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Berserker
- The Road Redeemer is widely considered to be the worst weapon for the Berserker. Simply put, it has the same stats as the Katana except its swing is much slower and the damage it deals is also pretty bad. As the final nail in its coffin, the Road Redeemer is put behind what is effectively a DLC paywall, requiring you to own (or play with someone who owns) Road Redemption.
Commando
- The AR-15 Varmint Rifle, the Commando's starting weapon, pales in comparison to other, more powerful assault rifles - its main disadvantage lies in its inability to fire full auto, with only single and burst fire modes being present. It also suffers with somewhat cluttered sights that, while good enough for hitting precision shots, are bad at having any sort of peripheral vision around your target. While it's not a bad weapon per se, many Commando players just opt to swap it for a better gun as soon as possible.
- The L85 was, after one point in 2016, considered a pointless weapon to purchase. Its damage was the same as the AR-15 and thus took no less bullets to kill zeds, while also costing 650 dosh. While the L85 had its upsides, such as 50% higher mag capacity, full auto instead of burst-fire, a simpler to use holographic sight and more reserve ammo available, most Commandos preferred to keep their AR-15 and go straight for the tier 3 weapons that include the AK-12, MKB and M16. With the Tommy Gun's addition to the game in Christmas of 2018, the L85 ultimately lost much reason to be purchased, as its direct competitor offers an even higher mag size (although the Tommy Gun's sights are worse compared to even the AR-15's iron sights, much less the L85's holographic sight).
- Eventually the Dystopian Devastation update in 2021 gave it a well-needed buff, reducing its weight to 5 KG and increasing the damage to 32 instead of 30 (at the cost of less ammo on purchase and a higher cost to refill it). Thanks to these changes, the L85 is now a solid full-auto backup weapon to the Commando's high-tier firearms.
- The Stoner LMG, especially after the ability to upgrade weapons was introduced. Upgrading the Tommy Gun is preferable to using the Stoner LMG, as while it does have clearer sights (though there are very few weapons that don't) and slightly higher magazine capacity than the Tommy Gun, it also has lower damage without upgrades, fewer opportunities to upgrade given its higher tier (which also exacerbates the damage issue), and far slower reload time (which, compared to the Tommy Gun, translates to lower average DPS). Generally not to be used except for completing daily challenges.
- The Minigun, a DLC weapon, is considered to be lackluster for a multitude of reasons. It can be of great use when doing SYG objectives with its fast rate of fire, but during normal waves especially on the higher difficulties its issues become apparent. It slows down the Commando and lowers the aim sensitivity when fired, making them easy prey for stalkers and crawlers to sneak up on and makes it suicidal to use against any of the bosses. It also has a rather low mag size of just 90 rounds, which can be increased but at the cost of either faster reload speed (and the default speed for the weapon is sluggish) or loss of extra damage (which on Suicidal and Hell on Earth is considered a must-pick). Finally its weight of 10 KG prohibits any Commando weapons for secondary/backup use except the AR-15 and L85. Ultimately, picking any of the other weapons such as the AK-12, FN FAL, SCAR and HMTech-401 is more practical for multiplayer matches. 2022's Tidal Terror update took steps to fix it by reducing its massive penalties to movement speed and increasing the speed of reloading, equipping it or putting it away.
- The FAMAS Masterkey is hated for only being able to fire in bursts, as opposed to controlled semi/full auto for other Commando weapons. That alone wouldn't be bad if its shotgun made up for that. Unfortunately, the Masterkey's fire rate is far too slow to be of any use. Not helping is that the weapon itself is ugly as sin and its animations are of noticeably lower quality compared to everything else in the game, standing out even with the game's already poor standard for DLC weapons with new animations. Like the Minigun, the Tidal Terror update worked to try to at least salvage the Masterkey by speeding up its animations and firing speed, while also decreasing its spread somewhat.
Support
- The M4 Auto Shotgun was a Master of None weapon that had a far smaller fire rate, magazine size, and ammo capacity than the AA12, reloaded as slowly as the starting shotgun, and was too heavy to be a viable off-perk weapon for most classes. The Bullseye update largely fixed this by increasing the ammo capacity and making Support's carry weight go up by one every fifth level, so every Support above level 10 can carry an M4 and AA12 simultaneously. Since the same update slightly nerfed the AA12's damage per shot, the M4 is now arguably better for general use.
