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Tips for New Doomers

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Try to attempt to recognize enemy patterns and common placements, you will save a lot of time on harder maps if you can deduce enemy composition on the spot, and begin to formulate strategies. Very helpful if you are attempting modern maps.

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I started playing Doom properly about 2 years ago, when Dusk got me interested in Retro shooters and I stumbled upon Eviternity. I was shit at the game then, and I've only recently gotten to a stage where I feel even remotely competent. The things I had to learn that helped the most:

  • Enemy Prioritization: This is the biggest one. I used to think I always needed to take out the biggest and scariest enemies first, but that's often not the case. For instance, it's usually wise to prioritize hitscanners over imps or Hell Knights. You can dodge projectiles, you can't dodge bullets. If space is at a premium, getting rid of those pesky pinkies might be wiser than focusing on those rambunctious revenants because then you have space to evade. There's a general order of prioritization, but always be willing to adapt.
  • Learn How to Infight: It'll save you some frustration and it's key to a lot of more challenging encounters.
  • Stop Being Stubborn: If something is too hard for you, drop the difficulty - or even come back to it later. Bashing your head against Sunlust on UV when you've only just finished Doom 2 for the first time is just going to make you cry, not put hairs on your chest. It's a game, have fun. If you really like challenging content, set goals. Work your way up. The doom series is already harder than a lot of games out there, and the most challenging stuff this community makes is way harder than 99.9% of what you'll find on Steam.

 

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The super shotgun works best at close range, generally a distance where one would take splash damage from their rocket launcher.  It is also awkward and wasteful at handling monsters at a large height difference and will often be better to use a different weapon.  Or infighting.

 

  It's OK to use saves.  Even the manual suggests saving often.  Saving in the midst of a chaotic battle isn't recommended until you've gained some experience and can judge whether you're safe enough.  Taking 120 unavoidable damage right after reloading a save is frustrating.

 

Most of the other stuff coming to mind has already been mentioned.  Or applies more to an intermediate/advanced player like punching revenants (berserk or not) or adjusting the mancubus dodge dance when the mancubus is at a different angle rather than in front (something that hasn't become part of my muscle memory yet).

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On 11/3/2021 at 3:46 AM, Sena said:

 

 

I learned stuff from this vid. So sort of like being at school.

 

But I also laughed and enjoyed learning stuff. So in other words nothing like school.

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SSG turns two shells into 20 projectiles that deal 5, 10 or 15 damage. Regular shotgun turns it one shell into 7 projectiles that deal 5, 10 or 15 damage. Unless you are absolutely certain that there is a good chance you will kill he enemy with the regular shotgun, use the double barreled one. Keep in mind that SSG delivers the damage faster than the regular shotgun, so you have a lower risk of getting damaged by enemy fire. Against chaingunners, this is an important consideration.

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Read the text files when playing custom wads.  If a wad states that UV is intended for experts than keep that in mind, there is no shame on playing on ITYTD or HNTR even on wads that weren't intended to be difficult.  Even the hardest wads (usually) will be designed for lower difficulties, and ITYTD also halfs damage and doubles ammo.  Other than that just play doom, the more you play the better you will get.  If you want a great list of wads to play "Wads for skill improvement" is a really good one, don't feel commited to no saving but that will make you a better player in the long run.

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SSG deals the same* damage as the rocket launcher at point-blank range, so because of that Archvile will go down in 4 shots if you shoot him at point-blank

 

*see posts below

Edited by lokbustam257 : Reason for edit

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9 minutes ago, lokbustam257 said:

SSG deals the same damage as the rocket launcher at point-blank range, so because of that Archvile will go down in 4 shots if you shoot him at point-blank

No.

It's a lot more complex and random than this. The damage of each weapon is highly random, go look it up on the doom wiki. Bosses are immune to rocket blast damage and therefor require more shots. Due to the blast damage of rockets, they can overall do more damage to a group compared to a single enemy, unlike the SSG.

From doomwiki:
SSG: 150-225 (with vanilla RNG)
Rocket launcher: 148-288 (direct hit + blast radius)

Read the articles, they go into much more detail. As a rule of thumb, RL will deliver more damage than the SSG does.

