Spectral Blade is technically a spell, same as Magic Missle. If it doesn't count as a melee weapon strike, then Magic Weapon would be a waste of a skill. If it does count as a melee weapon strike, then Magic Weapon would be very nice.
Do we know for sure which is true? Can anyone confirm?
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Playing a Wizard. Looking for Demon Hunters to play with.
I don't follow your logic though. Magic Weapon increases the damage of your melee weapon. Spectral Blade does damage based on your weapon's damage. Therefore Magic Weapon increases the damage of Spectral Blade.
But Spectral blade is a magic weapon isn't it so hopefully it will take the effect of magic weapon spell. It is hard to say Spectral blade is just a spell when it takes from weapon to get it's damage. It makes it sound like a kind of enchantment on your weapon more than spell.
No, it won't. It's a spell. The runed effects of Magic Weapon are very, very clear (unlike some other runes). A melee hit is a melee hit. Not a spell with a short range.
I'm so confused that anyone could think a melee mage wouldn't actually melee.... You have the defensive talents to survive in melee range, is it that hard to auto attack an enemy every two/three/whatever spells?
Spectral Blade is exactly what it says it is and what it looks like when cast. A spell.
"Summon a spectral blade that strikes all enemies in your path 3 times causing 35% weapon damage with each hit. This is a Signature spell."
If you want almost any of the runed effects of Magic weapon you're going to have to melee swing. Isn't the whole point of being a melee wizard beating the enemy in the face with your 2H mace/staff/whatever?
Supposedly in the beta the spectral blade gets a bonus from magic weapon spell, I don't see it really being used with the insanely small percent of damage added by magic weapon.
Your quoting the words of the description but nobody has actually used it with runes to know outside of the people who programmed it. You could be right, it just sounds like magic weapon and spectral blade are useless if they don't stack together. Even if spectral blades get the effect of magic weapon it is still bad except for AP regen from magic weapon with golden rune and magic weapon with knockback etc. Compared to enchant from Diablo 2 magic weapon sounds totally impotent. I thought they said there weren't going to be any useless spells but what they did to this compared to Enchant is almost laughable. In Diablo 2 the enchant lasted way longer compared to 1 minute of magic weapon but the rune effects for magic weapon are ridiculous (and these are level 60 runes) I couldn't see this spell being used outside of act 1 - 2 before your laughed off the game. I don't get what they were thinking, only 20% bonus to damage at max, it should be +50% bonus to damage at base level but you have to put a level 7 rune to get 34% that is total bull. That level 7 rune should be plus 100% to a base spell of +50% damage for magic weapon. They bent us over the fence with this spell. I think I'm just going learn my lesson early and hop off while I still have self respect and few splinters.
Supposedly in the beta the spectral blade gets a bonus from magic weapon spell, I don't see it really being used with the insanely small percent of damage added by magic weapon.
Your quoting the words of the description but nobody has actually used it with runes to know outside of the people who programmed it. You could be right, it just sounds like magic weapon and spectral blade are useless if they don't stack together. Even if spectral blades get the effect of magic weapon it is still bad except for AP regen from magic weapon with golden rune and magic weapon with knockback etc. Compared to enchant from Diablo 2 magic weapon sounds totally impotent. I thought they said there weren't going to be any useless spells but what they did to this compared to Enchant is almost laughable. In Diablo 2 the enchant lasted way longer compared to 1 minute of magic weapon but the rune effects for magic weapon are ridiculous (and these are level 60 runes) I couldn't see this spell being used outside of act 1 - 2 before your laughed off the game. I don't get what they were thinking, only 20% bonus to damage at max, it should be +50% bonus to damage at base level but you have to put a level 7 rune to get 34% that is total bull. That level 7 rune should be plus 100% to a base spell of +50% damage for magic weapon. They bent us over the fence with this spell. I think I'm just going learn my lesson early and hop off while I still have self respect and few splinters.
As I said before, a melee hit is a melee hit, it's pretty clear what that means.
Magic Weapon costs 8 AP and has no cooldown. In other words, it's duration is essentially infinite. You're making a lot of hyperbolic statements which make it hard to take your complaints seriously. How do you know a 20% damage increase to a melee weapon is a joke? We have no idea how much damage melee weapons might do. We don't even know if that 20% is modified by your Attack stat, just like any spell. For all we know as it stands now melee wizards running around and smacking stuff without casting a single spell could be the most overpowered class in the game. (likely not *waves hi to monks*)
Writing something off just from theory-crafting is silly. Testing is the only way we're actually going to learn anything.
