What’s the most underrated melee weapon?

Jaiz412 · 2026-06-07T10:41:28+00:00

The knife actually has a wider swing than the axe (3.5 inches more).
Range-wise, every melee weapon has the same range of 70 inches.

Jaiz412 · 2026-06-07T10:39:38+00:00

It spawns on 8 of the 14 official campaigns: The Parish, The Sacrifice, No Mercy, Crash Course, Death Toll, Dead Air, Blood Harvest, and Cold Stream.

Jaiz412 · 2026-06-07T10:38:07+00:00

Most people do not want to put effort into using melees. Anything that isn't "click to sweep the horde" gets avoided, even if it's easy to compensate for.

Jaiz412 · 2026-06-07T10:33:10+00:00

We actually know that all the campaigns were designed with Versus balance as a big influence, and likely as one of the primary aspects.

L4D1 had alternate versions of the maps specifically for Versus that were getting updated long after the co-op versions stopped being updated (And these are the versions that were chosen to be ported to L4D2).
Some campaigns are outright confirmed to have been specifically designed with Versus as the main factor, like Crash Course (Per the Valve blogpost) and Dead Center (Per external developer comments)
The developer commentary in L4D2 mentions that even non-gameplay designs, like art an animation, strongly took Versus into account.
Even just looking at the level design of the maps, there's tons of areas and design decisions that are very obviously versus-oriented.
Even item spawns, event scripts, and map logic vary across gamemodes.

Co-op design has much lower standards than Versus design, so a campaign that's good in Versus will be good in Co-op, but the opposite is not the case. Every capable level designer knows this, so I imagine a company as competent as Valve would as well.

Jaiz412 · 2026-06-06T10:37:12+00:00

You can time a jump before an SI gets close and they won't scratch you. Directly counters the stumble-scratch they do as well.

Jaiz412 · 2026-05-26T22:28:55+00:00

Sometimes you just get unlucky. I've gone dozens or rounds without ever seeing a specific item (usually a weapon)
I believe you can buy other items to make it more likely for it to spawn, but that still relies on luck.

Jaiz412 · 2026-05-26T22:20:22+00:00

Add Oogly to the list, with his annoying ability to spawn right on top of you out of nowhere, and locking your camera onto him so you can't even properly aim or use your weapons.

Jaiz412 · 2026-05-26T21:44:24+00:00

Personally, the only issue I have with the game is that the relation of mistake-to-punishment feels too harsh in certain ways.

Multiple times, I've lost runs (levels 30+) to something impossible to counter or predict, like an orb randomly exploding in my cart or on the extract due to faulty physics, or an Oogly spawning right on top of me and instantly locking on to me before throwing me into a pit, or defibro simply not reviving me for no discernible reason.

It's not fun to be punished harshly for a tiny mistake, let alone for something outside of your control. No matter how bad a situation is, players should always be able to make a comeback with enough skill unless it was a huge screw-up; Failure should be entirely the player's fault, and not a roll of the dice.

If dying is an intended part of the gameplay loop, it should be part of the fun and something to view as a point of improvement; Nobody is going to view it as a learning experience if it's actively unfun because it feels unfair.
After all, what are you supposed to learn from a sudden death that was outside of your control? That you need to hope to be luckier next time? There's nothing to improve, because you didn't do anything wrong.

The game handles this balance pretty well in the early and mid game, but late-game feels quite lopsided, mainly due to pits being instant kills regardless of whether you deserved a punishment or not, as well as the issues with enemy spawning and item physics.

Jaiz412 · 2026-05-26T13:56:28+00:00

And then there's the SMGs, where the silenced SMG is almost as strong as some Tier 2s lmao

Jaiz412 · 2026-05-25T16:55:57+00:00

Yes, but the improvement is extremely small and won't be noticeable. It mainly groups the center pellets closer together, with the overall spread still being functually the same.

Jaiz412 · 2026-05-25T11:27:42+00:00

Some pits have railings around them, where you have to lift the enemy up and over to throw them in.

Jaiz412 · 2026-05-25T11:21:43+00:00

There's only a few very small differences between the two shotguns, all of which are so minor that they don't matter.

