Hello, after the timing guide, I started writing on other aspects of dueling. This part is about damage output. It is quite basic, mainly for beginners, but I hope you will like it. The topic is less prone to text guides, but I wanted to pin down a few concepts. Any feedback is welcome.

Damage Output

Quake Dueling is about high damage output. Ultimately your goal is to frag the opponent, and to do so you mostly rely on your ability to deal damage (you can’t hope for the enemy to jump into lava/void, can you?).
The equation is regulated by the damage dealt and the stack production of the map, considering which stack each player runs. In the limit (if they are fucking pacmans)

- The big stack (mega + red) provides: 411 points / minute
- The small stack (2 yellows) provides: 240 points / minute

In practice, the numbers are lower, as challenges may delay item pickups, items may be synched etc. However, these values do not consider additional health/shards a player may take. So we can take them as fair upper limits.

So what are these numbers good for? During the game not much, as one usually reasons in pickup cycles rather than minutes, but after the game, they can help you give a bit more meaning to a win or a loss.

If I look at a recent duel I lost in Toxicity (mega, red, 2 yellows), I can see that I dealt 3470 dmg over the 10 minutes of play. I know that my opponent was running the big stack for most of the time, which means that to have a chance to win I should have dealt at least 4110. No wonder I lost.

There are many other indicators, as the final score and the item pickup counters. In a clear loss, all indicators agree, leaving the doubt of what is the major problem. Sometimes however, you may find yourself in the situation where although you did a good job in timing items and play the roles correctly, you still get destroyed. The ratio of damage dealt by you and your opponent is something to watch out.

Avoiding damage?

While at the input level dodging is a different skill than aiming, the two are strongly intertwined. Your dodging may assist your aim or spoil it. Shooting at your opponent forces him to dodge and aim less. There are situations where getting away alive is more important than killing. All this stuff is complex and situational, and we are not going to discuss it here.

For the sake of this discussion, we will focus on damage output, i.e. how to deal damage. The naïve understanding is that by learning how to deal damage, one starts to learn what is dangerous, which is definitely the first step to learn how to avoid getting damage. This is not everything you need to not take damage, but it is a start.
So, let’s say you know I have a poor damage output in a map. What should you do?

Knowing the Angles

There are several reasons why the damage output can be low. If the opponent is far better than you, his dodging will make your aiming harder, your access to the important weapons will be limited, and he will not expose himself preventing you to use the little position advantage you may have now and then.

However, even if the opponent is better than you, there are a few things you can certainly focus on. This knowledge is usually called “knowing the angles”. On the bright side, this is pure combat stuff, so even if you hate the brain-heavy sides of dueling, you will like this part. The dark side is that this is map dependent.
The requirements to do damage are quite simple:

1. Be in the right position
2. Have the right weapon
3. Use the weapon correctly

The order here matters. You may have 5-10% better lg than your opponent, but if he catches when you take a jump pad (ex: upper ya in t9) he will destroy you. Similarly, a good position to take lg fights may not be suitable to rail from, as it may have no quick escape routes if you miss. Finally, if you are in position and have the right weapon but hit like crap, you won’t achieve much.

These three criteria gives you a base on top of which you can judge damage exchanges.

Watching Demos

Watching demos is one of those things people are inclined to preach, yet it is one of the less popular practices. The problem is that there is a lot that goes with that “watching”, and if one is new to dueling he won’t know what to look for. So let’s try and give a first simple recipe that anyone can follow.

You want to watch demos and consider the damage exchanges in terms of position, weapon and aim

Forget about the items, the advantage and so on. These things will come at another time. Just take a demo of a map you want to learn (ex:noctis in toxicity), fire it up and whenever you see damage dealt, consider it in the perspective of position, weapon, aim as well as what happens afterwards.

Don’t look only for the damage that is dealt, but also the one that is not. Sometimes you see a player – rail in hand – waiting for the enemy to show up. That is important, mark that in your head and the next time you play try and see if you can get the same shot. Other times, a player will sniff a trap, slow down, bait the trapper with fake jumps etc. These are priceless tips. That trap may be worth doing, and knowing how to counter it may win you a game.

Good players spam a lot. Spam is your friend, and is one of the primary sources of damage. Unless you are in stealth mode, or about to get trapped with low ammo, spamming is always good. With time one learns the why, how and whens about spamming, but you can start right now. Copy what pros do.

Pro’s Demos vs. your own Demos

Watch pros’ demos for inspiration; watch your demos for mistakes

If you load your own demo right after the one of a pro, you are likely to notice a lot of differences. Of course, not everything that applies to pro’s will apply to you. You cannot hope to have their raw combat skills, so you may realize that in practice you cannot do what they do. On the other hand, you do many more mistakes you won’t see in a pro demo. These difference are what you want to work on.

For damage output, what you are looking for are tips, combinations of positioning and weapon that can work. These are often related to what mistakes the opponent does. And since you do many more mistakes than the pros, you want to watch your own demos and focus on when you take a lot of damage. You can then go back and see what pros do in similar situations.

Additionally, if you use WolfcamQL, you can switch pov to see how things look from the opponent’s point of view. You may see how silly your dodging was, or how imprudent you were, and try and do better the next time.

Finally, you want to look for situations where you could have dealt damage but did not (you did not spam, you did not expect him to be there, etc). Try to incorporate the spam you see from pros. Do a few cycles between your own tries and their correct executions.