The @Diablo twitter feed coughed up another interesting tidbit today, about one of the Witch Doctor’s minion skills.
[BLUE][WIKI]Zombie dogs[/WIKI] are back in action with new effects granted by the skill [WIKI]runestone[/WIKI] system.—Diablo [/BLUE]
Aside from the fact that Mongrel remains a vastly better name for the [WIKI]Witch Doctor skill[/WIKI] and the creature(s) it summons, what might these rune effects be? Thanks to Jay Wilson at Gamescom and Bashiok more recently, we know quite a bit about the current effects of Runestones in Diablo III. Only Hydra has been fully detailed, and since every rune rune has at least 1 and often 2 (or more) wildcard effects that do whatever the devs thought would be coolest, there’s no predicting the full battery of rune effects for any skill. Let’s try some guesses for Mongrels, though.
- +damage. Almost every skill gets this from one rune, though it may change the skill’s form as well as boosting the damage output.
- Multistrike. More Mongrels per cast? Faster attacking Mongrels?
- Critical Strike bonus: This can cause more [WIKI]criticals[/WIKI], or trigger some other effect when crits are scored (for or against).
- Lowers spell cost: The Energy rune effect is mostly gone, and it’s generally a wildcard in skills now. Still, Summon Zombie Dog could be one skill for which this old property remains useful.
- Wildcard: Anything! The chief goal? Keeping the skills awesome, baby.
As Bashiok told me a couple of weeks ago, there’s a lot of “plug and play” experimentation going on with runestone testing, as this Mongrel example bears out. Not one of the 5 rune effects are obvious, when applied to the skill, and even the ones that seem the most straight forward still allow a lot of leeway in the application.
How about some wildcard Mongrel runestone guesses? Elemental damage is a good bet; the dogs could previously be enchanted with poison or fire by other [WIKI]Witch Doctor skills[/WIKI], and the runestones seem a good way to work that back in. Other rune effects might change their AI, making them much faster and/or more damaging. Or, since the best damage a Mongrel can deal is by dying in an explosive [WIKI]Sacrifice[/WIKI], perhaps one runestone could cause them to spontaneously Sacrifice themselves whenever they took a big hit, or took melee damage from multiple enemies, reached some set nearly-dead % of their hit points? The possibilities are countless. Add your own in comments.
