Survivalist Rework Idea (with buffs)

[Demon Swords]

The Problem with the Survivalist Perk: With more and more weapons coming out, perks have weapon options that let the perk cover up its own weakness or face enemies they normally cannot. With most perks already having these options, the need of a perk allowing weapons from multiple weapons to face any scenario isn’t necessary and in this case just weaker.

Rework Goal: Give the Survivalist more Utility to make the survivalist more of a tradeoff from specialist classes instead of 100% worse.

Equipment Change

• You can choose your grenade to be a Healing Grenade, He Grenade, or Molitov.

Passive Changes:

• Increase Carrying Capacity by 1 per 5 levels. (Max 5)
• Increase Max Ammo by 3% per 5 levels. (Max 15%)
• Damage reduction per level changed from 1 to 0.8 (25%->20% at lv 25)

—--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tier 1 Changes

Tactical Reload: Increase weapon reload speed.

Medical Training: Increase the potency of all your healing 30% and decrease the cooldown of your syringe and healing darts 50%. (same as its current Tier 2 Version.)

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Tier 2 Changes:

Weakness Exploit:: Do 10% more damage with head and Weakspot hits. Gain 25% Recoil Reduction. (Replace Medical Training as Tier 2)

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Tier 3 - On the Hunt (Complete Tier rework.)

Scavenger: Increase Max health by 25%. Heal yourself 1 point of Health for every ZED you kill.

Takedown : Increase the power of incapacitation methods of your weapons by 50%.
—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tier 4 & 5 stays the same.
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Changes Rational:

Passive Change Rational: Things like max Ammo and Carrying Capacity are both only useful for the later waves of matches so making them the options of a Tier is very Awkward. (Thus I moved them to the passives) Decreased the passive damage reduction to compensate for the additional tank and damage options.

Medical Training Tier change Rational: Tier 2 of current Survivalist is very awkward since both perks are almost pointless if you want to play Survivalist with only offensive Guns and not a Healing Weapon or a melee weapon. Additionally with this change, you can use Melee Expert with Medical Training to have better self heals and thus be closer to the tankiness of Berserker.

Weakness Exploit Rational: A perk with a bit of damage boost and some Utility. Designed to be useful for any gun. (may need slightly higher numbers.)

Tier 3 Rational: Both of these perks are designed to be on the weaker side since the old tier 3 was moved to the passive effects and to not make the Survivalist too strong by getting a really strong extra skill. Scavenger is designed to make the Survivalist a little tankier and be most useful in solo play. Takedown is a more team oriented perk and would stack well with Spontaneous Zed-plosion for cc’ing.
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Edits from original post: Decreased passive damage reduction, Decreased Damage number from exploit weakness, Removed idea for a new Teir 5 skill.

 

[Aleflippy]

You're kinda late to the party brother ! That's something we've been saying upon the perk's very release... The game simply doesn't have the need for a jack-of-all-trades when all teams are better suited with specific roles. And as you mention, all perks' arsenals are so extensive nowadays that they can cover pretty much anything. I've been talking about "feature creep" so much that you could have a drinking game by scouting all my comments about it. But we've probably gone too far to turn back right now, and we just have to accept it... I'm still salty about the fact the Survivalist replaced the rumored Martial Artist perk, which I think would have suited the game super nicely. But oh well, at least he has his own guns right now, so at least he feels a little less like a subpar X or Y.

Now, on to your ideas ! It's been a while since I've seen people doing that.

-"Your Grenade is always the Healing Grenade." : Heck no. We FINALLY received the opportunity to spawn with a different grenade and the T1 of your choice, and considering the road the Survivalist has taken, I feel it's the best possible outcome. Even if we follow the logic of making a supportive, utility-based perk... I believe he should have access to every "buff/debuff" grenades available, namely the Cryo, Flashbang, EMP and Healing.

-Totally agree on the passive changes however. It fits nicely !

-Tier 1 : You hit the same problem as the current Survivalist... More often than not, one skill might only be useful if you follow a specific path. And in that case, it means the "Medic-lite" one. Why would you choose that skill instead of the Tactical Reload, which applies to ALL weapons?

-Tier 2 : So you're keeping the melee expert perk...? It's the exact same problem, unless you're going for the melee path, you're just much better using a perk that increases ALL your critical damage. I do concur that having an extra tanky Zerk with the usage of "Medical Training" and "Melee Expert" is quite clever however !

-Tier 3 : ... You know where I'm going right? Having ALL your weapons deal increased incapacitation damage is just more appealing than buffing your grenades. And you only get five of them, so it's honestly a skill that is very situational.

