Honestly zapoke foxes are completely fine. The only issue I see is when they are successfully rooted, frozen, or stunned and are useless from those. Other than that they are quick killers with good debuffs. Maybe because you're using a hate set, with the death shotgun they are awesome. It just takes the right setup and taking advantage of your debuffs and your poison skills. If you're almost dead and can time your skills right just use hypnotize then poison needle and then vixen kick and they fly across the map like a bear who beckon stomps. Also a lot of foxes don't use armor shredder. It is a good thing to have. I've used foxes at most levels from 5-71. There's certainly nothing wrong with them.