KF2 Hemoclobber: Meta or Trash? A Critical Look

The Hemoclobber is a Medic melee-hammer that heals its user and nearby teammates, and in the community it is often called "meta". This is a Russian-language opinion guide, translated and paraphrased, whose author set out to prove it is not. It started after he published a Survivalist build guide and a commenter said that build only worked for Hard. The commenter proposed a medical-weapon build, which the author compared to his own and decided against the Hemoclobber. Read it as one player's view; for a contrasting positive take see OP Survivalist build.

The guide's title card.

Role of the weapon and the classes

The author defines the best weapon as one that fills an important role in the game while making the class using it perform better than other classes would. The Hemoclobber is a melee weapon that heals its owner and the owner's team. Its important role is that healing, since in raw damage it is no better than other melee weapons.

Hemoclobber in hand near the trader.

Only Berserker or Survivalist can really carry it.

• Berserker: holds the crowd so Zeds do not break through to teammates. It already regains HP from skills at levels 5, 10 and 25, and a Medic is nearly mandatory in the team. Adding up its healing in a second, the Berserker already gets heals from many sources, so the bat's heal is marginal.
• Survivalist: has no clear role; it depends on perks and weapons. The two main roles are wave clearing and team support. Healing the team while freezing or slowing Zeds can even hurt, because the team may not need it and a fast wave clear would help more.

Survivability

Survivability is how easily you live in a given situation. To have a lot of it you need big damage, strong healing and some ranged answer, ideally all three. Does the Hemoclobber provide that? The author says it should shoulder some share of that job but does not.

Hemoclobber with a cosmetic skin.

Wave clearing

The author calls it the worst weapon for both damage and self-heal. It needs very close range to hit and heal, and you may simply get punched instead and wait for the syringe. Even if you hit a Fleshpound and avoid damage, if you fire every charge and collect every HP, you recover about 180 HP, which he considers nothing next to the 1150 HP a Medic Missile can heal in total.

Damage is also small. His test: killing a single Fleshpound took four charged right-clicks, meaning two ammo boxes per Fleshpound. Against four Fleshpounds, 180 HP does not help; fast, clean killing is needed.

A match with a sniper-style loadout from the author's testing.

If Commandos or SWATs could carry the bat, whose ammo can run out, and the weapon brought something important for them, it could be the best weapon in KF2. As it is, he says to take dart weapons instead.

How to improve it

The author answers a critical comment ("if you disagree, criticize; if you criticize, propose") with three suggestions:

• More healing from the charged right-click (30-40 HP).
• Bigger ammo reserve (20-25 charges, two per magazine is the scale).
• Darts instead of running half the map to find teammates.

With 40 healing times 25 ammo, that totals about 1000 HP (or 600), which he says would be a reasonable heal for a weapon whose role is healing.

Comment thread notes

Players in the comments argued about sniper loadouts: the author says in solo Hell on Earth the Railgun is better for more ammo and rate of fire, while in multiplayer the Barrett suits killing Scrakes and Mini-Fleshpounds with a single bullet. He also advises that each gun in a loadout should help the others rather than repeat their role, for example a Magnum for small and medium Zeds supporting a Barrett for large ones.