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Reliably chainsaw demons?

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I keep losing health to demons when trying to chainsaw them. Not always, but 1/3 times that I chainsaw them to save ammo, I get hurt. Is there any method to ensure connection and painlock?

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The most reliable method how to avoid getting bitten by a Demon is slightly but sufficiently backing away from him when he attacks back and is about to reach the frame when he deals damage - this is possible even during chainsawing him, but it's slightly harder than when you're not chainsawing him, as the chainsaw pulls you in. There is no reliable way to ensure painlock, and the reliable way to ensure connection is to keep standing in an orthogonal direction relatively to the demon, keep aiming at the demon's center, and staying far enough from borders between blockmap blocks if you're playing in an engine that has the blockmap bug.

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I try to minimalize damage by going backwards. As chainsaw is still sticking to demons, sometimes a little bit distance is enough to avoid bites.
EDIT: Nah, I'm too late :)

By the way, if you're skillful enough and got Berserk pack, it's better to punch them :) Without this power-up, hit demons only if you're really low on ammo and there's no other monsters around you.

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Lightly and rhythmically tap the "S" key (or the back arrow, if you use arrow keys) while you're chainsawing him. Get the timing right and you'll keep sawing him, but he won't be able to bite.

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Pressing backward has an effect while chainsawing? Weird cause you get pulled in. I will try it next time.

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I think the chainsaw's easier to use in G/ZDoom than in the original vanilla, but yeah, try to hang back with it while using it.

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Can't control the pain chance, its pretty much a gamble. Best situation is to rely on infighting. Get a chaingun guy to spray at all the demons and use that infighting threshold to your advantage to really saw the demons dead without risk of getting bit. Just dont get shot in the process!

Works especially well against bigger monsters. Massive shotgun shell savings when you get a hell baron to fight with something and chainsaw the shit out of him while he's trying to throw fireballs at another cacodemon or something.

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scifista42 said:

The most reliable method how to avoid getting bitten by a Demon is slightly but sufficiently backing away from him when he attacks back and is about to reach the frame when he deals damage - this is possible even during chainsawing him, but it's slightly harder than when you're not chainsawing him, as the chainsaw pulls you in. There is no reliable way to ensure painlock, and the reliable way to ensure connection is to keep standing in an orthogonal direction relatively to the demon, keep aiming at the demon's center, and staying far enough from borders between blockmap blocks if you're playing in an engine that has the blockmap bug.


Sorry but this explanation was nowhere NEAR specific enough. I got my dick stuck in a toaster.

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I'm confused. I chainsaw demons all day and all night. You just stand there and look at him with the fire key held, he walks up to you and dies.

If I understand this correctly, the pinky takes 16 tics to attack, and the chainsaw refires every 4 tics. So you're hitting him three or four times before he bites down. I'm not sure how the pain state fits in, but that could add another 4 tics. And he has a 70% painchance.

Just make a quick map with a chainsaw and a 64-wide hallway with like 20 demons lined up in front of you single-file. The odds are very good that you can kill them all and still have 100% health. You can just pick up the chainsaw and literally do nothing but hold down the fire key.

It might be fun to work out the statistics. I'm pretty sure the chance of being bitten is very small. The majority of my chainsaw fails are due to goofy footwork or initiating the attack too late.

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The chance is indeed very small, but it's still a chance. I had it happen to me at the most inconvenient times before. I swear, it only happens when you're at your last 20%.

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Cynical said:

Lightly and rhythmically tap the "S" key (or the back arrow, if you use arrow keys) while you're chainsawing him. Get the timing right and you'll keep sawing him, but he won't be able to bite.

I've been doing it this way for a few months now and have yet to be bitten. I came across it when I was trying to control the chainsaw drag and it just clicked with me. Also eliminates chainsaw drag as a side benefit.

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TBQH, as long as I was a keyboard-only player (all of the 90s, and a good chunk of the 2000s), I never had problems chainsawing demons. The "trick"? Just face them and keep the fire button pressed. No need to turn or strafe (which were awkward movements to perform with the keyboard anyway).

However, once I switched to mouse + WASD, I noticed that it was easier to "lose control" in that situation.

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Probably the slight wiggle of the mouselook? Yeah, though, really, I don't think it has to be complicated at all.

I think this creates a really cool dynamic whereby your hitpoints are indirectly embodied as your strength and aggression. If you are at full health, you are more likely to jump in and start punching and chainsawing. But if you're weak and a risk, however small, that missing just one baddie flinch could mean death for you, you're much more likely to slink away.

