Poison Dart

Poison Dart is a Witch Doctor Tier 3 skill unlocked at level 6. It's a ranged attack in which the Witch Doctor blows a poisoned dart at the enemy, dealing initial poison damage and damage over-time.

Background

Diablo III Skill [e]
Poison Dart Active, 5 ranks
Used by:	Witch Doctor
Skill Description:
Fires a deadly poison dart that deals X-X poison damage and an additional X-X poison damage over X seconds.
Skill Details:
Type:	Direct Damage
Quantity:	Duration
Effect:	Direct
School:	Poison
Mana cost:	Unknown
Cast time:	Unknown
Duration:	None
Cooldown:	Unknown
Synergies:	Unknown
Requires:	N/A
Prereq of:	N/A

The Witch Doctor uses a blowpipe to fire a poison dart.

Skill Design

This low-level direct damage skill first appeared in 2010. The casting animation is fairly slow, but the projectile itself is very fast and accurate.

Skill Rank Table

Blowing darts.

• Rank 1: Fires a deadly poison dart that deals X-X poison damage and an additional X-X poison damage over X seconds.

Synergies

• None known.

Skill Rune Effects

The rune effects for Poison Dart were revealed at BlizzCon 2010 by Wyatt Cheng in the gameplay panel.

• Alabaster rune: A snake is fired out to bite the face of the enemy.
• Crimson rune: Substantial fire damage is added to the dart.
• Golden rune: Mana is recovered with dart hits.
• Indigo rune: Grants machine gun darts, allowing four (or more) to be fired in very rapid succession.
  • Rank one: Fires 2 darts.
  • Rank two: Fires 4 darts.
• Obsidian rune: Darted enemies are slowed.

Development

Poison Dart was revealed as a Witch Doctor skill in early August, 2010. A fan in the official forums proposed a dart gun weapon for the Witch Doctor, and got more than he bargained for in the reply:

Bashiok: Wow, pretty good guess. We have a new witch doctor skill called Poison Dart. Pretty much this.

It was first seen in Blizzcon 2010 and skill runes were also shown at this moment. It was one of the Witch Doctor's starting skills, and Flux obligingly wrote about it:[1]

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.

Media

You can find pictures in the Diablo III screenshot and picture gallery:

• Diablo III screenshots and pictures
• Poison Dart specific gallery contents

References

• BlizzCon 2010 Witch Doctor Hands-on Report