Doom Roguelike Equipment Analysis: Melee Weapons
Before we properly start:
Chainsaw base sprite
You never get a clear look at this in-game, because only the Chainsaw uses this sprite, and it's always occluded by the Exotic purple glow. So here it is! (... partly just to make this post's icon appropriate)
Anyway, melee weapons don't have variable fire speeds, clips, or alternate reloads, so I'm not including those in their stat blocks. In the case of their 'fire' speed, it's a base of 1 second for all of them, even though that's a stat they do have, so I'm not listing it on individual weapons.
Most melee weapons do Melee damage, which is arguably the most boring damage type in the game: like Bullet damage, it has no special mechanics built in, and unlike Bullet there isn't much variation in enemy resistances. Regular Arachnotrons take double damage from Melee damage: that's it outside of the possibility of enemies equipping an Armor that modifies Melee resistance. You might expect Nightmare Arachnotrons to be weak to Melee damage, but nope!
Melee attacks themselves are straightforward: you target a tile, if there's something in it you make an Accuracy check, and if you pass that check you do damage to the target, while if you fail it all that happens is that the 'fire' time passes. No projectile physics, no splash damage, just hitting or not hitting your desired target. Melee attacks also never inflict knockback, no matter how absurdly hard you might be hitting.
Do note that you're allowed to 'fire' on empty air. This can sometimes be useful if you want to pass some time but for some reason don't want to use the 'pass turn' command: if you have favorable attack speed modifiers, this can allow you to pass enough time for eg an enemy to advance one step closer without giving other enemies a chance to fire, or ensure that the enemy you let advance only moves one step instead of getting two moves and so immediately attacking you in melee. (Which is a relevant concern with enemies whose Speed modifier is higher than 100%)
On to specific weapons!
(I wish a fist sprite had been made ala classic Doom, but it was not. Not even an unused one)
Fists
Damage: 1d3
Accuracy: +0
Alternate Fire: N/A
What you attack with if you make a melee attack without a melee weapon equipped.
Unlike in classic Doom, in Doom Roguelike punching is very, very narrow in utility. In classic Doom, punching is one of two ways to attack without spending ammo (The other being the Chainsaw), and though the Chainsaw mostly supersedes punching in classic Doom, this comes with the qualifier that finding a Berserk powerup in classic Doom supercharges the punch, and only the punch, making punching a very powerful option on any level containing one.
In Doom Roguelike, there are three big differences that make punching largely dubious: firstly, punching is amazingly sucky by default. In classic Doom, a punch is 2-20 damage, while the Pistol is 5-15 damage. In Doom Roguelike, punching is 1-3 damage, while a basic unmodified Pistol is 2-8 damage: so in classic Doom, a punch was on average about as strong as a Pistol shot (They both average around 10 damage), whereas in Doom Roguelike a punch averages 2 damage and a Pistol shot averages 4.5 damage: the Pistol averages over twice the punch's damage! Furthermore, Doom Roguelike has Accuracy: a punch starts from a 50% chance to hit, whereas a pistol firing on a target at the edge of vision has a 74~% chance to hit. As such, a damage per second comparison works out to 1 DPS for punching vs about 3.33 DPS for firing a Pistol -when assuming the Pistol was fired at max range, ignoring the issue that punching requires being point-blank and attacking from that close causes the Pistol's chance to hit rises to 91~% and so its DPS rises to over 4 a second! This is also ignoring that the Protection stat exists (As far as I'm aware, classic Doom lacks a damage reduction mechanic) and so punching is often knocked down to 1-2 damage while the Pistol is knocked down to 1-7 damage. (Or 1 damage flat vs 1-6 damage if a target has 2 Protection!)
Second, while Berserk still exists, in Doom Roguelike the status boosts all melee damage: you don't switch to punching for a bit after finding a Berserk Pack, you just keep shredding things with your Chainsaw. There's no mechanic in Doom Roguelike for specifically encouraging punching.
