Killing Floor Commando Guide and analysis

Commando’s base kit

 
Prewiev: not long ago I wasnt a huge of this perk either since I never really saw what makes this perk fun to play or his role in general. But after seeing a great Killing Floor 2 Commando players, such as Col_Moro, I decided that I have to find a way to make Killing Floor 1 Commando strong and viable perk to use. 
 

 
Additionally starting from 3rd level Commando gets ability to extend zed time starting with 1 time and up to 4 times at 6th level getting 1 additional zed time extendtion per level. At 5th level Commando starting with Bullbup and with AK-47 at level 6. 
 
Note: Commando’s increased reloading speed works like this (x/y), where x – is weapon’s reloading speed and y – Commando’s bonus starting with 1,05 at level 0 up to 1,35 at level 6. 
 
 

Commando’s weapons

 
Note: Commando has a variety of weapons but there will be mentioned only 3 that you should be using all the time since others overall just useless. 
 
AK-47 
 
Russian classic. Relaible and strong. The only downsides of this weapon are it’s recoil at low levels and it’s iron sight when aiming. AK-47 should be considered as an early/mid game assault rifle which servers purpose of ramping up to either SCARMK17 or FNFAL ACOG. Base damage per shot is 45. 
Default reload time is 3 seconds. Default magazine capacity is 30 bullets. 
 
Instead of giving explanation for 2 remaining rifles let’s just compare them side to side since they both deal the same amount of damage per shot – 65. 
 

 
As we can see SCARMK17 is slightly cheaper, has faster reload time and weights 1 kg less. In contrast to SCARKMK17 FNFAL ACOG has higher firing rate which sometimes can make a huge difference. You should make your choice depending on your loadout weight capacity since even 1kg difference can have a huge impact on your setup. 
 
 

Commando’s role

 
It’s known that Commando was desinged as trash cleaner which he is, but in order to be an efficient trash cleaner he should be securing as many headshots as possible to be effective. It’s also worth mentioning that his assault rifles have slow reloading speed which sometimes can leave him defenceless due to this, so that’s why it’s recommended to score headshots. To make things even worse with high amount of players and especially on high difficulties even level 6 Commando can struggle against lagre hordes of speciments or Scrakes. But the real Commando’s problem is Fleshpound since he has a lot of health and takes only 50% damage from Commando’s weapons making him completelly hepless against him. So what should you do and how should you possition yourself as Commando? To put it simply you should cover your weaknesses (Scrake and Fleshpound) by sharing lane with a perk that can easily deal with them but can have a hard time with trash/medium zeds which Commando is great pick up to take care of due to his high ammounts of ammo. Taking it all into account, staying with Sharpshooter is the best course of actions since this perk designed to deal with large threats. You will be covering trash and medium zeds and Sharp’s job will be killing Fleshpounds and Scrakes. Also, unlike Demolition and Firebug you won’t cause any visual disruptions caused by explosives and fire which will make Sharp’s life much easier. 
 
Sometimes you can be last person alive and you have to deal with all types of zeds. What should you do and how should you base your loadout on this possibility? Let’s discuss that. 
 

• Scrake: on lower difficulties Scrake is extremely easy to take with proper knowledge of his rage mechanic. On Beginner, Normal and Hard difficulties Scrake will rage when he has lost 50% of his base health. Please note that it doesn’t matter if damage was done to Scrake’s body or head as long as it meets 50% threshold of it’s body damage he will rage. To safely and easily take down Scrake on lower difficulties it’s recommended to always shoot Scrake’s head. With 1-3 players Scrake will rage with low head health if you were exclusively aiming at it. Giving his relatively ‘low’ rage speed in most cases you will kill him outright before he even gets chance to hit you. With 3-6 players dealing damage to Scrake’s head only won’t rage his since his head health with this amount of players is lower that 50% so in this case he will be decapitated. You can achive this goal by switching into semi-automatic firing mode on your assault rifle and slowly taking Scrake’s head health or using powerful off-perk weapons such as X-bow which is easily shreds Scrakes on low difficulties or Lever action rilfe(Winchester) that is great pick up regadless of difficulty. Moving on Suicidal and Hell on Earth difficulty Scrake will now rage after loosing 25% of it’s body health so the above mentioned methods won’t work cause even the almighty Xbow can’t stun Scrakes as an off-perk weapon, since Scrake has 50% resistance to Xbow head-shots. In order to take advantage of Scrake rage mechanics, it’s required to know exact numbers of damage threshold of damage that will rage Scrake. 
   

