Latest revision as of 22:24, 30 June 2013

Several Hell Swarm attacking

Swarms are Animals.

The extreme temperatures of Aranoch drive many creatures into varying degrees of insanity. This holds true even for mindless insects. Coupled with demonic influence, large numbers of insects often swirl and twist into tight swarms. These swarms of stinging, biting, and sucking insects consume every living thing in their path. Swarming bugs are difficult to target and are resistant to most attacks. Swift to anger, they are not easily chased off. Their stinging attacks often drain stamina, making it all the more difficult to retreat from combat.

Swarms are tightly-knit packs of small, gnat-like insects. They are not dangerous, but can be difficult to kill and frustrating for melee characters to battle, thanks to their high physical resistance and stamina draining attacks. Conversely, characters with elemental attacks will find them quite easy to kill.

Exactly how a swarm of bugs can be injured by an arrow or melee weapon, how they all die at once, and especially how they carry items are mysteries yet to be resolved.

A type of Swarm, "Plague Bugs" are listed in the game files and on Blizzard's site, but are not activated and never actually appear, as of v1.11.

• All values are listed by difficulty level: Normal / Nightmare / Hell.

Subtypes[edit]

• Itchies
• Black Locusts
• Hell Swarm

Statistics[edit]

Only boss and champion Swarm can drop items. Regular swarm will only drop potions, most often mana pots.

• The TC/Rune drops listed are the highest Treasure Class/Rune Group a normal monster of that type can drop.
  • TC Champions and Bosses can sometimes drop from the next higher group.
  • The max TC/Rune possible may depend on which level a monster spawns in, and can be lower than the maximum. See the item calculators to ascertain precisely what a monster from a given area can drop.

Offense[edit]

Speed rates a monster's movement speed from 1-10.

Stamina Damage takes X damage directly from a character's stamina.

• Odds of Stamina Drain Attack on successful melee strike:
  • Itchies: 40%
  • Black Locusts: 60%
  • Hell Swarm: 90%
• Odds of bonus fire damage upon successful melee strike by Hell Swarm:
  • Nightmare: 25% chance.
  • Hell: 40%

Defenses[edit]

Life and mana can never be stolen from any type of Swarm.

• Drain Effectiveness tells what % of a character's mana and life steal apply to that monster. 100 is all, 0 is none.
• Chill Effectiveness tells what % of a character's cold length applies to the monster. 100 is all, 0 is no freeze/chill at all.

Resistances[edit]

All types of Swarm are physical immune on Hell difficulty, but they have low hit points and no resistance to anything else but lightning, so they're not difficult to kill with most types of elemental attack.

• Resistances over 99% are listed as immunities and monsters will take no damage from that type of attack.
• Immunities can be "broken" by skills that lower resistance, if the value drops below 99%. See the Resistances page for more details.