Third, as the existence of this post suggests, melee as a category is notably more diverse. It's not super-diverse, but you have more options than 'punching' and 'Chainsaw', so 'I don't have specifically a Chainsaw' isn't necessarily an argument for punching. And even if it was, in a standard run 'I don't have a Chainsaw' is a temporary state you always correct very quickly.
Mod Packs further exacerbate all this since Doomguy cannot, in fact, apply them to his fists: he needs a properly equipped weapon. It would be cool to be able to Assemble up techno-knuckledusters or some such by Modding Doomguy's fists and would honestly make a certain degree of sense, but alas, that's not how the game works.
The primary context you're likely to actually throw a punch is if doing Angel Challenges. Angel of Berserk, Angel of Shotgunnery, and Angel of Marksmanship all restrict your weapon options: in Angel of Berserk, you will spend a bit punching things, because until you find a better melee weapon that's all you're allowed to do. In Angel of Shotgunnery and Angel of Marksmanship, you may find yourself punching as a way to stretch your ammo, and in Angel of Shotgunnery's case it's also worth considering punching when fighting enemies whose melee attack is much less threatening than their ranged attack (eg Arachnotrons, Revenants) since Shotguns will very reliably knock them away where a punch will not.
In standard runs and most Angel Challenges, though, you'll probably never make a melee attack without at least a Combat Knife in hand.
One point of note: you can punch enemies even while equipped with a ranged weapon. By default you can left-click on an enemy adjacent to you, and that's interpreted as 'melee attack this target'. This is especially nice to know if you're doing Angel of Marksmanship or Shotgunnery and are investing in melee to extend your ammo, but is in general useful to be aware of for any run that's mixing melee and ranged Trait investment.
But on the topic of the Combat Knife;
Combat Knife
Damage: 2d5
Accuracy: +1
Alternate Fire: Throw. Performs a ranged attack by throwing the knife at an enemy. This unequips the knife, but it can be picked back up. The knife will never travel more than 11 tiles when thrown. This attack always takes 1 second regardless of fire rate modifiers. Treated like a melee attack for most purposes, including benefiting from eg Brute ranks and being valid to use in Angel of Berserk.
Minimum floor: 2
Regardless, the Combat Knife is a big factor in why punching is unlikely to be done in most runs: Combat Knives have an absurdly high item 'weight', making them extremely reliable about showing up in the early game. You'll very often find 2-3 on the second floor, and it's extremely rare to not find any on that floor, and melee just plain needs Brute ranks to be viable, so even for a run intending to commit to melee you'll probably shoot things in the very early game and have found a Combat Knife long before you're willing to make a melee attack at all, even if it takes until floor 4 for one to spawn.
The Combat Knife itself is still pretty weak. It hits harder than a Pistol, but only a little bit, and +1 Accuracy means it's horribly unreliable if you don't have Brute ranks. You should absolutely use it over just punching if you are going melee, but the Brute ranks are much more important -punching with Brute 3 has capped Accuracy and does 10-12 damage. Stabbing with no ranks in Brute is 2-10 damage and will miss more than a third of the time, which is just obviously massively inferior performance. So don't think just picking up a Combat Knife suddenly makes you a viable melee fighter on its own.
Note that in an Angel of 100 or Archangel of 666 run, a Combat Knife may end up being the best you get in melee. Confidence and Overconfidence runs might not even have that much until the Unholy Cathedral! And for a Malicious Blades Technician, you're going to want at least one Combat Knife just to put in your Prepared slot to trigger the resistances. But most runs will inevitably move on to...
Longinus Spear
Azrael's Scythe, like the Longinus Spear, can only be acquired by clearing the Unholy Cathedral. More specifically, if you have a 100% kill rate when you clear the Unholy Cathedral and are playing on Hurt Me Plenty, Ultraviolence, or Nightmare! then Azrael's Scythe will spawn instead of the Longinus Spear... unless you're on Nightmare! and fulfilled a different set of conditions, but I'll cover that in a minute.