  Player ammount/Difficulty	Suicidal	Hell on Earht
  1	385	441
  2	580	658
  3	774	876
  4	966	1097
  5	1160	1313
  6	1353	1531

   
  In order to safelly kill Scrake as Commando you should predamage his head to his rage damage number threshhold that depends on difficulty and players amount, then flinch him by using machete headhit/katana, switching to your assault rifle(SCARMK17 and FNFAL ACOG are the best for this) and quickly decapitating him while he is on flinched state. Note that in the case some of your teammates death all next spawned zeds health amount will be equal to alive players remaining which makes it’s extremely hard to tell which Scrake was spawned with 6 and which was with 4 for instance which makes it’s extremelly risky task to complete. This takedown should be done only if you are the last one standing or other big zed killers are occupated.

• Fleshpound : amoung all perks Commando weapons and base kit are undoubtedly the worst against Fleshpound since his rifles have mediocre damage output against Fleshpound thanks to his 50% resistance. By all means you should never engage Fleshpound with your assault rifles. Instead you should use either of this 2 options: ‘hit and run’ tactic or using M32. Hit and run tactic is time consuming but at the very least it will minimize risk of Fleshpound enrage. At this point almost any weapon can be used for ‘hit and run’ but I would strongly recommend using Lever action rifle headshots since even as an off-perk weapon it deals 210 to Fleshpound in a single headshot. For instance it takes 15 off perk Lever action rifle headshots to decapitate 6 players Hell on Earth Fleshpound. Just make sure to headshot Fleshpound with 2-3 seconds interval to not rage him, breaking line of sight with him as soon as you get opportunity and lastly keep an eye on other specimens. And the second option is equpping M32 Grenade Launcher on Commando. Surely you won’t get any damage bonuses like Demolition player would but at the very least you will get a solid weapon for fighting Fleshpounds back since Fleshpound takes 25% more damage from explosives. Furthermore, full clip of M32 as an off-perk weapon can kill Fleshpound unless it’s 6 players Suicidal or 5-6 players Hell on Earth Fleshpound but even then you can seal the deal by using your grenades an then immediatelly shooting Fleshpound with M32 or finishing him off with full SCARMK17 or FNFAL ACOG clip. Just make sure to aim at his upper torso to get x2,33 damage multiplier with M32 and maximizing damage. Please be careful with M32 since you can end up blowing yourself up. Additionally it’s recommended to pull this trick only on solo Fleshpound cause if there are 2 or more of them in close proxomity to each other even if you kill one of them the rest will pound you to death.

• Patriarch: Unfortunatelly only you can see cloacked Patriarch but even then the distance is too short to react properly since he moves extremely fast while cloacked. However, seeing his health is completelly different story(unless you are playing with randoms in public match). You can tell you team how much health he has and this information can be critical for your team desicion making. As for your weapons choise, on Boss wave it’s recommended to be equiped by one of your assult rifles, and either X-bow or M32.

Recommended loadouts

 
For begginers it’s recommended to use 2 assult rilfes to level up a bit quicker so AK-47 and SCARMK17/FNFAL ACOG would be a solid choice. Additionally when you reached level 3 and above I would recommend changing AK-47 for Lever action rifle since it’s really good weapon for killing sirens and husks. 
 
Now let’s move on loadouts for experienced players: 
 
1.SCARMK17/Lever action rifle/MP5 Medic gun. 
2.SCARMK17/M32/Pistol of your choice. 
3.SCARMK17/Xbow.(For “slow rage Scrake” trick) 
3.SCARMK17/Katana/Winchester. 
4.FNFAL ACOG/M32/Machere. 
 
For those who is unfamiliar with Scrake’s ‘slow rage’: 

Conclusion

 
And that’s it. I hope you will find this guide informative and helpful. As usuall take care and stay safe. Happy zed hunting! 
 

Here we come to an end for Killing Floor Commando Guide and analysis hope you enjoy it. If you think we forget something to include or we should make an update to the post let us know via comment, and we will fix it asap! Thanks and have a great day!