Writing off Spectral Blade procing a Magic Weapon rune is probably pretty safe though.
I am joking. The reason I would want a longer duration is to cast it, and then take it off the screen so I can put something else up! If your trying to play a melee wizard with diamond skin, trying to use arcane dynamo, or have a build where you cast and are using disintegrate and hold it down it saves time if you don't have to keep recasting it! 20% is 20% if the weapon does 100 damage, that's 20 points more, meanwhile the wizard next to you is doing 500 pts of damage like its nothing. If the weapon does 300 damage, (unlikely) it is 60 pts more. Only way you could increase it is with something like this:
using arcane dynamo to charge up magic weapon and then casting spectral blade but since magic weapon only lasts a minute your going to be spending a lot of time charging it over and over and over again. They just seem like the red headed step spells of the wizard. It really should be longer than 1 minute for magic weapon I think that'll be annoying. Even the shield spells last 2 minutes..... and you have skill to increase that to 4.
Like I said those weapons better be incredible or the monsters really stupid later in game and in inferno... Ya I would bet the effect from rune of magic weapon won't be on SB but I would also bet two other things: 1. Every wizard in Arena will have prismatic shield. 2. No (well few)wizards will be chasing you around trying to melee you with Calamity teleport and wave of force etc.
Also I didn't say it wouldn't work I just wonder how well it is going to work outside of Act 1-2 (and all of lowest difficulty) where you can't increase your character's strength manually to use higher damage weapon (hopefully they'll just have a level requirement)...
Look Magic Weapon will enhance Spectral Blade. If you choose to interpret otherwise that's your choice but it would be the MOST useless spell in the wizard's arsenal, cos it won't stack with wands. And every single spell so far is viable and useful.
As mentioned Magic Weapon is a buff. Will it use up Arcane Dynamo when casting Magic Weapon? Probably not but we need to test that. I'm more interested if it will boost spells like Hydra which technically does not deal damage immediately. It probably will, but you never know.
Jay has said again and again Diablo to Blizzard is about viable builds. Will a melee wizard be the most powerful build out there? Probably not, in fact almost certainly not, but its doable and it will be fun and it will be viable. Its hard to beat spells like Meteor or Disintegrate for safety (distance wise) and dmg unless you find a really high dmg weapon (probably unique).
With any luck we might see some gear specifically set up to cater to melee wizards.
+damage % to magic weapon skill? Fingers crossed.
Also indigo rune looks much better than crimson on magic weapon imo
My fingers are crossed, cautiously, the damage on the weapons better be very very high. But really if the weapons in later game are 300 dmg in a single hit doesn't that mean the monsters have super hps which means if your doing 18% lightning damage from 300 your doing 54 pts of addition damage against something that has more hit points than Godzilla? We need a blue post that says, "hey arcane dynamo does not work with magic weapon." I'm just reading the words on the signature spell it doesn't say damaging spells only. Or a blue post saying the range of weapon damage, if the highest weapon in the game does 150 physical damage I'll feel pretty happy about that indigo rune... But if the highest weapon in the game that you might not be able to use does 500 damage a hit and drops from Diablo's cheeks (not the face) in Inferno then I'm going to assume that if you don't have this weapon you suck and if you can't wield this weapon you suck in later game as melee. I know good loot is supposed to drop everywhere it is just an example.
As I said before, a melee hit is a melee hit, it's pretty clear what that means.
The description of Magic Weapon states that the effects apply to a melee weapon, not a melee hit. This description means that you can't use Magic Weapon on a bow, for instance, and gain the effects. It doesn't (necessarily) mean that the effects of Magic Weapon are restricted to basic melee attacks, only melee-type weapons.
