End-of-Year Survey: PERK SKILL Suggestions

[Mister Master]

[Updated after Winter 2021 update.]
I filled out the end-of-year survey yesterday 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 amazing 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. 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 level 5 perk skills should apply to all Survivalist perk weapons as well.
   • 15 - Weapon Harness: 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, or perhaps a grenade that can benefit from Make Things Go Boom.
   • 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%).
2. 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%.
3. Commando
   • 25 - ZED TIME - Tactician/Machine Gunner: 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). Also, the 3% bonus damage should be removed from Machine Gunner (why is that 3% bonus damage even there?).
4. Support
   • 10 - Fortitude: 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?
   • 25 - ZED TIME - Penetrator: 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, an added damage increase during ZED time would make the one shot with increased penetration worth while.
5. Field Medic
   • 5 - Symbiotic Health: This skill is too powerful. Either the 25% total health increase should be removed, or the 6% self-heal amount should be reduced.
   • 15 - Acidic Rounds: 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 twice the toxic DOT. At least that way, healing darts and healing grenades can be used more effectively as weapons.
6. Demolitionist
   • 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 15%. The max ammo for weapons would have to be adjusted a bit to account for this. This passive skill should then apply to C4 (see Extra Explosive Ammo below).
   • 15 - Sonic Resistant Rounds/Fragmentation Rounds: 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. Also, reduce the area of effect increase of Frag Rounds from 50% to 40% (also change this for Survivalist's Make Things Go Boom). 50% is excessive and hurts you too often.
   • Extra Explosive Ammo: This passive skill of +5 max ammo should be changed to +3% every 5 levels (see the Extra Rounds skill mentioned above as well). This passive skill should apply to C4 as well, but at 3 max ammo for C4, you would only get +1 C4 max ammo if a level 25 Demolitionist was using Extra Rounds as well (+30% max ammo total).
7. Firebug
   • 5 - Bring the Heat/High Capacity Fuel Tank: I did the math on this, and from a DPS perspective, the 35% damage bonus is almost always better (the only notable exception being with Spitfires). To balance this, move the Firebug's passive +25% reload speed bonus to High Capacity Fuel Tank. However, if you decide not to buff High Capacity Fuel Tank, then Bring the Heat must be nerfed. Mathmatically, 20% damage increase balances fairly well against the +100% fuel tank capacity.
   • 20 - Firestorm: 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).
8. Gunslinger
   • 25 - ZED TIME - Whirlwind of Lead/Fan Fire: 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. Also, Fan Fire should definitely have its "reload in real time" bonus removed, as the Gunslinger already has faster ZED time reload (yes, I understand why "reload in real time" was added to this perk, but adding it here feels clunky and a bit unnecessary as the passive faster ZED time reload skill is completely negated).
9. Sharpshooter
   • 5 - Sniper: 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: 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.
10. SWAT
    • Armor Backpack: The SWAT perk skills are very well balanced with recent changes, but if it still feels like the SWAT lacks a role on a team, it would 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 be replaced with more ammo).

Thanks for reading!

 

[Mister Master]

Updated after Spring update.

 

[Aleflippy]

Considering how much I like commenting on things, it's baffling how I never stumbled upon this topic before now.

Anyway :

Berserker : I believe the reason most people chooses Skirmisher is for the innate regeneration anyway... Thus making the extra speed a passive bonus wouldn't improve anything. While it would definitely improve Dreadnaught, it wouldn't exactly hinder Skirmisher, thus nullifying such a change. I believe we should simply give the speed to Dreadnaught (and possibly remove some of the gigantic amount of extra HP it gives) , and leave Skirmisher with only the regen.

I indeed never understood why the Zerk, out of every available perk, would get the night-vision goggles. The Commando, being the "leader" perk with his capability to see the HP of zeds and invisible stalkers made sense. But the zerk...? It's not as if they were used very often anyway. People tend to dislike dark maps anyhow. HOWEVER, giving yet another innate bonus to the zerk would make the perk even more broken than it already is ! I agree that having both skills giving out extra attack speed is kinda ridiculous, but then here's the ticket : only one of them should give that extra attack speed, with the other giving out something different, possibly a more defensive bonus to go along with Vampire?

