DOOM Eternal - Combat Tips and Tricks

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Basic combat tips and tricks gathered over the course of several campaigns with added info from other users.

Tips and Tricks for Combat

All credit goes to Slade!

If there is one thing you should do at all times, you should keep moving. Even if you’re just shooting at an enemy from afar, you should at the very least be strafing from side to side so that the demons can’t get a good lock onto you.
Focus on larger enemies when you have full ammunition and reserve humanoid enemies (i.e., zombies) for recovering health, ammunition, and armour. If you get rid of the smaller foes too early, you may find there’s no way to recover health when you’re at death’s door.
There are lots of ledges, pipes, and portals littered around most areas where enemies appear. They’re not just for show. Use them as often as you can to dart around the area, getting the jump on demons where you can.
If you need to recover armour safely, use the flame thrower to roast a staggered foe. Do this before either performing a glory kill to get both health and armour, or mincing them up with a slash of the chainsaw for ammo and armour.
Know which alternative fire modes are best for dealing with certain enemies. For example, Cacodemons (the big eyeball things that float around) really hate swallowing grenades from Sticky Bombs. Getting rid of them first gives you some much needed breathing room to deal with the other big threats. (Open your Codex and read the entries on Demons: each has weaknesses, get to know them!)
Some enemies have weaknesses that can be exploited to reduce their firepower. Arachnotrons (the big brains with spider legs) can have their turret blown off with a sticky grenade or a well-placed bolt from the heavy cannon, while Revenants rocket launchers can be destroyed.
Use secondary fire often, as they’re usually much better than the primary fire for dealing with certain enemies. Hell Knights (the hulking jumping demons) tend to have a harder time against explosives like sticky grenades, micro missiles, and many others.
Shoot any mines or red barrels near enemies. Their explosions will nearly always stagger them for a short time, interrupting their attack for a short time.
For any enemy that uses plasma shielding, concentrated fire of the plasma gun will strip the shield. Destroying a shield with the Plasma Gun will cause it to explode, dealing heavy damage to nearby demons.
Are you finding levels too tough but don’t want to resort to cheats or changing the difficulty? Use the Mission Select to complete old missions to get Extra Lives. These carry over to your main campaign progress.
Upgrading weapons is a needful thing and certain areas are perfect for doing this such as the early area in Super Gore Nest Mission… but always leave a few enemies so you can just reload the checkpoint and continue. Also the Fortress has a practice area which is good for some mobs like soldier’s).
Often switch weapons and don’t stick to one. Not only the ammo you have is limited, some of the weapons also take a while to reload the shot. This means that changing weapons a lot during a fight can help you deal more damage and use up ammo more efficiently.
To optimize your weapon-switching, try to use numbers and your scroll wheel instead of the weapon wheel, or in case just press Q to switch to your most recent weapon. If a number is too far from your fingers, switch to a closer one and then use the scroll wheel!
Move efficiently! You’ll want to shoot who you can while moving (or running away), to ensure dealing damage. In addition, the Balista’s modules take quite a bit to load, and while it’s doing so your movement speed will decrease, making you vulnerable. Try to launch yourself in the air and load the shot. Then, shoot when convenient.
Spam dash, it can move you away from the damage radius of something like a Hell Knight’s slam. You can dash much faster if you only tap the key once. When you do a double dash it takes a second or two to recharge but if you tap, wait, tap, wait, tap you can basically dash forever because it recharges one pip much faster than two.