Diablo 3 Wizard Guide

Here’s a brief look at the Wizard’s utility spells which is also revealed in this Wizards Guide to Spells which I believe would come in quite handy for more serious Diablo 3 gamers looking to perfect their Wizard.

Mirror Image. Summon two illusionary duplicates of yourself that last for 7 seconds and have 25% of your Life. The images may cast some of the same spells as you, but those spells deal no damage. It means your illusions are not going to be dealing damage, but they are going to be confusing to your Enemy.

Slow Time. Cool down 20 seconds. Invoke a bubble of warped time and space for 8 seconds, slowing the movement speed by 30% and attack speed of Enemies by 20%. This bubble also slows the movement of Enemy projectiles by 90%. This means, if you’re getting shot, you’ve got range attackers, archers, anything like that, this bubble of warped time, anything that comes towards you, you’re going to be able to easily dodge it. I mean, to a degree, you already can, but this is going to make it just so much easier to do, in addition to that slowing the movement and attack speed of Enemies.

Now, it doesn’t say anything about the range. Invoke a bubble of warped time and space for 10 seconds. What I don’t know about slowed time is whether it’s a bubble around you, or it’s a bubble in a location where it’s just location dependent, you drop down somewhere, you can use it defensively, offensively, no idea.

Okay, so, our next ability here is going to be Teleport. 15 Arcane Powers, 16 seconds, long cool down. Teleport through the ether to the selected location up to 35 yards away. The 35 yards away, I’m not sure of the exact distance on that. I haven’t gotten the distances down totally flawlessly here, but 35 yards seems like it should be pretty good.

It seems like with the Furious Leap, Barbarian jump skill, Diablo 3 barbarian guide says that this skill can actually go over obstacles. It seems like with Teleport you should  be able to go over obstacles as well, because you’re just going to a selected location. If that selected location is valid, you will appear there. I don’t know that for sure, but that’s my guess.

Energy Armor. Focus your energies, increasing your defense by 65%, lowering your Maximum Arcane Power by 20. lasts for 2 minutes. This is an Armor Spell, and only one Armor Spell can be active at a time. We’ve got a few Armor Spells: Ice Armor, Storm Armor or Energy Armor. Increasing your defense by 20% but lowering your Arcane Power by 20. I will explain these skills again in diablo 3 wizard guide, but these things look they are for a play style that I wasn’t expecting out of the Wizard and that I haven’t tested out on the Wizard.

Familiar. 20 Arcane Power. Summon a companion that will attack your targets for 20% weapon damage as arcane. This companion cannot be targeted or damaged by Enemies. The pet lasts for two minute. Unlike other pets this one has a hard expiration date, two minute, and then, on top of that, it can’t be damaged. You can’t lose it. So this is just going to be something where, if you are using this, you want to make sure that you’re refreshing it every two minute. The 20 Arcane Power is pretty low, so hopefully that’s going to be a pretty good addition.

I hope you enjoyed this little walk through of the Wizard, the Passive and Active Abilities. The Active skills, just one quick thing. You only have two when you start. You get a third one, I believe, at Level 9, possibly Level 6. I’m not exactly sure when I got that third one, the third slot available to me, but, obviously, 12, 18, and 24. By Level 24, you have all six active skills available at a given time.

Let’s go ahead and try one thing. Leki other classes, we cannot keep our Buffs up if we switch the ability out of Hot Bar For example, let’s put on Ice Armor, which is a Buff for 2 minutes, but when I switch that ability out, and the Buff does not stay active. It looked like, very briefly, when we were looking at diablo 3 demon hunter guide, like the Debuff Marked for Death did stay active even after we switched it out, and, so, I’m not exactly sure what the mechanics are here, but certainly these 2 minute Buffs, one minute Buffs, from some of these Classes, if you try to switch that out, basically you can’t play the system. You can’t get a Buff out and then switch the ability after you’ve buffed yourself to something else to your benefit, because the Buff will immediately expire if you try to do that.