-Tier 5 : I still find "MadMan" to be vastly superior, because it's a tremendous increase in DPS. Having extra mobility can save your bacon in a pinch, but ZED-time is often better used not as an escape tool, but as a way to clear the stage easily. And again, I feel other perks do it better (the medic with its gas clouds, the demo with its explosions etc.) "Escape Artist" might come in handy for a berserker, always in the heat of battle and using his kitting capabilities to stay alive and harass zeds. For other "perks", it might be a waste compared to a DPS boost.


Bottom line : Your "general" skills reworks are good, and I believe it could make the perk much more efficient at its job. But the healing skills will just turn the perk into a worse medic... Which isn't really what you should be going for. If you want to heal the team, either play a medic or a perk that has a crossperked medic weapon. Otherwise, you're just limiting yourself for no really good reasons.

 

[Demon Swords]

Your Grenade is always the Healing Grenade." : Heck no. We FINALLY received the opportunity to spawn with a different grenade and the T1 of your choice, and considering the road the Survivalist has taken, I feel it's the best possible outcome. Even if we follow the logic of making a supportive, utility-based perk... I believe he should have access to every "buff/debuff" grenades available, namely the Cryo, Flashbang, EMP and Healing.

I didn't notice the upcoming grenade choice feature. However it seems like the only choices are the option provided by the Tier 3 skill or the Basic HE Granade the Survivalist starts with.

I unnecessarily Included the Healing Grenade part because this rework is a Modification of an Survivalist Rework I posted a years and a half ago. (I editted my original post with Grenade Choosing and replaced the grenade based skill.

-Tier 1 : You hit the same problem as the current Survivalist... More often than not, one skill might only be useful if you follow a specific path. And in that case, it means the "Medic-lite" one. Why would you choose that skill instead of the Tactical Reload, which applies to ALL weapons?

I think its fine if one half is generally better. Tatical Reload as an effect is normally the better option for the majority of classes. Also I don't think Tripwire would be willing to rework every skill of the survivalist (considering that the upcoming Inferno is the only skill rework they've done in the past 2 years), So I need to keep as many skills as possible when doing a rework.

-Tier 2 : So you're keeping the melee expert perk...? It's the exact same problem, unless you're going for the melee path, you're just much better using a perk that increases ALL your critical damage. I do concur that having an extra tanky Zerk with the usage of "Medical Training" and "Melee Expert" is quite clever however !

Melee Expert kind of has to exist if the Survivalist wants any chance of being able to use melee weapons. Berserker provides way too many damage boosts for melee weapons to be viable without having an entire skill dedicated to buffing it for the Survivalist. (Also reduces the number of skills that Tripwire would need to rework. If Melee Expert is really something that should be removed then it can be replaced with some Survivalist version of Fallback)

-Tier 5 : I still find "MadMan" to be vastly superior, because it's a tremendous increase in DPS. Having extra mobility can save your bacon in a pinch, but ZED-time is often better used not as an escape tool, but as a way to clear the stage easily. And again, I feel other perks do it better (the medic with its gas clouds, the demo with its explosions etc.) "Escape Artist" might come in handy for a berserker, always in the heat of battle and using his kitting capabilities to stay alive and harass zeds. For other "perks", it might be a waste compared to a DPS boost.

I think its fine if one of them is significantly stronger in most cases. Not much can compete with more damage. I think Escape Artist could be really useful in solo play and should see more play the Lockdown it would be replacing. (Though not replacing the skill would reduce the amount of effort Tripwire would need to rework the Survivalist.)

 

[Spoke]

The Problem with the Survivalist Perk: With more and more weapons coming out, perks have weapon options that let the perk cover up its own weakness or face enemies they normally cannot. With most perks already having these options, the need of a perk allowing weapons from multiple weapons to face any scenario isn’t necessary and in this case just weaker.

Survivalist is all about trade-offs already. As an example let's compare a sharpshooter with a railgun to a LRRLR survivalist with a railgun. You trade raw power (shots to kill) for:
- more survivability (damage resistance + swat amor)
- 25% higher movement speed with melee out
- extra 5kg of potential weaponry
- better trash clearing, crowd control and frequent but inconsistent stunning (zed-plosion)
- the ability to co-exist with chaos perks.

The Problem with the Survivalist Perk: With more and more weapons coming out, perks have weapon options that let the perk cover up its own weakness or face enemies they normally cannot. With most perks already having these options, the need of a perk allowing weapons from multiple weapons to face any scenario isn’t necessary and in this case just weaker.

