Here's a little sheet from Tripwire's site giving a quick summary of the Demolitionist's role.

- Deal Demolitionist Weapon Damage
- Kill Fleshpounds with Demolitionist Weapons

- Perk Weapon Damage (1% / Level)
- Explosive Resistance (10% + 2% / Level)
- Extra Explosive Ammo (1 / 5 Level)
- Grenade Supplier
- Door Traps
- Reactive Armor


Very straight forward passive. It simply provides teammates to grab a free grenade off your back. You yourself cannot benefit from it unless there is another demolitionist on your team.

Door Traps

In addition to the usual functions of your standard-issue welder, you can glue some explosives to the door indicated by an orange health bar instead the usual Horzine blue to give the zeds a little suprise when they decide to bust down the door.

Reactive Armor

Once per wave, if you take a hit when it should kill you, your general vicinity is covered by an explosion clearing out nearby trash and leaves you with 5 health, but the second time your health hits 0 on the same wave, your as good as dead.

Unlike with some perks like commando has an arsenal that mostly is just a straight upgrade over the other so, your approach to combating zeds won't be much different. However, in my opinion, demolitionist has one of the most varied set of weapons as each weapon despite its tier placement serves a completely different purpose from another, even if the RPG is objectively better than everything else.


It's an over sized box cutter. What else that needs to be said other than the question of what materials did Horzine use to make it able to create deep lacerations to the point of dismembering limbs? Seriously, all of the perk knives perform exactly the same as each other, aside from the fact that they all look different and cutting zeds in half from head to toe looks hilarious.


Everyone has at least one of these in their pockets at all times. It's free(150 to dual wield with 2 weight), it's weightless, and it performs like pants. A weapon used as a last resort.


The demolitionist's perk grenade. The damage is what you would expect from any other grenade, only this one has the longest fuse time out of all of the perk grenades, but has the ability to detonate on enemy impact with a stun effect thrown in for good measure.


This is the weapon you spawn with when demo is currently picked at the start of the game and when you respawn from the afterlife. I know people usually ditch this weapon as soon as they can afford an M79, but for me, this is a serviceable self defense weapon so most of the time, I keep this in my pocket throughout the entire 10 waves up until the boss round. It's cheap, it's effective against trash up at close range, and it's actually kinda fun once you get the hang of it all for 300 euros. Alternatively, you could swap this out for a double barreled boomstick for 650 and it will mostly do what the HX25 can do, in addition to the alt fire allowing you to launch yourself in the opposite direction, good for playing keep away with an angry fleshpound. In the case of getting completely swarmed, firing the HX25 at your feet can kill trash all around you in a small radius can give you an opportunity to escape. Can't exactly say the same thing for the boomstick since jumping away will usually be the last thing you do. Personally, I think the HX25 has more killing potential than the boomstick when it comes to killing trash. With the addition of the gorefiend enemy, I do personally find this weapon to hold more value if you're purely sticking with demo weapons, but require 2 shots to kill one of these with one exception: taking the bombardier skill can potentially kill it with only one shot if you hit the sweet spot being between the ground and their feet, but only if they're not blocking.


How I use C4 is essentially a grenade on steroids with enough spike damage to take out fleshpounds with two or three charges, but you can lay a line of C4 on certain choke points If you'd like, although it may not be a good idea to do that if you don't have siren resistance. There is a hidden mechanic that prevents people from cheesing the boss or completely destroying fleshpounds instantly like the pipe bombs did in the first Killing Floor in that they made C4 do about 50% less damage for each consecutive click, meaning if the first click deals 820 damage, the next click after that will only do 410, and the next one will only do 205 and so on, so in order to have it do full damage again, you'd have to wait on a 3 second cool down. With the Summer Sideshow event, C4 has been buffed slightly to allow you to throw charges in real time while taking the mad bomber skill. The charge will still travel at zed time speed, but the throwing speed can allow you to quickly perform other actions while you're waiting for the charge to reach its destination. Halloween has arrived with the Quarterpound placed into the regular survival mode as a more weaker, but more aggressive variant of the fleshpound, as they always jog towards your position matching the standard movement speed of players without movement speed buffs and can start spawning earlier than normal fleshpounds so if you're short on dosh, C4 is a more economic friendly alternative for big zed hunting.


