WADs to 'Git Gud' with that also look good.

Please nothing that more experienced\skilled people would consider to be of the 'Slaughter' type, no matter how gorgeous. I'd like to climb a (preferably pretty) slope with minimal risk of bashing into a wall.

Mods, if this is more suited to 'WADs & Mods' feel free to move it. Oops.

Sunlust will 'level you up' quite well and isn't pure slaughter outside of a handful of maps.

Scythe isn't pretty per se, but it has a great difficulty curve with a third episode that will really test with only a pair of slaughter maps (26 and 30). Scythe 2, though you may run into a wall starting at Map23. The first 22 have a good difficulty curve that gets quite challenging before transforming into a rather brutal wad towards the end. If you play these back to back, then you'll kind of quietly grind your way up in skill without even noticing it.

Plutonia 2 and Plutonia Revisted are both quite difficult while staying true to the original's style of difficulty (and both are slightly harder as well).

Valiant changes/replaces a lot of the base monster behavior in the game, but it's gorgeous and only has one or two slaughter-styled maps while remaining quite the challenge.

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1 hour ago, Krull said:

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/02/11/doom-2-mod-eviternity-escalates-from-basics-to-expert-grade/

+1 for Eviternity

There are also other megawads like Valiant and Ancient Aliens which are quite challenging on UV but forgiving on lower difficulties like HNTR.

Speed of Doom is a set that will test you to your limits if you're an average player like me. Has some wonderful locales to it as well.

Basically popular (G)ZDoom TCs (I recommend Cold As Hell)

Epic 2 simulate Egypt's visuals pretty good.

UAC Ultra can get pretty hectic at times, but the wad's visual is pretty gritty and badass.
Same for Going Down, except it is basically a slaughterwad with a weird theme and weird story^TM  

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/p-r/rush

Heres a wad that I believe is beginner slaughter friendly, 12 maps of fun in my opinion

Plutonia, Alien Vendetta, Kama Sutra, are all classics with a step up in difficulty, and I'd say their levels still hold up.

On 4/28/2019 at 3:40 AM, Snakes said:

Valiant changes/replaces a lot of the base monster behavior in the game, but it's gorgeous and only has one or two slaughter-styled maps while remaining quite the challenge.

Valiant has vaccinated edition, where all custom stuff is removed for mod compatibility and traditional gameplay. 

"Gitting gud" basically means moving into slaughter territory. There's no way around it, honestly.

As mentioned, Sunlust is a good example. It's very intense but builds you up to its nastier moments. And boy, are some of them nasty when played on UV.

Alfonzone is pretty and quite challenging.

I cut my teeth on Vanguard playing each level from scratch with no saves. Its slaughter style is pretty forgiving, I think, though it didn’t teach me all of the crowd shaping techniques required to beat stuff like Sunlust and Combat Shock.

On 4/27/2019 at 8:20 PM, DOOMed_Amateur said:

Please nothing that more experienced\skilled people would consider to be of the 'Slaughter' type, no matter how gorgeous. I'd like to climb a (preferably pretty) slope with minimal risk of bashing into a wall.

First of, you can't expect to "git gud" in a reasonable amount of time if you're not willing to actually practise things you can't yet do, and this means that bashing your head into a wall occasionally comes with the territory by default, there's simply no way around that.

Second of bashing your head into a wall and overcoming it can be much more rewarding and even exhilarating than doing the same-old-same-old with just a few chaingunners added in, or perhaps a few more revenants placed as snipers.

Also, there's no reason not try and see if you find something in harder maps that you enjoy, doubly so when difficulty settings exist that you should be using in case it's getting too frustrating for you. Can't beat a map on UV? Well try HMP then. If HMP is too easy and UV is too hard, then you're in a spot where your shot at learning new things on UV might just be exactly what you need to make progress.

Nothing that's worth having ever comes easy, especially not skill.

Stuff that helped me get to acceptable levels of play:

Speed of Doom
Valiant
Rush
Newgothic movement 2
Combat shock
SunLust
Dimensions (Start on HMP with this one, it's quite extreme on UV)
Chillax (if you can bear the frustration and the grind it really teaches you a thing or two)

Deus Vult II
phmlspd
Sunder

Technically not built by a player but with user created bits too, but Oblige (and thrown on top of it, ObAddon) will get you good in no time. Highly customizable, the latter addon makes it even moreso.

2 hours ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Chillax (if you can bear the frustration and the grind it really teaches you a thing or two)

That one surprises me a lot. Are you playing with respawn items or do you just fist everything when you are empty?

12 minutes ago, Kira said:

That one surprises me a lot. Are you playing with respawn items or do you just fist everything when you are empty?

item respawn

On 5/1/2019 at 12:35 PM, Glaice said:

Technically not built by a player but with user created bits too, but Oblige (and thrown on top of it, ObAddon) will get you good in no time. Highly customizable, the latter addon makes it even moreso.

I've never heard of ObAddon. Looks rad! Giving this a shot now.