Spectral "Blade" implies melee weapon Nobody questioned whether or not it could be used on a bow... I don't like how spectral blade is dependent on the weapon and damage is increased with magic weapon but it might not get the effect from magic weapon (seeing as how it does get the physical benefit) it sounds sloppy. Surely you get what we are saying, it strikes, it sounds like a weapon, it is named blades and I could be wrong on this but it looks like you have to be close enough to melee to use it... I'm not asking for 100 transfer of effect from magic weapon rune just saying there should be something. I don't remember seeing a single cast that was far away though maybe I'll watch that video again when I have time
If it doesn't transfer the effect from the rune, which no one can point to a blue post to say it doesn't, then it should have a rune that does make it do that or passive skill, I don't know call it Synchronus Blades. Even with a 10 percent chance that spectral blade would take the effect from magic weapon I could see hundreds of wizards using this pair considering the requirements. I'd really believe it was a spell if it had more range (you know they "cast" spells) like say as much range as magic missile and wasn't tethered to the weapon for it's damage, it makes them both sound like weapon enchantments to me. They should change it, spectral blades independent of weapon keep the hits but change runes to make it hit in a line or half moon like a barrier with the right rune, or make it a line of blades that move forward like a wave and can push monsters away or snare them with a rune. It is like reading a rough draft, they really need to do that, have spectral blades start at the wizard, like spells, and then move away. Maybe they could change it to a sword, and different ranks for the spell, 1 magic sword, 2 swords, and 3, maybe have a rune where it damages and will repel 1 ranged attack, and one rune where it forms the swords into 1 large blade with special effects, like have it parry 1 disintegrate/frost/orb. Maybe call it a "Reflecting/Parrying blade" and replace gold rune effect with it. Making it parry or deflect 1 ranged spell for each level of Gold rune but make it so the sword can't move quickly. Getting 7 arcane power from every hit is good but when you get 5 just for casting it it gets redundant, give it a larger cast delay but make it hang around and it'll be something they don't get laughed at for using, All the other rune effects are pretty good. It just needs... more and I've never said that about a Blizzard spell...
As I said before, a melee hit is a melee hit, it's pretty clear what that means.
The description of Magic Weapon states that the effects apply to a melee weapon, not a melee hit. This description means that you can't use Magic Weapon on a bow, for instance, and gain the effects. It doesn't (necessarily) mean that the effects of Magic Weapon are restricted to basic melee attacks, only melee-type weapons.
We're uhh, talking about the runed effects of Magic Weapon which clearly state melee hit. I'm aware of what the description of the base spell says.
Here is my interpretation. Magic weapon increases the damage of your melee weapon. Does 35% damage to all foes in the casting area 3 times, equating to 105% weapon damage and it activates hit or damage triggers 3 times. So, Ice Armor with the stacking defense increase would trigger 3 times for each Spectral Weapon cast. The benefit of this is that if there are two enemies "in your path", they both take damage, whereas a melee attack would only damage one of them. The downside is that this is a spell, not a melee attack, so the effects for melee attacks from runes on Magic Weapon will not help. So, you have to choose to use Spectral Blade with further enhanced damage and AOE or effects and single target. Because of this, it seems to me that using the rune for Magic Weapon that increases weapon damage further is the way to go if you would like to use Spectral Blade.
It does physical damage, and you can't do it at range, it is hard to say SB isn't a melee attack for me especially since it uses your weapon for a percent of it's damage... Using that purple rune isn't just a way to go it is pretty much the only way to go for increasing the damage on SB using magic weapon...
So people think that while the base spell Magic Weapon will probably affect Spectral blade and the indigo rune will affect Spectral blade, the other runes won't because they state specifically melee and melee attacks.
In my mind, if Magic Weapon does not apply to Spectral Blade, would ANY mage except those who want to prove a point ever use this spell? It would be completely useless if it did not apply to Spectral Blade. You could find the most damaging sword in the game, and you're going to use that as your base attack when you have 4 signature spells that cost 0AP do good damage and would even return AP and more if runed properly?
And if assuming Indigo rune on magic weapon is the only rune that carries over to Spectral blade, while the other 4 runes will only affect a true melee attack, the genius designer who thought that one up needs to be "praised".
The concept of every skill being improved by 5 runes with potentially different effects is already confusing/daunting to a casual gamer who is not as big of diablo fans as we are. Now we're going to have a skill where one rune affects a spell that looks designed for it, while 4 will not? Yep, genius.
To bad there isn't a like button for the above post, it is true it just sounds stupid, I mean both spells together. The fact that magic weapon only lasts 1 minute just adds to the joke! Also that is a level 7 rune and it increases it to 34%, that is amazingly bad by comparison what does a level 1 rune do? Increase the damage by 2% for total of 22% damage. You know there have to be better ways to use your runes than getting 2% damage increase on a spell that helps a spell (because SB doesn't take 100% of damage from weapon) so the increase in damage for the rune is a percent of a percent, only a fraction !... I would feel sorry for anyone who is giving runes to this it seems like a total waste of time compared to what you could be doing. Also the gold rune giving 7 arcane damage per hit I think it really should make a sword that stays in one place and parrys 1 ranged attack for each level of the rune, a wizard would actually use that! and it would be keeping with gold for saving stuff/regen theme.
