Demolitionist (Killing Floor 2): Difference between revisions

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Revision as of 00:20, 21 July 2016

Perk Overview

The Demolitionist perk in Killing Floor 2 specialises in the use of explosives, with particular emphasis on destroying larger groups of weaker enemies alongside dealing substantial damage to fleshpounds. This perk spawns with a HX25 grenade pistol, 9mm pistol, Utility Knife and a 1/2 stick of dynamite. This perk receives bonus experience for killing fleshpounds with on-perk weapons.

Weapons List

Weapon Name Icon
Utility Knife
9mm Pistol
Dynamite
HX25 Grenade Pistol
C4
M79 Grenade Launcher
RPG-7

Perk Stats

This perk receives passive bonuses as they level up. The bonuses are as follows:

Passive Item Bonus Received
Perk Weapon Damage
Explosive Resistance (Base 10%)
Extra Explosive Ammo
+1% Per Level
+2% Per Level
+1 Per 5 Levels

Perk Skill Tree

Demolitionist Skills
Level Icon Description
Level 5 Grenade Supplier: They'll love you for it: team-mates can get an extra grenade from you, once per wave.
Level 5 On Contact: In your face, pal: your dynamite sticks will blow up when they make contact with a zed.
Level 10 Explosive Resistance: Toughen up the team: Reduce damage taken by you by 30% - and your team-mates, if they are close enough!
Level 10 Reactive Armor: Be the bomb: Once per wave, a blow that should kill causes an explosion, damaging Zeds around you and leaving you with just 5 health
Level 15 Door Traps: Blow that door: You weld 30% slower, but doors you weld explode when broken down. The more you weld of the door, the bigger the explosion.
Level 15 Siren Resistance: Shut your mouth, Zed: your grenades have a 100% chance of getting past sonic damage and actually exploding.
Level 20 Off Perk: Off again: do 10% extra damage with any Off-perk weapon.
Level 20 On Perk: On again: Increase all reaction, stumble and knockdown power by 30% for Demo weapons

Skill utilisation

Demolitionist benefits from a number of skills at they level up. Each skill conveys some kind of advantage to the player, some generally more practical than others.

Level 5 grants a choice of Grenade Supplier or On Contact. Arguably, On Contact isn't especially beneficial - unless in a tight situation - until waves where fleshpounds arrive: wave 5 on medium length games, and wave 6 on long games. Therefore in a 6 player co-operative environment, supplying 5 other players with a grenade each wave (alternatively, purchased at the trader at the price of 40 dosh each) is generally considered to be the more economically sound and team-first option. Once reaching a wave where fleshpounds make their appearance, On Contact is - particularly in conjunction with the On Perk skill at level 20 - the most effective option for a Demolitionist.

Level 10 presents a question of preference: Explosive Resistance or Reactive Armor. Explosive Resistance, on the surface, doesn't appear to be particularly helpful for Demolitionist perks. However, there are a few instances where Explosive Resistance is a boon to the team. Firstly, once a Husk reaches 15% of their total HP, they will rush towards the targeted player and attempt to use their ranged weapon in a suicide attack. This attack's damage is quite high: enough to kill a player outright. If a Demolitionist is the targeted player, or close enough to the targeted player to share their Explosive Resistance, it is more likely that they will survive the attack with an additional 30% resistance to explosives. Similarly, Hans and the Patriarch have explosive attacks that are effective and lethal; this resistance can be a lifesaver. Lastly, Explosive Resistance is extremely beneficial when applied to your own explosive attacks. It is a frequent occurrence for a Demolitionist perk to take damage from their own grenades, C4 and other explosives. Reactive Armor, on the other hand, has a poor output of damage: dealing less base damage in a smaller radius than an M79 grenade launcher's explosive attack does. It can be used only once per wave, and leaves the player vulnerable with only 5 HP. Although Reactive Armor can stun enemies, its overall benefit to the player is situational - and arguably only delaying the inevitable - requiring only 5 HP in damage before death, assuming no intervention from other players or a Field Medic.

At level 15, the choices are Siren Resistance and Door Traps. Siren Resistance allows all explosives to ignore her sonic attacks. This skill is arguably essential, particularly since most fleshpounds that spawn in-game will be accompanied by at least one siren. Demolitionist munitions are fairly limited in number, making every explosive lost to a siren a costly result, both economically and to the team's continued survival. Door Traps has an inherent limitation in that once destroyed, a door cannot be repaired: this ensures the finite utility of Door Traps in all maps, base damage, range and stun power notwithstanding.

Level 20 provides a similar style of choice to level 5. Demolitionists that opt for an RPG-7/C4 loadout will have two units of weight spare for an off-perk weapon. Statistically the most effective weapon for 2 units of weight is the Desert Eagle. It can deal fairly high levels of damage and is a reliable, advantageous weapon to have as a sidearm in the earlier waves. For this reason, it is beneficial in these waves to run Off Perk and be granted a bonus of 10% to the damage for all off-perk weapons; the onset of fleshpounds will ensure the viability of On Perk. In the case of not running an off-perk weapon in the earlier waves, On Perk would be the sound decision from the outset. It is worth noting that the Desert Eagle does 91 base damage, meaning that a 10% increase in its damage enables this perk to 1-shot clot variants to the body, and 2-shot gorefasts to the body also with the Desert Eagle. Given the 2 units of weight spare with either the RPG/C4 loadout, or the M79/C4/HX25 loadout, the Desert Eagle fits snugly into either loadout, ready to be an effective trash cleaner without requiring quite the same degree of accuracy as other perks.

