The two sides of Irk

[Val-Tur]

Lately there have been a few posts complaining about Irk. Some say OMG its impossible to kill, and others - meh not that bad. To make things easy on my key farming, I took my peace mage. The first Irk was a bit tough, but after 3 or 4 minutes of EV's with some energy bolts he went down - no brain. I thought, ok, that is doable. The second Irk - holy crap. Not only could I barely dent his hp, but he magically seemed to heal what little damage I did in a few seconds of him oblitterating my 2 EV's. After many attempts, I simply gave up trying and had to resort to taking him to the fairies at that entrance.

For many of the ML named, there are average and super versions of them. Swoop and Miasma are this way. Throw in the changeling template on a tough version and it can be a lot of trouble.

 

[OxAO]

Some Irks are very hard some are not that bad. I am not sure why.
I bard the spiders onto the Irk then throw EV's.

a Sampire can take the Irk if it is only the irk on him. I doubt a normal fighter could.

 

[Connor_Graham]

I've never seen a "super" Swoop or Irk. Miasma yes, but that's the only creature I've seen that has one. Something to remember about Irk is that the resists on it change every time it spawns, with it's 2nd highest changing between each incarnation.

 

[Shelleybean]

I always wondered about this. Isn't there a theory that the named monsters spawn as paragon versions and are harder to kill? It seems true of Miasma and perhaps Thrasher.

 

[[JD]]

ive never seen a super swoop or a swoop with a chest. paragon versions of monsters can have chests on them. miasma chests attest to that. do you ever find chests of irk on his corpse? if so, it's a paragon irk you encountered. if you have 110 lore you can also lore creatures and see if their hp etc is substantially higher than normal. miasma has a hp range of 300 - 2000 hp from what i've read. the 2000 hp versions are more than likely paragons...

 

[Val-Tur]

ive never seen a super swoop or a swoop with a chest. paragon versions of monsters can have chests on them. miasma chests attest to that. do you ever find chests of irk on his corpse? if so, it's a paragon irk you encountered. if you have 110 lore you can also lore creatures and see if their hp etc is substantially higher than normal. miasma has a hp range of 300 - 2000 hp from what i've read. the 2000 hp versions are more than likely paragons...

I have never found a chest on Irk or Swoop. I have fought Swoop beyond count (probably near 1000 or so) using the same template and tactics. And I have noticed that occasionally he gets into a *super* mode (for lack of a better term) where you simply cannot hit him with 45% + HCI and he will rip you a new one for a number of rounds. He can occasionally send even a top end sampire running for the zone to regroup.Then the next spawn he goes back to normal. I really do not think it is a RNG problem either.

I think there is a definitely some randomness in their hp/stats/skills that comes together occasionally to make them quite a bit more challenging.

 

[pgcd]

You won't find chests on Irk or Swoop because, as far as I can tell, they don't have treasure maps in their loot table. Since chests are the "upgrade" of treasure maps for paragons, I guess that would allow them to have an "enhanced" version without dropping chests.