I understand that the new Zombie AI and stealth mechanism's are implemented to change the dynamics of the game, but I am constantly struggling with Zombies that rubber band and blink, hitting me from a distance and impossible to knock them out with weapons.

Experimental, the Zombies weren't that bad. Then again, experimental servers perform flawlessly with little to no desync. When you get on stable servers, the performance goes out the door. I am on a private server with password, 5 people, and the desync/rubber banding is a nightmare.

We need to be able to defend ourselves if they're rubber banding, disappear, spawn on top of you; there's gotta be a better way to defend ourselves. Nerfing the melee weapons and having to hit them 5 times with a Fire Axe is a major disadvantage to players. Only got fists? Standing still getting pummeled by 1 zombie and punching it in the head is better than the fire axe.