I fucking hate the Marauder so much. I see what their design intent was with him, but fighting him is just awful. I'm through most of the game at this point and have fought him several times and hated each time.
The problem is he controls the fight entirely, something no other enemy does. Other enemies have evasions, some have shields, but with them, it's still up to you how to attack, when, using what. With Marauder, the best you can manage is chip damage unless he does the eye glow thing. Playing this optimally, with the super shotgun equipped, it has the slowest feeling fight out of any enemy because your constantly waiting on him to act and all you can do is try to maintain mid-distance because otherwise he attacks you with the dogs or the shotgun or the energy blast. You only really have an opening when he goes for a melee and that means you are just waiting for him to make a movie instead of being proactive.
And the game does NOT let you be creative with him. His shield is indestructible. You could could directly shoot him the BFG-10000 and he wouldn't give a fuck. When I got the crucible, I though "Great, this will finally give me an easy way of fucking over that loser." Nope. The Crucible can wreck the shit out of any demon in the game....but not the Marauder. It didn't even damage him. It didn't even damage him when I slashed at him inbetween when he had his shield up. He's resistant to the BFG too and I assume the Unmayker. But...why? Other than to absolutely force the player to do his stupid timing ritual.
Like I said, i get the design intent here - with the entire game being based around sheer aggression, having an enemy that is defense oriented and you forces you to play opposite of what you've been doing should be a nice change of pace as well as giving him a unique identity. And maybe that would have been the case if he had been if he had just been a regular enemy. But by forcing the player into such a rigid, expressionless battle tactic while also making him one of the strongest, most aggressive enemies in the game, every time I get an encounter with him, I want to turn off the game and take a break. In fact, at one point, I did literally do that, just because I didn't want to deal with his bullshit.
Doom Eternal is an exhausting game, it takes a lot out of you, but I still have fun fighting Tyrants and Doom Hunters and so forth because, ultimately, they are like any other enemy and I can make my own fun taking them down. Not the Marauder. You will dance his dance or die. So I really hope he gets patched to a less restrictive design.
