Joined: 04 Mar 2011 Location: Planet Earth (specifically Southeast USA)
Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2012 1:18 am Post subject: Help! SSG Techniques
I've played DOOM for a while now, but I've yet to master what is arguably the game's most popular multiplayer weapon: the Super-Shotgun. I manage to continually get owned by them in matches of all game-types, and I never last very long after picking one up.
All I've been able to figure out in terms of technique is:
1. One must perfect timing when closing in on somebody while holding the SSG; if you fire too early, and you are too far away, your attack does minimal damage, but if you fire too late, you've taken too much damage and you're dead (especially when up against another SSG).
2. One must take advantage of the reload time of an opponent's SSG and attack while they're reloading.
3. One must take cover when reloading their own SSG. This requires good knowledge of the map.
I've practiced these for years, but to no avail. What am I missing? And for the love of DOOM, how the heck do people keep dodging my SSG blasts in wide open spaces? I'm superb with chainguns, so it's not like I suck at aiming or anything.
Joined: 19 Apr 2007 Location: Knee Deep in the Dead
Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2012 4:43 am Post subject:
Be patient and make your shot count, especially if you've snuck up on someone. I've killed many people whose only mistake was that they did not drop me with the first shot... they did not get a second chance.
Joined: 19 Sep 2009 Location: Coventry, Warwickshire, England
Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2012 5:01 am Post subject:
As boring as it may sound, playing duels on shoot.wad helps your aim a lot with the ssg, thats how I learnt anyway
Also it's best to wait for the moment when you think you have the perfect shot. A lot of players you see in public ctf matches for example shoot on sight, and don't stop holding down their shooting button until either you or they are dead. That imo is probably the worst thing you can do in an ssg vs ssg fight. As you said, it's mainly about movement, timing and aim, rather just spamming the shoot button on sight.
Myself, I have 2 separate techniques with the ssg playing ctf. If I'm playing offensive, I tend to run at my opponent, and right at the last second juke either left or right, and at the same time aiming to shoot him. When I play defensive, I usually back off from my opponent, hide behind walls, and take pot shots at him until I have a good enough opportunity to take him out.
Everyone has their own different preference though :)
Joined: 04 Mar 2011 Location: Planet Earth (specifically Southeast USA)
Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2012 8:02 am Post subject:
Thanks! These are great tips...but I still can't figure out how to dodge SSG blasts. It seems that even when I take my time shooting and I have good ping people can still dodge my attacks, taking little or no damage.
I feel you on the ssg thing, being not so great at it myself. It's all practice, and getting a feel for the weapon and the delay on it relating to ping and the trigger pull. I also like to play on more balanced maps where the ssg isn't immeadiatly accessible. Actually, trying to use the other weapons extensively has seemed to help my shotgunning a bit. I think understanding how the ssg is different from the other weapons helps.
Joined: 19 Sep 2009 Location: Coventry, Warwickshire, England
Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2012 10:34 am Post subject:
Op-Cow wrote:
It's all practice
Yeah and this. Once you get some sort of technique to it, and practice it, it will soon fall into place. I used to enjoy watching a lot of the top euro players too play with it too. The reason I made the France / Belgium comment was because a few years ago we had a few players in our community from those respected countries who had a clan that prided their style of play on SSG strength and dominance. The more you practice, the faster and easier it will be to pick it up, you'll soon see the difference :)
Joined: 04 Mar 2011 Location: Planet Earth (specifically Southeast USA)
Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2012 4:55 pm Post subject:
Thanks Swiftshot! I got an idea though: I want to observe more demos from the ZDDL matches. I'm realizing that if I SpyCam each player I can figure how each player wins or loses, specifically with the SSG.
Joined: 05 Jan 2005 Location: off the grid, but still fighting for the users!
Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2012 7:25 pm Post subject:
SwiftShot wrote:
A lot of players you see in public ctf matches for example shoot on sight, and don't stop holding down their shooting button until either you or they are dead.
Lol, sounds like a lot of co-op players. No monsters visible, but still blastin' away
1. aim, aim and aim
2. lower your mouse sensitivity (really!)
3. don't fire like a mad man, it's better to shoot only when you are 100% sure you will hit your opponent
4. play some small map with cybie and practice on him or play 1on1 with ssg only
you are growing with the ssg, u can train with me any day u want on a ctf or some own server, u can train with others too going on a ctf server ( u know, defending or something) or just going to a 1-1, that helps a lot.
To successfully use the SSG to it's full potential, you need to perfect one crucial thing: Muscle memory, aiming the SSG and then firing is just going to end up with the other player making you kiss the ground, you need to judge the distance of the swing you are about to do and then fire straight afterwards.
Once you get a knack of this, you'll instantly notice a higher rate of kills and crucial hits, with the SSG (and even the SG in some situations) it isn't about aiming, it's about judging distance, the swing and the shot. It's truly a game of millimetres.
For example
You are here
{}.............................
And you see a enemy here
..............................{}
You'll need to do 3 quick steps in half a second
1 - Judge distance of the swing you are about to perform before hitting fire
2 - Swing across
3 - Fire
Keep doing this and you'll eventually perfect a system where you won't even realise you are doing it, and trust me, you'll really start seeing the results.
Use a fairly high mouse sensitivity (around about 5-8cm to do a 180 turn) as well, it'll make the pellets contract more when you fire, making your shots more powerful. This is known as the "Swingshot", a trick in manipulating the spread of the SSG fire pattern by movement, the faster you can swing it, the more effect it'll have, some will debate this gimmick to see if it really works, but I've used it for years and trust me, there is something to it.