An alternate choice from C4 if you want to focus on big groups of trash instead of dealing huge spike damage. It may seem like a better choice than C4 early game, but personally I think the HX25 is good enough early game and instead take C4 to take out Husks, Bloats and occasionally sirens with only one click and save some HX25 rounds for something else. It's overall a bit more expensive due to having to pay for extra ammo while C4 does not require any extra funds upon purchase. However, mid to late game it will start to show its true colors as being a destructive force to be reckoned with. Unfortunately it's pretty useless against scrakes and fleshpounds alone, but mostly scrakes due to their pretty huge damage resistance to explosives.


Ah yes, the M203 has made its return to Killing Floor 2. It's basically the SA80 for the commando that's stuck in full auto, has less total ammo, and has an under mounted grenade launcher that does the same amount of damage as the M79 that can only hold a total of 12 grenades in your pockets, with the drawback of having a heavily decreased splash radius. For me, I think it's decent as a PDW if you don't prefer using the HX25, but the individual performance for the M16 and the M203 is straight up inferior to the SA80 and the M79 respectively, but in return you can use both for only 1200 taking up only 6 blocks while purchasing both the SA80 and the M79 will cost 1300 upon initial purchase and take up 12 blocks. Keep in mind that the game will prioritize an automatic reload for the M203 before reloading the M16 upon firing, so that can leave you vulnerable for the time being, but you can still interrupt the reload by hip firing with the M16, but the forced M203 reload prevents you from aiming down sights. With the small blast radius, I'd recommend using this for medium tier zeds. The Twisted Christmas update has buffed the M16M203 to now have the same amount of ammo as the SA80 assault rifle and added 2 more grenades to the total carried ammo with a 50% damage buff and a small reload speed buff for the M203.


Hands down the most destructive tier 4 weapon in the game in terms of raw damage, even as an off perk weapon, it is extremely dangerous in the right hands. Scrakes have a hidden weakness to direct hit rockets so feel free to take pot shots to his forehead. I suppose it's worth mentioning that you can damage zeds from the back blast, but lets be real here. How often do you actually think about utilizing the back blast?

Another explosive toy making its return from the first Killing Floor, we now have the Seeker Six with a bit of tweaking from the prototype version (along with an increase in size and weight) where all of its special traits have been retained, although you can now lock on to multiple targets with one rocket each trading off the six in one burst damage it had back in Killing Floor 1. How that works is you switch firing modes to heat seeking and skim over the zeds you want to shoot at by aiming down sights taking about half a second to lock onto a target and pull the trigger while still aiming down sights, otherwise dropping ADS will cancel the heat seeking. It trades raw damage for extremely high explosive DPS out damaging the RPG before a reload at least while taking it off perk, it has very good ammo pickup with 12 rockets per crate, you take no self damage and the heat seeking mode doesn't decrease any damage per rocket unlike the aim assist from the Railgun. Unsurprisingly the Seeker Six will suffer against Scrakes, but Fleshpounds on the other hand, are gonna feel the damage output from the Seeker. The biggest surprise is that this is not useless against bosses despite people saying otherwise and here's why: bigger ammo reserves than the RPG making it more forgiving to use on boss rounds, Hans can't dodge the improved heat seeking capabilities from the seeker, Patty can't cloak from the Seeker, and the King Fleshpound is still a fleshpound at the end of the day and demos prey on fleshpounds just for sport. Speaking of fleshpounds, you're not gonna get instant results like the RPG, but even then you should combo with other weapons in your loadout. The best weapon for pure demolitionists to combo with the Seeker Six in my opinion is actually the M16 M203. Why you may ask? The M203 for reliable spike damage and quickly switch over to the Seeker Six to unload for quick take downs and afterwards, you still have bullets from your M16 to deal with anything in close proximity while you're reloading. If you don't have the dosh for the M16 M203, the HX25 will serve you well, although not as reliable as the M203 due to the pellet spread of the HX25 so be prepared to take a hit if it comes down to it. I hope you know how to parry or at least perform standard blocking. Better than taking full damage amirite? If you do plan on taking an off perk handgun, I would suggest taking C4. Overall, it's a nice little niche to fit a more versatile role over the RPG.