So, anyway, that’s how this all works. I hope you’ve enjoyed this little look at the Wizard. The Wizard is a lot of fun to play. I believe at this point I’ve covered the play throughs and the abilities of the Passive and Active skills for Diablo 3 Wizard. I hope you enjoyed this. Thank you!

Passive skills may seem unimportant, however they do make a huge difference if used correctly. This is all revealed in a guidebook I recently bought of KillerGuides – Diablo 3 Wizard Guide

In this post, I’m going to be covering the Passive for Diablo 3 Wizard. Arcane Power is a fast-regenerating resource used for the Wizard’s Secondary Spells. So, that’s the main thing that we’re going to be using, and there are going to be a few Skills that involve it. In fact, there’s one very early on, which is our very first, which I’ll actually recover some every time we use the Health Globe.

Okay, before going any further, before going into the actual Skills, let’s go ahead and cover how the Skills work.

Passive Skills. You can have three Passive Skills available to you at any given time. However, each slot that you have, they unlock every ten levels. So, at Level 10, you have your first one. Level 20, you have your second one. Level 30 you have your third one. You can have up to three by the time you’re in Level 30, and you can just switch them in and out. What I mean by switching them in and out is, you’re not making a permanent decision here. This system is all the same in every Diablo 3 class.

The first one is Power Hungry. Gain 30 Arcane Power whenever you are healed by a Health Globe. This means that any time that I hit Health Globes, or somebody near me hits one of these Health Globes that I’m affected by it, I’m going to gain 30 Energy back, or 30 Arcane Power back.

Diablo 3 Wizard Guide quickly span and run out of Arcane Power while activating powerful skill. If I’m getting Health Globes, which are pretty common from Groups and Mobs. They can drop out from almost anything, or anything that I’m aware of. They’re pretty common. You would get Mana back. I don’t think it would be too often that you would actually be getting enough Mana back to sustain this, but it will help, depending on the situations you’re in.

Temporal Flux. Whenever you deal Arcane Damage, Enemies are slowed by 30% for 2 seconds. This is just a Slow that activates when you’re dealing Arcane Damage. I’ll give you a couple of examples here. I have used Shock Pulse and Electrocute, which deal lightening Damage than Magic Missile, an arcane damage skill, because it is about ten times more fun and Electrocute and Shock Pulse are so effective at what they do.

Glass Cannon. Increases all Damage done by 15% but decreases armor and resistances by 10%. This is interesting, because you get a penalty for using this, and you get that penalty at a very early stage. I found in diablo 3 witch doctor guide that the witch doctor has passives skills that have penalties attached to him, but usually deeper, and usually not like this. It is more substantial, like you lose a cool down, but it costs X amount, like a substantial amount more energy. As I recall, on the diablo 3 monk guide, you got like a 6 second cool down kick and several other abilities. They lost their cool down but you paid 50% more on your energy cost using them. Now, Glass Cannon, here, it increases all damage done by 20%. That’s fantastic. If you don’t get hit, it’s wonderful bonus. Obviously, that’s a decision to be made situationally, depending on how you are playing.

Prodigy. Every time you cast an Academic Spell, you gain 4 Arcane Power. The following Skills are Academic Spells: Magic Missile, Shock Pulse, Spectral Blade, and Electrocute. These four are basically Academic Spells. Actually, nothing else in your toolkit is going to be an Academic Spell.

Astral Presence. Increases your maximum Arcane Power by 20, and Arcane Power regeneration by 2 per second. Regenerating Arcane Power 2 per second, it could have a very substantial return on what you’re doing.

Illusionist. Whenever you suffer more than 15% of your Life in a single hit, the cool down on your Mirror Image and Teleport Abilities is automatically reset. So far, as weak as the Wizard has been, this basically for me would mean, if I get hit, I get the cool down reset. Just because I’m pretty weak, and so when I take a hit, it’s usually more than 15% of my Life. On the other hand, maybe you should be getting hit at all. It will just depend on your play style and how you’re playing, how effective you are, and the situations you’re in.