Commando : Again, I'd rather have a proper rework of Tactician period. Even if you switched weapons instantly...Is it even worth it? Even more so if you run with extra-large mags. It just feels too situational to me. Even more so considering the Commando weapons behave quite similarly, so you can't even really have gnarly combos by quickly switching in-between weapons.

Support : Your idea for "Fortitude" is something I'd give the SWAT instead to be fair. He's the "armor guy" of the team after all. I also think Fortitude, as it stands, is a bit more used compared to Salvo than, let's say...The dreadnaught/skirmisher debate !

Definitely in for the "Penetrator" idea however. Considering the main drawback to most support weapons is precisely that you have to reload each shells manually, that would be quite awesome. Particularly if you end up with a ZED-time kick once you're almost dry...

Demolitionist : Totally on-board regarding "Extra Rounds". Never quite got why they choose that flat "+5" ... I guess it was easier when the perk launched, but that was ages ago. Same for the passive obviously.

Funny that you think "Sonic Resistant Rounds" needs to keep up... It never left my loadout ever since I had access to the skill. I guess it's just too good to be able to shut the mouth of a siren by throwing a TNT stick to her face. Even better to avoid wasting that life-saving rocket you planned for a fleshpound due to a hidden siren behind him. But I wouldn't complain with your tweaks either. I don't think they'd be game-breaking...They're just not a must.

Firebug : Again, kinda funny regarding Firestorm considering I keep using it whenever I use the flamethrower or MWG. But just like SRR, I wouldn't mind a little buff.

Totally agree on the ubiquitous "Bring the Heat" however. It definitely needs something to compete with it. I also never understood why the Firebug was (I think?) the only perk without a quick reload (along with the zerk, but that's more understandable). Honestly, just being able to reload faster along with the extra reserve ammo would be nice.

Gunslinger : I think the problem is that being able to reload in real-time with Fan Fire (and even more so if you got the quick-reload skill) pretty much equals the bonus of never running out of ammo anyway. Hence why, as you say, Whirlwind of Lead needs a small bonus. However, if we remove the "reload in real time" bonus to Fan Fire, I don't think WoL should get BOTH extra damage and recoil reduction. Either it gets both and Fan Fire keeps the extra reload skill, or it gets one and Fan Fire gets nerfed.

Sharpshooter : The main problem with the perks level 5 skills is that being forced to camp in a game that forces you to always be on the move is a head-smackingly stupid decision. The reason why people don't pick Sniper is precisely that you have to stand still to get its bonus, effectively forcing you to break your momentum. So I don't believe increasing its use would be good. I believe we should find something that doesn't require you to stop in order to work.

I don't know if extra armor would be enough to make "Always prepared" any better either... Then again, both level 20 skills are boring as hell.

Totally agree on the zed-time triggering passive idea ! Unlike the night-vision, I never understood why the Commando was the one who could extend zed-time (he has too many abilities on his hands!). It would fit the sharpshooter way better and provide some flavor to the perk as well. Considering how reliant the perk is on Zed-Time to score his headshots, that's also brilliant.

SWAT : Wait... People are really picking up Heavy Armor Training after the first wave? I've never seen anybody NOT using Tactical Movement mate.

Survivalist : Problem being that unless the HWT skill increases mag sizes DRAMATICALLY (to the point of having a machine gun, just like the Commando's assault rifles when he takes the right skills), people will just run for the tactical reloads. It's just too good to pass up. Why bother having a 50% larger mag when you can just slap a new one faster? I agree however that, considering the Survivalist role and purpose, splitting weapons like this is silly and even counter-intuitive.

Same goes for Weapon Harness and Ammo Vest... Why don't you just let people choose which grenades they want to pick? That's the goal of the survivalist to mimic existing perks FFS ! Plus, both the healing grenades and molotovs are arguably WORSE than the basic HE grenade. So you're basically getting a nerf upon reaching level 15 as a Survivalist. What the heck.

