Strategy:Azrael's Scythe

0.9.9.7

Azrael's Scythe is tied with the Dragonslayer for the strongest melee weapon in the game, having an incredible 9d9 damage output per hit (which averages to 45 damage), being strong enough to potentially one-shot bigger enemies even without berserk. There isn't much strategy to using it, and unless you're fortunate enough to find the aforementioned Dragonslayer or are running Vampyre and would thus prefer the Ripper, this will unquestionably be your melee weapon of choice if you happen to fulfill the conditions to get it (which are playing on Hurt Me Plenty difficulty or higher, and maintaining a 100% kill rate up to the Unholy Cathedral). It's so strong, that even builds with no Brute investment can make decent usage of it, particularly to help conserve ammo if needed. It also deals plasma damage unlike other melee weapons; though this has a very minor effect on damage output (it halves enemies' armor, but dealing one or two more points of damage isn't making a practical difference when you're dealing so much damage per hit as is), it's more relevant in that it has a much easier time gibbing enemies, and combined with how powerful it is, it is even capable of reliably gibbing bigger enemies when berserked. This makes the Scythe especially valuable to melee builds planning to take on The Mortuary, Limbo, or for any other scenario when Arch-viles are around, and otherwise when playing Nightmare! difficulty or Angel of Darkness (though maintaining a 100% killrate up to the Cathedral in those modes will be especially difficult).

The other part of Azrael's Scythe with more interesting strategic applications is its alternate fire, Whisper Of Death, which deals 20 damage to all enemies on the level, in exchange for tiring you and permanently decreasing your max HP by 5. While very powerful, the drain to your max HP makes it not so practical, but there are situations where one can take strong advantage of this. Most notably, utilizing Whisper Of Death is by far the easiest way to get the Scavenger Platinum and Scavenger Diamond badges, which require you to clear The Vaults (the latter on Ultra-violence difficulty) without using the Arena Master's Staff. Normally this would require getting very lucky with using a Phase device to teleport into the central vault that cannot be opened without the Staff (and then being able to survive being in a small contained room full of powerful enemies with no cover), or other means that require luck (such as being lucky enough to find a Napalm launcher and flooding every single tile outside the central vault with lava, then using a Phase device, as it cannot teleport you onto lava and would thus force it to teleport you into the central vault). Clearing the level however, just means killing every enemy in the level, rather than actually getting into any of the vaults. As such, as long as you have at least three medkits on you when you make it to The Vaults (which are needed to restore your tactics after tiring yourself), you can use Whisper Of Death four times to kill everything without accessing any of the vaults, as long as you're ok playing the rest of the game with 20 less max HP (but even if you do die afterward, you'll still be awarded with the Scavenger badges). You could similarly exploit this for a much easier clear of The Mortuary and Limbo, as four uses will kill all Arch-viles before they can revive much enemies, and to later clear The Lava Pits and Mt. Erebus if you lack a radsuit or any other means to walk over lava without damage (though you'll still have to fight the Lava Elemental after killing everything). You could exploit this to quickly clear any other non-boss level of all enemies if you think it's actually worth it for such a massive cost to your max HP. If you get particularly happy with using Whisper Of Death, it should be noted your max HP stops dropping at 5, while you can continue to use it even with only 5 HP left as long as you're not tired, though obviously being at 5 max HP will cripple you for the rest of the game when any average hit will instantly kill you.

For one last thing, you could also use Whisper Of Death with the explicit intention of dropping your max HP, in order to make Berserker easier to activate (as one of the two ways it can activate is taking a hit that deals a third or more of your max HP in damage before armor and resistances are applied). Being able to more reliably activate Berserker off of more hits can be a legitimate strategy, though it must be warned that Berserker additionally requires a hit to deal at least 10 HP of damage before armor/resistance, no matter how low your HP is. So if you are intentionally exploiting Whisper of Death in this way, Berserker will not activate any easier below 30 max HP, and thus you would only be hurting yourself by dropping your max HP below that point. Omega Tyrant (talk) 13:42, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

0.9.9.8

Azrael's Scythe is unchanged, however Unholy Cathedral had its depth swapped with The Vaults. Aside from it taking slightly longer and being slightly harder to obtain (as you'll need to maintain a 100% kill rate for a couple more floors, as well as maintain it through The Vaults or the newly added House of Pain if you enter them), the main implication of this is that you can no longer cheese obtaining the Scavenger Platinum and Diamond badges with Whisper Of Death, as you cannot obtain the Scythe before The Vaults (which especially stings when The Vaults was made substantially more difficult in this version too, so it'll be much harder to survive actually phasing into the center vault). You can still utilize it to make The Mortuary and Limbo much easier though at the cost of permanent HP, as well as still utilize it to cheese The Lava Pits and Mt. Erebus without the appropriate equipment and items to get over the lava (especially so as the harder difficulties now remove the radsuits in them, but beware that the Lava Elemental was buffed too, so you'll need to be extra sure that you're able to still kill him conventionally after crippling your permanent HP). Omega Tyrant (talk) 01:06, 31 August 2024 (UTC)