SB and MW with indigo and obsidian come out to 2.89 times your weapon damage (then divide by 3 for amount in each hit). Unless you can find and hold a 200 plus damage weapon your in for a lot of death especially due to the melee range, and that level 7 indigo could make diamond skin last 21 seconds instead...
Bash/Cleave/etc count, therefore Spectral Weapon will as well.
Also, if you look at just about any Blue post on the subject of white hits, they usually indicate that there will be little reason(typically resource depletion) to actually swing a weapon without a skill behind it.
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Do we know for sure which is true? Can anyone confirm?
I don't follow your logic though. Magic Weapon increases the damage of your melee weapon. Spectral Blade does damage based on your weapon's damage. Therefore Magic Weapon increases the damage of Spectral Blade.
I'm so confused that anyone could think a melee mage wouldn't actually melee.... You have the defensive talents to survive in melee range, is it that hard to auto attack an enemy every two/three/whatever spells?
Spectral Blade is exactly what it says it is and what it looks like when cast. A spell.
"Summon a spectral blade that strikes all enemies in your path 3 times causing 35% weapon damage with each hit. This is a Signature spell."
If you want almost any of the runed effects of Magic weapon you're going to have to melee swing. Isn't the whole point of being a melee wizard beating the enemy in the face with your 2H mace/staff/whatever?
Supposedly in the beta the spectral blade gets a bonus from magic weapon spell, I don't see it really being used with the insanely small percent of damage added by magic weapon.
Your quoting the words of the description but nobody has actually used it with runes to know outside of the people who programmed it. You could be right, it just sounds like magic weapon and spectral blade are useless if they don't stack together. Even if spectral blades get the effect of magic weapon it is still bad except for AP regen from magic weapon with golden rune and magic weapon with knockback etc. Compared to enchant from Diablo 2 magic weapon sounds totally impotent. I thought they said there weren't going to be any useless spells but what they did to this compared to Enchant is almost laughable. In Diablo 2 the enchant lasted way longer compared to 1 minute of magic weapon but the rune effects for magic weapon are ridiculous (and these are level 60 runes) I couldn't see this spell being used outside of act 1 - 2 before your laughed off the game. I don't get what they were thinking, only 20% bonus to damage at max, it should be +50% bonus to damage at base level but you have to put a level 7 rune to get 34% that is total bull. That level 7 rune should be plus 100% to a base spell of +50% damage for magic weapon. They bent us over the fence with this spell. I think I'm just going learn my lesson early and hop off while I still have self respect and few splinters.
The weapons better be incredible....
As I said before, a melee hit is a melee hit, it's pretty clear what that means.
Magic Weapon costs 8 AP and has no cooldown. In other words, it's duration is essentially infinite. You're making a lot of hyperbolic statements which make it hard to take your complaints seriously. How do you know a 20% damage increase to a melee weapon is a joke? We have no idea how much damage melee weapons might do. We don't even know if that 20% is modified by your Attack stat, just like any spell. For all we know as it stands now melee wizards running around and smacking stuff without casting a single spell could be the most overpowered class in the game. (likely not *waves hi to monks*)
Writing something off just from theory-crafting is silly. Testing is the only way we're actually going to learn anything.
Writing off Spectral Blade procing a Magic Weapon rune is probably pretty safe though.
Edit: typo
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#XWVbSO!fbV!YZYbZZ
using arcane dynamo to charge up magic weapon and then casting spectral blade but since magic weapon only lasts a minute your going to be spending a lot of time charging it over and over and over again. They just seem like the red headed step spells of the wizard. It really should be longer than 1 minute for magic weapon I think that'll be annoying. Even the shield spells last 2 minutes..... and you have skill to increase that to 4.
Like I said those weapons better be incredible or the monsters really stupid later in game and in inferno... Ya I would bet the effect from rune of magic weapon won't be on SB but I would also bet two other things: 1. Every wizard in Arena will have prismatic shield. 2. No (well few)wizards will be chasing you around trying to melee you with Calamity teleport and wave of force etc.
Or they'll use this for precision http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#XWVQSO!fbV!YZYaZZ
Also I didn't say it wouldn't work I just wonder how well it is going to work outside of Act 1-2 (and all of lowest difficulty) where you can't increase your character's strength manually to use higher damage weapon (hopefully they'll just have a level requirement)...
