Revenant Punch-Out

[Cackledemon]

I've repeatedly heard that the best way to fight a revenant is to get in its face to bait its punches and step back to avoid them while you shoot it 'til it dies. I've tried this before, but I've never been able to pull it off. Reversing momentum just takes too much time and I either get hit by a punch or by a homing fireball. I've heard this bit of advice enough times that there has to be something to it, but my experience has quite consistently been that it's much less trouble to just use a chaingun. What am I doing wrong?

[Wadviro_]

Screen record your game doing it, my guess is you either go too far backward or you're too slow. 

[DoomSpud]

43 minutes ago, Cackledemon said:

I've repeatedly heard that the best way to fight a revenant is to get in its face to bait its punches and step back to avoid them while you shoot it 'til it dies. I've tried this before, but I've never been able to pull it off. Reversing momentum just takes too much time and I either get hit by a punch or by a homing fireball. I've heard this bit of advice enough times that there has to be something to it, but my experience has quite consistently been that it's much less trouble to just use a chaingun. What am I doing wrong?

While I've never heard of/seen/considered it against a Revenant, this was an effective tactic against Shamblers in Quake all those years ago. Step in close, trigger it's melee attack, step back to a safe distance and unload a clip of nalis or lightning into it while it flailed around and completely missed you... Doom's reaction times are a bit faster than Quake's (am I the only one who's noticed idtech1 runs a little faster than idtech??2?) so getting away with it against a Revenant would be a bit harder I'd imagine. To quote Jack Burton in Big Trouble In Little China...

"It's all in the reflexes..."

[snapshot]

I'd probably get instantly obliterated with my poor timing and not being able to tell how far I should step back, these moments when a mapper decides to throw you in tight spaces against revs without Plasma or Chaingun feel like genuine survival horror moments to me.

[Silliest Putty]

Back in 1995 when I played with a joystick it seemed a lot easier than now when I use the kb/m.  Does anyone play with a joystick and a mouse?  That'd be pretty wild.

Edited July 18, 2019 by Silliest Putty

[DecoyZulu]

I've never approached it in a linear fashion. I usually get in pretty close as well, but I move in circles in front of him. Sometimes he throws a punch and misses, sometimes he fires a rocket that tends to go far left. Either way, he gets locked into this pattern of missing an attack and getting buckshot in his teeth until he's dead.

 

If you've got room to run back and forth in his face, in my experience, you've usually got room to do what I do.

[noisebloom]

Now I'm thinking someone needs to make a Punch-Out!! WAD with a Revenant instead of Mike Tyson.

Edited July 18, 2019 by noisebloom

[geo]

Pinkies too! Get in their face, punch, run. Unless you have something more effective.

[SaladBadger]

you might enjoy this thread

[DecoyZulu]

I'm tempted to try and make a genuine level or two out of this concept.

[3saster]

It's more of a feel thing than any specifics (to me anyway), but I'll try my best. If you're getting hit by a punch, it means you aren't moving back fast enough. Since reversing the momentum takes a moment, you sort of have to start moving back earlier. The revenant also won't start to throw a punch unless you are very close, so you can kind of start your punch earlier and hit it as the revenant starts the punch, then back out. With practice you can dive in, land a punch at the "apex" of your run, and start moving backwards as the revenant starts its punch. If it flinches, be ready for a possible rocket and get ready to move sideways; you need quick reactions. One important thing to remember is that if you are close enough to a revenant (2 doomguys away I think), it will always try to approach and punch you, and you don't need to worry about its rockets. The exception is, of course, when it flinches.

If you can punch out hell knights/barons consistently, it's a similar technique. The key difference is that you can get a revenant into a "rhythm" where you hit it, back away, dodge rocket if necessary, then go back in. Repeat til revenant is dead. On HKs/barons, you really need to watch their attacks and rotate more, but they are much slower.

All of this takes a lot of practice though, and a good understanding of Doomguy's movement is the most important thing here. Once you start getting the idea, you can kinda just "feel" how you're supposed to do this.

[DecoyZulu]

Yeah, HK/BHs give me way more trouble. They're not tuned for melee so much, so their projectiles are less reliably anticipated and always seem to move a little faster than I think they will. Whenever I have to punch one out, I make sprinting passes where I'm strafing sideways and throwing a punch before looping away to get ready for another pass. Not unlike a fighter plane making length-wise passes against a battleship or something.

[xvertigox]

Bait a punch by getting close, this prevents them from firing their rockets. When dodging just step back a little bit, you don't need to move far to get out of their range.

[BigBoy91]

Stick and move brother.

 

[Maximum Matt]

I can only have a chance to do this against a single revenant, with zero distractions- otherwise it just decends into the same ol' thing where I'm running around being chased by fifteen rockets, Scooby Doo style