 

[Maxotaurious]

Survivalist perk ideas

Perk level 5

Gain movement speed on taking damage, deal increased damage for 5 seconds after receiving damage.

Perk level 10

Bashing with stocks of guns stuns big zeds, kills clots, crawlers and other weak zeds

Perk level 15

Gain fuel for firebug weapons based on damage output with firebug weapons. Lighting big zeds on fire will make them swap focus to you.

Perk level 20

Dying will set off a powerful explosion on your body and heals teammates in the vicinity.

Perk level 25.

Bashing will knock zeds of any kind down, bash in real time.

 

[Aleflippy]

Survivalist perk ideas

Perk level 5

Gain movement speed on taking damage, deal increased damage for 5 seconds after receiving damage.

Perk level 10

Bashing with stocks of guns stuns big zeds, kills clots, crawlers and other weak zeds

Perk level 15

Gain fuel for firebug weapons based on damage output with firebug weapons. Lighting big zeds on fire will make them swap focus to you.

Perk level 20

Dying will set off a powerful explosion on your body and heals teammates in the vicinity.

Perk level 25.

Bashing will knock zeds of any kind down, bash in real time.

Kinda hard to understand what you were trying to convey... I assume all of them are just ONE skill?

If that's correct, let's see :

Lvl 5 : it's actually a great idea that I had for my reworked "Martial Artist" idea. But I guess it would fit the survivalist quite well, consider he's all about well... survival. I would also argue that it could make an interesting counterpart to a tactical reload skill, which may be more valuable to a good player that barely gets hit, but less so to a newer player that may get bodied more often. Hell, some might intentionally hurt themselves to get such bonuses ! It's cool.

Lvl 10 : Stunning with the bash attack would be insanely cool yeah ! Kinda wonder why the zerk doesn't have that (but I guess parrying AND staggering is already more than enough). Don't know about "killing weak zeds", maybe that would prove to be a bit too much? Then again, the rate-of-fire isn't incredible and you'd only kill one per bash so... Maybe that's alright. Plus, good luck smashing that crawler before it hits you !

Lvl 15 : That's a big no-no because such a jack-of-all-trade shouldn't have skills tied to specific weapons IMO. Plus it would be easy to simply farm ammo that way, with no real downsides.

Lvl 20 : So kinda like the demo's passive with added flair? I guess the healing aura would be enough to warrant it as a skill rather than a passive. But it depends on its range and healing capabilities obviously. It shouldn't be too much otherwise you could pretty much "sacrifice yourself" for an easy win. But it shouldn't be a meager +20HP otherwise the skill would never get picked. It's still highly situational either way though.

Lvl 25 : It's quite underwhelming to be honest... How many zeds could you bash anyway? Even in real time, you don't exactly use the stock of your guns that fast... And you need to be super close. I believe it should have something extra, maybe bashing a zed will send it flying, damaging other zeds in his path? But I don't know how you could code that without it looking super stupid.

 

[OnionBubs]

Question, and I'm not trying to be a jerk about this, but do you guys regularly play Sharp in HoE maps, namely M14 Sharp? Because from my experience, some of this comes from a misguided standpoint on Sharpshooter:

Sharpshooter

• 5 - Sniper: 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: The extra ammo always comes just short of the Dead Eye skill. 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, and doing this would help non-level 25 Sharpshooters gain some of that much-needed value.

The best thing about Marksman is the firing speed buff. The only real purpose for the movement is to help you "dodge" Zed attacks in place as the odd ones reach your spot so you can back up and shoot them in the face. 10% isn't enough to make a humongous difference when you hit Hell on Earth anyway as most things will still catch you.
The firing speed buff is what makes the M14 loadouts so good, because it increases the headshots you can land in a shorter timeframe...which lets you trigger Zed-Time more, and deal greater DPS to Scrakes and Fleshpounds while you're at it.

