Darts shoot small homing projectiles at low velocity that stick in the target and then explode. Damage and elemental effects occur not on contact, but when the projectile explodes. Dart projectiles will home in on any live targets which are within or even near the wielder's crosshairs, even over great distances. This makes them an excellent choice for taking on difficult to pin down or airborne foes. If no target is in the wielder's crosshairs then the Dart projectile will travel in a straight line and ricochet off of any inert surfaces it comes in contact with, though it may home in on a nearby enemy if it passes within range.
While Darts suffer from a reduced fire rate, lack of critical hit damage, and delayed damage on hit, the downsides are somewhat offset by the homing capability, as this ensures that virtually every shot will hit the intended target so long as their health bar was visible when the weapon was fired. This provides Darts with one of the most even and reliable damage-per-second ratings, even over long distances or in motion on agile enemies.
Darts operate very similarly to Spikers, offering delayed damage and an inability to score critical hits, but Spikers offer slightly increased rates of fire and faster projectiles, though projectiles lack the homing capability. Aside from rate of fire and homing, the main difference is that Spiker projectiles will stick to inert surfaces and then explode, while Dart projectiles will ricochet several times on them trying to find a target.
Notable Variants
Dahlminator – Unique pistol with fixed corrosive element
Wanderlust – Pearlescent pistol with bouncing homing projectiles and extremely low accuracy.
Notes
A non-elemental Dart
Maya'sCloud Kill effect will not trigger until the Dart's projectile has detonated.
The Dart projectiles' appearance and behavior closely matches those of the Needler weapon from the Halo series. The Spiker E-tech pistol also takes its name from another weapon in the same series.
Hyperion Darts and Spikers have a small chance of spawning without an elemental alignment due to an error in the parts list for Hyperion pistols. Projectiles shot with these variants will be a nearly invisible translucent white and will make a purple blast on detonation, inflicting explosive damage.
The error is caused by the "Alien" and "Alien_Homing" barrels being mistakenly included in the possible parts list for purple-rarity Hyperion pistols, which can spawn with or without an element. Purple-rarity pistols which spawn with them will be "upgraded" to E-tech rarity. This makes Hyperion E-tech pistols more common compared to other manufacturers, and also allows Butt Stallion to produce gemstone variants of them which are normally unavailable for E-Tech weapons.
Trivia
There are 24,064 regular variants of the Dart, plus 5,120 non-elemental variants.
