Champion
Champions are higher quality versions of monsters, found alone or in small groups scattered throughout the world of Diablo 3. Champions are (generally) less powerful than bosses, but are much stronger than normal monsters, and spice up the play experience by presenting players with a greater challenge.
There are numerous types of champions, many of them repeating the champion varieties found in later versions of Diablo 2. See the champions information in the Diablo 2 section of this wiki for full details on those.
Diablo 3 Champions
Diablo 2 features five types of Champion monsters: Berzerker, Champion, Fanatic, Ghostly, and Possessed.
So far, three of those types (Champion, Fanatic, Possessed) have been seen in Diablo 3, along with one new type; Frenzied. It's not known how precisely the Diablo 3 versions emulate the Diablo 2 versions with the same names, but they seemed fairly similar to players who encountered them in the Blizzcon 2009 demo.
- Champions were like mini-bosses; much the same as the normal monsters of their type, but harder hitting, faster, and blessed with many more hit points.
- Fanatics were faster than usual. It's presumed they are similar to the Diablo 2 Berzerkers, who gained 100% more speed and 70% more Attack Rating.
- Frenzied were very fast but also took a long time to kill, unlike their D2 versions.
- Possessed took much more damage to finish off, though I don’t think they actually had 12x the hit points of their normal types, as they do in Diablo 2. If they added any more special bonuses I didn’t notice it during the combat.
In addition to their inherent Champion class bonuses, some of the Diablo 3 Champions spawned with boss modifiers as well. More testing will be required to figure out the rules for this; if some always get bonus modifiers, how randomly they are assigned, etc. These modifiers made the Champions considerably more difficult.
