Advanced gameplay tactics new players should know if they want to get better at Doom?

[TheNoob_Gamer]

Recently I have an idea of creating an interactive learning WAD (similar to Doomish Den of Design) that aims to teach new players useful gameplay tactics they might not have known. However, my lack of time for playing Doom these days, combined with my lackluster English have led me to a roadblock in finding any relevant resources, hence this thread. 

 

Before anyone asks: No, I'm not planning this to become a "tips/tricks" thread, although the distinction is pretty blur. "Advanced tactics" here include stuff like 2-shotting cyberdemons with BFG, enemy stun-locking; and can be anything from movement to shooting things as long as they are related to gameplay. 

I think the Doom Movement Bible is a good source for movement-related tactics, although I'm unsure if those gameplay oddities can be performed by many people in general. 

Edited July 28, 2021 by TheNoob_Gamer

[DSC]

23 minutes ago, TheNoob_Gamer said:

stuff like 2-shotting cyberdemons with BFG

Thats the one I immediately thought of reading the thread's title. Punching barons and knights is incredibly useful too.

[Doomkid]

While these tactics aren't advanced, I'm going to post these videos because they're very useful for anyone what wants to get better at Doom (plus if I don't post em, someone else will)

 

 

 

[DollarStoreChili]

This is relevant to my interests

[Stupid Bunny]

All these years and has never failed me

 

[Doomkid]

Just thought of something that's pretty important in Doom: monster prioritization.

 

Basically, if you find yourself in a crowded area with a variety of enemies, I find you want to prioritize killing the things that can damage you the fastest.

 

You want to kill Chaingunners before anything else. Followed by shotgunners! Hitscanner damage adds up fast. Zombiemen can usually be ignored til later. Arch-Viles aren't super tough, but deal a crapload of damage, so I usually go for them next.

 

There's a lot of variables at play in any given Doom map, but Revenants are famous for sneaky missiles, and Pain Elementals spawn constant Lost Souls, so getting rid of them quickly is key. The more slow and lumbering enemies like imps, demons, mancubi, arachnotrons.. As long as you have some room to move and some ammo, they're the lowest threat and can be saved for after all the above baddies are dealt with.

 

TL;DR: All of this is context sensitive of course, but as a rule of thumb - if it's kinda slow and fires a projectile, clear out the hitscanners and enemies with higher damage/sneakier attacks first.

[Teo Slayer]

52 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

 

 

 

WHAT KIND OF THUMBNAIL IS THAT?

[ketmar]

also, don't forget that hitscanners are using the same autoaim as the player. this can be used for your advantage, as hiding behind "meat shields".

[DollarStoreChili]

I think you could tie in the picking up of weapons, health, armor and powerups at the right times. I recently started E2M1 of doom 1 for the first time, which starts you off fresh with a pistol.  I came around the corner and there was an assorted group of zombie men beyond which there was a shotgun. Old me would've pistoled the enemies and then went for the shotgun. Instead I ran for the shotgun, which in turn made the encounter more efficient.

 

Probably seems like the basics to the old heads around here, but for someone who has just started thinking while playing doom, it's kind of an awakening.

[dmslr]

30 minutes ago, ketmar said:

also, don't forget that hitscanners are using the same autoaim as the player.

Except their autoaim works in infinitely(?) long distances unlike the player's. It's a common situation where you can't hit a hitscanner above/below you, but it can.

[Swordofdanu]

-Use infighting to your advantage 

-Always chainsaw Pinkys if you have space and time, even luring a pack out of a congested room

-An abundance of Medi packs mean you can punch lower fodder with more confidence to save ammo

-Save ammo

-And as Doomkid said always prioritise Shotgunners (the dirty bastards) 

[roadworx]

2 minutes ago, Swordofdanu said:

-Always chainsaw Pinkys if you have space and time, even luring a pack out of a congested room

unless you have berserk, ofc :p

 

i'd say that a good tactic is to use barons for infighting purposes. they're great at it cuz they can tank a lot of damage and have good output as well, and it'll help whittle down their health so they're less of a pain in the ass to kill

[The_SloVinator]

Cacos are tricky to punch, so my tip is to get it into an infight with anything above Imp & just punch away without losing much health from the bites.