Chainsaw
Damage: 4d6
Accuracy: +0
Alternate Fire: N/A
Minimum floor: 12
Special: The first time a Chainsaw is picked up in a given run, the Chainsaw is automatically equipped in the Weapon slot and Doomguy Berserks as per picking up a Berserk Pack. (Including that it heals him to 100%)
The melee weapon you'll be using for the majority if time in the majority of runs, as it's guaranteed to be found in the Chained Court and there's not really any reason to skip the Chained Court. If the Arena Master is too much for you, just don't complete Hell's Arena. I should also emphasize that the first-time Berserk is inherent to the item: if you find a Chainsaw outside of the Chained Court, the Berserk will trigger so long as that run hasn't triggered the Berserk-from-Chainsaw once already.
The Chainsaw itself is a big power spike (Brute 3 Combat Knife: 11-21 damage. Brute 3 Chainsaw: 13-33 damage), though keep in mind that by default you'll miss half the time, making it unreliable if you're not investing in Accuracy. It's strong enough while Berserking to be better DPS even without investment compared to eg a Shotgun so long as you get into melee first, but ideally you have at least Brute 2 so it's hitting more than 90% of the time. For standard melee-focused runs, finding the Chainsaw is the point at which things start working properly: you can stop shooting things as your default. For Angel of Berserk, it's the point at which you're probably set so long as your melee play is basically competent.
Note that the Chainsaw's label of Exotic and reliable presence in the Chained Court is misleading as to its 'normal' commonality. In 0.9.9.7, it had an item 'weight' of 3, which is a value mostly used for Uniques. 0.9.9.8 boosted this value... to 6. So it's still absurdly rare: you'll usually go multiple full runs in a row without seeing one outside the Chained Court, and an Angel of 100 run can't count on finding it. (An Archangel of 666 run goes on so long you're basically guaranteed to find one or more Chainsaws... but finding it on floor 500 isn't very helpful. If you got that far without it, do you really need it for the remaining floors?) It's pretty clear the primary reason it isn't classed as a Unique is because Uniques are barred from being modded by default.
The Chainsaw itself is one of the few cases where I feel like Doom Roguelike dropped the ball on converting the Doom experience into a roguelike system. In classic Doom, the Chainsaw's stand-out feature is that it hits almost 9 times per second and so in conjunction with the game's 'pain chance' mechanic (Enemies in classic Doom have a chance, defined by enemy type, to flinch in pain on being hit, interrupting whatever they might be doing) it can reliably stunlock some enemy types to get a safe and clean kill. In Doom Roguelike, no equivalent to 'pain chance' exists, and even though Doom Roguelike has both variable fire speeds and the ability to make a single attack be composed of multiple separate hits, the Chainsaw is instead one big hit per second.
It's functional as the 'default ultimate' melee weapon, but it's not very... Doom-like.
Butcher's Cleaver
Damage: 5d6
Accuracy: +0
Alternate Fire: N/A
Special: Halves knockback taken by the player while wielded. Additionally, kills made with the Butcher's Cleaver set the player's Energy to 5001, immediately giving them another turn. (This is the same mechanic as Blademaster on the Scout)
Minimum floor: 1
Note that this is redundant with the Scout's melee specialization, which can be frustrating if your Blademaster Scout actually finds the Butcher's Cleaver. (I've yet to have this experience myself, but I'm sure there are players who are flashbacking to exactly such an experience)
Outside that potentially-annoying qualifier, the Butcher's Cleaver is in the range I wish was more normal for Uniques: it can spawn really early, so you might actually pivot to it in real play (I did in fact have an Angel of 100 Marine find it on the first floor and go 'welp, I guess this is a Vampyre run now', having intended to go for a different Mastery), its raw stats are great enough that competition with lesser gear isn't severe (Making a Chainsaw into a Ripper gives somewhat better damage and attacks twice as fast, but imposes a severe Accuracy penalty that basically mandates Brute 5), and it gets a unique advantage that makes direct stat comparisons dicey (A Brute 5-backed Ripper is clearly better than the Butcher's Cleaver... unless you're getting kill-strikes, in which case the Butcher's Cleaver is functionally infinitely faster), meaning that it's just plain a great find that can be run-defining in a way Uniques rarely accomplish.
