give me a good reason as to why the pain elemental is a "bad" enemy

[Cruduxy Pegg]

They are underpowered as hell I never got what the big fuss about them was. It is very easy to use them in infights or block them by making lost souls attack into her and then she wastes all day trying to kill those souls that keep aggroing her over and over.

 

Outside a strict ammo starvation map you'll always have plasma and rocket launcher to easily deal with them. NO the rocket launcher isn't a bad weapon vs her the attack animation she does is telegraphed and the lost soul is easy to dodge, you can pretty much hold the fire button and beat her every time if you are willing to use 4-5 rockets too. Outside -fast the lost souls aren't annoying to deal with and can be killed in one sec with RL and plasma.

 

I think the problem is people insist on using the shotguns and chaingun to "save ammo" in fodder fights when they don't have to save ammo to begin with, especially not in any of the doom 2 Iwads.

 

Now the Doom 64 Pain Elementals on the other hand, yeah those are bullshit glad they never made it to another game.

[JeffAri]

it's annoying

[Maximum Matt]

Its only redemption is tagging the map15 secret - 

 

[magicsofa]

10 hours ago, roadworx said:

the reason that pain elementals are harmless when you're right up against them is because the part of the point of them is to draw the player in. if they were dangerous to you at close range, then the whole making-the-player-move-close-to-them thing would be thrown out the window and you'd have something more akin to the pinky, which is a niche that's already been filled.

 

source?

[Scypek2]

On 12/29/2023 at 12:34 AM, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

-The Lost Souls are the main issue. I don't have any new suggestions to add about how Lost Souls could be improved, but the point stands that I agree they could be improved.

 

I think what I did in Deadliest Dem(o(li)ti)on made them pretty ideal - the Lost Souls now have 1 hp and pause longer before charging, which makes them easier to dodge from up close and much easier to get rid of, but the way charging rapidly changes the direction of their next attack keeps them an uniquely challenging enemy. In addition, the 21 lost soul limit is less pronounced, as swarms of lost souls left unattended tend to kill each other pretty quickly, freeing up space for more lost souls. And because bulkier lost souls can still be fun to deal with in certain scenarios, I added a second lost soul type that doesn't come from Pain Elementals and doesn't count toward the 21 soul limit.

 

The fact that @Spectere found the huge pain elemental swarms in MAP08 might be the best proof that my change worked really well.

[DoomGuy999]

Lost soul spitter, it could affect the monster count depending on settings

[Cutman 999]

On 12/29/2023 at 3:21 AM, roadworx said:

the reason that pain elementals are harmless when you're right up against them is because the part of the point of them is to draw the player in. if they were dangerous to you at close range, then the whole making-the-player-move-close-to-them thing would be thrown out the window and you'd have something more akin to the pinky, which is a niche that's already been filled.

The thing is, no enemy in the game can be cheesed like this, only pe's get this extreme cheese Strat. If you try to do that with literally, every enemy in the game, even those lacking a melee state like the cacodemon, you would just eat damage, or risk taking damage. Pe's completely throw that out the window, or they fuck you over, or they don't do a thing, like i mentioned, none other enemy in the game has that polarizing dynamic.

 

On 12/29/2023 at 3:21 AM, roadworx said:

well, if you'd like to take that chance every single time you do a fight and deal with the resulting loss of ammo and time, then be my guest :)

So you are saying they do their job anyways because they're guaranteed to waste your ammo? emm, what if you just punch them directly in the face, not even a berserk punch, just punching them, i don't get this.

 

On 12/29/2023 at 3:21 AM, roadworx said:

in other words, they are in fact threatening. cuz, y'know, they're spawning more enemies that you'll have to deal with and will likely make a fight more difficult.

More difficult in what sense? In the potential sense, yeah, they can ballon harder than any other demon in the game, because their whole existence is trying to generate that bullshit game state where there are lost souls everywhere. if you mean in a practical fight where he succesfully pulled out a single lost soul, or the 3 after he dies, is debatable because of the lost soul behavior and their low agrression rate. 

 

On 12/29/2023 at 3:21 AM, roadworx said:

barons are just big imps that throw projectiles, nothing more. honestly, saying that the baron of all things is better at that than the pe is just bizarre.

The reason is simply because they don't enable bullshit game states and technically, they can work similarly to Pe's in the bullet sponge department, but more threatening because of their damage output. Leaving them as just "big imps with large hp" is a very superficial statement, like saying you can use zombie man and shotgunners the same way just because they are similar hitscanners.

