Doom Roguelike Analysis: Angel of Marksmanship Dual Challenges (0.9.9.7/0.9.9.8)

Angel Dual-Challenge post the second, but for Pistols!

Doomguy may only attack with Pistols and his fists.

You're going to struggle with Lost Souls. Probably. Usually.

Anyway, the combos!

Angel of 100

Effect: Completely removes all fixed floor generation cases, with the game ending upon completing your 100th floor.

My experience is that this combo makes for a very rough mid-early game, but if you get your Mastery online and get a reasonably decent kit, it tends to hold up well in the long haul. Pistol builds are extremely ammo-efficient, so ammo starvation is almost never a problem, and Lost Souls ultimately largely phase out, so even if you never diversify away from Bullet damage this tends to become less of a flaw later in an Angel of 100 run.

Notably, Pistols are the only weapon category with an Angel Challenge specialized in them that in a standard run doesn't get guaranteed access to non-basic iterations of their weapon. Angel of Shotgunnery and especially Angel of Berserk have a lower 'floor' on power when combined with Angel of 100, but Angel of Marksmanship can never count on anything better than the basic Pistol spawning anyway. In fact, Angel of 100 adding so many more floors and thus loot generation means it's actually a lot rarer in combo runs to never actually see a non-basic Pistol!

That said, that mid-early period is very rough indeed. Angel of 100 functionally having an accelerated timetable on enemy progression can readily create nasty moments like 'you haven't even gotten your Mastery online, and you're facing a Revenant backed by an Archvile', which can easily be a more or less unavoidable death. (Especially if you don't know the Archvile is there before it revives the Revenant) The Mod Pack situation also tends to be awkward, since there's not really any straightforwardly fantastic Assemblies for Pistols that use only basic Mod Packs, and Pistols are awkward for supermodding: raising Accuracy tends to be low in value, improving fire time is literally worthless at Son of a Gun 5, and Bulk Mods for ammo might be low-value as well. (Such as if playing a Scout and getting free reloads on kills) It's pretty easy to thus get to floor 100 never managing to do anything particularly great with your Pistols and Mod Packs, or to die in part due to lacking the ability to significantly improve your Pistols.

Also, in the very late game Agony Elementals can be a very, very big problem if you're still reliant on Bullet damage. To the point that running for the stairs may honestly be the better response to sighting one.

Angel of Light Travel

Effect: Doomguy has only 5 slots for carrying items, but he generates 20% more Energy per game tick.

This combo is stronger than I imagine most players intuit, for reasons I've covered before: that only 0.1 second can pass at a time, but actions spending 0.1 second of Energy can still result in Doomguy's Energy stockpile growing, resulting in some later action (or actions, plural) going much faster than it normally would. As such, reaching Son of a Gun 5 is not 'wasting' Angel of Light Travel's benefit, but instead converting it into a deferred advantage.

Though that requires you get that far in the first place, mind, and that's the hard part. While Pistols are ultimately quite ammo-efficient, they're not inventory-efficient, and their issues in terms of being terrible at dealing with Lost Souls and whatnot get noticeably exacerbated by Angel of Light Travel combined with Angel of Marksmanship: carting around swaps for dealing with Bullet-resistant enemies is much more painful when such a swap is 20% of your inventory, and Angel of Marksmanship means you can't carry around a Shotguns as a swap anyway!

Technicians are theoretically hit less hard by this, since Sharpshooter blocks Dualgunner and so can actually commit the Prepared slot to a 10mm ammo chain without giving up firepower, but, uh, I've tried that a... lot. It doesn't work out very well.

Angel of Marksmanship+Angel of Light Travel is surprisingly rough!

Angel of Impatience

Effect: Medpacks, Envirosuit Packs, and Phase Devices are immediately used on pickup, like Powerups.

One thing worth pointing out is that this makes it almost impossible to complete the Containment Area/The Wall and get the Backpack. It's technically not actually impossible, as you could theoretically Assemble a Demolition Ammo Pistol or an Energy Pistol and slowly cut your way through the wall that way, but for one thing only Technicians can dip into Whizkid without the issues of having to path through Finesse. For Marines and Scouts, reaching Whizkid 1 in time basically demands they heavily put off their Mastery, and it's entirely possible you just... fail to get the required Mod Packs, so it's a risky play as well.

