The Marauders sap all joy from the combat in this game

I basically loved Doom Eternal from the start. There are issues here and there, but the combat and the movement felt so good, I didn't mind them. Then the Marauders started showing up in regular combat encounters, and all that changed. It blows my mind how they could have included this enemy in the game as more than a single boss encounter (even that one was terrible, but at least it was only once). He totally ruins the flow of every combat encounter he's in, because you have to constantly stare at him while staying at him and stay at a certain range from him, so you can't jump around and do all the fun "Doom" stuff. Or you do, and you just try and kill everyone else and leave The Marauder till last, but then he's just gonna spawn a bunch of shitty dogs (that you can't glory kill or put on fire, thus removing them from the resource loop!), and he's still miserable to fight.

And there's basically just the one way to kill him: stare at him at the correct range, then blast him with the Super Shotgun when his eyes flash. There's no variation. With the rest of the enemies you can improvise and have fun, like "I jumped over the Mancubus and shot him with the Super Shotgun, then turned around and fired missiles at the two Arachnotrons, dashed to the group of fodder dudes and set them on fire and then blasted them with the grenade..." etc. There's endless variation, which is what makes the combat so good and satisfying. Not with this dude: stay at mid-range, wait for the flash, Super Shotgun. Every time. Over and over. Unless his shitty, non-resource generating dogs kill you first, in which case: start the fight over. I'd rather fight 10 cyberdemons at once than fight a single Marauder: at least that's an interesting challenge.

I'm nearing the end of the game, but I'm just done at this point. I'm not going to finish it. If the game is just going to throw more and more of these miserable guys at me, then I'd rather just play something else. I guess I could bump down the difficulty, but I can't imagine this guy is any less tedious at the easier levels. Also: I'm loving the rest of the combat at the difficulty I'm on, and bumping it down would make those parts less enjoyable.

I can't remember the last time a single enemy like this totally sapped all the enjoyment I had in an otherwise incredibly well-designed game. What the hell were they thinking?

I don't feel like he's that bad, honestly, you just have to play defense in a game centered around offense.

I use the ballista. Every parry gives you the chance to shoot him twice, and I bring out the machine gun to take down any dog. Repeat the cycle 3 or 4 times and you're done.

When other enemies show up, it's a frantic run to either leave them behind or take them all down so you can focus on the maurader. There aren't too many scenarios where you're completely overwhelmed like that, but if you're in one use the BFG to clear some space. He sticks closer to you than other enemies, so it's easy to put some distance between you two and the rest of the pack. So these fights have me using the environment a lot, which leads to variation in these scenarios.

The super shotgun is a go-to for most folks, but once I moved to the ballista double-hit method the marauder fights became a cakewalk. In fact, he introduces chaos into combat at a point in the game where you might be getting comfortable (like when you first meet the Flood in Halo, at a much smaller scale). I get why people don't like him, but I feel like the marauder accomplishes what they designed him to do.

Yep, he sucks.

The seemingly agreed upon method is to use a combination of the ssg and balista to take him down quickly in 4-5 parries, which still blows and saps all the fun out of the fight. He negates most of your arsenal. The only other strategy I see mentioned is using the remote detonated rockets to aim behind him since he can't shield those.

I found the best way to deal with him was to ignore him and get chased around while killing everything else big off, then dealing with him, which felt like a dull slog.

@csl316: That's more or less what I do, and it works, but that's not the problem. I can beat him just fine if I work on it. The problem is that all those encounters are tedious and frustrating, and they're not fun. Like, at all. I don't have a problem with including a difficult enemy in the game (god knows Doom has a lot of them), my problem is that after every fight with him – win or lose – I go "fuck this!" and more often than not turn the game off. It's not a difficulty thing at all, really: most of the Slayer Gates that don't feature the Marauder are much, much harder than the Marauder encounters, but they're all incredibly rewarding and fun to play.

As I said, I think I'm done: even in these locked-down times, I have more respect for my time than to suffer through this shitty encounter again and again just to get to the end. If ID patches the game to remove the Marauder from these encounters I might come back, but short of that... I don't really think so.

They get super fun to deal with on the last level when you have every enemy in the damn game all at once.

He's terrible, but he only shows up maybe 3 or 4 times after his introduction, and usually towards the end of the fight. I just ended up turning down the difficulty to kill him specifically, and then brought it back up.