On that note, Always Prepared basically gives you a free Freeze Grenade and an extra clip of ammo. Which, if you're hitting your shots and you know how to use your grenades, is more powerful than it sounds. Dead Eye is only really useful in RailSharp loadouts because 10% extra damage off the M14 barely changes any breakpoints that I'm aware of. Not that I would necessarily turn down extra max armor, but to say Always Prepared isn't helpful is wrong.

Not to say I entirely hate the idea of the passive linear increase for triggering Zed-Time, but Sharpshooter isn't lacking in value, either. It can either delete Scrakes and Fleshpounds for free, or it can be an insanely powerful generalist that grants the team Zed-Time for the Commando to extend. By the way, if you haven't read the patch notes, Ranger now lets you stun even raging Fleshpounds with virtually any on-perk weapon, so it turns an already useful skill choice into an even better one.

Sharpshooter : The main problem with the perks level 5 skills is that being forced to camp in a game that forces you to always be on the move is a head-smackingly stupid decision. The reason why people don't pick Sniper is precisely that you have to stand still to get its bonus, effectively forcing you to break your momentum. So I don't believe increasing its use would be good. I believe we should find something that doesn't require you to stop in order to work.

I don't know if extra armor would be enough to make "Always prepared" any better either... Then again, both level 20 skills are boring as hell.

Totally agree on the zed-time triggering passive idea ! Unlike the night-vision, I never understood why the Commando was the one who could extend zed-time (he has too many abilities on his hands!). It would fit the sharpshooter way better and provide some flavor to the perk as well. Considering how reliant the perk is on Zed-Time to score his headshots, that's also brilliant.

Wut? The game doesn't always force you to be on the move. A good team holding a spot is basically what peak performance looks like. No need to worry about getting blocked off in kite routes if you just destroy everything anyway. Trying to play Sharpshooter well during a constant kite map, while possible, is way more trouble than its worth and is often a losing proposition. (Ask me how I know from all those Nuked games...)

Sniper forcing you to stand still is for the Railgun loadouts, since those guns are dummy powerful and they need some balancing factor to keep them in line. Doing full damage while having extra movespeed, etc. would put them over the top. Besides, if you're on a coordinated team watching out for you, then Sniper does its exact job by letting you sit still and pick off Scrakes/FPs more easily with the delete cannons.

Not necessarily disagreeing on the "passive Zed-Time headshot trigger" thing, per se, but I do disagree that Sharp is reliant on Zed-Time to get the most out of headshots. The Sharp should be getting headshots anyway; the Zed-Time is a bonus to let you clown on whatever big boi is in your way at the time, especially with the aforementioned Ranger buffs.

------

More on topic, I'd like to see some changes to SWAT that would give it the option to use more loadouts, rather than "use the Fallback/armor skills at the start, then switch to the Tactical skills because why bother after that." The armor skills don't really help past the first couple of waves since you're basically one bad Fleshpound encounter from losing all of the armor, and Fallback is...well, Fallback. Not that good once you sell off the pistols and get your first actual gun.

Like, maybe make the armor a passive and swap one of those skills with a recoil booster skill. Maybe Lv. 5?

 

[jiramdev]

Even more so considering the Commando weapons behave quite similarly, so you can't even really have gnarly combos by quickly switching in-between weapons

 

[OnionBubs]

Even more so considering the Commando weapons behave quite similarly, so you can't even really have gnarly combos by quickly switching in-between weapons

I just now saw that this was a snippet from AleFlippy's post above, so what the heck:

Tactician isn't bad in a vacuum; the whole point is that it allows you to keep both of your ARs topped off at all times, which is fine...in a vacuum. The problem is that it runs up against Machine Gunner, which vastly raises Commando's skill ceiling in so many ways. It allows you to actually extend off of anything bigger than a Gorefast, it allows you to put multiple shots at long range for an extend in case you're afraid of missing the first one, and most importantly, it allows you to kill Scrakes and (situationally) Fleshpounds depending on the situation, 3% extra damage (lol) be damned. The opportunity cost to running Tactician is so great that you might as well be actively sandbagging your team without it.

