Doom Roguelike Enemy Analysis: Revenant

HP: 30

Protection: 2

Ranged Accuracy: +4

Melee Accuracy: +4

Ranged Damage: 5d5 Fire

Blast Radius: 1

Melee Damage: 1d3 (-1) Melee

Speed: 120%

Inventory: Rocket ammo*3

Experience: 452

Danger: 12

Minimum floor: 13/10/7

Maximum floor: Infinite

Experience per Danger: 37.66

Can open doors. 50% resistant to Bullet damage and 25% resistant to Fire damage. Ranged attack detonates at targeted tile rather than continuing past its target in the event of a miss, making it semi-immune to Accuracy checks. It can still be Dodged and can catch against intervening objects, such as walls and other enemies.

Dodge chance: 30% base, plus 6% per tile out, making for a maximum of 78%.

Attack chance: 50%

I describe the Revenant rocket as 'semi-immune' to Accuracy checks because the possibility of a rocket failing its Accuracy check on Doomguy rarely matters: if you didn't Dodge, the rocket detonates in Doomguy's tile regardless. If you did Dodge, then it shouldn't be intersecting with Doomguy's tile anyway, but unless you're very fast it will usually just hit the tile next to you and do full damage anyway.

That said, it should be emphasized that the rocket is a conventional projectile: keeping other enemies between you and a Revenant will discourage them from firing, and if they do fire anyway their high Accuracy means their shot is very likely to end up catching on their buddy and causing friendly fire.

Revenants themselves are easy to underestimate just looking at their raw stats: you can compare them to a Baron of Hell, and the Baron will always die at most just as quickly (Revenants having 50% Bullet resistance just puts their base HP of 30 as effectively tying with a Baron's base HP of 60, if you're using Bullet damage on them) and often shrug off much more punishment even without putting on an Armor or grabbing a Medpack, while being more Accurate, much more lethal in melee, and only somewhat slower and somewhat less lethal at range. It might seem strange that Revenants take longer than Barons to show up, never get placed in early Special Levels the way Barons do on higher difficulties, and if you've looked at the Doom Roguelike community any you might be confused as to why the Dreaded VMR (Archvile, Mancubus, Revenant: VMR are their symbols in console mode) isn't the Dreaded VMB or something.

And honestly, Barons of Hell are more robustly problematic than Revenants: it's very possible to have a run go smoothly where Barons of Hell repeatedly gave you significant trouble and Revenants were never a problem...

... but Revenants do in fact deserve their reputation as one of the three most dangerous regular enemies in Doom Roguelike.

The big thing is the Revenant's unique targeting behavior. As noted earlier, Dodge and Accuracy checks don't help much against Revenants most of the time: if the shot 'misses' Doomguy but detonates in his tile, he takes full damage anyway. If the shot is Dodged, but detonates right next to Doomguy, this may change the knockback, but he's still unavoidably hit for full damage.

This is then exacerbated Revenants being pretty fast: if you want a successful Dodge check to protect Doomguy at all, either it needs to result in the Revenant's shot being intercepted by terrain or an enemy before it gets next to Doomguy, or Doomguy needs to be fast enough to get two turns between a Revenant's turns. That's outrageously fast. Not literally impossible, but it requires a pretty specific combination of item loadout and Trait picks to have happen without specifically Running. (And even doing it while Running is pretty demanding)

In turn, this means a Revenant's functional damage output is much higher than a raw numbers comparison suggests: if a Baron pf Hell expects to kill you in four hits, but also expects to flub the shot three times for every shot that actually hits you (Because you're keeping on the move to regularly Dodge at line of sight), then it'll take 16~ turns to kill you. Plenty of time to disengage, kill it first, heal up... whereas if a Revenant expects to kill you in four hits, that's potentially a four-turn death-clock.

