serve the dual purpose of: 1) not instantly killing a player because they accidentally clicked on Mouse1 with the RPG at the wrong time, and 2) punishing players for letting themselves get surrounded by trash Zeds by disallowing the player to instantly clear their feet with primaries, because Demo is supposed to be weak at close range to make up for not having to aim while still having instadeletes on HVTs.

This only sounds good until a Stalker facetanks your RPG at point blank, because that would hella kill you in 6P HoE.

20 - Armor Piercing Rounds: Too weak. The amount of times that this perk skill comes in handy is small since it only affects the impact damage of explosive shells.

See my point above re: High Impact Rounds.

Firebug

Firebug's weapons need to be nerfed; its base kit is more or less currently fine.

Making ground fires even stronger is a bad idea because Firebug is already "Ground Fire Spam: The Perk" and it's really strong for very little effort required, even in 6P HoE.

5 - Sniper: Too weak. Marksman's speed increase is very valuable, so Sniper needs a slight buff. +10% recoil reduction while stationary and using perk weapons would be a great addition.

Marksman's speed increase is the least useful thing about it. The firing rate increase is what makes it so good.

Sniper is used in LLLLL Railgun/M99 builds and does not give other boosts because it's really strong, because 1-shotting the biggest threats in the game is really strong.

20 - Always Prepared: Too weak. The benefit of extra ammo always comes just short of the Dead Eye skill benefits. A +25% max armor bonus would be a welcomed addition to Always Prepared, as the Sharpshooter needs something to help with survivability.

No. Dead Eye is only useful in LLLLL builds because 10% on a M14 changes nothing about shots-to-kill, making it useless when most good players hipfire anyway.

Otherwise, there's no reason not to take AP.

25 - The Sharpshooter has always been lacking a bit in value on a team

I don't necessarily disagree about having the trigger chance go up with levels, but oh sweet mother of Satan, this is wrong.

Sharpshooter is one of the top 3 perks in the game on a good team with good players. It just requires you to actually work at it. The game getting easier around it hasn't helped that impression.

In some CD servers, Railgun/M99 are banned because they make the game too easy.

SWAT

Doesn't really need any more buffs. It's already a "kitchen sink" perk. The only thing that would really help it at all is a base damage boost, and for some reason TWI is averse to that idea. Or just increase the monster cap so there's more trash Zeds at once.

Gunslinger ZED Skills : agreed on both ! It's especially insulting that Whirlwind is a mere "you never run out of ammo" considering most perks who got similar skills also have a little extra added on top. Then again, the GS is a precision perk... If you got a quick aim, being able to pop a great number of caps
(especially with Rack'em up!!) is already pretty generous.

The reason it doesn't have both rapid-fire and unlimited ammo is because that would be broken as hell. Same reason why Sharp doesn't get both.

Survivalist

Delete from game, and the weapons that came with it. It's hurting the game.

And no, it doesn't need to intrude on Sharpshooter's freeze grenades; it already has at least 2 freeze weapons (yes, the Frost Fang counts) that are pretty broken.

 

[Aleflippy]

And no, it doesn't need to intrude on Sharpshooter's freeze grenades; it already has at least 2 freeze weapons (yes, the Frost Fang counts) that are pretty broken.

I agree on pretty much everything as always, but I just have that little nitpick... What makes you hate the Frost Fang so much? I tried using it to complete the event's objectives and I just couldn't ever freeze anything. Zeds always died before I could smash them into icy bits. Same goes for the Winterbite.

The only reliable freezing weapons IMO are the cryo grenades, compound bow and freezethrower.

 

[OnionBubs]

What makes you hate the Frost Fang so much?

This is going to be way off-topic by my own admission and probably deserves its own thread, but: Fair question.

To start with: most of the weapons in KF2 do one or two things at least competently. Most hitscan guns do their one primary attack (maybe with a toggle switch fire mode) and some have a secondary that can at least be "nice to have" even if it's not objectively great (see: the M16) in the grand scheme of things. For example, the vast majority of shotguns shoot things with one barrel, or sometimes more than one barrel. That's about the extent of it. This is by design, if you look at most of the game's base offerings, as they are designed to do one thing well in similar fashion to the perk wielding them.

The more functions a weapon has that set it apart from the usual arsenal, the more tampered down those functions will often be, since you run the risk of giving a perk too many options that don't belong in a perk's kit and/or engaging in what is effectively power creep by way of perk scope creep.
A good example of this principle in action is the Berserker's base offerings. Of the ones that have a function beyond "light attack/heavy attack/block", there's three standouts in its original weapon list (of four!) that adhere to this principle.
The VLAD is a limited distance weapon for a close-range perk that just happens to be really, really effective at close range in short bursts, at the cost of not being able to block by itself and not having a reliable melee attack. The Pulverizer is a melee weapon that trades DPS uptime for a burst AoE option. The Eviscerator has two different melee attacks, blocking, and distance weaponry all in one package, but none of these beat out any other options by raw stats to keep it balanced.