@gkhan: That Slayer Gate with the Archvile was tough as hell, but super super fun. So I can see what you mean.

He doesn't bother me because of how few times he pops up, but it isn't really an excuse. He's just a bad enemy design. It's a shame because he is a really great concept.

In general I hated the Marauder and every single appearance. It isn't that he is particularly hard. It is just that he breaks up the flow

BUT, the slayer gate Marauder was actually really fun. I don't understand enough about game design to be able to pinpoint why but I think it was a mixture of the arena being well designed, lots of loot pinatas to keep ammo high, and who knows what else?

I suspect part of my hatred of the Marauder is that the super shotgun is the best weapon against him (although sticky ballista may be faster) and I tend to use the super shotty a lot. Great way to keep armor up during fights and generally my metric for when I need to chainsaw some ammo out of people. So I probably go into most marauder fights with low shotgun ammo and always have to do the laps around the arena waiting for an enemy to spawn so I can chainsaw or glory kill them.

@gundato: I had a lot more luck using the Ballista against him, standard shots. With the Super Shotgun I always seemed to land partial hits so it would take forever. With the Ballista I was guaranteed maximum damage when I landed a hit.

I agree they suck a whole lot. I finished the game and for me they never became fun to encounter. The way i dealt with them was constantly moving backwards to trigger his weakness state, shoot him twice with the Super Shotgun and repeat. When my health was around 50% i would seek a weak enemy to heal, and then go back to constantly backing up to trigger his attack again.

Yeah I can't understand the idea behind his design at all. I'm close to have finished the game and had not that many issues with the Marauder fights, including the optional ones, it's no that it's too hard, it's just boring. Every time I see one pop-up I'm just disappointed by the game.

Gosh I still love this game in parts, but sometimes it feels like one of the biggest disappointment I had in a while. So many design decisions I think are opposite of what the game does best.

Love em. Think they add a nice change of pace to the typical "shoot it til it's dead" method and the idea of a parry mechanic in doom is incredibly enticing for future releases. I will say the fight in the final levels with the Marauder was bullshit because he definitely seemed to shrug off a few direct super shotgun blasts to the face. And making him immune to super weapons is a weird choice. Like I can straight up murder a cyber demon with a sword but can't stab some punk half the size? Still if the fights are 1-1 they're exhilarating. If they're part of a larger group they become infuriating.

I found the marauders annoying but I way I found to deal with them was to just constantly dump grenades (both regular and the shotgun mod) at his feet behind him cause they cause him to stagger so he drops his shield. Then I just stick grenades and shoot him with the regular shotgun while he is staggered and just do that repeatedly till he dies. It made it much quicker and easier than waiting for the parry. It feels cheap and against what they wanted but by that point I just wanted to finish the game.

If he showed up more than a handful of times and in groups, then I might have actually quit the game. As it is, he only shows up a few times and I don't recall ever seeing more than one at a time. Don't avoid this fantastic game just because a handful of short fights in its 15-20 hr runtime are tedious.

If you're having trouble, BFG everything in the room, clean up any survivors, and then focus on the Marauder. You have to do that maybe five times throughout the whole campaign, I don't have an exact count but it's such a tiny portion of the campaign.

Chalk me up to the people that never really had a problem with him. He's definitely selfish, I'll give you that. He makes the game about himself when he's on the field, but at the same time as long as you don't stop moving you can deal with the other demons before him, he can't really catch you. You can also just remote detonate rockets behind him, his shield can't block it. Same with a frag grenade.

He's also there to test your combo game. You can kill him off one parry, and it's incredibly satisfying. The combo is: Arbalest, SSG, frag, ballista, frag, SSG, ballista. Obviously this takes some practice, but once you got it down he's a chump. If not, you can kill him in 2 parries with one frag, or 3 parries with just the standard SSG, ballista, SSG combo.

As someone with dyspraxia (a condition where it's sometimes difficult to concentrate on multiple tasks, among other things), I was initially worried about Marauders showing up often While the initial encounter was definitely a pain, I actually found them easier to deal with later in the game. You get a lot more space to move around, so it's easier to both escape them and take care of other enemies.

In my opinion, the worst encounter is the first; just an unfortunate side-effect of having it in a confined space to teach you how the enemy works.