This isn't even counting it reducing knockback, which is great on its own and actually means even a Blademaster Scout might want to wield it, since the Scout's Masteries all block Badass and knockback is a notable problem for leveraging melee combat.
0.9.9.8 has made it slightly better, as Technicians can now limitedly mod it. This opens up the possibility of Assembling it into a Piercing Blade and then putting a Power Mod or Bulk Mod on it to up its damage further. It's not a big boon, but it's nice if your Technician lucks into it, and it does count as a 'blade' for Malicious Blades, reducing the damage output gap between Malicious Blades and a Berserker using a Chainsaw.
Assuming Piercing Blade and a Bulk Mod Pack is applied to it and the Technician has a Chainsword with a Bulk and Power Mod applied to it, then you'll hit for 6d7 (Ignoring Protection) plus 8d3, so 14-66 damage. Stack on Brute 5 and this is 44-96 damage. A Brute 5 Berserker using the Ripper does 42-102 damage: the Berserker is still winning the DPS race anytime kill-strikes are not occurring, but kill-strikes giving Doomguy a free turn makes the comparison genuinely unclear which is better outside of fighting lone tough enemies.
(One point I've yet to be able to test: it's possible the turn-reset only triggers if the Butcher's Cleaver hit is the killing blow. That would notably drag down the effectiveness of all this)
Base sprite
Oh, and the Butcher's Cleaver is another case of having a unique sprite you can't get a good look at in-game due to the Unique glow: it obscures how bloody the Cleaver is meant to be!
(I've had this generate once, ever, and before I committed to building these posts. So no graphic for now)
Mjollnir
Damage: 1d25
Accuracy: +0
Alternate Fire: Throw. Performs a ranged attack by throwing Mjollnir. Unlike a Combat Knife, Mjollnir remains equipped when thrown. Mjollnir will never travel more than 11 tiles when thrown. This attack always takes 1 second regardless of fire rate modifiers. Treated like a melee attack for most purposes, including benefiting from eg Brute ranks and being valid to use in Angel of Berserk.
Minimum floor: 5
Scavenger always gives an Onyx Mod Pack.
I'm not sure why Doom Roguelike spells Mjollnir with 2 'L's in it. Normally I see it spelled as 'Mjolnir', or as that but with an umlaut over the 'o'.
In any event... in 0.9.9.7, Mjollnir was frustratingly awful and the main reason you might have used it was that in an Angel of 100, Confidence, Overconfidence, or Archangel of 666 run you can't count on a Chainsaw to displace it. Back then it was only 1d15 damage, and its minimum floor was 15, meaning standard runs didn't have very many floors for it to try to generate in at all, and it was always going to be displaced by the Chainsaw anyway. Its only other merit was that in an Angel of Berserk run you might cart it around so as to give you a ranged attack, so you could do stuff like provoke Pinkie Demons that haven't noticed you into charging you through a river of Acid or Lava, detonate barrels from a safe distance, etc.
In 0.9.9.8, by default Mjollnir is still dubious, with frustratingly unreliable damage, no ability to mod it, and in a standard run it will almost always spawn after you've already gotten the Chainsaw in the Chained Court, with the ranged attack being still its primary merit, which is still only particularly significant in Angel of Berserk: outside that, you'd rather use a gun.
I say 'by default' because now Technicians can limitedly mod Mjollnir. This opens up the option of giving it the Piercing Blade Assembly (Making it ignore Protection and raising its max damage by 1), and more importantly it opens up the option of putting a Bulk Mod Pack on it. (You can do this after making it into a Piercing Blade, I should emphasize) As Bulk always increases dice count on melee weapons, this will straight-up double Mjollnir's damage from 1d25 to 2d25 (Or from 1d26 to 2d26 if you make it into a Piercing Blade first), and it being made of 2 dice means its damage will be much more stable. It will still be basically displaced by the Longinus Spear or Azrael's Scythe in a standard run, but in an Angel of 100 or Archangel of 666 run it may well be the best melee weapon your run is liable to find!
