How to Swarm
How it Works
The idea of swarming is to kill a mass of light blue mobs that would gain you more experience than killing a dark blue mob solo, and ultimately to be faster than experience in a mediocre group. To do this, you need a few things. The first thing, is you must heal more than you take in damage obviously (or you would die of course). Reference the HEALING spells in the spells tab at the top for this. The second thing, you must have a way to kill mobs, as simple melee would be too slow, so look at the DAMAGE spells in the aforementioned spells tab. The nature of the swarm is that it will generally take nearly the same amount of time to kill 5 mobs as it would 20, but you have to be able to take the hits of the 20 to make this work.
I. Preparing for the pull
Before you pull you want to make sure you are all buffed up, including clickies if you have them. Make sure to watch for things that have worn off if you have already been hunting, especially your Vow line buff, thats one of the more important ones. If you ever read about shadowknight swarm kiting, you will notice how important AC is, so you want to pop everything you can that helps it out.
II. Pulling and the Early swarm Phase
Pulling is fairly straight forward, so I will combine it with the early phase, that is, the time when you have the most number of mobs and are taking the most damage, therefore its the highest risk period. I like to pull with Blood of the Devoted, because I can cast it once, and it will infect itself to the other mobs when i get to camp. Cast it on something, and then round up the appropriate number of monsters for you, depending on how many you can handle. Once you have enough, run to your camp, and if at all possible wedge yourself into a corner to limit the push they exert on you. Its a good idea to cast a promised healing spell on yourself before the train gets to you.
Once the group hits you, your main goal is not to be overwhelmed and die right off the bat. The promised heal should help, but you have to last until it lands, and then try to recast it right away. You want a Vow proc as soon as possible, so keep Yaulp up as well to increase your proc rate and only cast spells to keep yourself alive, so that you don't lose swings to proc from. As a backup, use the DA proc hammer if you have it until you have good control, as well as keeping several DA spells up too, I like to have at least 3, counting the AA, ready. Once your HoT procs, cast your ward line if you didn't get time to cast before the group got to you. Surviving the first point of the train is often the breaking point, so after that its smooth sailing usually. Try to cast a promised heal, followed by a DA if you are worried you are getting too low, and it will heal you while you are invul and have you ready at full when it fades.
III. Middle of the Swarm
Once you figure the perfect amount you can handle, this phase is simply waiting for melee proc from Vow, and Ward procs to beat down your swarm. If you can survive long enough for promised heals to land without having to go invulnerable, you are doing well. Use them if you have to, but try to save them for initial pulls and saving yourself when possible. Ward will still proc while you are invulnerable, so if the pull is tough and you have the DA hammer, just keep swinging it when it fades until the group is whittled down to a more manageable amount. You want to be able to do it without the proc as soon as possible though, so you can get the DPS from your vow strikes, which is considerably good for fighting light blues, as I proc about 3500 damage when it crits at level 81. Also you can use your summoned hammer pet, because if you go invul, they will agro the pet first and kill it easily.
IV. Finishing Up a Crowd
Once the first mob dies, the rest aren't far behind. This is important for two reasons, one being experience, the entire idea behind swarming (unless you are simply farming, then neither point matters to you most likely). Second is that every mob down, is less damage you are taking, and less you have to worry about dying. So it gets exponentialy easier as the time goes on, allowing you to focus more on finishing them off, and planning where to spend all your AA points!
One hassle for us clerics, is the very last mob. We are getting a majority of our dps here from defensive abilities, so when they start running it takes longer to kill that mob at 10% than it did several of his friends. This is a good place for the summoned pet again, as he can still put out the damage. Stuns work better than roots since every proc or ward strike will just break the root anyway. You can usually nuke the runner down without any major issues, and stuns don't hurt either.