But if you're willing to take this reasonable risk, especially when there's a surplus of health both in your body and on the ground waiting for you, you can really save a lot of ammo. In fact, I might even take this logic further by saying that you are wasting this health resource by not wagering it on ammo-saving tactics.

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I'm glad your query was about demons rather than cyberdemons. If you try to chainsaw a cyberdemon you're gonna have a bad time.

I also back away while I'm chainsawing demons and I try not to do it on the stairs.

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Maes said:

The "trick"? Just face them and keep the fire button pressed. No need to turn or strafe (which were awkward movements to perform with the keyboard anyway).


It's possible to get chainsaw malfunction on a blockmap, so you'll be dealing less hits and possibly fail to stunlock them. I'll echo the hint that moving to sides or backing away reduces the chance to get hit.

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savagegrant said:

I'm glad your query was about demons rather than cyberdemons. If you try to chainsaw a cyberdemon you're gonna have a bad time.


Not if you understand the importance of foreplay ;-)

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Damn, I can't chainsaw arachnotrons in Doom Retro. It has to do with the monster's radius, right?

Which ports amend this problem? I think ZDoom family does. What is the consensus on this problem with fisting or chainsawing the bigger monsters?

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What "consensus"? It's a vanilla Doom behavior, and a specific of ports which try to retain vanilla compatibility to a lesser or greater degree.

doomwiki said:
Another issue is that a monster's cross-section, rather than its bounding box, is used to check for hitscan impacts; this makes melee attacks unlikely to hit very wide monsters like the mancubus, spiderdemon, and arachnotron.

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Arachnotrons suffer the most from zdoom's buff to the chainsaw. They get stunlocked to death where in vanilla you will get killed in seconds.

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Pegg said:

zdoom's buff to the chainsaw.

ZDoom's buff to the general "hitscan/line-of-sight-scan versus things" collision detection code, to be precise. The difference can be noticed while using any hitscan or melee weapon.

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Even if it is a change to how things work it is a full buff to the chainsaw vs bigger demons.

Edit : Well I feel silly now. You didn't even disagree :P.

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I've always wondered about that! I've tried working hard to get monsters distracted through infighting so I could chainsaw them from behind but it doesn't work very well.

I wonder if that's something the developers would have liked to have been different, but they had to stick with their hitscan code.

Does this also make demons maybe just a teensy bit easier to miss since they're a bit wide?

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Macblain said:

Does this also make demons maybe just a teensy bit easier to miss since they're a bit wide?

Yes. In fact, every monster suffers from the problem at least a small bit. The wider its radius is AND/OR the closer the attacker is, the larger is the theoretically-hittable area (from the attacker's point of view) that belongs to the monster's hitbox yet it won't ever be hit by a line attack casted from the attacker. And melee attacks have it further complicated by a range limit, which requires the attacker (in our case the player) to stand close to the monster in order to successfully hit its cross-section, and therefore increase the theoretically-hittable area that can't be hit. But sure, being closer to the monster gives the attacker a better chance to "theoretically" hit the monster in the first place, so that the effects nearly neutralize each other at longer distances AND/OR when the monster has a small radius.

EDIT: Nevermind, this was a misinformation - only now I've found out that monster's cross-section is diagonal and not orthogonal, which invalidates pretty much everything in this post. So the truth seems to be that only (1) a blockmap bug (which depends on the monster's relative position to the map's blockmap grid), or (2) not standing close enough to the monster to hit its diagonal cross-section can cause you to miss. So, demons are easier to miss because their radius is higher only in the sense that you need to stay close enough to them to be always able hit the cross-section OR aim precisely enough to hit the part of the cross-section in your melee range, AND/OR because they're slightly more likely to stand on the blockmap block's edge simply because their bigger body covers a bigger area so that their probability of "standing at a bad position" increases.

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Funny you bring this up; I was thinking about how easy it was for Demons to counterattack when using a Chainsaw in the PS1 Doom port. I never had the problem on the PC, though I've probably been really lucky about it.

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risk/reward my friend. like trying to berserk punch a projectile thrower before they nail u in the face, or stun-lock a revenant with the chaingun hoping he wont assplode you with a rocket, you are taking a risk and hoping for the best.

float like a butterfly and sting like a bee!

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With proper spacing and timing, punching any non-Mancubus non-spider non-histcan enemy without taking a hit in retaliation is 100%.

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