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21 minutes ago, zokum said:

As a rule of thumb, RL will deliver more damage than the SSG does.

Unless you're shooting a Cyberdemon :P

 

37 minutes ago, lokbustam257 said:

SSG deals the same damage as the rocket launcher at point-blank range

You can say they deal similar amount because like Demons are 1 (*), Cacodemons are 2~3, HK are 3 (**), Manc are 3~4, AV are 4 (***), but they are very different in a lot of scenarios.

 

*. RL is the one that can fail to kill a Demon in one direct shot, and mostly, you can't deal max 128 splash to anything. However SSG is a sure kill if you hit 20 pellets;

**. RL is the one that can 2 shot a HK (or Arachnotron) while SSG can never kill a HK in 2 shot. (Though, it seems it's still contested about the max damage of SSG. 225 could be wrong, but hard to tell.)

***. I think AV can be 3-shot, but it's super rare.

Edited by GarrettChan

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20 minutes ago, GarrettChan said:

***. I think AV can be 3-shot, but it's super rare.

With rockets sure, happens to me sometimes. Never got one killed with just 3 SSG shots though.

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28 minutes ago, Andromeda said:

With rockets sure, happens to me sometimes. Never got one killed with just 3 SSG shots though.

TBH, 3-rocket AV never happens to me... despite I ran quite a lot of max or whatnot. Maybe I missed these due to being a mess, or I just planned with 4 so I shot the empty rocket not matter what.

 

I don't know about SSG TBH, if you want to 3-shot an AV, then the max damage will need to be at least 235, and possibly there is/are only 1/2 group of arrays can do this in the P_Random table, so yeah... I guess one day DSDA-Doom can implement damage numbers for TAS or something for a better investigation.

 

3-shot AV with SSG, this is the way to go. :P

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Rockets also fire at a much faster rate than SSG, and therefore will always pump out more damage over time, even against single enemies (not sure about cybie and spidey since they don't take the splash. SSG might be better then?)

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17 minutes ago, magicsofa said:

Rockets also fire at a much faster rate than SSG, and therefore will always pump out more damage over time, even against single enemies (not sure about cybie and spidey since they don't take the splash. SSG might be better then?)

Surprisingly, against Cyber, SSG and RL both approximately take 31 seconds to kill them on average if everything hits, but usually SSG is more reliable due to human error, because RL needs to keep a weird distance where you can sometimes miss a rocket or eat some splash damage.

 

7 minutes ago, Andromeda said:

Huh, nice! The first shot didn't look anything special either.

Are you joking or serious? I actually can't tell...

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If you see a Pain Elemental, shoot it as quickly as possible. Chaingun or plasma rifle ideal.

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8 minutes ago, GarrettChan said:

Are you joking or serious? I actually can't tell...

Serious, the first shot didn't look good at all. It obviously was because otherwise you'd need four shots.

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33 minutes ago, Andromeda said:

Serious, the first shot didn't look good at all. It obviously was because otherwise you'd need four shots.

Oh, mhrz sniped me. Yeah, that AV took splash damage from itself. That's basically a 2-second save and you really can't count on 3-shot it otherwise.

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The automap lets you leave markers. Use them if there's an area in the map you want to take note of (except for doors that need a key since those are colour coded, at least in source ports). Don't rush maps when you're playing them for the first time and try to be mindful of the layout and how many ways you can go. None of that applies to solely combat focused WADs of course, so I guess a third would be to know what kind of WAD you're getting into.

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Try walking into the pain elemental while it's entering its death sequence so as to minimize lost souls spawning after its death. Depending on how well you did it, you'll either leave one lost soul and get hurt, or you'll make these numbskulls go poof.

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On 11/5/2021 at 4:34 PM, GarrettChan said:

Unless you're shooting a Cyberdemon :P

Which I also stated quite clearly a few lines above :-). A rule of thumbs means it is an approximation, not necessarily 100% correct in all cases.

