Dark Swarm...What does it do exactly?

I used dark swarm on buildiings, air units, ground units, it doesnt seem to do anything!?!?

Does it actually have a function?

P.S. How do you hotkey groups/buildings?

 

Dark swarm blocks every missile attack within it.

And you can create groups by pressing ctrl and a number, after that you only need to press the number to select the units in that group.

 

Whoa whoa whoa... slow down... You're a Zerg player?

Dark Swarm limits the ability of ranged units to attack targets. Within Dark Swarm only melee units have any effect.

You can hotkey buildings by clicking on it and then hitting control 1, 2, 3, etc.... Or by selecting a group of units and selecting control 1, 2, 3, etc...

Welcome to the forums.

 

Darkswarm covers a 6x6 area, where it prevents ground units under it within that AoE from taking any damage from ranged attacks.

Anything not covered in the above sentence are basically exceptions. Darkswarm covers ground units, not air units or buildings. It blocks out damage from ranged attacks, not melee, splash, or spells. It doesn't matter if the ranged attack comes from outside of the darkswarm or from within, it only matters if the target ground unit receiving the attack is within the 6x6 AoE of the darkswarm. The effect of the darkswarm applies universally, not just to your own units.

So basically, darkswarm is used as a protective barrier for your own ground units against enemy ranged attacks. But keep in mind that if you are careless, an opponent can move his ground units into the AoE of your darkswarm and receive the same protection against ranged attacks. So for instance, if a zealot enters your darkswarm and you only have hydralisks inside, the zealot could deal damage to your hydras but your hydras will be unable to deal any damage to the zealot. Another trivial fact is that units that deal ranged splash will only deal the splash portion of the damage from their ranged attack, this means if you only have one unit in a darkswarm siege mode tanks will do no damage to it.

I hope this helps.

 

Wow remy, that was perfectly clear.. I didn't know about splash... thanks a lot.

 

A lot of epeople don't know the effects of Dark Swarm, which why almost no one uses it when they get Defilers: they think Plague is the deadliest ability. (Of course, it is really embarrassing to Dark Swarm a bunch of enemies when you meant to Plague them >_<

Take a look at the abilities of all of the spellcasters: in just about every case, the ones that don't do damage are actually more dangerous than the ones that do.

 

Dark Swarm is a fantastic tactic for massing with ground units it is almost unstoppable for masses Hydralisk/lings is under the Dark Swarm

But don't do Dark Swarm against your Zerg opponent or else it would be a non-stop war!
By the way Remy i didn't know the Dark Swarm also works on other races, does it really work on other races excluding the Zergs?

 

It works on all the races, which is why the enemy can quickly turn the tables if you're careless and/or your opponent pays attention to micromanagement.

 

Ah i see thanks for the info! (starts to play SC and started to be careless with the Dark Swarm by accident)
OH NO!!!! guys guess what!! i just accidently did the Dark Swarm carelessly how stupid of me!

 

I've never really used Dark Swarm, nor defilers in general, was just too awkward with them, so all this info is good to know. For a while, I thought DS was a sort of inverted version of that corsair spell. :-\

 

Unlike siege tanks, firebats can deal damage to lone targets under darkswarm btw.

Plague is also an extremely useful defiler spell, although most of the time you don't really use it for immediate results in the heat of battle. It is good against Protoss units which have higher life expectancies and irrecoverable HP. But the carrier is the only Protoss unit that you can see the full potential of plague on.

Since plague goes for 300 damage over a relatively long period of time, buildings make very good candidates as plague targets. Protoss buildings have large portions of irrecoverable HP, which you can let plague eat away at while you hack away the shield portion, or just leave the weakened buildings to be easily taken out later. Terran buildings on the other hand self-destruct on their own once you drop them down to red HP(1/3), strategic use of plague carries an added annoyance factor vs Terran because it can not simply be ignored.

Another useful application of plague is vs Protoss players that go for hard push of corsair + DT combo. I'm talking about the ones that come a bit later but bring a ton, putting it all on the line to get the GG out of you. With a whole mass of corsairs raping your overlords it is often hard to micro the ovies to provide detection on the DTs raping you on the ground. Even if you micro ovies well, with enough corsairs it can still be hard, as the ovies will be killed very quickly near the frontlines. If you have plague handy, it's one way to counter a large scale DT+corsair combo, or just cloak in general. Since getting your own cheap Zerg units caught in the spell or the high energy cost of 150 are not concerns for you, it's a good decloaking tool to use in a pinch against DTs, wraiths, or arbiter cloaking field.

 

Excellent points about the application of defilers, Remy.

But all the points you mentioned are exactly why I use them so heavily. As soon as my hive appears the first building I build is a defiler's mound. Then I build accordingly to either ultralisk den against Protoss or greater spire against Terran.

Zerg is so adaptable late game that it makes me cry! :-D Just gotta wear down both opponents.

I'm a victor of attrition.

 

@ Remy, ensnare is also useful in that last situation as it reveals cloaked units, and i think it doesnt need to be researched (im not much of a zerg player so im not sure). and you have to get a queen nest anyways to get to tier 3.

 

Actually, ensnare does need to be researched, although obviously it can be researched earlier. I would consider ensnare to be a backup ability at the stage of game that Remy is talking about. Plus there are corsairs about so you're probably going to lose the Queen in the attempt.

Of course, Ensnare is cheaper, as is the Queen, and it costs less mana.

 

A great strategy with dark swarm is to form a corridor of dark swarms by consuming zerglings to get more energy and then moving all of your melee units to the front. It's great against siege tanks and photon cannons.

One of the best moves I ever saw with a defiler came when I was playing a game (as toss). I had a bunch of troops massed together, preparing to be used as an assault group. I was playing with a terran friend against a zerg player and a terran player. A defiler pops up, plagues my troops (I managed to kill it). I couldn't heal the units (ah, life before still my terran friends medics ) and so I left them there for a little bit. Health all when down to 1 and then suddenly a Sci Vessel appeared EMPed my troops and like 5 marines took out my entire force. I was completely taken by surprise and (clearly) lost the game.

 

While what you say is true in that ensnare could be used the same way as plague to decloak units, I was speaking under the premise that you don't have queens(and certainly haven't researched ensnare) available.

Zerg players generally do not ride queen tech or make queens at higher level play. While the usefulness of the queen and its abilities is certainly debatable(for my opinion on that, you can read my Units That Sucked thread, as well as various other threads where I expressed my thoughts on the queen), it's hard to see as something that's worth delaying defiler tech over. For every second that you save on getting defiler tech, it is undoubtedly that much more beneficial to the Zerg. While a decision to invest in queen tech instead(thus delaying defiler tech) will remian as "debatable."

 

um... i heard this being said before and i'm just going to clarify... spells and splash still hit anything in swarm. so that means firebats, siege tanks, and storms will still afftect anything in the dark swarm.
also burrowed units take no damage in swarm. even from splash.

 

Remy, don't you need the queen building to upgrade to the hive? Then you at least have to get the building to get up to tier 3 and the defiler. It's true I don't often encounter the queen and really don't like it, but I thought that you did at least have the capacity to build them when you got to tier 3.

 

Yeah, but getting the building is different from getting the actual unit. If you intended to get the queens, you would have to research all the abilities, which in my opinion aren't all that useful when compared to the Defiler's.

 

I agree that defilers are way better (for my style of game play), but it's not like it's a huge step to research one or two abilities (do they come with ensnare? I don't believe so, but I may be wrong). It's a much larger step to then buy the building for the defiler and research all the abilities.