Poison Dart Revealed

Bashiok let on about a new WD skill, and while the info is pretty vague, at least it's something new. Here's a quote of my main page post, for longer term WD discussion:

A fan's forum post provoked Bashiok into a rare event; the reveal of a new Witch Doctor skill.


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A blowgun that you can buy different kinds of darts and also have different blowgun skills like a rapid shot and critical shot.

[BLUE]Wow, pretty good guess.

We have a new witch doctor skill called Poison Dart. Pretty much this.[/BLUE]






We saw 34 Witch Doctor Skills at last year's BlizzCon, and nothing like Poison Dart was among them. There's no telling where it is in the skill tree, now that the 3 skill trees have been combined/reformed, but this would clearly have been in with the Voodoo Skills, where all of the direct attack, mage-like spells were located.

Most (all?) of the WD spells available for use at BlizzCon last year were fairly slow-acting. Skull of Flame has to be thrown across the screen. Corpse Spiders and Locust Swarm have to swarm/crawl over the enemy. Plague of Toads have to hop their way there, Charged Bolt style. Fire Bats deal DoT, like Inferno. With magical attacks like those, something like Poison Dart, that shoots out a lot of quick poisoned projectiles, would be very useful, to mix up the speed of damage delivery and aid in nailing fast-moving enemies.

It'll be interesting to find out if this is a low, medium, or high level spell. A BB-gun, or a boss-killer? Personally, I envision it as a low/mid-level ability. I picture it quickly dealing draining poison damage, potentially to a number of targets, kind of like Strafe crossed with Teeth. The sort of attack that you'd use on lots of small enemies, to offset their health regen right at the start of a battle. Rather than some kind of mega killing attack that works against bosses.

|||If it's a spell, it sounds like a Melf's Acid Arrow sort of situation. Like a poison bone-spear for the necaholics.|||Those darn fetishes keep shooting those things at me - let's see how THEY like it! Hah!|||It sounds like Teeth, but with poison. My guess is that this will mean another DoT attack to the WD's arsenal. Probably a low level spell that you'll quickly never use again. People will probably pick another stronger DoT attack in its place.

I can't say that I'm impressed by this skill. It does sound like they simply adopted another Necro spell.

So far the direction the WD seems to take is DoT. The Wiz gets all the nifty DD spells while the WD is stuck with DoT and poor tanks to make sure monsters keep away while you play the waiting game. Hopefully the different DoT spells stack. It would be **** if only one DoT spell could affect a target at a time.|||Why the assumptions so far?

It would be a pretty darn cool skill if there were specific blow guns for the purpose of using it. I.e. a ranged weapon similar to a bow. This would solve all kinds of balance issues, and would help to encourage people to make specific builds around the dart guns.|||Why would you think DoTs wouldn't stack? Different origin damage over time abilities always stacked in Blizzard games.

Besides, hopefully Blizzard graduated out of "early level skills and late game skills" mentality.|||Quote:








Those darn fetishes keep shooting those things at me - let's see how THEY like it! Hah!




hahahaha thats what I first thought. Those damn annoying wimpy fetishes!|||Quote:








Why the assumptions so far?




Because that is what seems most logical to me. Blowguns aren't confirmed yet. This is the first of the Dart spells that we have heard about and it would be the very first weapon skill for the WD. It seems unlikely to me at this point that it will function like Poison Dagger. If it is not Poison Dagger than a Teeth variant seems pretty logical to allow people to fire pretty rapidly. The WD seems to be all about DoT via spells and minions. A direct damage weapon skill doesn't seem to fit this mold.




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Why would you think DoTs wouldn't stack? Different origin damage over time abilities always stacked in Blizzard games.




I don't know whether the DoT stacks or not. I hope it does because that is generally the only way to gain acceptable kill speed in DoT builds. Stack as much as you can and hope stuff dies before you get bored or killed.




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Besides, hopefully Blizzard graduated out of "early level skills and late game skills" mentality.




While I hope that you are correct, I'm not so sure that this will be the case. There will be respeccing so it doesn't matter if you pump all points in a low level skill. It can also be pretty hard to make sure that all spells are equally useful at all levels.

I'd really loved it if we could have taken Teeth in D2, invested 20 points and be about on par with a BS at 20 points. Hopefully they'll do this in D3, but there hasn't been any info on that subject AFAIK.|||I'd rip on this, but I don't want to make Mantis' sig too long to post.|||Quote:








I'd rip on this, but I don't want to make Mantis' sig too long to post.




I need to change it anyway.