Rework Goal: Give the Survivalist more Utility to make the survivalist more of a tradeoff from specialist classes instead of 100% worse.

Equipment Change

• You can choose your grenade to be a Healing Grenade, He Grenade, or Molitov.

Passive Changes:

• Increase Carrying Capacity by 1 per 5 levels. (Max 5)
• Increase Max Ammo by 3% per 5 levels. (Max 15%)

—--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tier 1 Changes

Tactical Reload: Increase weapon reload speed.

Medical Training: Increase the potency of all your healing 30% and decrease the cooldown of your syringe and healing darts 50%. (same as its current Tier 2 Version.)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tier 2 Changes:

Weakness Exploit:: Do 15% more damage with head and Weakspot hits. Gain 25% Recoil Reduction. (Replace Medical Training as Tier 2)

—-----------------------------------------------------------------
Tier 3 - On the Hunt (Complete Tier rework.)

Scavenger: Increase Max health by 25%. Heal yourself 1 point of Health for every ZED you kill.

Takedown : Increase the power of incapacitation methods of your weapons by 50%.
—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tier 4 stays the same.
—-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Escape Artist: During Zed time, you cannot be grabbed from clots or immobilized by E.D.A.R lassers (removing the effect of it upon zed time), and you move and switch weapons in real-time. (Replacing old Lockdown)

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Changes Rational:

Passive Change Rational: Things like max Ammo and Carrying Capacity are both only useful for the later waves of matches so making them the options of a Tier is very Awkward. (Thus I moved them to the passives).

Medical Training Tier change Rational: Tier 2 of current Survivalist is very awkward since both perks are almost pointless if you want to play Survivalist with only offensive Guns and not a Healing Weapon or a melee weapon. Additionally with this change, you can use Melee Expert with Medical Training to have better self heals and thus be closer to the tankiness of Berserker.

Weakness Exploit Rational: A perk with a bit of damage boost and some Utility. Designed to be useful for any gun. (may need slightly higher numbers.)

Tier 3 Rational: Both of these perks are designed to be on the weaker side since the old tier 3 was moved to the passive effects and to not make the Survivalist too strong by getting a really strong extra skill. Scavenger is designed to make the Survivalist a little tankier and be most useful in solo play. Takedown is a more team oriented perk and would stack well with Spontaneous Zed-plosion for cc’ing.

Escape Artist Rational: Lockdown is awkward as it needs you to be in the position of having enemies you want to stun, but not kill instead with the extra fire rate of Madman. Escape Artist helps you to reposition and switch between whatever weapons you need for the situation.

Jesus Christ, survivalist is already super tanky giving him the option to have better syringes, movement speed and heal on kills (which is what survivalist excels at already) is way too much. Survivalist as he is now is too tanky, not too little. I disargee with tier-3, it actually a very balanced trade. Healing grenades + extra mag or two versus extra 5kg is pretty balanced and i don't always go one way in the late-game. Some teams just can't be trusted. Also Melee Expert isn't useless if you go with only guns, you get the speed bonus with a knife aswell.

15% extra damage on weakpoint is too much. You would do more damage with Swat weapons than swat himself (he gets 25% damage to perk weapons), same with support without salvo.

I agree with removing lockdown but not because it's too weak but because it's too strong. I've saved people from death countless times. You can stun whole rooms with rapid fire weapons, even bosses. Sharpshooter needs a headshot to do that.

I'm going to take a guess that you don't play survivalist or at least not extensively.

 

[o2xVc3UuXp0NyBihrUnu]

Survivalist as a perk is a bad idea (= contribute nothing to the team, let your teammates die, pick up their weapons, kite for 40 mins) that cannot be fixed. It starts with the name, so as long as the name pertains to anything solo survival related it's still dead in the water.

Whole perk has to be trashed and a new one created with 1 major lesson learned: absolutely NO encouraging of any behavior detrimental to the team play, heavy dependency on team cohesion and severe reprimand of any behavior violating the team role.

 

[OnionBubs]

On top of what o2xVc3UuXp0NyBihrUnu wrote above, at this point in the game Survivalist is already too good for what it should've been in the first place.

Between the numerous buffs in guise of "QoL updates," the many frankly busted weapons, the newly added ability to select very good perk-specific grenades, and the addition of the Reducto Ray to its arsenal as of this beta, the Survivalist has grown too big for its proverbial britches.

At this point the only thing it doesn't do is incredibly niche perk-specific stuff, such as Commando's Zed-Time extensions, or Firebug's fire/DoT boosts.

 

[Aleflippy]

On top of what o2xVc3UuXp0NyBihrUnu wrote above, at this point in the game Survivalist is already too good for what it should've been in the first place.

