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• This ability spawns 10 crabs per second that will do their respective colour's damage and can crit.
• The swarm does not spawn an AppX crab if you have it, only regular coloured crabs.
• Even though the crabs are black (shadow!) they are still coloured.
• Picking a talent highlights that colour with a swirling graphic. The rest of the swarm remains as is.
• Each level of the ability multiplies the damage that the swarm crab will do.
• As of this writing, the individual coloured swarm crabs do not trigger coloured genes. Specifically Emerald Strand and Garnet Strand do not work with the swarm. This has been confirmed with AppX as intentional behaviour, not a bug.
• The gene Midas Swarm will give you 2% of reptile gold each time one of the swarm lands a hit.
• The mutation Verdant Wings Pincers cuts its cooldown in half.
• The mutation Scythe Carapace increases the duration. If you have the cooldown mutation, you need level 190 Scythe Carapace for "permanent shadow swarm" (total cost 265051 DNA + unlock).

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When it's good

Lower levels when your Amethyst crabs might outdamage the other two colours.

Commentary

Dodge is pretty much worthless. 100% critical damage bonus sounds good on paper but it doesn't mean they will crit for double damage. In Crab War language, 100% extra crit damage translates into a 5x multiplier. So if your amethyst crabs normally have a 200x multiplier, the amethyst swarm crabs will have 205x.

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When it's good

Lower levels when your Emerald crabs might outdamage the other two colours

Commentary

Crit rate is easy to get past 100% without even trying hard, so the bonus 15% doesn't matter. As with Amethyst, the 50% crit damage sounds nice until you figure it's only adding 2.5x. So if your emerald crabs normally have a 200x multiplier, the emerald swarm crabs will have 202.5x.

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When it's good

Any level when your Garnet crabs might outdamage the other two colours. Current end game is all about garnet

Commentary

25% damage bonus sounds nice on paper but if you consider your garnet crab has over 8000% damage bonus after all evolutions are picked, adding 25% to that doesn't do much (it's not 25% of 8000%). Damage to boss, having been fixed with the 1.3 patch, is what makes this ability shine.

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Which Talent Should I Choose?

Garnet Swarm across the board, but only because of the Dmg to Boss bonus. Since they fixed it, this multiplier actually works, and you can only get garnets to 57% max bonus through crab evolutions. This would raise that to 82% which is not shabby.