Field Medic
- The Mine Reconstructor is arguably the most clunky and awkward weapon to use in the game. It shoots out mines that can be charged up, that poison zeds and heal any players when they explode, which is done either on contact with a Zed or with the weapon's alt-fire. This sounds good on paper, but in practice the damage and healing from the mines are very minor at their base charge. And while they can be charged up for more damage and size, the weapon's clip size only allows for two fully charged mines before needing a lengthy reload. The mines also do not heal the player using it upon explosion, and like the HMtech-501 Grenade Rifle it also lacks the healing darts of the Medic's other weapons, meaning constant swapping to another firearm will be needed when you need to get off a heal quickly. It can be of good use if the team is holding their ground, as the Medic can place mines on one chokepoint and then focus on another, but this still requires constant checking and re-applying mines as needed. If you ask players which DLC weapon they think is least worth their asking price, the Mine Reconstructor will likely be their answer. Even later buffs in the 2021 Day of the Zed update did little to change its perception in the playerbase, not helped by the addition of the Corrupter Carbine, a DLC weapon considered to do the Mine Reconstructor's job much better.*
- Before it was buffed enough to fit the other side of the spectrum, the Hemogoblin was a pretty disappointing choice for a Medic. Apart from weighting a whopping eight blocks, it had a pretty mediocre DPS and was more useful for laying debuffs rather than outright killing the Specimens. Its loading animation was also unforgivably slow, making its wielder an easy target. Fortunately, the Hemogoblin was finally saved from the heap and had since become one of Medic's most useful weapons.
Demolitionist
- The M79 Grenade Launcher used to be this, as it was often disliked for being underpowered for its cost: it's mostly the same as the RPG (single shot magazine, similar reload time and spare ammunition supply) but lighter and much weaker — the explosion was less than one third as powerful and the impact did not do quadruple damage to Scrakes like the RPG's did. Since its price was close enough to the RPG (1100 vs. 1500), players often didn't bother with it unless they're desperately needing both explosives and a different primary weapon. After the Bullseye update however, the M79 was given a buff in damage radius and had moved to the tier 2 slot, reducing its cost to 650 (with the returning M16 with M203 taking the tier 3 slot and its higher price). While it's still not an amazing weapon, players now consider it much more useful for its cost and it can now also be carried alongside the RPG, giving demos both useful boss and trash-clearing capabilities.
- The Pulverizer is a crossperk weapon for the Berserker and the Demolitionist. It sucks on both of them, being expensive and low on ammo for a Berserker on the go, and it's especially bad for the Demolitionist who shouldn't be anywhere near melee range in the first place. The Neon Nightmares update increased its explosive radius and light melee damage, making it more useful for the Berserker, but Demolitionists are still recommended to avoid it.
- What truly made the weapon suffer for a long while was that the explosive attack did less damage than intended, due to a coding mistake. Because of this, it was actually faster to kill Fleshpounds with it if you used up all the ammo in the clip and then smacked it to death instead with the ammo-less alt-fire. It was eventually corrected in the Season's Beatings update, though it's still not quite used to the extent of the Berserker's other weapons like the Zweihander or Bone Crusher.
- The HRG Tommy Boom, a reskinned version of the SWAT and Commando's Tommy Gun, ends up as a very mediocre weapon at best in spite of the huge cool factor granted by a full-auto weapon with explosive bullets. The damage and explosive radius are inconsistent and often have trouble taking out even lowly trash zeds unless upgraded, to say nothing when it comes against the bigger threats. The weapon's mag size is also less than half of the Tommy Gun's, necessitating frequent reloads. The ultimate nail in the coffin, however, is the weight which comes in at 7 KG, meaning it cannot be carried alongside the RPG, thus locking Demolitionist players who take it out from their best late-game weapon. It does have some advantages going for it, namely the cheap price that's typical for a tier 2 weapon, cleaner iron sights in comparison to the Tommy Gun (which, again, is very hard not to do) and the ability to pepper an entire area with nukes in Zed Time with use of the Destroyer of Worlds skill... but in the grand scheme of things, it's more practical to save up for the HRG Kaboomstick, M16 or even sticking with the starting HX-25 grenade pistol for self-defense than to sacrifice the weight needed for the Tommy Boom.