It's still kind of underwhelming overall and will ideally be buffed further in some capacity, but in 0.9.9.7 it was so bad it had that 'feels bad' issue of 'I got a Unique!... a Unique so bad as to be essentially meritless, where I'd have rather this item generation was spent on another Unique, or even on an Exotic.' In 0.9.9.8, it's at least not reliably a massive disappointment.
(I've had this generate twice, ever, and both times before I committed to building these posts. So no graphic for now. Pretty sure it was Combat Knife With Unique Glow, though)
Subtle Knife
Damage: 3d5
Accuracy: +0
Alternate Fire: Invoke. Can only be used when not Tired. Does 5 damage (Ignoring Protection) to Doomguy and makes him Tired, but does 15 Plasma damage to all enemies the player can see. Takes 1 second to perform.
Special: Does BFG Plasma damage. (This does not allow it to destroy walls)
Minimum floor: 15
Anyway, Invoke was notably buffed by 0.9.9.8, incidentally: previously, it only did 10 damage, and using it cost 2 max HP, making it very difficult to justify using it given the permanent cost involved.
The Subtle Knife is by default a painfully mediocre Unique that is difficult to justify using. Its BFG Plasma damage typing isn't very relevant to combat: just having Brute 3 and Berserker is enough to be doing 20-24 damage a hit. The Angel of Death is the only enemy in the game to innately have more than 5 Protection: BFG Plasma damage ignoring up to 4 points of Protection on most enemies barely affects your damage output, and in fact a Chainsaw's 4d6 means it'll often roll high enough to do more damage than the Subtle Knife even against what few enemies have 5 Protection.
So by default the main draw is Invoke, which is... underwhelming. It was straight-up garbage in 0.9.9.7, but even in 0.9.9.8 you're damaging yourself to do fairly light damage to what enemies you can see: 15 Plasma can kill some of the enemies at the very low end (eg Imps, Lost Souls), but any real threat will survive that. Most enemies will in fact survive it twice. Hellknights will survive it thrice! Barons of Hell will survive it four times!
So there's not much draw to the Subtle Knife by default.
That said, I said 'by default' for several reasons.
First of all, in Angel of Confidence, Overconfidence, 100, and Archangel of 666, the 'a Chainsaw is stronger' issue doesn't (consistently) haunt it. You may be very glad to find it just because it's better than a Combat Knife -even a Chainsword Assembly isn't as good as the Subtle Knife. (2d8 vs 3d5, so 2-16 vs 3-15... but the Subtle Knife does Plasma damage, and so will pretty consistently do better against targets with Protection. which is plenty of enemies)
Second, Angel of Berserk can appreciate it as a ranged attack option, which by default is not really available to an Angel of Berserk run, same as Mjollnir. (But minus detonating Barrels with it...)
Third, its BFG Plasma typing does make it noticeably more prone to gibbing enemies than even several stronger weapons, which can be appreciated when Archviles are running about, or when playing on Nightmare! and/or Angel of Darkness. Just keep in mind that if you're playing a Malicious Blades Technician with a noticeable focus on ranged combat that gibbing prevents ammo drops; you might want to swap out the Subtle Knife when fighting zombies so you can restock on ammo.
Fourth, Technicians appreciate it more than most because it does in fact count as a 'blade' for Malicious Blades. Since it's overall better than even a Chainsword, it's a nice improvement in this regard: the Butcher's Cleaver is even better, but if your run is lucky enough to get both, you equip both!
Fifth, as of 0.9.9.8 Technicians appreciate it even more because they can limitedly mod it. Once again, it can be given the Piercing Blade Assembly and then a Bulk Mod Pack slapped onto it: this bumps it from 3d5 to 4d6 (3-15 becomes 4-24), and upgrades its Plasma damage to Piercing, making it completely ignore Protection.
It's still strangely lackluster given it's a reference to a knife from the 'His Dark Materials' series, and in the source material this knife is never blocked in a cutting attempt and can cut open portals to other dimensions: why is this version so weak, and why is its activated effect a weak ranged attack on visible enemies?