During the Twisted Christmas update, the Pulverizer became a cross perk weapon for Demolitionist. Now obviously it's not gonna be as effective when not playing as beserker, but it does have a few advantages over taking it for beserker: fully leveled demolitionists can carry more ammo with 25 shells (30 with the extra rounds skill), can opt in for a faster reload with the shock trooper skill and can create toxic clouds with the destroyer of worlds skill, although somewhat unreliable to pull off in my experience. I have tried using it with the mad bomber skill and it didn't increase its swing speed, but you can cycle rounds and reload in near real time. Overall, I found this weapon to be good for contingency situations with raging big zeds, big groups of trash zeds surrounding you, and even in boss fights aside from the abomination boss since there's usually nothing to block, but does require you to put in some effort into using it as an off perk weapon. My recommendation is to pair it with other weapons specialized with mob control to make you more flexible, but nothing is stopping you from pairing it with the RPG.

At some point in the game's life cycle, the Husk Cannon had a complete statistical rework in order to make the weapon relevant in people's arsenal to which I believe it has succeeded in making the Husk Cannon a viable choice for both firebugs and demolitionists, but sadly is still overshadowed by the Helios Rifle and the RPG respectively. That being said, it can now reliably one shot most trash zeds with tap shots and no longer applies after burn on point blank shots which was the major drawback for using it with demolitionist.

An old classic from KF1 makes a return as a tier 3 weapon with a few upgrades to boot, mainly an increased magazine capacity from 3 to 5 and the ability to manually detonate the harpoons on your own accord. Any zed that dies from the harpoon itself will fly back and potentially stick to a wall or hit another zed capable of surviving the impact making it very good for applying some collateral damage. Just watch where you shoot if big zeds are present. That being said, the harpoons do arc much more than the other grenade launchers so you're going to need to compensate the farther your target is, but mastering the trajectory is oh so satisfying.

The M32 returns from KF1 as a tier 5 weapon that basically functions like an M79 on steroids: 6 consecutive rounds and a larger ammo reserve. If you are going to unload all 6 rounds at once, do keep in mind that the recoil will throw your grenades off course without trigger discipline and reloading from empty is gonna take about 6 years to reload without shock trooper so plan your shots carefully so you don't get caught with your pants down.

The HRG Kaboomstick is a variant of the double barrel boomstick for support, only it's loaded with explosive rounds that deals no self damage to the user so it's basically an HX25 on steroids with all the quirks carried over from the boomstick including shotgun jumping from it's alt-fire. That being said, if you enjoy using the HX25, this is basically a direct upgrade only weighing at 6 kg meaning you can take a high tier explosive primary like the RPG or M32.

This tier 4 weapon is basically the spiritual successor to the orca bomb propeller in KF1 where you can launch a cannonball that bounces off geometry and into zeds for those fancy trick shots I do enjoy so much with some additional upgrades: 3 cannonballs per magazine, delayed detonation by holding down and releasing left click for fancy trick shots, an alt-fire to shoot it like a shotgun that will also bounce off surfaces like the nail gun, and it cross perks with support. The one draw back to this weapon is the $10 paywall if you plan on taking it in multiplayer matches, but you can try out the weapon for free in solo play via console commands: press ~ to open the console, type "EnableCheats", then enter "GiveWeapon KFGameContent.KFWeap_Pistol_Blunderbuss" to spawn the weapon in your hands.

Other than stating the available skills, I will tell you what my opinion of said skills along with reasons for saying what's preferred and what isn't.

Bombardier: Increase damage of explosive perk weapons by 25%.
Self explanatory. However, I've noticed the extra 25% damage is a big enough threshold to kill gorefiends and bigger groups of trash more reliably with the HX25 grenade pistol. With other weapons, it's a bit harder to notice the damage increase, but it never hurts to dish out a little extra spike damage if you can handle the reload times.

Shock Trooper: Reload Perk weapons 20% faster and increase their knockdown and stumble power by 25%.
If you decide to forgo the extra damage and cannot tolerate the reload times, Shock Trooper can help you increase demo's overall dps along with the increased stumble power to help keep scrakes and fleshpounds away from you and your team for a few extra seconds.

High Impact Rounds: Increase direct hit damage with explosive weapons 20%.
Simply put, if you find yourself going to direct hits very often or if you want to dispatch fleshpounds a bit faster, maybe you might like to pick this skill up, but personally I don't pick this skill due to the fact that extra ammo overshadows slightly extra damage that may or may not make much of a difference, especially if the damage bonus only applies on direct hits unless you are about to enter the boss wave.