Between the numerous buffs in guise of "QoL updates," the many frankly busted weapons, the newly added ability to select very good perk-specific grenades, and the addition of the Reducto Ray to its arsenal as of this beta, the Survivalist has grown too big for its proverbial britches.

At this point the only thing it doesn't do is incredibly niche perk-specific stuff, such as Commando's Zed-Time extensions, or Firebug's fire/DoT boosts.

... Then again, my only reason to play Survivalist is precisely due to its unique weapons

Which really makes me think we could have had that damn "scientist" perk in the end, playing a similar supportive role as the medic, but with buffs/debuffs instead of healing.

 

[o2xVc3UuXp0NyBihrUnu]

Which really makes me think we could have had that damn "scientist" perk in the end, playing a similar supportive role as the medic, but with buffs/debuffs instead of healing.

This totally makes sense to me, I double that. No idea what TWI people behind the current idea of survivalist were thinking when they designed it. KF2 is too late at this point, but hopefully we can talk sense to them for KF3 and they do something like you propose here.

 

[OnionBubs]

My best guess is the survivalist was done out of obligation (publishers) to have the 10 perks or whatever they had originally promised, in lieu of omitting Martial Artist as its own perk, which is why it came out at the very last minute and was so underwhelming.

... Then again, my only reason to play Survivalist is precisely due to its unique weapons

Which really makes me think we could have had that damn "scientist" perk in the end, playing a similar supportive role as the medic, but with buffs/debuffs instead of healing.

Thing is, you don't even need to play its own weapons on the perk. Stuff like the Freezethrower is perfect on the Field Medic as on offhand weapon that just helps you win harder against the Zeds.

Plus of all the things Survivalist did get, actual boosts to its own desginated weapons weren't in that list. For some reason.

 

[Aleflippy]

My best guess is the survivalist was done out of obligation (publishers) to have the 10 perks or whatever they had originally promised, in lieu of omitting Martial Artist as its own perk, which is why it came out at the very last minute and was so underwhelming.


Thing is, you don't even need to play its own weapons on the perk. Stuff like the Freezethrower is perfect on the Field Medic as on offhand weapon that just helps you win harder against the Zeds.

Plus of all the things Survivalist did get, actual boosts to its own desginated weapons weren't in that list. For some reason.

I'm still 100% certain that it would have been possible to make the Martial Artist work as an interesting counterpoint to the Zerk : make it a pure melee glass cannon, while the zerk is a tank. That or the "Scientist" idea I've been throwing around.

You're right about NOT having to play Survivalist weapons with its dedicated perk, but I'm not that fond of playing off-perk weapons anymore. It worked decently in KF1 (and was sometimes encouraged : having a ranged weapon as a zerk, or getting a little something as a demolitions up until you could buy your costly guns...). But here in KF2, with the skills, the VERY numerous arsenal each perk has, and the crossperked guns... I feel you can often get whatever you need without looking at other perks' loadouts.

It's not as if the Medic's weaponry wasn't busted already. Leave some for the others !

 

[OnionBubs]

I'm still 100% certain that it would have been possible to make the Martial Artist work as an interesting counterpoint to the Zerk : make it a pure melee glass cannon, while the zerk is a tank. That or the "Scientist" idea I've been throwing around.

I'd like that more than the current Berserker implementation--this game needs more glass cannons, as it's been proven that tanky perks are really unhealthy for this game on the whole--but it probably never would've passed the sniff test with the larger playerbase. Most players looooooooove their tank/speed builds.

You're right about NOT having to play Survivalist weapons with its dedicated perk, but I'm not that fond of playing off-perk weapons anymore. It worked decently in KF1 (and was sometimes encouraged : having a ranged weapon as a zerk, or getting a little something as a demolitions up until you could buy your costly guns...). But here in KF2, with the skills, the VERY numerous arsenal each perk has, and the crossperked guns... I feel you can often get whatever you need without looking at other perks' loadouts.

It's not as if the Medic's weaponry wasn't busted already. Leave some for the others !

I'm completely on that same field. I never was a fan of offperking with a couple of exceptions (.500 on RPG/C4 demo being an example) and honestly I don't like that the concept has its own dedicated perk, rather than being an exception to the norm. I also think there's far too many useless guns/weapons for each perk that contribute to the issue, but that's another story.

Encouraging offperks destroys the uniqueness to perk loadouts that each team role is based around.

It's not as if the Medic's weaponry wasn't busted already. Leave some for the others !

By the Medic crossperks I really meant the 101/201, etc.; the originals weren't so bad.