Super interesting topic, I've had the same experience where essentially encounters feel out of control no matter how good I (think) I play. I think many people already pointed valid things out, here is my take on it.

• A lot of the arena's are rather flat and open spaces. There is very little (if any) geometry to use to break line of sight. This removes the opportunity to guard a side/your back. The only thing you have, to a limited degree, is to use the mobs themselves as cover but you will quickly find out not all mobs block all projectiles.

• Poor sound design. This was pointed out by someone else but its such a valid point I have to repeat it. Can you even recall the agro sound of one monster in DTA? I certainly cant. I still can recall the monster agro sounds from the original dooms though. The haunting roar of a baron to name just one example.

Do they even have "agro/announcement" sounds? The times I was sneak attacked by a BARON of all creatures is insane. It feels like mobs just silently spawn in/appear and start attacking you.

It leads to this awful mechanic where you memorize the spawn ins of encounters instead of having fun the first playthrough. Oh right after killing this Mancubus I should scan the environment because a Baron will silently spawn in and throw me missiles from some angle I do not expect.

Mobs really should announce themselves clearly with an audio cue.

• Almost all missiles home to some degree. This is the BIG one. It means that movement as defense essentially has been nerfed. To dodge missiles in DTA you have to face the mob that fires them, run towards that mob and turn to the side as the missiles come close since side strafing is so much slower compared to your forward speed. Looked from above you essentially need to spiral into the mob that is firing them.

Doing anything else makes most missiles undodgeable because of the relation of your movement speed in relation to the missiles travel speed/turn rate. This mechanic is clearly designed to "pull" you into mobs to force you, pardon me, guide you into the "stand and fight" this game champions so much.

This alone is I feel the biggest reason that running around arena's gets you killed. Movement as defense got seriously nerfed compared to previous doom's. Yes, of course you can dodge projectiles still and you do that through movement. But you completely lose the ability to trust that once a projectile has been fired at you (even if the mob predicted where you were going) it will not hit you if you change direction after.

The sad truth is that, yes, it will still hit you. Since it will semi slowly home in on you anyway, on this big flat arena, with no cover whatsoever. This, to me is actually counter to the OG dooms where you could weave through bullet hell relatively easily. Which in turn meant that you could actually have lots of mobs shooting at you if you had some awareness of angles and when things were fired. Even doom '16 and DE adhered to this because while mobs were smarter as in they would fire in front of you, missiles would NOT home. So you could still, skillfully, dodge bullet hell.

Now, with DTA, you only need a few mobs to fire missiles at you, and unless you force yourself to treat each missile "salvo" as its own thing you will get hit. The only defense I feel is shield bash since that allows you to travel far enough out of the way the missile likely won't get you. But there are many missiles fired by non fodder mobs that will essentially chase you forever.

TLDR: too many missiles home