It's an issue akin to Gunslinger's Fan Fire vs. Whirwind of Lead--WoL isn't awful in a vacuum because it does allow you to one-tap some things without burning your precious ammo supply, but Fan Fire's "basically unlimited DPS for 18-21 seconds, go nuts" is so absurdly powerful that you'd be hard pressed to find a replacement for it. I wouldn't change that, either; Gunslinger is designed to handle a particular way and changing that would be unnecessary variety for variety's sake.

Berserker : I believe the reason most people chooses Skirmisher is for the innate regeneration anyway... Thus making the extra speed a passive bonus wouldn't improve anything. While it would definitely improve Dreadnaught, it wouldn't exactly hinder Skirmisher, thus nullifying such a change. I believe we should simply give the speed to Dreadnaught (and possibly remove some of the gigantic amount of extra HP it gives) , and leave Skirmisher with only the regen.

It's a combination of both. The speed lets you get away from Zeds to heal, and the auto-regen combined with Zerk's tankiness means the Zeds really have to surround a Skirmisher zerk in order to kill him. Skirmisher either having the speed or the regen would be fine, but both at once is excessive.

By contrast, Dreadnaught lets you still tank a stupid amount of damage when coupled with Medic buffs, but in practice, Dreadnaught is effectively only really good on boss waves because in most cases you're occupying the Medic the whole time just to stay alive.

Support

• 10 - Fortitude: 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?
• 25 - ZED TIME - Penetrator: I have tried using this skill many times, but it never seems to be better than its Barrage counterpart. To buff it, make perk weapons reload in real time during ZED time. That way when using Penetrator, you can get a few more shots in.

I would still take Salvo over Fortitude in any circumstance, because it lets Support reach major shots-to-kill breakpoints for HVTs, and dead HVTs > not-dead HVTs hitting you. So this is nice, but I still wouldn't use it by comparison.

The problem with Penetrator, like the Commando and Gunslinger bit above, is that it will never be as good as Barrage because of sheer opportunity cost that giving up DPS yields. Shotguns already have such great penetration that there's no reason to take the Pen skills at 15 or 25 because you'll never line up more than 4 Zeds on any regular basis. Meanwhile, Barrage lets you kill everything and enables you to solo HVTs effortlessly.

Really, the entire RRRRR Support build is already so good with such a high skill ceiling I hate to change it.

Demolitionist

• 10 - Extra Rounds: An ammo increase of +5 is very inconsistent, as 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 15%. The max ammo for weapons would have to be adjusted a bit to account for this.
• 15 - Sonic Resistant Rounds/Fragmentation Rounds: Ever since the damage reduction was taken away from Fragmentation Rounds, Sonic Resistant Rounds fell very far behind. I'm glad the damage reduction was removed from Frag Rounds, but Sonic Rounds needs to keep up. I think a great buff for Sonic Rounds would be to increase projectile speed. Also, reduce the area of effect increase of Frag Rounds from 50% to 40% (or maybe even 30%). 50% is excessive and too powerful.
• Extra Explosive Ammo: This passive skill of +5 max ammo should be changed just as Extra Rounds above should be changed (to +15% max ammo, or +3% every 5 levels). This passive skill would apply to C4, but at 3 max ammo for C4, you would only get +1 max ammo if a level 25 Demolitionist was using Extra Rounds as well (+30% max ammo total).

It was designed back when the RPG was the perk's capstone weapon and simply wasn't changed accordingly. Demo has some weird design issues, but if you think about it, pretty much every stat is designed around RPG + C4 builds (which are, and continue to remain, the best builds) with the rest being joke weapons. Having said that, I can concur that it would make sense to change it so that other weapons are also affected in equal proportion.