Yeah that was super frustrating for me! I'm dealing with the rest of them as they appear but I'm definitely glad I can keep it on Hurt Me Plenty without guilt for now - can't imagine making them actually any harder.

If you really need to take him out, buy the quick weapon switch perk. Hit the Marauder with the Super Shotgun or Ballista to stun it and then switch to the BFG and hit him with that. If you have the perk you should be able to switch and fire before he recovers and the BFG will just end him. This works at the very least on Ultra-Violence.

Yeah, he kind of ruined it to me. On Nightmare in the sections that have many, many demons and no checkpoints, it's just too much and not enough fun. I love the dance gameplay of Doom 2016, and for the most part, I liked it in Eternal (although I can see why some don't), but I don't like the dance with the Marauder. Also, somewhat off-topic, but does anyone else find it completely weird that your basic melee attack in the game is near useless aside from pushing enemies away for a brief second? I mean, how many punches on the weakest enemies does it take to set them up for a glory kill? I get why they did it, I just think it's an inconsistent choice.

Do I find him annoying, yes. Does he ruin the game for me (so far), no

I just encountered him for the first time last night, twice in the challenge room. His first encounter is definitely a brutal one, small space, little pick ups and he comes with a wolf too that could distract you enough to kill you. I didn't lower my difficulty to beat him, playing on ultraviolence, granted I died about 6 times in this encounter.

His second encounter in the challenge room was much more manageable. I ran away from him and killed everything else until there was imps and him left in the room. When it came down to it felt like a strange game of chicken, who would get close enough to shot gun range first. Took me no extra lives to kill him this time.

Both times it felt so satisfying to finish him off, and used the super shotgun/ charged plasma rifle to hit him. I will try out the Ballista since I haven't given that gun much use.

As long as the map isn't as small as the first time when I encounter him I won't have much issue with him. If lore states that the marauders were once a slayer like the Doom Slayer himself, then I won't have the fight go any way.

I normally don't post, but for catharsis sake, i'm going to agree with the point here. Story and other trappings aside, the game was excellent until the Marauder showed up. Part of this I blame on myself for playing on Ultra Violent. I found that fighting this guy sucked all the fun out of an encounter. Normally, losing in an encounter multiple times was a fun frustration, but this guy i just never wanted to engage with in the first place because fighting him wasn't fun, and i almost quit the game because of it. I do wonder if it would have been a more fun encounter on a lower difficulty, but then i feel like the rest of the encounters wouldn't reach the same highs.

Didn't have a problem with the marauder. Just a different challenge. Only shows up like 6 times after the initial boss battle. The activation range for his parry-able attack is a bit finicky, but otherwise you can deal with everything else. Dog doesn't spawn unless you shoot his shield, and it can be killed in one SSG blast.

For all the people saying, "It's not a difficulty thing, it's tedious," that sure sounds like a difficulty thing. He is easily dispatched in 20 seconds or less if you use the SSG and ballista, and I don't even know what the "optimal" combo is or how to do it. Given you fight him about 6 times, maybe a bit more, that's like maybe a a couple minutes of fighting the marauder in a 15 hour game. How is that tedium? How is that overused?

Second argument of "I have to kill everything before him." Well, yes, that's the ideal way to kill him. It's generally inadvisable to fight him while being attacked on multiple fronts. Why is that bad?

Sounds like people want to play Eternal like 2016, where the last half of the game became a mindless repetition of the same circling the arena and using the same weapons and tactics on every enemy. Eternal mixes things up, and not even that often, and for me, it's enough to keep it fresh.

If you ask me, the Archvile is the most poorly designed enemy in the game and the least fun to fight. Fortunately (and unfortunately) he can be killed with the sword, so it almost feels like the Archvile is barely anything more than buff totem with annoying AOE attacks. The Archvile deserved better.

He's a good enemy that's used in weird ways sometimes. His very first fight is intentionally frustrating and meant to show you the ropes, but after that he usually only appears in larger arenas with lots of room to maneuver and stay safe in. The only other time I didn't like him was at the very start of Taras Nabad (or whatever, the lore in this game is so terrible), and that's because you're on a flat plane and it's kind of a weird boring arena setup.