Same applies to Barons & much more!

[ketmar]

2 hours ago, dmslr said:

Except their autoaim works in infinitely(?) long distances unlike the player's. It's a common situation where you can't hit a hitscanner above/below you, but it can.

it's slightly more complicated than this: first, they aiming straight at the player, in 3d. and only then they are using autoaim. player cannot aim vertically, though (at least in vanilla). but autoaim is still in effect, and can be used to player's advantage.

[The_Trve_Raith]

protip:

 

get gun shot big dmon win gam

[Gaia74]

the first 2 shots of the chaingun are always accurate, sometimes it is better to make several clicks before holding it down the chaingun, someone taught me this and it is one of the things that made me improve a lot by now having a sniper in my weaponry

[DSC]

4 hours ago, Doomkid said:

TL;DR: All of this is context sensitive of course, but as a rule of thumb - if it's kinda slow and fires a projectile, clear out the hitscanners and enemies with higher damage/sneakier attacks first.

Yeah, that reminds me of this one post, unfortunatly forgot by who, but I do remember it was a big community member, who explained very well how combat puzzle and slaughter maps shift the gameplay around by swapping the monster priorities, for example, making the AVs and Pain Elementals harder to kill. Its incredibly interesting.

[Chopkinsca]

6 hours ago, TheNoob_Gamer said:

interactive learning WAD

 

I had an idea like that long long ago. I think I sort of made one, but didn't get far with it. It had the apt development title of "training.wad".

[Biz!]

Circle strafe all the time

Abuse any piece of cover to take a breather

Use Rocket Launchers for large groups of small enemies

Use Plasma Rifle for Archviles, takes them down faster than an SSG, and you will never have the room to rocket Archviles

[ketmar]

54 minutes ago, Gaia74 said:

the first 2 shots of the chaingun are always accurate

first pistol shot is "sniper" too, and it deals the same damage as chaingun shot.

[VoanHead]

I would say know the time and place to be aggressive or to be cautious. Some fights are not worth the hassle depending on your arsenal and ammo that you have, there’s no shame in running away from a fight and coming back to it later.

[out_of_service]

When combating demon hordes ALWAYS be on the move. Learn the art of circle strafing, zig and zag between baddies as you zap 'em with your guns. Induce infighting when possible, use cover when it's available, be a force of nature!

[Teo Slayer]

The thing I learnt from DOOM is that you must always move and circle-strafing. That's how I got good at it

[GarrettChan]

Maybe some fights you need to know prioritization and/or how to making room for yourself to work.

 

Also, fighting PE with Rocket Launcher :P

[ax34]

1. Run circles around enemies and let them infight.

2. Kill arch-viles and pain elementals first.

3. One shot of super shotgun deals more damage than two shots of regular shotgun (though it's more strategy than tactics).

4. BFG is big shotgun, not big rocket launcher.

5. Chaingun is good sniper rifle (especially with mouse look).

6. When you meet a herd of pinkies, just hide in a corner, stick working chainsaw outside and hold "back" key.

7. Bosses are immune to splash damage.

8. Pain elemental is helpless against chaingun.

9. All hitscanners can infight with each other.

10. If you met a herd of imps use rocket launcher. The same is true about barons/knights.

[garudave]

In cramped rooms where circle strafing around a group of monsters isn't an option, stick to one side of the room to draw the enemies in that direction if possible.  Once they jam up on each other on that side of the room, you can start strafing around them and thin the herd.  Kind of hard to explain but I have had to use it a lot lately.  Learning to get the monsters to move where you want them to just comes with practice.

