A new balancing update for Doom: The Dark Ages is now live, changing weapon stats and gameplay elements. The Super Shotgun gets a slight nerf, while Plasma weapons receive ammo boosts. The update also fixes parry issues and improves high-damage difficulty settings—all delivered seamlessly through the game’s tunables system.
A fresh update is live for Doom: The Dark Ages, bringing adjustments to several weapons and some minor quality-of-life improvements. This is part of a series of balance updates released recently, with the dev team continuing to refine the game’s combat after launch.
Like Doom Eternal in 2020, the Doom: The Dark Ages team has been tracking player feedback and in-game data closely since release. Some updates have already rolled out across all difficulty levels. These small tweaks didn’t require players to download anything, thanks to the “tunables” system, which allows the game to automatically apply updates when connected to the internet. This includes changes to weapon, difficulty, and enemy variables.
One of the latest updates included changes to how lethal hits from behind are handled on high difficulty levels (where damage sliders are set at 250% or 500%). These types of deaths, especially from outside the player’s view, have been a major issue due to the game’s heavy enemy density and sudden reinforcement spawns.
The most debated change in this patch is a nerf to the Super Shotgun. Though not drastic, it now does less damage to some armored enemies and is less effective against the Hell Knight. Meanwhile, Plasma weapons have been improved — both the Plasma Accelerator and Plasma Cycler now hold more ammo, and using the Accelerator’s Heat Blast to kill demons gives even more ammo in return.
Another fix included in this update addresses a bug where Whiplash attacks didn’t parry correctly, which had been a noticeable issue during combat.
The developers at id Software continue to monitor balance, but tunables can’t fix major bugs or add new content. They’ve acknowledged ongoing problems like the bug affecting the Berserker achievement and are working on a future downloadable patch to resolve it.
Doom: The Dark Ages May 2025 Update Patch Notes
- Adjusted player forgiveness to reduce back attacks causing death on highest difficulty sliders (250%–500%)
- Reduced Super Shotgun’s effectiveness against Hell Knights and some armored enemies
- Increased ammo for Plasma Accelerator and Plasma Cycler
- Heat Blast kills with Accelerator now give more ammo
- Fixed Whiplash attack parry issue