If you're not boosting speed and you don't have any Fire resistance or Protection, it is in fact possible to walk forward one step at 100% HP and be instantly killed by a single Revenant getting two moves on you! (It's extremely unlikely unless you're on Angel of Max Carnage, and it can't happen to Marines, but still)

The main reason Barons are more robustly problematic is because of the difference in damage types: Assembling a Fireproof Red Armor is a very reliable way to make a Revenant's attacks tickle and far from the only option for protecting yourself from Fire damage, whereas wielding the Acid Spitter is the only comparable option for gaining significant resistance to Baron attacks without also making Revenants way less dangerous. A secondary reason is that Revenants are overall frailer, making it more viable to take them out in one action.

As an aside, the unique Revenant targeting behavior makes them one of a handful of enemies where Dodge triggering can actually matter when you stayed in the same line of fire: if you walk toward a Revenant, it might target behind you due to failing the Dodge check, flub its Accuracy check, and so the rocket detonates behind you and launch you forward. Similarly, walking directly away from a Revenant instead creates the possibility of the Dodge having the shot detonate right in front of you, which can matter if eg you were trying to walk away from an item on the ground so it doesn't get blown up. (And sorry, it got blown up anyway)

Revenant groups are also by far the most blatant about Dodge only caring that Doomguy's position did change, not why it changed, as you can easily end up with a Revenant blasting you 2 or even 3 tiles and so be saved from follow-up rockets because the other Revenants target where Doomguy was before the knockback, even if Doomguy didn't move his feet at all.

Anyway, Revenants are particularly problematic for Pistol builds thanks to their high Bullet resistance. If you don't have an Energy Pistol (Or Blaster, I guess), Pistol builds find Revenants comparable in durability to Barons of Hell, while being faster, harder-hitting, and basically guaranteed to hit with every shot, which is a terrifying combination. Pistol builds are also pretty bad at radar-shooting type actions, which is unfortunate given Revenants are best dealt with by engaging them without letting them fight back.

The alternative is to try to engage them in melee, where they're unexpectedly sad, punching as weakly as the basic zombies! When possible, this is a pretty good plan in general, but that 'when possible' is a pretty big qualifier, as several floor types offer extremely poor cover access, where it may be impossible (Or at least really difficult) to bait a Revenant into running up to a corner and trying to ineffectually slap Doomguy to death. Their high Speed also makes it easy to be horribly punished by misjudging things, in that a Revenant may step at an angle to get a shot and then immediately fire thanks to getting two turns between Doomguy's turns, when you were expecting it to enter melee and so be Not A Threat, or were at least expecting that if you misjudged the pathing decision that you'd get an opportunity to step into melee before it could fire.

This tends to stack upon itself too, thanks to their high damage resulting in knockback: flubbing an attempt to bait a Revenant into melee tends to mean it's just going to keep hitting Doomguy away until he's dead or out of sight if Doomguy doesn't have pretty significant knockback resistance. (eg Badass 2) This can easily spiral into a death to a lone Revenant if you don't have a very strong defensive kit. (And potentially even if you do, especially if you're slow to give up on closing to melee)

It's also worth pointing out that Revenants are a little mean with their mild Fire resistance. In terms of raw stats, an unmodified Rocket Launcher would be able (If unlikely) to one-shot them, except actually they're mildly resistant to Fire, so in truth the base-case scenario is knocking off 25 of their 30 hit points. More typically, your Rocket Launcher will do less than half their HP in damage. So a thought process of 'might as well use my Rocket Launcher on them because they'll drop replacement ammo' works out unexpectedly poorly because of their mild Fire resistance.

This is especially unfortunate given Rocket Launchers are good at blind-firing, and so on paper would be a nice option for dealing with a Revenant sight-unseen. In practice, Shotguns tend to do the job better. (Which is one more reason why Shotguns should be a staple of most runs)

At least they die pretty quickly to Plasma Rifles.

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Next time, we cover part two of the Dread VMR: Mancubi.

See you then.