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Memfis

2-BFG-shot cyberdemon kill

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So with careful timing and movements you can kill a cyberdemon in just two shots. It's tremendously useful in speedruns and is simply an excellent way to conserve ammo. However, it is quite risky: one little slip-up and you might just eat a rocket.

So, just like with my SR50 poll, here is another question: do you try to use this technique in casual play or do you find it not reliable enough? I've been playing through Speed of Doom again and I realised that I'm definitely not good enough at doing this, especially when figthing 2 cyberdemons together.

And for the pros... Do you think you can perfectly master this technique or is there always at least a little bit of luck required? Like sometimes the cyberdemon starts another series of shots immediately after he fires the third rocket: hate that!

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Memfis said:

So with careful timing and movements...


Really? I thought it was basically shoving the BFG up some Cybie's smooth, muscular ass and pressing "fire" twice. Not much movement involved here, only boldness and nerve :-p

I am not TimeOfDeath, and I usually perform an approximation of this technique called "just BFG the Cybie as close as you can", without always expecting a 2-BFG-shot kill, but I can settle with 3.

It's not really hard to perform in multiplayer or large infighting in single player, where a Cybie might be occupied with shooting something else, though in single player I'd usually leave the Cybie do some of the dirty work for me, rather than taking two cheap-ass (pun intended) shots at it.

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Maes said:

Really? I thought it was basically shoving the BFG up some Cybie's smooth, muscular ass and pressing "fire" twice. Not much movement involved here, only boldness and nerve :-p

Well, if you watch UV-Max demos by skilled players you can notice that they usually perform a certain "dance" while dodging the rockets and start firing the BFG at a specific time so that the BFG ball hits the monster just after he fires the third rocket I think. This basically minimizes the risk if I understand correctly.

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I always try to get a point-blank shot and I usually use his obvious third rocket attack as an indicator to know when I can get close to him.

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If there's only one cyberdemon, and it's relatively "safe" - enough space to move, no other monsters, etc. - then I'll usually go for it. I can get it most of the time, sometimes needing a 3rd (or using the SSG), and only rarely eating a rocket.

If there's more than one, then usually no, unless I can get one of them distracted by infighting or whatever.

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I do this a lot, I'm even fairly good at it vs. two simultaneous cybers (although more than that is really pushing it). I'd say there is some nominal element of luck involved in trying it in certain kinds of environments (e.g. hallways vs. courtyards), but timing the shot and the charge right usually limits risk to an acceptable degree. When I screw it up, usually it's because the cyberdemon manages to resist pain-stun and resumes firing even as the impact is pushing him backwards.

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Ya, really depends on the environment. I remember the two cybers on map 20 AV being some of the toughest i've faced for 2 shotting. Otherwise it's really consistent aside from eating the third rocket sometimes by being bad at the game.

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I never killed a Cyberdemon with less then 3 BFG shots, and most of the time it takes me 5 or 6 shots. I've seen videos where people 1HKO spiderdemons with the BFG.

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If you got health and armor, you can deal spider mastermind quite easily.

Usually, it's more of chicken vs. train game on my part. Either it boils down that I eat rocket, or chicken out, losing good portion of BFG's effect. It's just that you need to time the firing. Three or four shots are more likely, two shots uncommon.

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I've done it many times myself, and another thing you have to keep in mind when using an old schoolish port is that you have to hit it from either a 90, 180, 270, or 360 degree angle, if that makes sense.

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I find the tactic fairly reliable despite lacking the ability to time or memorize anything. Unless I'm feeling hot I don't go for broke, doing the dance at middle range gets me a guaranteed 3-shot kill with very little risk, most maps aren't so tight with ammo the extra threat is worth it.

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I do it whenever it's possible (enough room and time to wait for it to attack and line up the shot).

With good timing you can minimize the thread but I don't think you can entirely avoid it without TAS.

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I tried it on every cyberdemon in AV. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Spiderdemons went down with one usually.

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I admit that there's something deeply satisfying when this is pulled off correctly, and some poor cybie's ass catches all of the BFG tracers, knowing that it might be up to 2000+ pts of damage. When this happens, it's also visibly pushed back.