Still, the buff helps.
Longinus Spear
Damage: 8d8
Accuracy: +0
Alternate Fire: Holy Fire. Tires Doomguy, and cannot be used while Tired. Detonates a radius 2 explosion on Doomguy, with a base of 10d10 Fire damage. Doomguy takes no damage from this explosion. Takes 1 second.
Special: Does Plasma damage. (This does not allow it to destroy walls) Halves knockback while wielded. Additionally, if equipped alongside the Angelic Armor, the Angelic Armor gains +4 Protection.
Minimum floor: N/A
I'm not sure why the glow for the in-game sprite trails up at the tip like that. Also, this has a unique base sprite:
Longinus base sprite
In-game it's easy to think it just uses the 'staff' sprite you'll be seeing in just a minute, since you never see either sprite without a 'special item' glow around them, but the Longinus Spear's sprite is both different and used by nothing else.
The Longinus Spear is an odd weapon that's simply not allowed to generate normally. (You'll never see it in Angel of 100 or Archangel of 666, for one) You can only get it by clearing the Unholy Cathedral: if you're playing on Hey, Not Too Rough, then the Longinus Spear generates. If you're on Hurt Me Plenty, Ultraviolence, or Nightmare! and meet other conditions, the Longinus Spear won't generate: I'll cover what can generate instead in a minute. (The wiki for some reason claims that Hurt Me Plenty is insufficient to get the alternative) If you're wondering why I'm not mentioning what happens on I'm Too Young To Die, that's because the Unholy Cathedral simply refuses to spawn in that case.
This whole thing is a bit clunky in design, as the Longinus Spear has a set bonus with the Angelic Armor, which you can reliably get from Limbo/The Mortuary, but one of the weapons that can displace the Longinus Spear doesn't have a set bonus with the Angelic Armor nor will it replace the Angelic Armor with something that does fit to it, making this superior weapon come with a secret drawback. It's not a big deal in practical terms, as the Angelic Armor is actually pretty underwhelming, but it's odd and feels wonky.
Regardless, the Longinus Spear is your reward for beating the Angel of Death: a weapon clearly better than a Chainsaw (Though not so clear when compared to a Ripper), in a fairly straightforward way. You can't mod it (Not even a Technician in 0.9.9.8 can mod it), but still, 8d8 damage is pretty absurd. In conjunction with Brute ranks and Berserk being active, a lot of enemies will be very reliably pasted in one hit: with Brute 3 and Berserk, even rolling minimum damage is 34 damage, which is enough to two-shot stuff like Barons of Hell. In actuality you'll generally be doing around 80 damage, which one-shots almost every non-boss enemy. The fact that it halves knockback received is a nice bonus, making it much easier to get into stabbing range even when fighting enemies with reliable knockback like Mancubi.
Oh, and it has its Holy Fire attack. It, uh, exists? You can use it to delete corpses and break down walls. In combat conditions, it's difficult to justify it over just hitting things -among other points, its higher base damage is misleading since it doesn't benefit from Brute ranks or Berserk being active, so in real play it only maybe makes sense to use if being mobbed. (And this has the problem that Vampyre and Blademaster reward melee kills: a Vampyre is often better off stabbing to keep HP up, while a Blademaster is often better off stabbing because no time passes as they kill things that way) So it's not nearly as useful as the raw numbers seem to suggest.
The Longinus Spear functions fine enough in its role as the Default Ultimate Melee Weapon, but its design could be better.
Azrael's Scythe
Damage: 9d9
Accuracy: +0
Alternate Fire: Whisper of Death. Inflicts 20 Plasma damage on every enemy on the floor. Lowers Doomguy's maximum HP by 5 permanently, and he becomes Tired. Cannot be used if Tired.
