Revenant/Doom II

"Apparently when a demon dies, they pick him up, dust him off, wire him some combat gear, and send him back into battle. No rest for the wicked, eh? You wish your missiles did what his can do."

- Doom II instruction manual

Revenants are monsters exclusive to Doom II, making its first appearance in MAP06: The Crusher.

Physical appearance
Revenants take the appearance of tall animated human skeletons with golden-brown bones. They are equipped with a metallic silver body armor with shoulder-mounted missile launchers. Below their body, they have blood and gore running down their ribcage and legs.

Combat characteristics
A Revenant emits a raging/pain-like high-pitched shriek when spotting the player. When in pain, they make the same groaning sound emitted by former humans and Imps, but otherwise give off a heavy huffing breathing sound while roaming.

At range, Revenants fire a missile from one of their shoulder launchers. Revenants fire two types of missiles; unguided and homing (this can be identified by the gray smoke trail). At close range, they will resort to melee combat; they will strike a downward blow with their fists, accompanied by a punching sound effect.

Revenants are one of the fastest enemies in the game, sharing the same speed level as Demons and Spectres. Unlike the other two monsters, however, Revenants approach directly at their target rather than zigzagging aimlessly. This makes them much more aggressive, as they are also prone to quickly fire their missiles or punch any nearby targets.

When killed, a few of the Revenant's bones will shatter, creating a very distinct bone rattling sound, and the monster will simply fall on its back, one of the cleanest monster deaths the player will come across.

Tactical analysis
When confronting a Revenant, the biggest threat to account for comes from their homing missiles, as it is much more difficult to dodge and can do significant damage upon a direct hit. However, while their homing missiles fly pretty quick, they can be outrunned by the player. In wide open spaces, players can strafe around the Revenant's homing missiles, and use any nearby obstacles as cover, without taking any damage.

The speed Revenants possess is not to be underestimated. As they are rather fast on their feet, it allows them to quickly close in on the player to attack more frequently. Combined with the occasion that they can fire homing missiles to the player, it is advisable to avoid staying in one place at all times. If the player is forced to engage a Revenant in close combat, the super shotgun works best, as two solid blasts at point blank range will instantly take them out. The chainsaw is also powerful but quite risky, as the aggression Revenants possess can either allow them to fire a missile at close range, or even resort to a powerful punching blow on the player.

While a single Revenant overall presents itself as a moderate threat to the player, they can be more dangerous when coming together in groups. This is especially true on on higher difficulties, as they are often found in large groups in the open. Fortunately, the Revenants possess a significantly high pain chance, making them pretty vulnerable when taking under heavy fire, as they are not able to instantly retaliate. Repeating weapons like the chaingun and the plasma gun can generally make short work on Revenants for this reason. The plasma gun shines greatly when confronting them in group as the weapon's high rate of fire and large plasma bursts will ensure that multiple Revenants get hit at once.

While the Revenant's tracking missiles can pose as a threat, players can utilize this with their higher speed to lure it's missiles in hitting other demons, thus allowing the Revenant become a target for the other monsters. The Revenant presents itself as a moderate contributor in monster infighting. It is able to hold it's own against the lesser enemies such as the former humans, Imps, Demons, and sometimes Cacodemons, but it will occasionally fall if facing against the likes of a Hell Knight and other monsters beyond that. A large force of Revenants can be effortlessly outmobbed by bosses like Spider Mastermind and Cyberdemon.

Data





 * 1) These tables assume that all calls to P_Random for damage, pain chance, impact animations, backfire checks, and smoke trails are consecutive. In real play, this is never the case: counterattacks and AI pathfinding must be handled, and of course the map may contain additional moving monsters and other randomized phenomena (such as flickering lights). Any resulting errors are probably toward the single-shot average, as they introduce noise into the correlation between the indices of "consecutive" calls.
 * 2) Assumes that direct hits are possible, which does not occur in any stock map.
 * 3) Hardcoded exception to infighting negates damage (excepting indirect damage caused by exploding barrels).
 * 4) Assumes that the target is 196 units away. The approximation of consecutive P_Random calls is particularly shaky in the case of a Revenant's missile: not only does the total number of calls depend on the flight time of the missile (via the smoke puffs), but the absolute gametic value at launch determines whether the missile is guided or not, and that in turn is highly dependent on how far the Revenant walks between attacks.

Appearance statistics
In classic Doom, the Revenant is first encountered on these maps:

The IWADs contain the following numbers of Revenants: