[:1]Has been posted.
http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/com...-witch-doctor/
A quote from the skills coverage, minus the links and images:
Quote:
Summon Zombie Dog
Tier One
Description: The Witch Doctor summons a zombie dog to aid him. Can have up to X zombie dogs out at a time.
The WD�s Mongrels have been seen in every gameplay movie, including the Arena footage from this year, so there�s not too much mystery about them. They do move oddly; they�re not very dog-like, except in the shape of their heads. They�re actually more like bipeds walking on all fours; they seem to have four arms, rather than four legs, and they lurch and creep along, sort of spider-like, rather than bouncing up and down like a quadruped. They move much more quickly than you expect also, in a sort of speed-walker way. They don�t look like they�re running, or trying very hard, but they get there quickly.
Not that their appearance of gait is of any real game importance, but it gives them a weird, unnatural vibe, which is nice. They look skinned; like they�ve been turned inside out.
I did not note the number of points in each of the WD�s 3 starting skills, but it�s possible that this one had 5, since there were three dogs available, just like there were for the WD in the Arena demo. And since the skill description lists the number of dogs as a variable based on skill points, and the Arena WD had 5 points in all of his skills� could be. Poison Dart and Zombie Charger were both quite weak un-runed, so if either of those had five skill points in it, they weren�t doing anything real impressive.
There�s no telling how the Mongrel stats have changed (or not) since last year. I can say that they were more effective, offensively. Last year they couldn�t kill anything, and I was regularly annoyed by their tendency to get locked into combat with some last, lone, unimportant enemy, like a Desert Wasp. �A� for effort and all, but I often found my WD without minions as he ran forward to the next battle, because all 3 of my dogs were back two screens, scratching uselessly at some monster I hadn�t cared enough about to go back to finish off.
It was often faster to summon new ones than to run back to find the current batch. Bad dogs. Bad dogs! You are all very bad dogs!
This year that never happened. The mongrels were more able to damage enemies, and their AI seemed to have been tweaked to prioritize proximity to the Witch Doctor over endlessly swiping at irrelevant monsters. I saw them finish off the last zombie on screen a number of times, and I don�t recall ever having to summon new ones simply because the old ones had gotten stuck or lost around some corner of the dungeon. That speaks to their pathfinding as well, since the dungeons in this year�s Blizzcon PvM demo were made largely from narrow corridors and were quite windy and full of sharp corners and obstacles.
As for their durability, they died pretty often. I had to summon up new dogs pretty often, and during an early boss battle I went through maybe 8 or 10 dogs. That was partially my fault; I�d run forward as soon as the demo loaded, rather than taking the time to sort my inventory and try runestones in my starting skills. Thus when I rounded the first corner and came to a small room that was in the starting layout of the Halls of Agony every time, but with different/random contents, and it turned out to hold a nest of Unburied, I was not prepared for a boss battle. So it was largely the dogs holding off the half dozen massive Unburied, while I spit my puny un-runed Poison Darts and tried to use the very short range Zombie Chargers.
The runestone effects I had available on Mongrels weren�t real impressive. I could add to their damage or up their hit points with the runes in my possession. I went with the +damage, and it made a difference, but they weren�t exactly murderous; more like �slightly less reluctant to land the killing hit on enemies my spells had already slivered.�
Zombie Charger
Tier Two
Description: A reckless, suicidal zombie deals X-X poison damage to all enemies in its way.
This skill has a cool concept, but that�s largely window dressing. The skill could be described as �short range poison plume� and it would work exactly the same. You summon the Zombie, which runs straight forward 2 or 3 steps, dissolving as it moves and leaving a sort of AoE cloud of gas. Anything in its path gets bathed in poison, but it doesn�t go very far, the poison isn�t a gas that lingers to infect other monsters, and there�s nothing about the zombie delivery system that has any real game effect.
It�s hard to use, since it has so little range; it�s hardly more than melee distance, and doesn�t work at the usual range a player assumes, a few paces behind the front line where the Mongrels are tanking. You have to learn to stand closer, almost at melee range to get any real effect from the skill. It�s not like a poison bolt, where as long as it gets to the enemy the full damage is done. The zombie doesn�t actually hit anything; it�s not a projectile. It�s just passes through them, trailing poison. So enemies it passes over and through take a lot of damage. Enemies it just barely gets to only receive a little splash of damage that hardly registers.
I didn�t rune this one since I didn�t like it, and since my rune options weren�t very good. I did not have the rune that yielded the infamous Zombie Bears, though that one sounds like fun.
I could imagine this skill becoming fairly useful with much increased range (it would basically be a slow-motion version of the Amazon�s Poison Javelin, minus the javelin and the lingering clouds of poison). Or if it had a homing property, or if the zombie itself had an attack, like it grabbed the targeted enemy and dealt huge poison damage. At the starting state, it was nearly useless, though. Easily the least helpful of the skills on any starting PvM character.
Poison Dart
Tier Three
Description: Fires a deadly poison dart that deals X-X poison damage and an additional X-X poison damage over X seconds.
The main attack skill that the WD started with, this one was also disappointing while un-runed. It�s pretty much what you�d think; a tiny green projectile that deals impact damage and some DoT to the target. The dart moves quickly through the air so it�s got good accuracy, but the casting (blowing) animation is very slow. Lift the pipe, squat down into the shooting stance, fire, stand back up again, repeat. This results in a poor DPS, even though the actual dart isn�t terrible.
This one was greatly improved by the runestone, as much as any skill I used at Blizzcon. I had two runes (don�t remember which ones). One would up the damage of the dart. I didn�t use that one. The other gave me multiple darts per blow, and I went with it and was greatly impressed. Just the level 2 rune gave me 4 shots, which were fired in rapid succession. It wasn�t like Strafe from D2; all 4 darts went at the same target, and they were fired one after the other, considerably extending the time my WD spent down in that crouching, blowing position *cough* But the darts were (apparently) the same damage, and since it had been taking me 2 or 3 shots each to kill monsters, with the runestone the skill was able to kill everything below a boss in a single �shot.�
The DoT wasn�t much changed, but the actual dart hits were the majority of the damage, and with the rune they were quadrupled. I soon learned to fire at monsters that had another monster behind them, if possible. The first 2 or 3 would almost always get me the kill, which meant that the 3rd and/or 4th shot would hit something behind the initial target. This skill was awesome in narrow hallways against crowds or lines of monsters, and I much enjoyed mowing them down, machine gun style.
This one could be really fun with a lvl 7 skill rune, assuming that granted 8+ darts right in a row. It would be kind of risky to use in some situations, because the Witch Doctor would be motionless for a second or two, like a Bowazon with high level Strafe back in the D2C twenty-shot days. But the damage to the target would be awesome. This one looked like a quality boss-killer, and the full-screen range was another big selling point, since most of the WD�s spells have fairly short range.
Firebats
Tier Four
Description: A swarm of fiery bats burn enemies in front of you for X fire damage per second.
At level 10 I surveyed the skills, and since I�d pretty well tested out Poison Dart, I went for another attack skill. In retrospect I wish I�d tried one I haven�t seen in action.
* Haunt is supposed to be all new graphically.
* Corpse Spiders is improved with new rune effects (Bashiok said that one makes a giant spider that protects the baby spiders).
* Sacrifice I�d only tried in the Arena, and was curious to see how well it worked against monsters.
* Soul Harvest was changed from a nova-like mana stealing spell to a buff that boosts damage based on the number of enemies in range, and I�d like to see how the visual for that works and how the spell improvement was conveyed to the player.
* And most of all� what do the Fetish summoned by Hex look like? And can they really turn enemies into chickens?
Sadly, I didn�t try any of those. Instead I put a point into Firebats, a spell that�s very easy to understand and that I�d used extensively in the last two demos. Fail. (I blame the demo time limit. The 15 minute timer contributes to rash, thoughtless decisions since you know you�ve got so little time to experiment that you don�t want to waste any of that time reading hover descriptions.)
Firebats was informative, at least. The spell�s range and damage were both much less than when I used it last. The bats hardly flew further than Zombie Charger could run, and the damage was not very good. Even when I moved close enough for the winged rats to reach the enemy, not a whole lot happened. Happily, I had a rune left, it promised to add damage and range to the bats, and did it ever. To the point that I�ll put Firebats in with Poison Dart and Magic Missile as the skills that were most improved by skill runes.
There are limitations on that statement. I could only try 3 or 4 skills per character, there were no runes enabled for the DH or Monk, and I could only try the 2 or 3 runes I had/found on each character. But that said, Firebats was greatly improved by the rune. The range more than doubled, to a bit more than half the screen. The damage looked like it at least doubled also, though the much greater range was far more useful since it put multiple more enemies in range of the constant DoT damage.
It even looked better with the rune; more bats flew our, giving it a fuller, thicker, more lustrous visual effect. I could call it the Pantene rune, at least for Firebats.
The other interesting thing about this skill was the firing mechanism. You couldn�t click it. If you did nothing would happen. Literally; sometimes one bat would squeak out, but usually not even that. The spell dealt very good DoT, but you had to hold down the mouse button to let the bats flow forth. It took a second or two for the full flow to get going, and once it did the damage was great, but you had to commit to using it.
This made the skill not so good against single targets, since it was slow to start dealing damage, and when it did the damage was spread over a wide area. Sledgehammer for an ant.
It was awesome against big groups, though. Easily the most powerful skill I used in the entire demo, in terms of total damage dealt. Once I had it with the rune effect the demo became almost pointless, it was so easy. I�d just follow my Mongrels, get into position once they found some monsters, and start hosing out the bats. The shape of the flock is like a slice of pie (mmm, tasty bat pie!) and anything in that area takes heavy DoT.
The damage seemed to be evenly-spread over the whole area; I was able to kill 10 monsters as quickly as 2, and I was soon doing some herding; running past the Mongrels once they locked up with the first targets, to try to lure in a few more monsters. Once I took up my firing position behind the Mongrels it was all over in a few seconds, no matter how many monsters were in range.
The bats didn�t chew through bosses quite as quickly, of course, but they didn�t take much longer. The WD was one of the characters that I finished the whole demo with, and with Firebats and Mongrels even the ending battle against The Warden was easy. I ran to the center of the dungeon to get him to spawn, and when I heard his voice and the quest icon went off, I ran back down one of the four paths, let my Mongrels cover the approach of the Ghouls, and just stood behind them, decimating the enemy horde as soon as they drew into range. Even The Warden didn�t last long, and I don�t think I even had to summon any more dogs, though one or two of my pack of three died before the fight ended.|||Unless something dramatic happens in balancing between now and release it sounds like runes are going to be the defining element when it comes to skills. Although that was to be expected I had hoped that pouring points into a skill would make it effective on its own.
You make it sound like starting a new untwinked character is going to be a real bore. Skills are underpowered and you practically need a rune before something fun happens. Add to that the restrictions on skills and a new character has lots of incentive to level as fast as possible.|||Probably. But you'll find runes very early on; by level 6 or 8 you'll have a few of the lowest level ones, so new chars will be trying them out and switching them around right from the start. Or so it seems...
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