Galvanizing Ward. Increases the duration of your Armor Spells by 120 seconds. As long as an Armor Spell is active you gain 310 Life per second. The following Skills are improved: Energy Armor, Ice Armor, and Storm Armor.

Blur. Decreases Melee Damage taken by 20%. Evocation. Reduces all cool downs by 15%. These are pretty straightforward Passives. The Blur is probably going to make a big deal, depending on how you are playing. The Wizard does have a few Melee-range Spells, so this would play into that dynamic.

Arcane Dynamo. Every time you cast an signature spell. you gain a Flash of Insight. After 5 Flashes of Insight your next non-Academic Spell yields 75% more additional damage. The following skills are Academic Spells: Magic Missile, Shock Pulse, Spectral Blade, Electrocute. Again, those are the Rapid Cast Spells under Active Skills. We’ll get to those soon.

Unstable Anomaly. When reduced below 20% Life, release a Shock Wave that knocks all Enemies back. This effect cannot occur more than once every 60 seconds. This is basically a save. It’s going to be passive, so I’m going to say that it will be triggered automatically. If you are below 20% Life, this will probably save your Life as long as you didn’t take a hit that was, like, you were at 21% and you took a hit for 22% and you’re dead.

If it does land in that 20% window, this will knock everything back. I don’t know how it will effect something like a Boss Mob. What I will say is my CC’s on the Skeleton King did work on other Classes, like diablo 3 monk leveling, so I don’t know if Knock Backs will work or not on a Boss Mob. In some cases it may. Overall, it’s going to depend on your play style. It’s going to depend on, basically, are you really good at staying away, or are you sometimes getting in? Are you playing with other players who keep things at a distance? Any number of things. Are you using the Templar who is taunting things off you? It just depends on the play style. It depends on which other skills you are using.

I think I might have found the best possible offensive skill/spell set for the Diablo 3 Wizard. It was available in this exclusive Diablo 3 Wizard guide I recently just downloaded. I’s a pdf book that covers practically all sections. From equipment, builds, rare runes, skill sets all specifically for the Wizard. Also did a google search on this guide and it seems it is high recommended!

Magic Missile. Pretty straightforward. Very, very hard, even at an early stage, to run out of Arcane Power doing this. I can just spam it. Single Target, that’s all it is, Single Target Damage. There’s nothing more to it. This is an Academic Spell. Academic Spells cost one less Arcane Power every time you gain a Level. I don’t know if that gets down to a certain level and just stops. It would be impossible for me to find that out inside of the Beta, unless it is already at the cap, if it could only go down to 6 Arcane Power, or if it goes down to zero, or maybe it returns Arcane Power to me at some point. I really have no idea.

Shock Pulse. 8 Arcane Power. Release a pulse of 3 unpredictable charges of electricity that deal 105% weapon damage as lighting to Enemies they hit. Okay, I love this ability. This is one of my stock abilities. I’ve had a lot of fun with it. It’s like poison toads from the diablo 3 witch doctor leveling, but it’s not. The toads are pretty cool. I’ve kept a pretty good distance. It will stop on random obstacles, like, if I’m shooting it upstairs, if there is anything in here, for some reason it will just stop. If I’m shooting it near obstacles, it will do the same thing. Put in the code, obviously, but sometimes it looks like when it should continue traveling, it just doesn’t continue traveling.

Okay, so our next one here is going to be Spectral Blade. 10 Arcane Power. Summon A Spectral Blade that strikes all Enemies in your path 3 times, causing 135% Weapon Damage with each hit. This is what I’m going to kind of give away, that I don’t know much about these alternative play styles for the Wizard, because I’m not sure how Spectral Blade is supposed to be used if it is possible to build a Wizard that is melee range, that is making use of a weapon, etc.