Your point on Sonic Resistant Rounds, though, stuns me. Like, that's one of the skills keeping Demo playable in HoE difficulty because it stops one Siren from completely ruining dynamite stuns and C4 combos, to say nothing of the rest of Demo's arsenal. Frag Rounds loses out on that alone, even when taking into account blast radius falloff meaning that it only really helps if you're running a M32 or Seeker 6 spam build (you shouldn't).

Firebug

• 5 - Bring the Heat/High Capacity Fuel Tank: I did the math on this, and from a DPS perspective, the 35% damage bonus is almost always better (the only notable exception being with Spitfires). To balance this, add the Firebug's passive +25% reload speed bonus to High Capacity Fuel Tank. This could also be modified to instead just use faster reload animations for perk weapons (the same as every other perk with faster reload perk skills, in which case Firebug weapons could be added to the Survivalist's list of weapons that it can use with faster reload).
• 20 - Firestorm: Compared to Heat Wave, Firestorm doesn't stand a chance. As such, a great buff for this skill could be that ground fires last 50% longer.

Yes, the DPS increase from Bring the Heat is what makes it better. The other issue is that BtH combos much better with the Firebug's other skills, including Pyromaniac, because it gives you a means of up-front lethality rather than relying purely on DoT, something Firebug always needs. So the faster reload wouldn't really help HCFT much, just suck less.

Heat Wave will basically always be better at Firebug's meta role than Firestorm because it lets you avoid taking hits by pushing things back (sometimes into your own fire). In fact, I'd argue that Heat Wave is basically what saves Firebug in HoE, because without it you're basically guaranteed to eat hits when holding a choke. So IDK if longer burn time would exactly help.


I don't have anything for Survivalist, I think it's an inherently bad class and there's nothing one can do to fix it while keeping the game healthy.

 

[Maxotaurious]

I have some more ideas on making a survivalist more about being an actual survivor.

Level 5 Dexterous Fingers

Reload Faster with any weapon. (Firebug, berserker weapons too)

Or
Eye for detail
See Zed healthbars at medium distance or less.

Level 10 Melee expert

Currently a great perk early in but suffers later with more going on. Perhaps gain 2 hp per zed killed as well would be great.

The healing perk is also great.

Level 15 Hunter Tactics

Zeds take 20% additional damage to critical zones.

Or

Lone wolf

Movement Incressed by 10%
Firing speed increased by 10%
Incoming damage reduced by 5%


Level 20 hot headed

Firebug weapons burn for 50 percent longer, do 20 percent more damage and have 50 percent increased knockback.

Or

Team captain

Players take 10 percent less damage when near you and their healing is 15 percent more potent.

Level 25 The Killing Floor

Any zed hit by your bullets will stun, any zeds hit by explosives will get knocked down, any zed hit by fire will permanently burn until death. Timed on bosses

Or

The saviour

Teammates receive 20% armor who are nearby and are healed 25% when zed time activates.

 

[Mister Master]

The original post has been updated after the Winter 2021 update.

 

[CitronVert]

I don't disagree with most of your suggestions but wanted to point out one where you're very wrong, the sharpshooter: FYI, "Always prepared" is by far the better perk, having that one extra grenade often is a life saver and on top of that the ammo buff synergizes very well with M14 which is one of Sharp's best weapon.

Dead Eye is actually a very underwhelming perk, the perk forces you to aim down sights to get 10% more damage, but since the ADS animation can not be reload cancelled unlike the regular hip fire animation, you're in fact losing way more DPS by trying to aim than the 10% you're gaining (not even taking into account the time you spend aiming, just the time you waste by waiting for the reload animation to complete). That would be acceptable if 10% made a difference practically with certain enemies thresholds but it does not at least there isn't any that I'm aware of.
But even worse (imo), the perk forces you to do something you should not normally do (aiming down sights), that alone is a massive downside because it means playing with this perk makes you alter your playstyle and get bad habits (same reason why I hate Sniper). Very rarely do you want to aim in this game, bullets already go perfectly at the center of the screen, all that aiming really does is zoom out the screen. I would probably still not use that perk even if it was free, and I recommend you to try to do the same.