The only thing I'd change is removing his spirit dog. It wasn't until reading this thread that I learned that the dog is something player-triggered, not based on distance. For the introductory fight, I thought it was just another random enemy type. With how much of everything is going on in that game, the spirit dog seems like a weird cherry on top that doesn't strategically add anything to the Marauder as an enemy.

This enemy is infuriating. I just got to him at the end of Arc Complex, and just cannot get passed him. I've tried for two days now on the easiest difficulty,.. urgh.

I'll try some of the suggestions in this thread next time.

I just got to this guy and can confirm he sucks and was not fun to fight. I was using the super shotgun and it took way too long so it’s probably not the ideal weapon although it wrecks everything else at short range. I’m sure for folks out there that play the game on the hardest difficulty this enemy isn’t a huge deal but to the generic player like myself not so much. I generally continue to dislike the hard counters in this game opting to defy them whenever I can and the Maurader is the ultimate manifestation of that.

From what I’m reading his later encounters aren’t as frustrating because the arenas allow for better movement, which makes me wonder why the first encounter was designed to be such a pain. Eternal overall is based on this principle of teaching you through very aggressive “fuck you” scenarios instead of normal ramp-ups. I’m really curious now how the third game will shape up. It is very obvious that Eternal caters to the hardcore player, the guys that were playing Doom 2016 way past the release date. Not folks like me that played through the campaign once, had a great time and moved on. I know Hugo reads comments and is in tune with what people say about Doom so I’m wondering if they will be bolstered by these elite players that absolutely love the game or will they reign it back a bit? If Doom 2016 was a rally car and Doom Eternal is formula 1 ..what’s faster?

@warpr Using the Ballista instead of the Super Shotgun will make your life much easier. The game kind of dupes you into thinking you should use the Super Shotgun and I just didn't find it to be all that effective. It got the job done, but usually at the expense of a ton of health on my part.

Still, they are my least favorite part of the game. I don't dislike them as much as some others, but I do feel like they were kind of a failed experiment in the larger scheme of things.

When he shows up switch to the super shotgun, then switch to the balista. Hit him with one when his eyes glow, then hit the quick swap button to go to the other and shoot, than swap back to the first again and shoot. He goes down in like three rounds this way on ultra violence. Didn't really have much trouble after the first couple appearences.

It is humorous that after introducing this enemy the next level has that big boss fight featuring the exact same mechanic and that boss is such a pushover compared to just the regular enemy. The jump rope energy beam phase is also another one of those "what..?" type of mechanics in this game.

@humanity: Yeah, though you don't have to jump over it from what I remember. You just have to walk left and right as it's like a sound wave, so you can easily sidestep them without jumping. I don't remember if there was a straight beam that you had to jump over though. I like that kind of thing in it, although yeah, the boss was easy. It's similar to how the bosses worked in 2016.

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I reinstalled the game to see if the HDR options work well for me, and yes they do. The game looks great with the first setting; I recommend checking it out if you have an HDR display and want a more accurate HDR image. The default options looked good, but they're not as accurate I suppose. Also, in doing so, just playing the game (albeit with the infinite ammo cheat, which is fun), makes me think about the aspects I do like about the game. Although I ended up pretty disappointed in the game by the end, it is still a lot better than a lot of the shooters as of recent.

@humanity: I bet if they just made the window for countering it bigger (maybe based on difficulty), people would dislike it less.

I gotta say - I'm on like the last level of the game and have to retract my statement. The Marauder still isn't the most fun enemy to fight, at this point primarily because it means I have to clear 90% of the arena before I can engage him in that boring tango, but he has become a minor nuisance. The real worst enemy of the game is probably the Archville. He teleports, has a shield, has a big health pool AND buffs enemies? Thank the lord for the crucible because I always have one blip of ammo especially reserved for this enemy. I just cannot be bothered.

Yeah really not diggin it. Was really hyped for this game and have been having a blast on Ultra Nightmare mode but the Marauder just sucks all the air out. The game completly looses all it's energy and frantic aggression when he shows up. The only emmotion I feel when he turns out is just disapointment.

Vice Gaming had a really good article on this. I agree with every word: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jgezzk/why-the-doom-eternal-marauder-sucks-so-bad

Finally got past him by using the balista after each green eye flash. Haven't had much trouble in subsequent encounters, I think because there are more fodder enemies around for me to get health back.