Special: Does Plasma damage. (This does not allow it to destroy walls)
Minimum floor: N/A
Azrael's Scythe is itself kind of odd given its even more demanding than the Longinus Spear to acquire. It loses the set bonus with the Archangel Armor, loses the knockback resistance, and replaces a safe-to-spam special move with one that permanently eats max HP on each use. In exchange, its damage is higher (But the Longinus Spear is normally one-shotting most enemies anyway), and it has Whisper of Death... which requires more than three uses to kill Barons of Hell and other Real Threat enemies. I'm given to understand people liked to use it to kill everything in the Vaults before opening them in 0.9.9.7 (In 0.9.9.8, the Unholy Cathedral was swapped with the Vaults, so you can't do this anymore), and I can see the logic as far as that the game is nearly over by that point so sacrificing HP strategically can be done without worrying overly-much about the future, but overall Whisper of Death seems too costly to justify using in most situations.
The overall result is that I tend to feel like the Longinus Spear is the better reward in practice, even though Azrael's Scythe is set up as the harder-to-access weapon. I assume the players who use Whisper of Death to cheese specific Special Levels disagree, but I'd consider that to be a design problem anyway: Whisper of Death being good by virtue of trivializing challenges in a non-interactive way isn't good design. I really wish Azrael's Scythe did something more interesting and less abusive: struck multiple targets at once in melee, or was a melee weapon that could strike a tile further, or its Alternate Fire let you teleport to a chosen destination at the cost of Tiring Doomguy, or some other such thing.
On a graphical note...
Base graphic: never seen without modifiers.
... there isn't a scythe sprite: Azrael's Scythe is instead using this staff graphic, also used by the Arena Master's Staff and the Hell Staff. I'm showing off the base sprite because it's another graphic you never see unobscured in-game: it always has either the green Unique glow or the brown glow used by Azrael's Scythe.
What is unique to Azrael's Scythe is this graphic:
It's Doomguy wielding a staff. I spent a while confused when I saw this in the spritesheet given Doomguy can't wield the game's two staves: I hadn't realized Azrael's Scythe uses it!
Dragonslayer
Damage: 9d9
Accuracy: +0
Alternate Fire: Whirlwind. Immediately attacks each adjacent tile once, for a total of 8 attacks. Attack time is equivalent to making 8 attacks, minus 5 seconds. As Doomguy will be Berserk, in practice this takes barely any time at all, as Berserk reduces time spent on all actions by 1/3rd in the first place. (About 0.33 seconds if you have no other attack modifiers) Tires Doomguy, and cannot be used while Tired.
Special: Cannot be picked up unless you have nothing in your equip slots and are Berserk. If you met those conditions when trying to pick it up, Dragonslayer is immediately and permanently equipped, and your Berserk will never time out. Halves knockback to the player while wielded. If you additionally equip the Berserk Armor, Nightmare Demons will spawn infinitely for the rest of your run. (These Nightmare Demons do not grant experience when killed)
Minimum floor: 16
Dragonslayer spawns normally, albeit very rarely, unlike the Longinus Spear and Azrael's Scythe, but can also be spawned consistently within a normal run.
For this to happen, you must be playing on Nightmare! difficulty and have cleared Hell's Arena without taking damage. In that case, clearing the Unholy Cathedral will replace the Longinus Spear/Azrael's Scythe with Dragonslayer 100% consistently. (To be clear, you can take damage in the run: it's specifically damage taken in Hell's Arena that will prevent Dragonslayer from spawning in the Unholy Cathedral)
So yeah, if you want it consistently, you're going to need to become absurdly good at the game. (Much better than I am, frankly) You can still luck into it without meeting those conditions, thankfully.
Whirlwind allows for the unusual situation of being Berserk and Tired. This... mostly doesn't matter given you can't Run while Berserking and being Tired doesn't do anything except prevent Running, Whirlwinding, and using the magic staves, but it's still a neat little factoid.
A few notes before I continue on.
Firstly, the wiki indicates it's bugged in 0.9.9.8 (Including the 0.9.9.8a release) to not actually provide permanent Berserk. I've yet to confirm this myself, but have no specific reason to doubt such a claim.
Second, in 0.9.9.7, the unlimited Nightmare Demons gave experience when killed, allowing one to grind to Level 25 (The maximum) if you really wanted to.
