Last Updated on by Samuel Franklin
This Killing Floor 2 Demolitionist guide optimises the chaotic class for explosive carnage against all ZEDs. When not carefully using your destructive power the Demolitionist can be found welding doors shut with explosive traps, countering Fleshpounds or passing around extra grenades to their teammates.
The comprehensive build below includes strategy, tips, perks and weapon choices for different teams, maps, difficulties and playstyles. While there are several builds discussed below my recommended default is a perk build of LLLLL while using RPG-7, C4 Explosives and .50 Desert Eagle for weapon loadout.
Table of Contents:
– Demolitionist Strategy and Tips
– Demolitionist Perks Build
– Demolitionist Weapons Loadout
Killing Floor 2 Demolitionist Strategy and Tips
Playing the Demolitionist to maximum effect requires careful use of your destruction potential with these tips and strategies:
- Play Your Role: Your role varies based on party dynamics from trash or large ZED specialist. Adjust your build accordingly to provide the greatest team benefit.
- Be Careful With Explosives: Your explosive potential is kept in check by a low ammunition pool, long reload times and the potential to damage yourself. Maximise your ammo with careful trigger discipline that avoids hurting your allies and fires only when there is a large swarm of ZEDs or a large ZED.
- Weapon Maximise: Utilise your full weapon kit including sidearm, off perk weapons and even the deadly gun bash attack as each of these has a use and helps you fend off lone weak ZEDs without consuming your vital explosive ammunition. Even with these options players should not willingly separate from their team as you are most effective when supporting other allies with your devastating explosions.
- Grenade Supplies: Don’t forget to equip your teammates with additional grenades at the trader between waves.
- Longer Round Strengths: The Demolitionist’s effectiveness is tied closely to the length of rounds with shorter round matches hurting your potential significantly as you need time to build up your power and are suited to large wave sizes. In short round games consider giving the Demolitionist a miss for another class perk instead.
- Damage Optimisation: While firing at the centre mass of a ZED is effective if you miss you’ll potentially lose a lot of damage and for this reason it is often better to aim at the feet of your enemies as even your misses will deal strong explosive damage in a radius around them.
- Minimum Weapon Range: The Demolitionist weapons have minimum activation ranges so be careful about firing these at close range. Retreating first is often better before unleashing one of your explosive themed weapons.
Killing Floor 2 Demolitionist Perks Build
The Demolitionist has the following perk bonuses at maximum level:
- 25% perk weapon damage (1% per level)
- 60% explosive resistance (10% base and 2% per level)
- 5 extra explosive ammo (1 per 5 levels)
- Grenade supplier
- Door traps
- Reactive armour
The Demolitionist has the following active perk skills to select from:
| Perk Category | Left (L) Option | Right (R) Option |
|---|---|---|
| Technique | Bombardier: Increase damage of explosive perk weapons by 25%. | Shock Trooper: Increase reload speed of perk weapons and increase their knockdown power 10%. |
| Explosives | High Impact Rounds: Increase direct hit damage with explosive weapons by 25%. | Extra Rounds: Increase the maximum ammo for explosive perk weapons by 10. This does not apply to C4. |
| Advanced Techniques | Sonic Resistant Rounds: Your explosives are immune to the siren’s scream and will always explode. | Fragmentation Rounds: Increase Perk weapon explosion area of effect by 50%. |
| Weapon Techniques | Armour Piercing Rounds: Increase damage of direct hits to critical areas with perk weapons by 50%. | Concussive Rounds: Increase reaction, stun, stumble and knockdown power of perk weapons 50%. |
| Advanced Explosives | ZED TIME – Destroyer of Worlds: During ZED Time, your explosives dish out massive radiation damage, poisoning ZEDs and explosive rounds will explode at any range | ZED Time – Mad Bomber: During ZED Time, you shoot and reload in near real-time, the area of effect of perk weapons increases by 25%, and explosive rounds will explode at any range. |
Notable active perk skills when playing as the Commando are:
- Technique: A fairly typical trade off in Killing Floor 2 with a choice between improved explosive damage or improvements to reload speed and knockdown power. The raw damage of the left option is useful in the vast majority of situations that can make the difference against ZEDs regularly. While the reload speed is nice it’s not significant enough and at an advanced level of play can be replaced with reload cancelling anyway.
- Explosives: A difficult choice as extra explosives means more damage output overall. Don’t underestimate the direct damage though as this allows you to reach some important break points for direct damage kills and allows you to better fulfil your role of large ZED killer when required. Note that prior to obtaining some perk levels and the level 20 Armour Piercing Rounds these breakpoints may not apply so while levelling the right side additional ammunition can be viable option during progression to max class level.
- Advanced Techniques: With Sirens being a staple ZED enemy you simply can’t do without the Sonic Resistant Rounds option as their ability can completely nullify an explosive attack and might result in a cascade effect across your team. On waves without Siren spawns though this effect is obviously useless and in these cases Fragmentation Rounds is the stronger tier 3 perk choice.
- Weapon Techniques: Armour Piercing Rounds allows you to hit key break points when you target the heads of the larger ZEDs and ties in perfectly to our role. For this reason it’s hard to ever consider the right side of these level 20 perk options as the extra crowd control doesn’t offer as much benefit.
- Advanced Explosives: The left hand choice once again reigns supreme for the Demolitionist by empowering damage and area of effect by adding a nuke attack to our ZED time while adding for instance explosions. While this makes Destroyer of Worlds a great default the ability to reload and fire at an extreme speed that Mad Bomber provides can feel fantastic if you have a reliable Commando that is maximising refreshes every single opportunity.
Given the above the Demolitionist best perks setup is LLLLL as your default option. The Demolitionist has some flexibility based on your party needs and preferences though so experiment with options like LLLLR (preferably with a good Commando) or LLRLL (focusing on low tier ZEDs only with a Siren killer on the team).
Killing Floor 2 Demolitionist Weapons Loadout Guide
The Demolitionist can shift between low tier ZED and large ZED specialist as necessary with their explosive aresenal. Most loadouts will still want a little of both though to balance ammunition requirements with final loadouts including the following Demolitionist best weapons:
- RPG-7, C4 Explosives and .50 Desert Eagle: The standard build that adds a Desert Eagle to save your explosive ammunition against simple ZEDs. Meanwhile the RPG-7 is a staple of our strong loadouts which with the appropriate perk selections (and upgraded to weapon tier 5) can one shot a Scrake enemy to the head while still being ideal against large waves of ZEDs. Pairing this with another top tier utility like the C4 will create explosive combinations to handle Fleshpounds, doubles as a wave clearance tool and adds additional strategy as you explode your C4 when the time is right.
- RPG-7 and HRG Kaboomstick: This Demolitionist build retains the RPG-7 for power and flexible reasons noted above. Instead of C4 though we use the Kaboomstick which is an explosive shotgun and fills the role of clearing out weaker groups of enemies while keeping us mobile. The ammunition is limited so players need to be careful when they fire this explosive shotgun but it does provide a well rounded alternative to the standard build above that utilises perk specific weapons.
- RPG-7 and M79 Grenade Launcher: Holding onto the RPG-7 still this build pairs it with the M79 Grenade Launcher instead and is a potential build for when players can stand safely behind their front line classes. Both weapons are good across the spectrum of potential ZED encounters with the M79 packing a huge explosion radius with the trade offs being the magazine size of 1 and the long arm time that makes it ineffective if enemies get close.
