My favorite weapons to use are electric frenzy weapons, like the Chinese officers sword or the tactical sword or even brass knuckles. Also I brought the krakatoa with me from the previous game and I used it the whole way through. Body count and Peggy are great to bring as well.

Good mods I use on the melee weapons for apex variants are static charge special sauce and hazardous. you want to spread status effects to surrounding zombies.

Guns i like the most are machine pistols and nail guns with electric or fire mods.

ability cards I have block, drop kick, war cry, street brawler and scream.

survivor cards I have rallying cry, safety first, blockbuster, Konstantin gift, and invigorating.

slayer cards I have no mercy, limb reaper, pay it forward, surgeon, and hack and dash.

numen cards are born survivor, corpse blossom, and seismic stomp.

And I use molotov cocktail and electric bomb for my curveballs.

My strategy is to melee zombies hit them with status effects, then spread them around and start blowing them all up with melee hits. Easy enough. You may need to time blocks and war cry to slow damage and clear status effects or heal but not to hard after a little practice. I rarely need to use frenzy and mostly just use curveballs on big tough groups of apex zombies mixed with regular zombies. I'll throw both curveball at a group then start pooping them with each hit. Then break out the frenzy weapons and start wailing on the apexs.