(Crossperking blurred and compounded all of this even further because it introduces this problem just on its principle alone, and so planned weapons had to account for crossperking. To wit, there is a reason why there were virtually no good crossperk Berserker weapons--or more accurately, crossperk melee weapons--because Berserker's base kit is really, really good and anything that's already good on other perks becomes absurdly powerful on Berserker by proxy: high damage multipliers, fast movespeed, etc., etc. that other perks didn't benefit from.)

Then there are some weapons that overstep these boundaries when they have multiple functions that don't belong on the base perk they're attributed to. While these can create a variety of ways for player, making weapons like these heavily runs the risk of them having too much in one package.
Some weapons like this aren't a problem because they were balanced to be a jack of all trades that doesn't do anything particularly well. Others offer too much in one package and they make for a power creep package that shifts baseline expectations on what a perk should offer.

The Mosin Nagant on Sharpshooter is a good example of the former: it can shoot, it can block, and it has a distinctive melee, but none of these are really outstanding abilities compared to the perk's offerings otherwise. Its primary fire is worse in most ways than the SPX, its blocking capabilities are really only for situations that a Sharpshooter could/should otherwise avoid, and the melee stab is only really useful for Clots and Crawlers, as it lacks the ability to reliably kill anything above that with a single stab and the stab is limited to hitting one enemy at a time at best, so it's mostly for saving ammo on single trash Zeds. But it's still fun and it's not so bad that it becomes a throw pick unless you just miss too many shots to reliably kill things with it (which, to be fair, applies to Sharpshooter as a whole).
Now, if this were crossperked as a melee weapon on Berserker, that would change the name of the game substantially, as it would be underpowered on Sharpshooter but have too much on Berserker (and, to a point, the current Survivalist). In many ways it would literally just be a better Eviscerator.

A good example of the latter would be the Field Medic's...OK. So in the middle of typing that previous sentence, I thought of multiple weapons that could apply. But before I get into that, I have to digress onto another point. Incaps.

So at the start of the game's life cycle, incaps were extremely limited by design and usually relegated to perk skill tree options or grenades. Incaps, as I've mentioned before, can range from "strong" to "really strong" once players understand how they work and how to take advantage of them. Whoever was originally in charge of the game's design understood this, which is why they were so limited: if they were going to hand you a few ways to mostly or completely disable Zeds, then they were going to keep it as a back pocket option for times of desperate need, not something that players would have at the ready on-demand.

Thus, incaps and damage were usually either separate or at a compromise. For example, see Sharpshooter's stun option skills coming at an opportunity cost of more damage, or the freeze grenades doing effectively no damage at all in exchange for their incredibly powerful incap. (I maintain that freeze is still arguably the strongest incap in the game, tapered only by the fact that lesser incaps like stumble can override its use by sheer accident.)
Also, see Sharpshooter compared to Gunslinger, who had no real incaps like Sharpshooter in exchange for being able to take advantage of high damage.

At some point, this changed. Someone at TWI decided to start introducing incaps into a number of weapons, meaning that they came with and yes, we are absolutely going to come back to this talking point, because it's part of what spelled the death knell for not having weapon scope creep.

At first, this wasn't as much of a problem. As much. If we're running with the Berserker theme as from above, then a good example of a more balanced implementation of this would be the Static Strikers: they have a special incap that is part of their base kit, but at the cost of being shorter ranged compared to the other melee options. This allowed the Berserker to contribute to team kills without using EMP grenades by way of a well-timed alt-fire to EMP a Zed, allowing the team to continue shooting the Zed in question while slowing it down. So it was certainly a viable option, but not unanimously the best one for Berserker, with clearly defined upsides and downsides compared to other melee weapons.
Notice how I mentioned "at first?" They didn't stick to that philosophy. Originally, the Medic's Hemogoblin had an incap at the cost of it being bad at everything. Healing, damage, etc. This was later buffed and now the Hemogoblin has a reliable incap, damage source, and healing all in one package and it's considered one of the meta options in the Medic's arsenal. In many ways it's more effective than the 401, one of the original capstone weapons for Medic.
Speaking of bloated Medic weapons with incaps, how about the Incision? A reskin of the Railgun with a primary fire that does high damage (for a Medic weapon) and inflicts EMP on anything it doesn't kill, complete with hitscan darts that heal more per dart than most of Medic's arsenal and can headshot (and knockdown) trash unlike anything else with healing darts, and since darts are limited by recharge rather than a limited pool of ammo, it gives the Medic an unlimited anti-trash incap as well as an incap for large Zeds.