Extra Rounds: Increase the maximum ammo for explosive perk weapons by 5.
If you're level 25, you essentially have 10 extra rounds on your back making ammo less of an issue during the waves, even during the boss fight you can stay in the fight longer contributing continuous damage until you are forced to disengage for ammo pickups. Honestly, you should switch to high impact rounds for the boss wave because ammo is always respawning and when you do have to scavenge for ammo, most of the time this skill is pretty useless. Don't be that person who tries to top off on ammo during the boss fight or it will be no different than having a dead teammate and that could spiral down to defeat. Keep in mind that C4 cannot benefit from this skill and the extra ammo only applies to the underbarrel grenade launcher and not the M16 rounds.

Sonic Resistant Rounds: Your explosives are immune to the Siren's scream and will always explode.
Just like it says, this makes sure your explosives are not vaporized by sirens so taking this skill will practically eliminate the demolitionist's main counter.

Fragmentation Rounds: Increase the area of effect of explosive perk weapons by 50%.
At some point, they removed the damage penalty from this skill and left us with just the flat aoe bonus which makes it more enticing to take, but I personally still don't take it myself since it's still competing with sonic resistance rounds and the splash damage is large enough where it ends up doing more harm than good with the extra self damage you're doing to yourself. It may not look like a lot initially, but round after round it can add up to the point where you could put yourself into an unfavorable situation, so unless you have a medic on your team to heal you back up from the self damage, I personally don't think it's worth taking this skill as you can't afford to be taking too much damage to begin with for HOE. If you were to use it for HOE matches, it is best paired with weapons that don't apply self harm or have a very small splash radius to make the self damage near irrelevant like the HX25, HRG Kaboomstick, or the Pulverizer.

Armor Piercing Rounds: Increase damage of direct hits to critical areas with perk weapons by 50%.
While the extra damage is good for taking out fleshpounds and occasionally scrakes with headshots from an RPG, it's a bit hard to benefit from this skill consistantly since it requires you to hit their squishy bits and that will require you to be extremely precise, but if you have good aim, fleshpounds will kneel before you. Having High Impact Rounds will also boost this skill's effectiveness to greater levels since direct hits is usually what you would go for anyways. Very good for taking big chunks of health during boss fights if you manage to hit their squishy bits.

Concussive Rounds: Increase reaction, stun, stumble, and knockdown power of perk weapons 50%.
If you can't kill them outright, you'll at least knock'em around for a bit to keep them off your back. With a bit of luck, you might be able to launch a scrake into the skybox with an RPG, because that's always fun to watch them blasting off again and again. Just be careful about knocking them towards your teammates.

ZED TIME - Destroyer of Worlds: During Zed Time, your explosives dish out massive radiation damage, poisoning Zeds, and explosive rounds will explode at any range.
This little perk turns all of your explosive weapons into miniature nukes during Zed Time, creating a bubble of safety for you and your team while decimating trash zeds and leaving larger zeds panicking for Patty's confort all while they're slowly dying from massive radiation poisoning, although scrakes and fleshpounds won't really die from it, so be sure to put them out of their misery after watching their little dance routine. While Destroyer of Worlds is not a bad choice, on the contrary it's a very good zed time perk to have, but one thing to note is that you have no control over what type of zed walks in the cloud so you need to be mindful of where you're shooting or you can end up raging multiple large zeds at once without even noticing.

ZED TIME - Mad Bomber: During Zed Time, you shoot and reload in near real-time, the area of effect of perk weapons increases 25%, and explosive rounds will explode at any range.
Basically the blast radius of all of your explosive weapons is increased by 25% during Zed Time along with the ability to reload and have projectiles travel in near real time, allowing you to constantly take potshots in slow motion (and yes, you can shoot the M16 in near real time so have fun spraying). Despite the skill making all of your explosives explode at point blank range, you take no self damage so go nuts.

My opinions for solo play is a bit different from playing with other people due to the scaled difficulty that's determined by how many people playing on the server.

Bombardier: Increase damage of explosive perk weapons by 25%.
If I have to be honest, this skill feels a bit overkill because in solo play, zeds have decreased health to compensate for the fact that only one person is playing on the server and there does not seem to be any difference in how many shots it would take to kill anything unless you're trying to utilise splash damage very often.

Shock Trooper: Reload Perk weapons 20% faster and increase their knockdown and stumble power by 25%.
There's only one person that can watch your back and that's your lonely self so this is what I would personally take to help keep those pesky zeds off your back.

High Impact Rounds: Increase direct hit damage with explosive weapons 20%.
Unless you're using the RPG, I don't think this skill by itself will make too much of a difference for solo play.