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Memfis said:

do you try to use this technique in casual play or do you find it not reliable enough?

It took me a while to learn to do it. Now that I have more confidence, I also do it in casual play and mostly succeed, it's a satisfying feeling.

Memfis said:

And for the pros... Do you think you can perfectly master this technique or is there always at least a little bit of luck required? Like sometimes the cyberdemon starts another series of shots immediately after he fires the third rocket: hate that!

Nothing's ever perfect, but I think you can pull it off on the same level as a pro tennis player hitting a regular tennis shot over the net. Once in a while you bust it up, but 95% of the time you won't.

Of course in this case there are other confounding factors such as the number of cyberdemons, the environment, and other monsters. Just as in tennis some confounding factors are the height, trajectory, speed, swing and/or spin of the incoming ball, how fast you're running, how much you have to stretch, your balance, what kind of shot you're going for, etc.

PS The fact that you can learn and apply such unique skills is one of the many things that make Doom so great. :) This really gives a lot of depth to the game.

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I have pulled it off a few times but have never fully mastered the art of the 2 shot kill. I have noticed that one hit KO's to spider masterminds are a lot more easier and I can pull them off more frequently than the former. That's probably more due to its sheer "wideness" than anything, so that it can take all of the BFG tracers in one go. As for demos; I don't attempt it because I play a little too cautiously. Casual playing however, there isn't much too lose in recording terms.

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I've been meaning to post a thread about something like this. I have embarrasingly little experience fighting cyberdemons, and also very little experience with the bfg. I'm more of a 10,000 shells and am ssg kinda guy in any scenario. I was going to name the thread "rate my bfg skillz" and upload an all-cyberdemon oblige wad and a demo of me trying to two-shot many cyberdemons in a row but it had a lot of failed attempts and I was kinda embarrassed assuming that anyone can do this without a sweat by now. Maybe I'll reconsider in hopes of getting some more detailed advice. But generally I've adapted pretty well to the endurance exercises of fighting cybies from a reasonable distance with rocket launcher or ssg.

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I always go for the 2-shot kill and I feel like I can do it pretty reliably nowadays. When demoing it's a pretty imperative skill and when casual playing I just do it for fun and because I have a very serious ammo hoarding problem. I can pretty much instantly tell if my timing is even a little off and consequently the chances of getting blasted are higher, but I can't really stop the routine "dance" when it has started so if that happens I just wish for the best.

Two Cybers I can handle alright too if they're roaming freely since you can line them up, but it's a little riskier since it's easy to mess up the timing.

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No matter how I try, it always seems to take at least 4 shots for me.

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MFG38 said:

No matter how I try, it always seems to take at least 4 shots for me.


Load cybie.wad, and idkfa, then :-p

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Ever since I figured out how to actually do the 2-shot cyber kill, I try to use the trick as much as possible. Although I can't do consistently.

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ducon said:

Once, I shot a Spidermastermind in one BFG shot. Once.

This actually happens about 50% of the time if you succeed in hitting her at point-blank range, though the effectiveness of this tactic is somewhat mitigated by Doomguy's tendency to imitate a colander the other 50% of the time.

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Foxpup said:

This actually happens about 50% of the time if you succeed in hitting her at point-blank range, though the effectiveness of this tactic is somewhat mitigated by Doomguy's tendency to imitate a colander the other 50% of the time.

Right. When someone mentions regularly killing masterminds in one shot, what they're actually saying is "I use Zdoom and I don't even know the difference."

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If you've not learned to do it reliably (like me) it is a bit like a test of your nerve. I don't think I can even do it in 3 shots and sometimes it takes a ridiculous amount like 7 shots or something. I feel like I need to get better at Doom in general. I don't mind being a casually skilled player but it means you're second guessing monster placement and setpieces sometimes if you're trying to map above your own skill level, which is obviously not a recipe for success.

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The only way to kill cyberdemons "in two shots" (on average) without having to run up to them and shooting them practically at point-blank distance, is to use the BFG against a dense group of multiple cyberdemons: this way all or most tracers will "catch", and all cyberdemons will be damaged (on average) in such a way that every two shots, one will go down.

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