But the creep didn't stop there. All of that to say:
The Frost Fang is what happens when you ignore all of those core design principles I highlighted above, and then charge players real-world money for the privilege.

• To boot, it's an on-perk M4 Combat Shotgun with a built-in freeze incap, block, and melee, and the M4 was already a good shotgun in the current meta when this thing was introduced.
• It's all that for three separate perks at once: Support, Berserker, and Survivalist.
  • While it is listed as a Support weapon, it's probably the least useful on Support, if only because Support already has so many devastating weapons to choose from in the first place. And it's still really useful on Support, so that should tell you something.
  • Really, it's a Zerk/Surv Swiss Army weapon disguised as a Support shotgun. Zerk gets an anti-trash weapon that also allows them to freeze HVTs. Survivalist gets a weapon that, by virtue of combining Survivalist's skill trees, allows it to do basically everything except long-range hitscan sniping.
• Its primary combines fairly high damage per shot with a freeze functionality instead of having them separately, meaning it can kill and freeze at the same time, something no other weapon in the game has. Effectively, it punishes players less for not killing something immediately, as that thing will be frozen instead of continuing to rush the player in question down.
  • Support's built-in penetration combined with Tight Choke means that, unlike any other shotgun, you can freeze multiple Zeds with a single pull of the trigger.
  • Unlike all other shotguns, where penetration would run the risk of raging HVTs, this is beneficial since the penetration will reduce the damage inflicted but maintain the same amount of incap power as the pellets pierces the Zeds. So shooting through buffer trash to guarantee a freeze on a Fleshpound is a viable tactic.
  • Survivalist gets a huge damage boost because its bonuses from Melee Expert and base damage bonus work additively on all attacks from this thing, in addition to having faster reloads from its Lv 5 skill options.
  • The freeze stops large Zeds from being a threat, allowing any player regardless of skill access to takedowns that would otherwise be impossible since the HVTs can't fight back while being frozen.
• Its melee attack does increased damage to enemies that are frozen and can still dispose of trash.
  • While not a huge boost, it's not nothing. This allows Support to clear occasional trash with the built-in melee, something Support otherwise doesn't have access to.
  • This synergizes with Berserker's and Survivalist's faster swing speeds and damage boosts, frozen target or not.
• It has a built-in block.
  • Lets Supports tank Fleshpound and Scrake hits from failed takedowns.
  • Gives Berserkers reliable access to Parry boosts, unlike VLAD, which must be swapped first.

The weapon is overtuned and I do not believe that will ever change, since if I had to guess, it's one of the more popular weapons since Berserker and Survivalist are some of the more popular perks. It's that self-feeding sister cycle of a perk bringing in more players because it's overpowered, so more people play it, so it gets more overpowered stuff, and so forth, only applied to a specific weapon instead of just being a standalone perk issue.

It's too bad that this thing is a costs-real-world-money weapon that ignores every facet of Killing Floor 2's original design intent. The only thing that would be more poorly designed is a crossperked HRG Mosin Nagant that also inflicted freeze.

I tried using it to complete the event's objectives and I just couldn't ever freeze anything. Zeds always died before I could smash them into icy bits.

Same with the Winterbite.

Right--which is part of my larger point. Remember: death is the ultimate incap, but freeze is a close second. When something can inflict both at once on demand, that's really good. That might make it kinda useless for the event where you're just supposed to freeze enemies over and over again, but I'm speaking from a perspective of "what is going to get me through a 6P HoE Long Survival game", which this thing is good at.

The Winterbite just happens to be not that good in the grand scheme of things because 1) it's based on the Spitfire, which is a very flawed weapon to begin with, and 2) it's for a perk that is so grossly powerful at its skill ceiling that the Winterbites just slow good players down, since they're otherwise too busy removing something's face at any given second from across the map with strong hitscans. On any other perk a similar option would be more attractive.

Which leads me to the followup point...

The only reliable freezing weapons IMO are the cryo grenades, compound bow and freezethrower.

These all share a common thread: they don't really kill things at the same time as they inflict freeze, but to elaborate further...

Cryo nades are a very limited resource on what is otherwise a high skillcap perk.
The Compound Bow trades off on Sharpshooter's capstone weapons for the comfort of freeze, with the one-two punch of the Compound bow being otherwise pretty bad for a $2000 capstone Sharp weapon.
I would still consider the Freezethrower an extremely capable weapon, just one that is underappreciated because of its split between actual damage vs. freeze damage. It's still one of the strongest weapons on a competent team at the cost of taking up a slot that could otherwise be used to do more damage, but it still lets you trivialize HVTs and stop the player from getting rushed by trash with a simple sweep of the wrist. Which is why I mentioned in a previous thread that it's one of the best options a Medic can take.