[DOEL]

this is a concept I've thought about lately, basically musical etudes but for Doom

[Skronkidonk]

New players might not know some quirks of the monsters that can really help them out at times.

1. At the right time get into a pain elementals face so it doesn't spam lost souls *Best if you can get it into a corner*

2. Archviles instantly target other enemies when they get hit 

(I also like to stand on top of corpses so he can't revive them)

3. You can get into a pinky's face and let it try and bite you but back up before it does the bite frame. *Horrible way of explaining it*

4. Similar to the pinky but a little more tricky. There is a certain distance from the revenant you can be in where he won't shoot you and will keep chasing you to get a cheeky punch. So you can sort of utilize that so he doesn't spam missiles, but if you get the revenant in its pain state back up because he will most likely fire a missile.

[Nootrac4571]

Some random beginner tips I've found useful:

 

Demon/Spectre:

Their attack animation has a big pause before it actually damages you. Once they start to bite you have a half second or so in which you can just casually back away - they'll stay standing where they are and chomp the air instead of you. This is really useful if you're pinned near a dead end and need to buy some time.

 

Cacodemon:

Can be stunlocked with the chaingun or chainsaw.

 

Pain Elemental:

They can't shoot lost souls if you're standing right up in their faces - The lost soul won't appear if you're occupying the spot it wants to spawn at. If you push yourself right up against a Pain Elemental it's effectively harmless.

 

Mancubus:

They fire six shots, in three volleys of two, but of those six shots only two of them are actually aimed directly at you. If you're not being pressured to move by other monsters, you can just gently sidestep the single shot aimed at you in each of the first two volleys and ignore the third volley entirely.

 

Revenant:

1) You can quickly tell if a Revenant rocket is homing or not: Homing rockets leave a smoke trail, while non-homing ones don't.

 

2) This one's a bit harder to get the hang of, but they won't fire rockets if they're within a certain (fairly close) range. So there's a sweet spot where they're too far away to punch you but too near to fire a rocket. If you can back away and keep them in that sweet spot then they can't attack you at all.

 

Arch-Vile:

Never interrupt an Arch-Vile when it's infighting. They instantly switch targets to the most recent thing that hurt them, and their attack animation doesn't reset when this happens. So if an Arch-Vile is casting flames on another monster and you shoot it, the flames will instantly switch to you - potentially right before they explode, giving you no chance to find cover.

 

Spider Mastermind:

You can - most of the time, there is some RNG involved - one-shot a SMM with a point blank BFG shot.

 

Pistol:

It's slow and weak, but every shot has 100% accuracy, so it's useful for shooting low-tier enemies from a distance without wasting ammo.

 

Chaingun:

Has a wide spread, so normally not great for long-range shots, but the first two shots act like pistol shots and have 100% accuracy. So by regularly tapping the fire button instead of holding it down, the chaingun is great at sniping distant monsters.

 

BFG:

Read up on how the BFG works, because it's really *really* unintuitive.

 

Very quickly: When you fire the BFG, the game records the direction you're facing. When the big glowing ball hits something - no matter how far away, or how long it's been flying through the air - a massive invisible shotgun blast is fired from the *player* in the direction the game remembers you were facing when it was fired.

 

The ball itself does some damage, but not that much. It's the massive invisible and completely illogical shotgun blast that does the real damage.

Armour

Read up on how armour works because it's also completely unintuitive. Basically, blue armour isn't just more percentage points - the game records which colour armour you last picked up, and reduces damage based on the colour. Blue armour is much better than green armour, but the HUD doesn't give you any indication of this.

 

[TheNoob_Gamer]

5 hours ago, Teo Slayer said:

The thing I learnt from DOOM is that you must always move and circle-strafing. That's how I got good at it

That depends on context. For instance, in the middle of a big fight, an Archvile joins. Keep moving around is definitely not a good idea. 

 

@Chopkinsca What was this training WAD like? I'm a bit curious.