Most Sharpshooter mains would probably agree that it is a well balanced class and doesn't need survivability buffs, although I should mention his largest problem (for me) is how buggy his freeze grenades are, this is to the point where it actively impacts gameplay, I have hundreds of hour on this class and yet I can still not figure out why sometimes I throw a nade and something that should clearly be frozen is not frozen even though the nade is at their feet (my guess is due to bugged LOS, since it happens only on certain maps - btw why is LOS even a requirement? very buggy on some maps like Biotics Labs). Freeze grenades are such a crucial part of Sharp's playstyle and yet they depend mostly on factors that are random or out of your control, 95% of time it works fine and 5% it doesn't work and you die stupidly, because the scrake you tried to freeze happened to be in a weird animation state like "taunting" or "poisoned" which looks passive but the devs somehow decided is not freezable. That makes Sharp extremely unreliable in pubs and probably the class that is the most heavily punished by having teammates.

 

[o2xVc3UuXp0NyBihrUnu]

bullets already go perfectly at the center of the screen

Just wanted to chime in to provide perspective that ADS is still useful occasionally on SS. While it's true that bullets go almost perfectly on SS weapons because they have the lowest spread in the game, a special case has to be made for zed time. During zed time spread and recoil of rapid shooting weapons deteriorates which is very noticeable on FN FAL used in full auto mode during zed time, bullets just go astray. One can unload without missing shots only at a very close range, everything else requires ADS and/or pacing shots. Another issue is not all rifles are equal, e.g. M14 has lower spread and less affected by not ADSing, while FN FAL has higher spread and better used in ADS at longer distances. Yet even M14 at longer ranges (say the long right lane on Containment Station) is better shot while ADSing to reduce its significant recoil when one shoots in rapid succession with zero downtime between the shots.

Another dead eye bonus not mentioned is its recoil reduction is a) multiplicative and applies 0.9 factor to the sum recoil value b) active even when not ADSing. This makes a) landing M14 rapid succession shots more reliable at long range even when not ADSing b) a must have on FAL in full auto mode in marksman setup when ADSing. Basically, FN in full auto mode FAL with Marksman, when not crouched, still and ADSing, is completely unmanageable.

There's a number of top KF2 players who prefer to run Dead Eye over Always Prepared at all times.

I agree though that Always Prepared is better in vast majority of cases.

I throw a nade and something that should clearly be frozen is not frozen even though the nade is at their feet

Yes, that's a very annoying problem. From what I know this affects all incap grenades, including demo's dynamite and SWAT's flashbangs. It doesn't seem to be related to blocking as zeds clearly don't block when they are expected to freeze and yet sometimes they don't. Also, I'm talking out of my ass here, but was it always like that? Wasn't it something that started manifesting itself first after, say, 2019 spring (or maybe 2020 spring?) update? From what I recall there were sudden complaints about it back then with videos proving it and if it's indeed the case there should be no videos with inconsistent freezes prior to that update.

 

[OnionBubs]

So all of my previous points in the thread still apply and the two posters above me pretty much (re)covered my thoughts on Sharp, but I had to chime in at this:

Field Medic

• 15 - Acidic Rounds: 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 twice the toxic DOT. At least that way, healing darts and healing grenades can be used more effectively as weapons.

Hard disagree. Gas is already stupidly powerful, stupidly easy to use, stupidly easy to apply, and readily in abundance. See my post from many months ago for more thoughts. The last thing the game needs is encouraging combat Healthrower/Incision combos by making them absurdly effective. Medic on the whole needs to have its kit dumpstered, not buffed.

Unless it gets a complete redesign to make it not a complete pain for everyone else in a lobby, Acidic Rounds is for solo players like the rest of the right-side tree.

 

[CitronVert]

Yes, that's a very annoying problem. From what I know this affects all incap grenades, including demo's dynamite and SWAT's flashbangs. It doesn't seem to be related to blocking as zeds clearly don't block when they are expected to freeze and yet sometimes they don't. Also, I'm talking out of my ass here, but was it always like that? Wasn't it something that started manifesting itself first after, say, 2019 spring (or maybe 2020 spring?) update? From what I recall there were sudden complaints about it back then with videos proving it and if it's indeed the case there should be no videos with inconsistent freezes prior to that update.