But here’s basically what it is. It’s short range. I mean, it’s not super short range, but it is short range. I don’t know if a good and viable option to actually become a melee range Wizard that is close range at all time. obviously that there are, like we’ve said in the past, some skills. There are a few Passive skills that will lend themselves towards a melee weaponed Wizard, but I just don’t know much about that play style. I didn’t try it out too much because I did like the range skills. I prefer playing diablo 3 barbarian guide or diablo 3 monk guide to play melee wizard.

In particular, I like Electrocute, which is going to be our fourth ability here, fourth Academic Spell. Lightening arcs from your fingertips towards an Enemy, dealing 80 weapon damage as lightning. The lightening can jump, hitting up to 2 Enemies. Damage is reduced 30% each jump. I love it. It’s a lot of fun. You can just demolish groups of Enemies from very long range. It goes exactly where you want it to. I can actually shoot it through other things to hit my target, and then it’ll bounce from there.This is just a wonderful ability

Electrocute, a stock ability. What I have found myself doing is using these two in combination with each other. The Electrocute I’m really using a lot more than Shock Pulse, because the Electrocute will cause me to kind of keep moving, keep shooting like I would on, say, The Demon Hunter or like I would on the Witch Doctor, while getting Damage in on Enemies. The Shock Pulse, on the other hand, to really get the Damage out from Shock Pulse I have to be standing still, or I have to at least have to be moving slowly to get the cast in. And, so, I do find myself using Electrocute a whole lot more than Shock Pulse, but definitely using both depending on the situation.

Hydra. 40 Arcane Power, so this is going to be even more expensive than the previous one, but, presumably, your available Arcane Power is continuing to go up. Summon a multi-headed hydra for 15 seconds that attacks Enemies with bolts of fire, dealing 33% weapon damage as fire per attack. For 15 seconds, so it does have a limit on the duration.

Wave of Force. Explode a wave of pure energy that repels projectiles and knocks back nearby Enemies. This also slows the move of Enemies by 60% and deals 200% weapon damage as physical. Pretty straightforward. I haven’t wanted to use it too much, because of it’s 15 second cool down

Arcane Orb. Hurl an orb of arcane energy that explodes when it hits, dealing 175% weapon damage as arcane to all Enemies within 10 yards. This is a powerful spell and also a fantastic way to run out of Arcane Power, and that’s really what it comes down to. I’ve used it. I’ve had a lot of fun with it, but, ultimately, I couldn’t sustain it. And, again, something like Electrocute, the Academic Spells, the Rapid Cast spells, those you can sustain and deal tons of damage with. I do prefer to keep the other ones on my Hot Bar in my diablo 3 guide.

Energy Twister. Release a twister of pure energy that deals 360% weapon damage as arcane per second to everything caught within it.

Disintegrate. Cause 20 Arcane Power per second. Thrust a beam of pure energy forward dealing 155% weapon damage as arcane per second and disintegrating Enemies it kills. This looks like it’s channeled. it looks like Cyclops, Laser Beam, could be incredible. I mean, the animation looks kind of incredible. Somebody is getting shot through with a laser.

Explosive Blast. 20 Arcane Power with 6 seconds cool down. Interesting that it has a cool down. It’s a very, very high cost. Gather in a fusion of energy around you that explodes after 1.5 seconds, causing 205% weapon damage as physical to any nearby Enemies wihin 12 yards.

Ray of Frost. Project a beam of frozen ice that blasts 215% weapon damage as cold to the first Enemy it hits, slowing the target’s movement speed by 30% for 5 seconds. Ray of Frost is 20 Arcane Power per second. Let’s go back up here. Disintegrate is 20 Arcane Power per second, but, now, here’s what I don’t know. Disintegrate may go through the target. It doesn’t say anything about not going through the target, whereas Ray of Frost says pretty clearly to the first Enemy it hits

So, I’m not going to say anything about Disintegrate like, do I know that it goes through the target or not? I’m just assuming that, because of the laser going through the guy’s bones and continuing out the other side, but sometimes those icons aren’t the most accurate. So, this is going to slow your target. It seems to me that this could be very, very good in a single target situation in particular, maybe in a Boss fight or something like that.