Just got to him the other day and it almost made me quit playing.

Then I got to a Slayer Gate where one pops out and I called it for the night.

Even one-on-one they are absolutely not fun to fight against for me. Having to manage them while also dealing with a bunch of other enemies smacking you from behind just makes the game feel like their difficulty balancing was just "Add enemies to this!" instead of making actual interesting arenas and scenarios to fight in.

Also, I can't tell, but is it possible to damage him with a rocket/grande that blows up behind him? It seemed to stun him the few times I got that to work.

@pooch516: that is possible, it's one of the strategies for beating him without having to deal with his shield.

@pooch516: Splash damage from a rocket does very little. So you would be at it for a very long time.

This game has more problems than the Marauders, but they certainly help make it worse. A defensive enemy in a Doom game is idiotic. It seems like thought that guided this game's development was "what if Doom 2016 but not fun".

I've been messing with the Marauder for 2 hours each day for four days. The first encounter was not so bad. I got past him in a reasonable amount of tries...for me. But this second has been a bitch.

However, I do believe I am seeing a light. The BFG, though ppl. do say it works, is perhaps not the best choice to use on him. I've seen him simply take it, or block with his shield, most of the time. However I just did him (The Marauder) and almost finished the arena, only ifI had just remembered my arsenal...

I think the trick is to use all possible on him. Concurrently. I won't get more specific than that, but anything that makes him do that bullshit stagger(so many times) is worthwhile . You can hit him more than once.

Of course, I still have to be successful. But finally, I do have hope. Just remember what to do for the second half when you do put him down.

Edit; Came back the next day, beat the Marauder and the 2nd half they throw at you to get out of the Slayer Gate. They tell you a real narrow approach, and it just not the whole story.

It still is a pain though.

Seems these complaints about Marauders is one of the most misguided. They come off as knee jerk reactions by players whom have not experimented enough with tactics.

One of the common misconceptions is the Marauder sends his wolf randomly, and there's nothing you can do about it, wrong. He only sends it if you, or in some cases AI, shoot his shield.

Another is that you have to wait for his eyes to flash green, wrong. You can pepper the area behind and beside him with grenades, rockets, and sticky bombs, all of which wear him down. You can also fire the BFG over his head, then shoot his exposed back as he turns to defend against it's tendrils.

Another is that you need stay at medium distance, wrong. An easy way to lure him into attacking is going in close, then dashing backward as he does an overhead axe attack.

Perhaps the easiest way to deal with him though, and one I never see anyone else mention, is luring him into a choke point. It doesn't even have to be a narrow one, even a wall semi close to a pillar will suffice. What this does is take away his sideways dash that he dodges and flanks with. When choked he will continue to do forward, green eye flash axe attacks. I've gotten in 6 consecutive shots when he does this.

With some of these methods you can consistently kill him in under 30 seconds, even on Nightmare.

Skip to 25:41 for the Marauder fight.

Late to the party i know but i'm dealing with Marauders now and they suck, and i'm on easy mode.
I put it down to easy fairly early on and i don't regret it, there's enough parts of the game that aren't gelling with me that i would have stopped playing by now if it was any more annoying.
Is it the Archviles that spawn an army of dudes that completely swarm you? They're annoying too, i'm overwhelmed by how many types of enemies there are i'm starting to roll my eyes every time a large demon drops in, ready for the game to end now.

@cikame: I just started DE when it came to Gamepass and I honestly don’t know how you’d play this on anything higher that easy with a controller. More so than even Doom 2016, this game’s combat feel specifically design for the precision and fast rotation of mouse aiming, with controller support more of an after thought. Still, on easy on console, the game can be quite enjoyable.

@navster15: It gets easier. It feels SO overwhelming at first, but once it is all clicking it works VERY well on a controller.

Especially the part where you navigate to the game's icon on the XMB, press the Options button, scroll down to "uninstall application" and press confirm!

I kid, but re-reading this thread was the bad kind of nostalgia. I had such high hopes for this game...

@navster15: I beat it on Nightmare with a controller. It's much more so about being able to navigate the space and capitalize on openings than it is about raw precision. There's so much flexibility in the health/armour/ammo situation that you're never more than a couple demons away from being full up on everything.