It of course also makes getting a complete victory more finicky to arrange, pretty much demanding Assembling Cerberus Boots. (Or getting lucky and just finding some other Lava immunity)

I've personally never tried this combo and suspect I'd struggle a lot with it given how much I rely on Shotgun corner-shooting to minimize the harm from not being able to cart around healing, but I'm not sure how rough it actually is? What with having never done it..

Angel of Confidence

Effect: You start the game in Deimos 1. (ie floor 9)

My limited attempts at this combo were much harder than I intuitively expected, specifically in the capacity of being prone to dying almost immediately. That's just part of Angel of Confidence, of course, but I hadn't considered beforehand how Pistols are heavily dependent on Son of a Gun ranks to pull their weight, and Angel of Marksmanship blocks off the option of using Shotguns as an interim solution. I also hadn't considered the point that you'll almost immediately be confronted with either Hell's Armory or the Deimos Lab, both of which have Lost Souls and/or Revenants as a notable part of the population, meaning you're immediately confronted with significant Bullet resistance.

Very much a death roulette, alas.

Angel of Purity

Effect: Powerups do nothing.

Pistols aren't as good at corner-shooting as Shotguns, so it's a bit harder to completely avoid damage when relying on Pistols, putting more of a strain on your healing supplies. Maybe this isn't as bad I intuit, but honestly, I've dreaded this combo too much to ever get around to trying it... it seems likely to produce a lot of early deaths especially.

Angel of Red Alert

Effect: A nuke with a five minute timer is placed at Doomguy's feet upon entering each new floor. Scouts also don't get to passively know stair locations.

Pistol builds tend to be quite swift, especially if you prefer to Assemble Speedloader Pistols to ablate the reload times. (Or are a Scout with Gun Kata) So this sounds... not so bad in theory? To be clear, I've never tried this combo: I just don't find Angel of Red Alert to be that interesting. It's totally possible I'm underestimating painpoints, such as how 10mm ammo is often grabbed in small amounts here and there but picking up an item always spends 1 second of Energy regardless of whether it's 100 units of ammo of 12. 

But if you're already comfortable with Angel of Red Alert and Angel of Marksmanship individually, this at least seems like it shouldn't be a big escalation over each.

Angel of Darkness

Effect: Doomguy's base line of sight is reduced by 2 tiles (ie from 8 to 6), the game doesn't display tiles not currently in line of sight, and corpses Doomguy can't currently see have a chance to resurrect periodically. By extension, 'You feel relatively safe now' will never display. Scouts also don't get to passively know stair locations. Experience is gained twice as fast.

I've never tried this combo, because it seems... pretty nightmarish and anti-fun. Corpse destruction is very difficult unless you Assemble Demolition Ammo, compared to Angel of Shotgunnery you really feel the pain of 'firing into darkness tends to whiff even if you're highly accurate', etc. I don't like Angel of Darkness anyway, but even if it was my favorite Challenge somehow, I think I'd still be pretty hesitant to try this combo.

Angel of Masochism

Effect: Almost all healing fails to increase HP. (The Marine's Vampyre Mastery still functions) Gaining a level heals Doomguy to 200%.

I've never gotten around to this combo mostly because Angel of Masochism is a lot easier for a Marine thanks to easy access to Badass to hold onto the overhealed HP, but the Marine's Pistol Mastery is very flawed. I just always waffle on whether to suffer through Bullet Dance, or play Scout and suffer through not having Badass, or play Technician and suffer in general, and then end up trying a different Challenge setup or the like because I can't decide which unpleasant option seems least worst.

Angel of Overconfidence

Effect: You start the game in Hell 1. (ie floor 17)

Well, at least you'll start with a Combat Pistol.

I think I tried this once precisely because of the 'you start with a Combat Pistol'. It was... a frustrating experience. To my shock, I actually died to ammo starvation, not to being pasted before my build could come online! 10mm ammo is just so easy to run out of in Hell...

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Next time, we cover the final weapon-specialization dual-Challenges: Angel of Berserk's list.

See you then.