But remember the 3 main steps: Judge, Swing, Fire.
Once you know how to use the SSG really well alot of competitive matchs will fall into place for you, it'll become second nature. I'd do what the guys have already said but if your practicing your gunna take ages to get the perfect shot and gunna get blasted away. What I do sometimes is I "chip" off health with it then land a solid shot. for example when far away you'll hit like 20hp off then maybe if you shoot again you can shoot off about 15hp then that makes it 65hp left which will be easy to take out on a shot which isn't dead on. you'll learn loads of ways to use the SSG on duels and ctf. probably better off with ctf for learning it though, loads more action. duels is more using your mind to outwit etc.
The biggest misconception out there about the Super Shotgun is that it requires great accuracy. This is not true. It requires average accuracy and great reaction time! The spread is so great on it, as long as you are within close distance to your opponent, you can manage a fairly strong shot with relative ease. The key is to finding a good mouse sensitivity that boosts not only your accuracy, but your reaction time as well.
Here are a few tips I picked up over the years for reaction time practicing amongst other critical things:
-playing on servers with higher latency
When you're faced with a situation where godlike reaction time might not even close the gap on when your shot hits versus your opponents, you know you're in a tough situation. Against weaker opponents, this is great practice. Against stronger ones, I might advise you to try against lesser competition.
-learn the maps from top to bottom
One beautiful thing about FPS games is that even when you're old and rusty, you can still pull off great shots because you know where to position yourself in the map rather than depend on pure reaction. Finding "sweet spots" in maps is awesome. For example, in dwango5 map01, after you've fragged an enemy and he spawns in the back-hallway, you can cut him off at one of the entrances into the bfg room. It's not a matter of having better reaction time in the midst of SSG combat, it's a matter of knowing where to be before your opponent gets there.
-practice with the boomstick
This is an awesome way to not only diversify your weapon balance, it also works as great practice for SSG. The boomstick reloads a little faster than the SSG but requires much greater accuracy. As I said, accuracy isn't everything, but you do have to have the ability to shoot a fish in a barrel! Plus, if you gain the ability to react well with the boomstick, this translates well to the SSG!
-use sound as your guide as well as vision
While this doesn't contribute much to reaction time, it's one of the most important things to pay attention to. You can determine a lot just by sounds the doom marine makes. This ranges from the typical "umph" noise made by the marine when he comes down high-level stairs to listening to where their ssg reloading sound trails off at. Listening to them reloading is huge because where they go as they are reloading, the sound goes, too. With this, you can vaguely determine where they are in a map if they take a peck shot at you and run away. It's not an 100% spot-on, but the general idea of their position is huge - you know they can't surprise you now. In summary: LISTEN! LISTEN!! LISTEN!!!
-knowing when to make an aggressive attack on an opponent
This is pretty difficult and takes quite a bit of experience to learn. The SSG can deliver a one-shot kill to you without any power-ups (armor, spheres etc) so it's key to remember this. Even when you know they have low health, you don't want to get too ballsy and rush them if it puts you an a really bad spot (i.e don't leave yourself out to dry). There's nothing wrong with doing this though as long as you don't miss! But the point of this is to have a good idea of what their health is. If you know they're really low, being aggressive can get you a frag. You can also be a good judge of this by how they play. If they go from being super aggressive to playing behind walls and running for cover, you know they're probably low on health. There's millions of scenarios you can go through with this, it's just best to get a good feel for knowing when to be aggressive and when not to be.
There are millions of tips we can offer as veteran players. None of them are incorrect. The biggest way to improve is to continue to play. Different game-modes demand different things. In 1vs1, you have a little more time to calculate your shot whereas in CTF, you usually do not. Practicing different game-modes and mastering them is a great way to become a well-balanced doom player in all fields.
And while we're on that subject, another great way to gain ability in doom is to play survival coop with an aggressive style (i.e, rushing melee monsters like cyberdemons with bfg and not dying!). Playing survival coop with an aggressive approach helps your movement and teaches you to prolong your life without dying. While this isn't the greatest translation to competitive doom modes, it does help some.
Just remember this, like any other competitive game, there are always the percentage points to consider. What I mean by this is knowing when you have a good chance to accomplish what you want in a situation and when you don't (i.e you have tons of health, they don't, you make a strong attack but in doing so, you expose yourself some: you have a better chance of fragging them than they do you, so making this play is a calculated risk but the chances of you being successful are probably good). With 1vs1, it's all about controlling respawn spots/weapons/critical map areas. Never forget how important that is!
The key is, don't rule out anything. Some of the smallest, seemingly inconceivable things can actually help make you a much stronger player.
Sadly, the current scene doesn't have many prominent figures in the public eye but they are alive and active if you're willing to do some research to find them. Overall, just keep practicing and ask - I'm sure all of us are willing to help. Best of luck!
Just remember, that if you are on an open map, how your movement is the KEY to avoiding attacks. The more unpredictable you are the better, sometimes people expect u to move left or right? try mixing it up, performing different movement in every case. This will FORCE your opponent to rely on a high level of accuracy to deliver damage. And make sure, u know where ur oponent is at all times, this will incease the percentage in accurate hits/damage to them.
One day perhaps i'll teach you all to move like a god.
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