Spear Weapons and Throwing

I'd love to see throwing weapons and spears introduced. Short spears would be a dex/str weapon that would apply to skills generally used with one handed swords, claws, and daggers. In order to throw, however, you'll require a special new kind of belt called the Bandolier Belt that allows throwing of spears as well as daggers and one handed axes. This does a few things: 1, it allows more build diversity by hybridizing ranged with melee; 2, we see more physical ranged potential without relying on bows or wands. I'd love to try a dual wield marauder throw build and I bet plenty of D2 barbarian fans would, too.

The spears themselves would feature a few various unique innates. There might be a bleeding proc innate, an armor penetration innate, a critical multiplier innate, or maiming innate to name a few. All physical damage and appropriate one-handed damage nodes would apply to both melee and ranged attacks, but melee damage would not apply to thrown and projectile damage would not apply to melee. Certain Bow and Wand skills would gain Thrown so they can be used while throwing. Certain melee skills would also gain Thrown, or have Throw specific equivalents for simplicity's sake (e.g. Dual Strike, Double Strike, both would make great candidates).

Spectral Throw already exists, and Frost Blades is pretty much the "throwing knife" type skill.

Don't think a "throwing spear" type thing would really change nything.

Yes, those skills exist, but the idea here is to bring out new builds rather than just a couple of skills. Throwing weapons that you can then use in melee would be a pretty major addition to the game, more than any we've had in any recent memory, as far as build potential and the like is concerned. It would be pretty major content IMO and just having the spears anyway would be a neat addition.

It would be great if GGG implemented these into the game. Would require a lot of work though and must have some kind of positive effect on the game, rather than just another bunch of weapons to use.

They would need something unique that other items don't offer. I guess spears could have the longest weapon range plus a chance to cause bleeding. Not sure what advantage you would have with throwing weapons though...would depend on the type, javelin or knives? Both would have different characteristics. Could throw Jav and have it pierce where as knives could be thrown like EK (as default attack).

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CPTBRUMBL3Z wrote:

I'd love to see throwing weapons and spears introduced. Short spears would be a dex/str weapon that would apply to skills generally used with one handed swords, claws, and daggers. In order to throw, however, you'll require a special new kind of belt called the Bandolier Belt that allows throwing of spears...

That's where I stopped reading. If you want to gate such mechanic behind a specific unique than it's and instant NO from me.

I put this idea in the same category as the following:
Change "Staff" to "Spear", "Polearm" & "Staff"
Change "Bow" to "Crossbow" & "Bow"
Change "Mace" to "Flail" & "Mace"


It's detail that (while really cool) I think we're a few years past the point they could add.
I think the best we could hope for today would be a unique or two themed that way. A staff that has spear-looking art and really lends itself to a ST build. Maybe has the following modifiers:
Grants lvl18 Spectral Throw Skill
Projectiles from Spectral Throw do not return (or something like that, I'm not good with words.)

We need spears!