Revenant doesn't spawn drones. It turns squares into drones by touching them, and big squares make big, heavy drones. With the right farming it fields the largest swarm in the game.
| Tier | 4 |
| Unlock level | 45 |
| Upgrades from | Shepherd |
| Barrels | 2 (cosmetic); drones come from absorbed squares |
| Absorbing | touch a square with your body or one of your square drones |
| Slot budget | 22 slots, plus 2 per Reload point (36 at 7 points) |
| Small square drone | costs 1 slot: 20 HP, 6 damage, 220 px/s, penetration 1, size 11 |
| Medium square drone | costs 2 slots: 60 HP, 16 damage, 200 px/s, penetration 1, size 19.8 |
| Large square drone | costs 3 slots: 140 HP, 40 damage, 175 px/s, penetration 2, size 33 |
| XP | absorbed squares give no XP; a new square spawns in its place |
| Stat labels | Drone Speed / Drone Penetration / Drone Damage replace the bullet stats |
| Health / movement | ×1 / ×1 |
Every number here is at 0 stat points, before the per-level health bonus and the per-level speed penalty that every tank gets. The automatic balancer can nudge a class's damage and health over time, so treat these as the roster's base values.
Revenant starts at 45 with no drones at all. Touch a square with your body and, if you have slots free, it turns into a drone on the spot. Your square drones do the same: any square they touch joins the swarm. Other shapes don't convert; your drones chip away at them like normal drones. Absorbing a square gives no XP, and the map spawns a replacement square.
The swarm is limited by slots, not by count. You have 22 slots, plus 2 for every Reload point. Small squares cost 1, medium squares cost 2 and large squares cost 3. So at 0 Reload you could hold 22 small drones, or 7 large ones, or any mix in between; at 7 Reload the budget is 36. The drones differ a lot. A large square drone has 140 HP, hits for 40 and has 2 penetration. A small one has 20 HP and hits for 6. Big drones are slower: 175 px/s against 220.
Control is the same as the rest of the Shepherd line. Hold fire to send the swarm to your cursor, let go to have it hunt within 400 px of each drone, right-click to repel. Letting go is how you farm: the drones seek out nearby shapes, and every square they reach becomes another drone.
A full Revenant swarm overwhelms almost anything that relies on a single target at a time. Large square drones take a lot of shooting to kill even with bullets doing double damage to drones, so slow snipers (Horizon, Nightveil) and single-shell classes (Cataclysm) can't keep up. It's strong in team modes where you can farm behind the front line and bring a wall of squares forward.
Its weak point is the start. Right after upgrading, or after a big fight, your swarm is empty and you have to farm squares to rebuild it, and your tank has no gun. High-volume guns (Octant, Fanblade, Deluge) shred small square drones. Caltrop's 64 body damage costs a drone over 5 penetration per hit, so even large drones last only a touch or two. Trap fields block and chip your swarm.
A 33-point build: Reload 7, Drone Damage 7, Drone Penetration 5, Drone Speed 5, Max Health 5, Movement Speed 4.
Shepherd leads to Revenant, Hivelord, Steward, Foundry, Dreadnought and Snarelord.
Revenant has the highest ceiling of the six. Its budget allows far more drones than Hivelord or Steward's 8, and its large drones are much tougher. The cost is time and dependence on the map: you need squares nearby, and you rebuild from nothing after losses. Hivelord and Steward refill on their own. Dreadnought refills constantly but its drones are tiny and short-lived.
Take Revenant if you're willing to farm and you have a quiet area with squares. Take Hivelord or Steward if you want a swarm that looks after itself.