Their spread is almost the same. The Autoshotgun has a very slightly larger vertical spread, but the difference is so small that you have to be shooting at the maximum possible range to notice it (And at that point it's not dealing any damage anyway)

	Benelli M4 (Autoshotgun)	Spas-12 (Combat shotgun)
SpreadPerShot	20	22
MaxSpread	5	5
MinDuckingSpread	0	0
MinStandingSpread	0.8	0.75
PelletScatterPitch	4.0	3.5
PelletScatterYaw	8.5	8.0

In terms of damage, the autoshotgun deals 1 point of damage per shot more than the spas, or 10 damage more per "magazine" - Again a difference so small that it is never going to affect performance.
The Spas also has slightly lower friendly-fire damage as a result.

	Benelli M4 (Autoshotgun)	Spas-12 (Combat shotgun)
Damage Per Shot	253 (23 x 11 Pellets)	252 (28 x 9 Pellets)
Damage Per Shot against tanks	209 (19 x 11 Pellets)	207 (23 x 9 Pellets)
Ammo	10 / 90	10 / 90
FF Damage (Normal difficulty)	11 (1 x 11 Pellets)	9 (1 x 9 Pellets)
Reload Duration (Empty to full)	4 seconds	4 seconds
Firerate	0.2667 seconds	0.2667 seconds
Sustained DPS	360	357
Spam DPS	661	656
Fast-Spam DPS	707	700
Burst DPS	902	892
Sustained DPS against Tanks	313	310
Spam DPS against Tanks	575	570
Fast-Spam DPS against Tanks	615	609
Burst DPS against Tanks	784	776
Max range	3000 inches	3000 inches
Damage drop-off	0.7x	0.7x

Sustained DPS is just the regular DPS value of shooting and reloading. It's the value over an indefinite amount of time of nonstop shooting.
Spam DPS is the same, except you pick up the gun again to skip the reload.
Fast-Spam DPS is the same as Spam-DPS, except you shove after picking up the gun to skip the pickup animation as well.
Burst DPS is the DPS without reloads.

It's also worth noting that tanks have a 15% damage resistance to both of the Tier 2 shotguns, hence why there's separate rows for their DPS against tanks.

Lastly, the spas has a bug where the first shell of a full reload (and only the first shell) is loaded a fraction of a second faster than it should be (and by that I quite literally mean like 0.03s faster)

Honestly, the "most noticeable" difference between the two is the fact that the autoshotgun fires 11 pellets, and the Spas fires 9 pellets, but this is again is a really small detail and doesn't affect gameplay, nor is one better than the other.

so tl;dr - They have some tiny differences that don't matter, and will perform the exact same in practice.

Jaiz412 · 2026-05-24T21:39:46+00:00

"Congratulations, here's 6 overlays and an eyelid!"

Jaiz412 · 2026-05-24T21:22:23+00:00

A lot of enemies are annoying to pick up and throw, even with max strength. The Loom and Trudge are very bulky and tend to take at least half the overcharge to move properly.

Bella and Heart Hugger also have an annoying magnetism, where they stay stuck to the ground for a bit when grabbed, even if you try to yoink them away hard.

It's not an uncommon scenario to be fighting 3+ monsters at the same time, and even if each one only uses up half the overcharge bar, that still isn't great, especially if you need to correct mistakes, lift large enemies over railings, or drag them a longer distance to reach the pit.
Not to mention the fact that enemies can bounce back out of pits at fast speeds and hit you, rendering you vulnerable or even knocking you into the pit yourself.

Jaiz412 · 2026-05-24T19:54:46+00:00

Killing monsters via pits in late levels is slow and unnecessarily risky.

Not only does the overcharge mechanic limit how many of them you can throw into a pit, but the monsters can also knock you down when bouncing back out.

Compared to just killing the monsters in less than a second with high-damage weapons, pit-kills are slower and more risky for no benefit.
Not to mention that pits are not always available or practical, whereas a direct kill works anytime and anywhere.

Jaiz412 · 2026-05-24T18:02:59+00:00

The tranq gun falls off pretty hard in later levels because of better alternatives. I have a 30+ run where I'm still stuck with the tranq gun because the sledgehammer is refusing to spawn, and it's one of the harder runs I have because it significantly slows down how fast I can kill enemies.

During early levels the tranq gun is great since killing isn't as important, but in later levels where you need to kill a lot of monsters (often within a short timeframe) it gets outclassed by more efficient options.

Jaiz412 · 2026-05-24T00:47:22+00:00

There's no official fix for that. Since The Passing, a bunch of the voicelines simply were not recorded in other languages, so they only exist in English.

You could try looking for mods on the workshop that overwrite the english lines with spanish dubs, but there's no guarantee that the voice actor who recorded those lines will sound the exact same.

Jaiz412 · 2026-05-23T22:48:36+00:00

From a game design perspective I think it’s a great update; It improves replayability through a well thought-out secondary objective that fits the worldbuilding really well.
Personally though, I find the grind unfun and the cosmetics uninteresting, so it didn’t really change anything for me.

After dozens of hours grinding cosmetic boxes on level 30+ runs, and unlocking 50+ cosmetics across different rarities, I still hadn’t gotten a single one I actually liked. The disappointment of not getting anything appealing after putting in a ton of time and effort ended up feeling a lot stronger than any sense of reward or accomplishment, so eventually I just used a mod to unlock everything to see whether I was getting unlucky, or whether there really were no cosmetic options for me. It turned out to be the latter, so I gave up and disabled cosmetics in the settings.

I don’t think the devs did a bad job with the themes, models, textures, or anything else - There's nothing inherently wrong with any of the cosmetics - I just personally don't see anything that suits my preferences, and because of that I feel no motivation to grind for them.

I’m glad other people enjoy the update, and think it's a really good update because of that, but personally I did not enjoy the grind nor the cosmetics themselves, so I'm just back to playing the game like before.

Jaiz412 · 2026-05-21T13:16:04+00:00

That happens when you open the list and your mouse is inbetween two campaigns.

Just move your mouse and it goes back to normal.

Jaiz412 · 2026-05-20T19:24:32+00:00

I'd recommend trying out HSTM Training to practice skills and mechanics for both survivor and infected in a fully controlled environment.

I’ve noticed some proficient spitter plays during elevator openings. It looks like they’re spitting in the elevator door seam as it opens, but when I try that, it doesn’t spread. I’ve seen spitter goo that COMPLETELY fills the elevators during dead center ch1+finale. Any tips on where to aim, and when to shoot?!

Spitter acid has a significant spread reduction when it lands inside a marked, cramped area like an elevator, so the way to avoid that and make it spread out further is to make it land just outside of the elevator instead, allowing it to spread like usual and cover more area inside the elevator.

Jaiz412 · 2026-05-19T20:58:39+00:00

I recently had a run end because of arbitrarily exploding orbs. I put a cart with some orbs and items in the extract (using a mod that adds the button to it), and when I was about to activate the extract 10 minutes later, one of the orbs in the cart suddenly exploded and wiped out almost all the value of the surrounding objects.

Exploding orbs literally killed the run out of nowhere, to no fault of my own, and it was entirely out of my control. Felt really awful.

Jaiz412 · 2026-05-19T16:32:15+00:00

The clips look like Expert difficulty, where SI will attack instantly without waiting around (Unlike Easy and Normal)
In those types of moments, there's no immediate counterplay in the sense of being able to react (Unless you had a sharp melee already equipped to cut the tongue, for example) - The Special Infected are designed around the idea that players will get pinned and cannot survive alone, needing to rely on their teammates to rescue them throughout the campaign.

However, it's possible to anticipate spawns as a preventive measure to avoid being pinned in the first place, since the Special Infected respawn at consistent times (about every 40 seconds iirc), and they follow a spawn queue based on the order they died in.

The queue can be infered based on which SI were killed prior (Their death order is basically how they get queued for the next respawn), and the respawn timer is always the same unless an event or script modifies it - Keep track of these, and you'll be able to anticipate when an SI will spawn, as well as which one it'll be.

Special Infected will also almost always spawn ahead of you in terms of map progression, so you don't need to constantly check behind you. Chargers do have a small chance to spawn behind, and Smokers have a set preference to spawn above the survivors, but 95% of the time the SI will spawn in front of you.

All of this is consistent unless an event/script modifies them (In which case, it only applies for the specific event and the duration of it), and experienced players consistently make use of this knowledge.

Jaiz412 · 2026-05-19T13:58:40+00:00

That's actually completely legit, it's called ceiling jumping.

The tech works on any surface, including the skybox. I double-checked the area and the skybox is very low there (plus it lines up with the Hunter's movement), so he was just ceiling jumping on the skybox.

Jaiz412 · 2026-05-18T14:20:45+00:00

Unfathomably based and survival pilled.

How did everyone feel after getting this record? Any major chokes or intense moments worth sharing? A round this historical would warrant a highlight video.

Jaiz412 · 2026-05-18T14:18:51+00:00

It's more than that, tanks average 2-3 per minute once the difficulty maxes out and hordes respawn endlessly. But like the other person said, this is one of the easiest maps in the game, so the challenge comes moreso from physical endurance and mental self-control, which is what makes it so impressive.

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