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I'd say the most important skill that I see excellent players demonstrate is: use of the rocket launcher 

 

To use it well, it looks like you need a great understanding of the splash damage distance, how auto-aim works, which enemies are high risk for making you face rocket, confidence in moving into the space which is created when rockets take out groups of fodder enemies, combining rocket fire with wall hugging to manage herds of mid-tier enemies such as barons to create space you can move into or through, remaining calm enough so you can quickly stop your fire when moving around in areas with pillars/walls, how many rockets it takes to kill each enemy, understanding rocket travel time versus the timing for archivile attacks and incoming projectiles, when you can use rockets for enemies to save cells for BFG shots etc etc.

 

I say all the above in the full knowledge that (a) I can't do all that! I just see other people do it (b) i am sure there is lots more to it that what I have listed.

 

I think from watching highly skilled players in action, it's evident that mastering the rocket launcher is the most important skill you can learn for playing most modern maps.

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On 11/5/2021 at 5:34 PM, GarrettChan said:

***. I think AV can be 3-shot, but it's super rare.

It is true, but there's even more rare event:

5-shot AV. Even with perfect aim, it is possible that 4 SSG shots do not kill the arch-vile. I ran a simulation 100M times, where the pseudoRNG index jumped randomly between consecutive shots and the result was:

Out of 100 000 000 cases, number of shots needed to kill an arch-vile:

155 386 times with 3 SSG shots

99 844 409 times with 4 SSG shots

205 times with 5 SSG shots

 

So 5 shots is 1 in 500k, while 3 shots is 1 in 644. Identifying 5 shot arch-vile kill is super problematic though, because even if it happens, one sure assumes that "I must have missed a bit!"

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Here's one from me: Never underestimate your arsenal.

The chaingun, whilst fantastic at pot-shotting from far away, is still efficient at gunning down mid-tier enemies like cacodemons and hell knights.

The plasma rifle may be out dps'd be the BFG9000 but on its own it serves as a very trust-worthy rapid fire weapon.

Super shotgun may sound really strong (and it is) but the rocker launcher deals roughly the same damage from much further away and is consistent.

Chainsaw goes brrrrrrrrrrrr.

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5 minutes ago, DynamiteKaitorn said:

Here's one from me: Never underestimate your arsenal.

The chaingun, whilst fantastic at pot-shotting from far away, is still efficient at gunning down mid-tier enemies like cacodemons and hell knights.

The plasma rifle may be out dps'd be the BFG9000 but on its own it serves as a very trust-worthy rapid fire weapon.

Super shotgun may sound really strong (and it is) but the rocker launcher deals roughly the same damage from much further away and is consistent.

Chainsaw goes brrrrrrrrrrrr.

Chaingun is underrated. Its DPS almost matches the SSG in 'real world' because of its long distance tappin ability, as SSG would still be useless from that range. You can stun multiple important targets with the chaingun, for example 3 scattered chaingunners.

 

Rocket launcher deals a lot more damage than the SSG, even more than the plasma rifle. It has actually almost identical DPS with the BFG, IF (big if) you use a source port with up/down aim, and shoot a roof above hordes of baron of hells / hell knights or such, as each rocket deals over 1000 damage to the horde.

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Versus Cyberdemons and Spider Masterminds, the RL becomes more like a heavy slug gun that lobs heavy, solid projectiles with about the same damage as a regular (non-super) shotgun shot, as those enemies both shrug splash damage. Of course the fire rate is much better in case of the RL, and since it's not a hitscan weapon, you can lead and "pump" your attacks.

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You may have heard of circle-strafing, but what if I told you there's an even more advanced move, called the Clover-Strafe.

 

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Unlike the circle-strafe, which solves the monsters-in-the-middle problem, clover-strafing allows you to combo other powerful techniques.  For example, baiting out melee attacks on the inward stride, which keeps the monster ball from unraveling but also mitigates homing rockets from coalescing into that megazord super death cluster that results from a long fight of circle-strafing.


Also, unlike the circle-strafe, which mostly only handles the monsters in the middle of the room, the clover-strafe allows you to dodge peripheral projectiles.  You know that cyberdemon that's been lobbing rockets your direction from off-screen a mile away?  No, you don't, but you still don't want to die to it.  Clover-strafing provides a whole extra dimension to your dodging, so you might accidentally dodge that coke-line of penis-shaped rockets coinciding with your third rotation cycle.  And who knows, if you start getting really good, you might be able to dodge these on purpose too using the same method.

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