If that is true then magic weapon really is the red headed step spell...
As mentioned Magic Weapon is a buff. Will it use up Arcane Dynamo when casting Magic Weapon? Probably not but we need to test that. I'm more interested if it will boost spells like Hydra which technically does not deal damage immediately. It probably will, but you never know.
Jay has said again and again Diablo to Blizzard is about viable builds. Will a melee wizard be the most powerful build out there? Probably not, in fact almost certainly not, but its doable and it will be fun and it will be viable. Its hard to beat spells like Meteor or Disintegrate for safety (distance wise) and dmg unless you find a really high dmg weapon (probably unique).
+damage % to magic weapon skill? Fingers crossed.
Also indigo rune looks much better than crimson on magic weapon imo
My fingers are crossed, cautiously, the damage on the weapons better be very very high. But really if the weapons in later game are 300 dmg in a single hit doesn't that mean the monsters have super hps which means if your doing 18% lightning damage from 300 your doing 54 pts of addition damage against something that has more hit points than Godzilla? We need a blue post that says, "hey arcane dynamo does not work with magic weapon." I'm just reading the words on the signature spell it doesn't say damaging spells only. Or a blue post saying the range of weapon damage, if the highest weapon in the game does 150 physical damage I'll feel pretty happy about that indigo rune... But if the highest weapon in the game that you might not be able to use does 500 damage a hit and drops from Diablo's cheeks (not the face) in Inferno then I'm going to assume that if you don't have this weapon you suck and if you can't wield this weapon you suck in later game as melee. I know good loot is supposed to drop everywhere it is just an example.
If it doesn't transfer the effect from the rune, which no one can point to a blue post to say it doesn't, then it should have a rune that does make it do that or passive skill, I don't know call it Synchronus Blades. Even with a 10 percent chance that spectral blade would take the effect from magic weapon I could see hundreds of wizards using this pair considering the requirements. I'd really believe it was a spell if it had more range (you know they "cast" spells) like say as much range as magic missile and wasn't tethered to the weapon for it's damage, it makes them both sound like weapon enchantments to me. They should change it, spectral blades independent of weapon keep the hits but change runes to make it hit in a line or half moon like a barrier with the right rune, or make it a line of blades that move forward like a wave and can push monsters away or snare them with a rune. It is like reading a rough draft, they really need to do that, have spectral blades start at the wizard, like spells, and then move away. Maybe they could change it to a sword, and different ranks for the spell, 1 magic sword, 2 swords, and 3, maybe have a rune where it damages and will repel 1 ranged attack, and one rune where it forms the swords into 1 large blade with special effects, like have it parry 1 disintegrate/frost/orb. Maybe call it a "Reflecting/Parrying blade" and replace gold rune effect with it. Making it parry or deflect 1 ranged spell for each level of Gold rune but make it so the sword can't move quickly. Getting 7 arcane power from every hit is good but when you get 5 just for casting it it gets redundant, give it a larger cast delay but make it hang around and it'll be something they don't get laughed at for using, All the other rune effects are pretty good. It just needs... more and I've never said that about a Blizzard spell...
We're uhh, talking about the runed effects of Magic Weapon which clearly state melee hit. I'm aware of what the description of the base spell says.
In my mind, if Magic Weapon does not apply to Spectral Blade, would ANY mage except those who want to prove a point ever use this spell? It would be completely useless if it did not apply to Spectral Blade. You could find the most damaging sword in the game, and you're going to use that as your base attack when you have 4 signature spells that cost 0AP do good damage and would even return AP and more if runed properly?
And if assuming Indigo rune on magic weapon is the only rune that carries over to Spectral blade, while the other 4 runes will only affect a true melee attack, the genius designer who thought that one up needs to be "praised".
The concept of every skill being improved by 5 runes with potentially different effects is already confusing/daunting to a casual gamer who is not as big of diablo fans as we are. Now we're going to have a skill where one rune affects a spell that looks designed for it, while 4 will not? Yep, genius.
SB and MW with indigo and obsidian come out to 2.89 times your weapon damage (then divide by 3 for amount in each hit). Unless you can find and hold a 200 plus damage weapon your in for a lot of death especially due to the melee range, and that level 7 indigo could make diamond skin last 21 seconds instead...
Also, if you look at just about any Blue post on the subject of white hits, they usually indicate that there will be little reason(typically resource depletion) to actually swing a weapon without a skill behind it.