Extra Rounds: Increase the maximum ammo for explosive perk weapons by 5.
Having extra ammo allows you to be a bit more reckless with your ammo and to make sure you don't run out leaving you with just your oversized box cutters while 3 fleshpounds unleash their temper tantrum on you for insulting Father Clamely.

Sonic Resistant Rounds: Your explosives are immune to the Siren's scream and will always explode.
Just take this over frag rounds. It will make your life as a demo a whole lot easier. Unless you're a masochist.

Fragmentation Rounds: Increase the area of effect of explosive perk weapons by 50%.
On solo play, your syringe gives you 50 hp instead of 20 every 10 seconds after using it plus zeds generally do slightly less damage so even if you were to harm yourself from the increased splash damage, the extra hp per use should make up for it so it's a viable choice so long as you're a bit careful with your shot placements and stay mindful of sirens.

Armor Piercing Rounds: Increase damage of direct hits to critical areas with perk weapons by 50%.
Honestly, I don't know if you need the extra spike damage for solo. Once you grab an RPG, I usually end up two shotting a fleshpound and blowing a scrake's head off with just one shot without this skill. Even two sticks of C4 will provide the same results for killing fleshpounds. I suppose if you want to end a boss fight as quickly as possible, then by all means go for it.

Concussive Rounds: Increase reaction, stun, stumble, and knockdown power of perk weapons 50%.
Most of the time, you can deal enough raw damage without any damage boosting skills to kill most zeds without much issue aside from scrakes and fleshpounds. In combination with shock trooper, you can push around scrakes and fleshpounds if they get too close for comfort, although fleshpounds are a little harder to push around if they're already charging at you, but if you got an RPG with you, that shouldn't be too much of an issue, unless they're about to smash your face in.

ZED TIME - Destroyer of Worlds: During Zed Time, your explosives dish out massive radiation damage, poisoning Zeds, and explosive rounds will explode at any range.
Honestly, I found it very difficult to utilize nuke so you either need to switch explosive weapons as soon as zed time activates, or if you happen to have an M16 on you. Your explosives will detonate in your face, but thankfully you will take no self damage during zed time.
Like what I said in the previous section, v1048 made it more consistant to use so it is now a more viable option to take with you if you so desire.

ZED TIME - Mad Bomber: During Zed Time, you shoot and reload in near real-time, the area of effect of perk weapons increases 25%, and explosive rounds will explode at any range.
Simple, it's all about unloading everything in their faces and it's the more consistant zed time skill during solo play.

Dos:

• Focus on the big boys. The extra spike damage will make your teammates lives a whole lot easier.
  
• Remember to utilize dynamite to stun the big boys, especially if your SWAT or Sharpshooter is dead, is out of grenades, or you don't have one to begin with.
  
• Prioritize husks before taking on anything else. The last thing you want are husks pestering you and your team with constant fire damage from halfway across the map, let alone ambush you with a flamethrower attack or a suicide attempt when turning a corner.
  
• Always have a contingency plan when things go south, and by that, I mean keep a personal defense weapon with you at all times.
  
• I know people always say never to waste you're ammo on scrakes since they do have a 50% damage resistance to explosives, but in the case where a scrake does spawn as early as wave 2 where everyone still has weak weapons, contributing any extra damage will increase the chances of surviving an early scrake spawn.
  
• If there is one thing I hate more than anything in this game, it's the EDARs, especially the trapper variant. You see one, you kill on sight.
  
• Fun Fact: You can punch in real time while carrying C4 in zed time if you're using Mad Bomber.

Don'ts:

• Unless you're the last player standing or if they're already raging, do not try to deliver any chip damage on scrakes and fleshpounds when your team is not ready to take them on. This should be common sense regardless of what perk you're playing as, but occasionally I still see people do this from time to time.
  
• Using fairly weak weapons like the HX25 or the M79 on fleshpounds will only make them angry and will most likely get your teammates killed more than anything, unless your plan is to team kill in secret and try to make everyone think you're MLG pro 420 blaze it. I would say the only exception is if you're using it to combo with other weapons in your pockets like the RPG, C4, or the Seeker Six.
  
• If you have a sharpshooter and/or a gunslinger on your team, they could probably do a better job at taking down big zeds considering the skills. In that case, I'd focus on taking weapons that helps control trash, unless you notice they're not able to keep up.

I hope this guide is helpful to you one way or another and I will make any necessary updates whenever demo gets any major changes. If you got any suggestions on how to improve this guide, feel free to leave a comment below. Besides, who needs bullets anyway when you got a ton of explosives on you.