I have 2 hyoptheses for that:
- bugged map hitbox / invisible item on ground which blocks the nade sight.
- the non-frozen zed was in one of those "non-freezable" states that I mentioned but the animation was bugged and it looked like a normal animation, or maybe I simply didn't see it. (but that might not be true if you say the bug affects all incap nades, do zeds also have certain states with incap immunity to SWAT/demo nades i? don't play these classes enough to tell)

Can't recall when I started to notice this bug but it's possible that it was not there at the beginning of the game indeed.

 

[flashn00b]

No mentions of Massacre? I feel like that skill's been useless for the longest time even before the Zerker nerfs. IMO, i feel like this should be how the skill should function:

Massacre: Increase ranged perk weapon damage 15% & light melee attacks 30%. Also reload faster with all Berserker weapons.

30% light attack damage has nothing going for it when heavy swings often decide the outcome against large zed encounters, and you can get a similar effect by landing consistent headshots with your light melee attacks. Faster reloads and an unconditional damage bonus for ranged attacks would probably be more beneficial in a melee/ranged hybrid build.

 

[flashn00b]

Double-post to comment on a few things:

Gunslinger
Fan Fire's "reload on real time" bonus is actually a downside for the Gunslinger, since you don't get the janky looking reload animations that you'd often see when reloading a gun as a Survivalist near the end of Zed time.

Field Medic
Acidic rounds is a pretty controversial perk skill and as much as people like to complain about poison damage, I can't help but think that when engaging certain enemy types like the gorefiend and husk, the "chip damage is still damage" argument is applicable. These enemies are IMO, the least enjoyable enemies to the point where I'd be willing to fire a three round burst to poison an enemy, resume healing teammates/killing trash before poisoning the gorefiend/husk again. I think the most that can be done to make that skill suck less would be to change the Acidic Rounds DoT damage type from Toxic to Ballistic_Rifle, so as to have okay damage against most enemy types (common sense would dictate to not try and DoT a fleshpound or Scrake to death, obviously).

As for symbiotic healing, I feel like the skill's also in an awkward position since the previous nerfs to it means that the Medic will have to trust that his teammates are off-perking an HMTECH-101 cuz the self-heal applied to healing others isn't exactly what i'd call sustainable. You'll probably get crushed pretty bad-like, honestly.

Survivalist
I'm surprised the TC hasn't commented on Melee Expert on how it's much better than Medic Training even if you used ranged weapons exclusively. IMO, I think Melee expert should just be a thing that the Survivalist gains unconditionally at Level 10 regardless of perk choice. Perhaps these skills would be welcome instead?

Level 10: Melee Combat
Mad Doctor: Increase the potency and recharge speed of all your heals 40%. Also increase melee attack speed 20%, inflict 90% more melee damage, and move 25% faster when using any melee weapon.
CQB Training: Increase melee attack speed 20%, inflict 80% more melee damage, and move 25% faster when using any melee weapon. Also gain a +10% damage bonus to all weapons in the game.

Another skill that I find problematic is Lockdown, since it's pretty much impossible to compete against Madman's faster rate of fire with its current balancing. Perhaps these adjustments could be in order?

Level 25: Specialist Training
ZED TIME Madman: The 3x firing speed now applies to melee weapons on top of its current bonuses.
ZED TIME Grenadier: During Zed Time, all your weapons do not require reloading*

*How this will work is that when a weapon's magazine hits zero, the weapon will just reload instantly. You'll still need ammo to sustain it. Essentially a weaker version of Whirlwind of Lead that applies to all guns. It is important to note that if for whatever reason that a single-shot weapon has more than one round in its magazine, then it will have the same rate of fire as an AA-12. So imagine that RoF being attached to things like the Railgun, M99 and RPG-7.