Third, the wiki has claimed for over a decade that wearing the Berserk Armor alongside the Dragonslayer causes Nightmare Cacodemons to spawn unlimitedly. This did not happen to me in 0.9.9.7 when I got both: I only got Nightmare (Pinkie) Demons. I've only done this in Angel of 100, so maybe that's somehow at fault? Regardless, these Nightmare Cacodemons ostensibly gave experience in 0.9.9.7 and no longer do.
The rest of what I'm going to say is thus premised on two things: ignoring the 'no unlimited Berserk' bug, and ignoring the Nightmare Cacodemons. The former because it will presumably be fixed in the next version/did work in the prior version, the latter because my own experience doesn't match it.
The Dragonslayer/Berserk Armor thing is itself meant to be one of the game's big secrets you're intended to figure out on your own (The wiki spent years saying 'we know there's a reliable way to spawn it, but don't know what it is' and indicating the devs asked people to not share this info if they figured it out), but I'm not respecting that because the whole thing is extremely opaque, not interesting to figure out, and just knowing how all this works doesn't let you cheese the game: if you can reliably clear Hell's Arena on Nightmare! with no damage, how much does it really matter that this translates into a further power spike much later in the run? By contrast, I've been alluding to 'complete victory', and only intend to properly lay it out in one post much later, because figuring out the 'complete victory' is actually an interesting little puzzle one can solve without code-diving or watching dev streams or whatever.
As a final layer of annoyance to the Dragonslayer/Berserk Armor issue, if you complete Angel of 100 without equipping them both, the game will inform you that you haven't figured out 'the secret' of the Dragonslayer and Berserk Armor, and you can only get a 'complete victory' in Angel of 100 by equipping them... even though there is not a way to force them to spawn in Angel of 100, and they're both so absurdly rare you can easily go multiple full Angel of 100 runs without seeing either, let alone both.
Anyway, having the Dragonslayer itself is an absurd power spike. 9d9 damage while Berserking and with 3 ranks in Brute (So you don't miss half your swings) is already 36-180 damage on a swing. Averaging very heavily toward the middle of that range, which is to say non-boss enemies will basically always die to one swing. You are giving up non-melee attacking options (You can't budge the Dragonslayer from your Weapon slot), but you're also permanently very durable and fast. Vampyre especially is absolutely absurd with the Dragonslayer, able to charge in and kill things while naked and only occasionally feeling a need to heal. (Blademaster is great with it too, but doesn't get value out of Whirlwind. Malicious Blades resents that this doesn't count as a 'blade', but is quite happy to get permanent Berserk, and can actually still get use out of the Prepared slot) This was true before 0.9.9.8 gave the Marine innate resistance to energy damage types and gave Ironman resistance to physical damage types: an 0.9.9.8 Marine with permanent Berserk doesn't actually need an Armor equipped to reduce most damage to 1-2 points! (Which is actually kind of awkward, as Berserk Armor massively slows down Doomguy, and its only benefit is damage reduction: if the next patch reenables permanent Berserk with no other changes, the Berserk Armor will be actually pretty dubious for a Marine to equip from a 'playing to beat a standard run' perspective)
The Dragonslayer is in fact such a huge power spike that it's kind of boring! It halving knockback inherently and Berserking Doomguy means you don't even have to try that hard to bob and weave on the way in: a Vampyre in particular can just face-tank punishment and feed on his foes, no need for resource management or tactical maneuvering, but even for a Blademaster Scout or Malicious Blades Technician the game is largely 'solved'. I don't actually find myself minding how difficult it is to get the Dragonslayer+Berserk Armor online, because the game is just boring with them equipped.
Do note that if you are shooting for 100% kill rate, equipping the Dragonslayer and Berserk Armor makes this nearly impossible. The Nightmare Demons prefer to spawn in your vision range, but they spawn regularly and you have no ranged attack: you're not going to get to the stairs and sit there killing Nightmare Demons until they're all dead and then descend the stairs really quickly. It's just not realistic.
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Next time, we wrap up weapons by covering the assorted weapons that don't fit into a 'family' of any kind.
See you then.
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