 

On 12/29/2023 at 3:21 AM, roadworx said:

secondly, any enemy can be harmless. even the arch-vile can be made non-threatening; it all depends on how the enemy is used. and you really don't need very many pain elementals to make them a priority target. as you said earlier: "When you put it next to more enemies, yeah is optimal for you to prioritize them".

False equivalence. Pe's like I said, are the only enemies in the game that get this big cheese in which they're completely harmless. You try to cheese an archvile and take advantage of its lack of melee state, your ass is likely toast. You try to cheese the revenant and its janky dead zone, you get punched or fucked by the guaranteed attack they do after a pain state. Like I said, they are a priority target because of that extreme game state where they just flood everything with enemies, nothing more.

[Xaser]

2 hours ago, Cutman 999 said:

Pe's like I said, are the only enemies in the game that get this big cheese in which they're completely harmless.

 

PEs can be cheesed by running up to their face. Archviles can be cheesed by camping behind a pillar. Cyberdemons can be cheesed by circle-strafing. Groups of pinkies can be cheesed by moving backwards slowly.

 

...that is, if the map allows the player to pull it off.

 

The thing about good fights is that they don't typically throw a single monster type at the player in an area that allows you to step on their Achilles heel with impunity. Pinkies are employed in spaces where movement is restricted, Cybs are used in areas where you don't have enough free room to just spin around 'em endlessly, Archies get paired with heaps of corpses or employed in spots where cover is few and far between, and PEs are used in fights where rushing them puts you at risk of getting surrounded by all the other monsters you're not paying attention to. :P

 

These are just vague off-the-cuff examples, but the way in which the monster is used in a map is a vital part of what makes 'em tick. Trying to judge the monster by the fact that a weakness exists, in isolation, doesn't really make any sense.

[VoanHead]

My two cents: it was a fucking terrible idea to remove the lost soul limit for complevel boom default settings. 

[banjiepixel]

1 hour ago, VoanHead said:

My two cents: it was a fucking terrible idea to remove the lost soul limit for complevel boom default settings. 

 

This. Also,vanilla PE should have had projectile attack to use when lost soul limit is met. Single mancubus projectile would had worked or it could had been basically just lost soul turned into simple projectile.

[Shepardus]

32 minutes ago, banjiepixel said:

Also,vanilla PE should have had projectile attack to use when lost soul limit is met.

So you can get blasted in the face because you didn't keep track of how many lost souls the map maker placed around the map? Yeah, no thanks. The lost soul limit has always been dumb; even if it makes sense to limit the amount of lost souls spawned from pain elementals (which I don't think it does, pain elementals are best when they're allowed to go wild), the way it's implemented in vanilla Doom is about the worst way you could do it.

[fruity lerlups]

imo the only problem is lost souls have too much health for no lost soul limit, give em 1-10 health maybe? thats about it i guess.. idunno i like pain elementals and just see lost souls as a projectile anyway.

[Fonze]

If it was a mistake to remove the 21 lost souls limit then it was also a mistake to expand the other limits of vanilla. Room and map sizes are bigger, we need more lost souls to fill em!

Edited December 31, 2023 by Fonze

[Grain of Salt]

Has arms but you can't hug it

[ApprihensivSoul]

I like fights with limited mobile space over damaging floors (or death drops.)

Dropping Pain Elemental pincers at each end of the room makes these fights go from careful affairs to nightmare scenarios in a heartbeat. 

I confess that I rather dislike encountering Pain Elementals in the wild, but this is as often from them being very well used to control space as from them being used badly, which Doom 2 does quite often. Rule of thumb is if their purpose is to put the player on a clock or to make dodging difficult, they can be super fun in an angry way. The Chaingun gains alot of usefulness with the introduction of the PE due to the potential for stunlock, as well.

(EDIT: Also they're terrible delinquents I hear.)

Edited January 1 by ApprihensivSoul

[Dravencour]

I call these things "Pain in the Ass Elementals" for very good reason. With Cacos, you just have to deal with the one tomato. With these things, you have to deal with not only the Pain Elemental, but every one of the little flying skull bastards that it spits out. On limit removing mods especially, this can be a nightmare, as they can quickly fill up an entire room with the things, making you have to bust out something big like a BFG just to get rid of them all.