Arcane Torrent. 20 Arcane Power per second. This is another low cost one, just like the Disintegrate. Relatively low cost, I mean. 20 Arcane Power, you would quickly run out of if you were at the point in the early stage. Hurl a barrage of arcane projectiles and deal 175% weapon damage as arcane per second to all Enemies near the impact location. So, you are picking a location as opposed to this where you are shooting out in a direction, and I’m not sure whether this looks like it’s going to be a line, not a column. Arcane Torrent is, you pick a location, and it’s going to be basically the same thing.

Meteor. 60 Arcane Power. Summon an immense meteor that plummets from the sky, causing 180 weapon damage as fire Damage to all Enemies it crashes into. The ground it hits is scorched with molten fire that does 60% weapon damage as fire over 3 seconds.

Finally, Blizzard. Cost, 45 Arcane Power. Call down shards of ice to pelt an area, dealing 255% weapon damage as cold in the area over 6 seconds. I don’t know if Blizzard just loves keeping its spells named Blizzard, but this is basically identical to every other Blizzard spell in every other game that they’ve ever made.

Used wisely, utility spells might just keep you alive in deadly battles in Hell and Inferno. Here’s a few strategies I use to keep myself alive in the game found in the expert gamers blog with strategies for the Wizard.

Now, Utility is interesting, because, so far we also have another magic weapon here, which is another melee range thing, but let’s go ahead and jump in.

 Frost Nova. An explosion of ice that freezes nearby Enemies for 3 seconds and causes cold Damage. Another one that I didn’t use much because of 12 seconds cool down. I prefer the spamming abilities. I don’t prefer the long cool downs. I don’t want to put anything on a long cool down because I can easily be in combat in less than twelve seconds after I was in combat the first time. So, I want to keep other abilities on my Hot Bar. That said, you know, maybe that wasn’t the best decision, because, honestly, like I said, Electrocute, I wound up using it once I got it all of the time. And I started using the Shock Pulse less frequently, and so I could have made more use of it.

However, our next ability, Ice Armor. 25 Arcane Power. Surround yourself in a barrier of ice and chilling melee attack enemies for 2 seconds, lasts for 2 minutes. Pretty cool animation on it, and I keep spamming it. This, again, goes with Spectral Blade, and it goes with our next ability.

Magic Weapon. Imbue your weapon with magical energy, granting it 10% increased Physical Damage. Can only affect Melee Weapons. Lasts for 2 minute. So, it kind of comes down to, there is some melee play style which I am not familiar with, and I am not going to be able to tell you much about, but other people maybe can. There is something going on that makes a melee play style with the Wizard viable, like a good thing to do.

Diamond Skin. Diamond Skin here is the ability that transform your skin into diamond for 5 seconds, absorbing up to 10853 Damage from incoming attacks. Not only does this have a cool animation, if you’re coming up across, like the Exploding Guys, which is when you come up across them, and they’re about to explode, just pop this. Now, this does have a cool down, but it blocks a lot of damage. It blocks about half of my health bar, so I have found it situationally very useful.

I can justify this on my Hot Bar, because it’s a kind of ability you’re not trying to spam anyway. It’s a kind of ability that will save you when you know you’re about to take that big hit. It’s a good defensive cool down to have. I like it a lot. It probably, aside from me finding it good as a solo adventurer. It’s probably another one of these things that plays into, you could potentially play a Melee Wizard. For me, I would like to play diablo 3 barbarian guide or diablo 3 monk guide instead of Melee Wizard as I told you before.

Storm Armor. 25 Arcane Power. Bathe yourself in electrical energy, shocking range and melee attackers for 70% weapon damage as lightning. Lasts for 2 minutes. Again, this is another on which it’s assuming that you are taking attacks, so take it for what it is.