Level 25 grants Nuke and Concussive Force. Whilst Nuke arguably contains benefits to the team, it has some drawbacks. Scrakes have a threshold of HP that, once they reach, enrages them: they will continue to rage indefinitely until death. On lower difficulties, Nuke can be extremely beneficial, however as the difficulty level increases, the scrakes' rage threshold becomes more and more tenuous. On Hell on Earth difficulty, a scrake need only take 10% of its total HP in damage before it will enrage, making Nuke detonations equally as dangerous to a team as it is helpful. The selection of Concussive Force is often a case of weighing up the positives and negatives of Nuke's potential to rage enemies that might prove difficult to kill once enraged, rather than any perceived benefit from actual knockdowns.

Weapons and team strategy

When looking at the perk's role, it's important to note that their secondary XP objective is "killing fleshpounds with Demolitionist weapons". Considering that this enemy doesn't materialise in-game until the second half (wave 6 of 10), this prompts questions about what the Demolitionist's role is prior to this stage. First of all it's important to look at the weapons of this perk, the limitations of the munitions, off-perk weapons as backup and how best to apply these to the team.

C4 is a highly effective weapon and without doubt the most powerful tier-2 weapon in the game, either as a Demolitionist, or off-perk. As such, this weapon forms the cornerstone of all effective fleshpound kills; a C4 detonation, followed by a 1/2 stick of dynamite, an RPG followed up by another C4, even at level 0 Demolitionist, is enough to kill a 6 player normal difficulty fleshpound outright. The importance of spacing the C4 detonations is as follows - any detonation of C4 by a player, that is followed by another C4 detonation by any player within three seconds, will result in 50% less damage output for the second detonation. This 50% reduction continues for every subsequent C4 detonation. For example, assuming base damage of 820 for any C4, then the next detonation of C4 within 3 seconds of the last would output only 410 damage, and within three seconds again, would output only 205 damage. This means that proper spacing of C4 detonations, particularly in regard to attacking fleshpounds, is extremely important to get the most damage value out of the C4.

The RPG-7 is an extremely effective weapon, although in truth - against fleshpounds - it does slightly less damage than C4. This is because the impact damage of an RPG-7 is 150 - and subject to the fleshpound's general 50% reduction in damage received from most sources - and the 750 explosive base damage is multiplied by 1.5 to reflect the fleshpound's weakness to explosives. This equation sums to 1,200 damage ((750*1.5)+(150*0.5)). By comparison, C4 does 820 base damage, the entirety of this figure is multiplied by 1.5 to reflect the same weakness (1,230). This trend remains the same as the Demolitionist levels, meaning that C4 is as integral to the success of the Demolitionist against fleshpounds at level 25, as it is at level 0.

However, studious examination of fleshpound HP levels as player numbers and difficulty levels increase will reveal that it becomes increasingly difficult for the Demolitionist to deal with fleshpounds alone. This point emphasises the importance of Demolitionist synchronisation with other perks, in particular, the Berserker. Even on Hell on Earth, 6 players, the Demolitionist's C4/dynamite/RPG/C4 combination - in conjunction with a Berserker's Pulverizer attacks - can neutralise a fleshpound in seconds. Despite this, the Demolitionist struggles from a fundamental issue at higher difficulties: munitions quantity.

It is possible for a Demolitionist to run a different loadout than RPG/C4, assist a team with crowd control, and still be highly effective against fleshpounds. An example of such a loadout is M79/C4/HX25/Desert Eagle. The much maligned HX25 grenade pistol is surprisingly effective against small groups of weaker enemies, and is capable of killing a siren outright. The similarly despised M79 grenade launcher is effective against both small and medium-sized groups of enemies. These weapons - in conjunction with the Desert Eagle for backup purposes - can perform a reasonable crowd control function in any team, the M79's munitions count being modestly higher than the RPG-7's, with the added benefit of the HX25 as another option for backup. A variant of the same C4 combination can be used against fleshpounds - C4/dynamite/M79/HX25/C4 - without compromising too much on damage output, at any difficulty level with 6 players. This affords the Demolitionist the option of being able to more liberally use their M79 munitions for crowd control, alongside the HX25 for shorter range encounters, rather than having to use RPGs in a generally sparing fashion. This solution to the munitions problem answers the question of what this perk's role is during the first half of the game: crowd control without having to restrict the player's munitions usage.

It must also be mentioned that the RPG-7 has a unique ability against scrakes. The impact from a fired RPG does 4x the damage that the rocket itself would normally do. This means that at a base damage of 150, even as a level 0 Demolitionist, an RPG impact can cause substantial levels of damage to a scrake. However, given that attacks to a scrake's body will not affect its head HP, preceding or following up any headshot damage to a scrake with body damage will have no positive effect on a decapitation, and as such, should be avoided at all costs. RPG decapitations have a small margin for error, and often have disastrous results for a team if the Demolitionist dies, both exposing the team to fleshpounds, and having a substantial negative impact on the game's economy in the event that numerous items need to be repurchased.

It is no secret that the Demolitionist has the most challenges presented to it as a perk. However, with smart usage of munitions, good understanding and application of game mechanics, the Demolitionist is a force to be reckoned with both against fleshpounds, and the more numerous, weaker enemies.