Bruiser Demon (Beastiary)

''You want to see how the "real" Baron of Hell looks? You got your wish... as now this is your death wish!"''

Overview
The Bruiser Demon is named after the bruiser brothers (barons of hell), that made their debut first in E1M8, the final map in the first episode of shareware episode of Doom. Bruiser Demon appears as dark orange-skinned, black-legged Baron, with glowing red eyes and black horns on his upper body.

Characteristics
By default, Bruiser Demon has 3000 hitpoints, although some wads may sets his health to a lower amount (in Stronghold and Zpack his health is 1500 hitpoints). Regardless of the amount of health, the Bruiser Demon is immune to splash damage from rockets, which makes Rocket Launcher less effective against him than other weapons commonly used in regular Doom wads. Bruiser Demon has three attacks: (1) a large, powerful, trailing fireball, which can be easily dodged; (2) a volley of seven to fourteen smaller fireballs, that are more difficult to avoid; (3) a floor-hugging barrage of exploding fire, in a small cone radius.

Tactical analysis
His ground explosion attack is very difficult to avoid in tight spaces and corridors, so if you are cornered in a trap or dead end, just pray that he won't use that attack at all. The floor attack can hit you behind objects, regardless of the ground level, so hiding behind walls is recommended. If there are no cover places, circlestrafe around Bruiser Demon like crazy. Recommended weapons to use: Super Shotgun, if you can use some cover, or energy weapons (Plasma Gun, BFG) if you are fighting Bruiser Demon in open space.

While ordinary Barons of Hell often pose lesser immediate threat despite their endurance, the Bruiser Demons are both very tough and very powerful, when it comes to their special attacks. Because of the floor barrages and fireball volleys, Bruiser Demons should always be your highest priority targets. Note that the damage from ground barrage counts as blast damage (against which Bruiser Demons are themselves immune). When killed, the body of Bruiser Demon will turn into ash.

Appearance in Zdoom
Bruiser Demons can be encountered in the following notable ZDoom-specific wads:

The Ultimate Torment & Torture (Armory of Pain boss fight)

Knee-Deep in Zdoom (recreation of the famous E1M8 boss fight)

ZPack - Random Maps for ZDoom

Stronghold - On the Edge of Chaos

In ScoreDoom, Bruiser Demon is one of the possible replacements of Baron of Hell.

Special Note
There is an purchaseable powerup in Stronghold called "Morph Device". The flavor on it says that the UAC scientists have finally deciphered the genome of a Bruiser Demon. Indeed, when you use the Morph Device, you will actually transform into a Bruiser Demon with over 999% health for a limited time and will be able to use any of the Bruiser Demon's 3 attacks (alternating between then with an alt-fire button). The downside of that form is that your movement speed will be drastically slowed, about the same as a Baron, and dodging attacks from enemies will be more difficult. Careful, because even with 999%+ health you can still be killed by large hordes of strong monsters that will assalut you base, and the ground barrage attack (which deals the most damage) will be ineffective against enemies that are immune to blast damage, such as other Bruiser Demons.