Firebug
- After being added back into the game, the Husk Cannon was derided for having awful reload speed, fire rate, and for not having a niche in the Firebug's or Demolitionist's arsenal. It didn't do well against hordes (not enough splash damage) or elite Zeds (not enough explosive damage) and for Demo, it has no minimum distance requirement and would deal heavy damage to the Demo if fired at point blank range. The weapon was usually ignored for much better options, like the Flamethrower, Microwave Gun, Helios Rifle, RPG and M32.
- The weapon was eventually buffed in the Back and Kickin' Brass Update, where its damage, radius and incap power when charged up increased, as well as its mag size, in return for a lower amount of reserve ammo and higher ammo costs. The weapon was received much more warmly afterwards.
- The MAC-10 has had a rough history with this trope. To summarise:
- When it was first added in Spring of 2018, it was surprisingly powerful against mid and high level enemies, as its damage was classified as the "shotgun" type instead of the "SMG" type. Coupled with being the Firebug's only ranged weapon that fired hitscan bullets instead of projectiles and its fast rate of fire, it made for a good self-defense weapon and picking off trash zeds at a distance.
- The Treacherous Skies update nerfed it by correcting its damage type, causing some to consider it useless. Others argued that it still made for a decent trash-killing weapon that could compliment the Microwave Gun or the later-added Helios Rifle, if worse for mid-level enemies than the cheaper Spitfires.
- Come the Neon Nightmares update of 2020 however, and the weapon became completely obsolete, due to the addition of the HRG Incendiary Rifle which did its job better, with higher raw bullet damage and incendiary grenades to lock down chokepoints with groundfire. All for only sacrificing 2 bullets per clip, 2 more blocks of weight and a slightly higher price tag (1200 dosh vs 1100).
- Eventually it was buffed in the Perilous Plunder update, where it got a price decrease to 900 dosh and had its damage increased, both in terms of bullet and DoT. These changes allow it to be a cheaper light-weight alternative to the Incendiary Rifle, giving Firebugs more reasons to use it in their loadout.
- Meanwhile for SWAT, it was at first a supbar choice compared to the P90 and UMP, before being rendered completely useless. It has a low magazine size that's only better than the MP7 and UMP, and because of the way fire damage works* , the DoT aspect is rendered nigh-useless as it will not kill anything stronger than a Crawler with one shot, even at level 25.
Gunslinger
- The 1858 revolvers, the Gunslinger's starting weapons. They're not terrible, doing twice the damage of the 9mm, but they're still considered the worst of the starting weapons, having the slowest reload among the handguns and an extremely low capacity (even spawning with two gives you less ammo at once than the 9mm) without the benefits other revolvers get like the .500 Magnum's extreme power boost (dealing three times as much damage as the 1858s) or the Abnormal Ammo of the Spitfire, HRG Winterbite, and DLC Rhino. They were somewhat rescued with the update that lets you upgrade weapons, since, being tier-1 weapons, they are extremely upgradeable - so much so that they had to be nerfed in a later update, since before that point they could be upgraded to deal almost as much damage as the .500 Magnum revolver with much less recoil, a slightly faster reload, and a slightly higher capacity actually giving it higher damage-per-second. Even after the nerf they're still good when fully upgraded, though the high cost required for it means you're just as well dropping them for the 1911, which still deals almost as much damage when fully upgraded in return for clearer sights and a much faster reload.
Sharpshooter
- The Crossbow has been hit by both ends of this trope. When it was first added as an off-perk weapon, it was widely considered overpowered as it could stun Scrakes and Fleshpounds with just one well-placed headshot (or chest core for Fleshpounds), allowing the whole team to easily eliminate them, even when taking into account that it's no longer hitscan like it was in the first game. Cue the Bullseye update, which made its stunning capabilities less reliable, and people started to complain it's useless when taking into account its slow fire-rate and projectile attacks, and many people now go straight for the M14 EBR.
SWAT
- To a far lesser degree than many of the others, the MP7 when off-perk - such as picking one up off the ground and holding onto it to sell at the end of the wave - is considered an annoyance, not because of any deficiencies in the weapon itself but because it has ridiculously high priority in the primary weapon slot: not only does it get to the top of the slot over any other tier-1 weapon, but even several second- and third-tier weapons go below it for no reason, which just makes it annoying to have to press the button to select your primary weapon twice to select the weapon you're actually using.
