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Quote from ElectricEel

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.

Edit: typo

So there's been a lot of builds going up over the last few days, but so far I haven't seen any designed towards hardcore mode. Now, I know my first character certainly won't be Hardcore since I want to learn the game first, but I know that I'm going to be playing a Hardcore Wizard at some point. Here's what I've come up with:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#QOiZhl!dXe!cacbZa

or

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#QOiZUk!dXZ!cacbaZ

Stat wise you want to focus on 1). Life 2). Defense 3). Attack

The build is really built around the first 2 spells. The combination of Force Armor and Ancient Guardian should hopefully make it so that no matter what you can't die. A potential issue with this is the wording of Ancient Guardian: "8 attacks directed at you" is not "8 attacks that hit you". This would mean that if there are 8 skeleton archers on screen and they all fire at you, even if none of the arrows actually hit, your familiar would be consumed. As a result you'd be recasting Familiar a lot more than would likely be reasonable. It takes 2 Magic Missiles per Familiar, as long as that is maintainable things should be okay.

Energy Armor is also the best defensive armor spell. Ice Armor gives armor which only reduces physical damage, Energy Armor increases your Defense stat. For those not aware, Defense is a flat % reduction to damage you take, both physical and elemental.

Teleport with Safe Passage seems fairly obvious. Not only do you need a way to get out when there's unexpected danger, the damage reduction is fantastic.

Magic Missile also seems pretty mandatory. (The AP from Astral Presence will cancel out with the negative AP form Energy Armor so you're left with the base 100 AP.) You're going to need some form of AP regeneration both for your damaging spells as well as the mandatory maintenance of Familiar. Magic Missile gives you 14 AP a cast and easily has the longest range of any Signature spell. (Question: Could this be replaced by swapping out Blur with Virtuoso? What is an unsuccessful wand attack? How fast do wands attack? If wands can attack once a second this ends up being a better source of AP generation, and you also get that 1% life regen which is far better than Galvanizing Wards regen. Seems like only an option for build 1.)

So 2 slots left. Here I'm not positive on what to do. Obviously staying alive isn't enough, we need to be able to actually kill things as well. I expect a fair amount of Magic Missile spam to keep AP up, but that's not going to be enough damage. We also need some form of slow to try and keep enemies away from us. This is where the 2 builds diverge.

The first goes with Crimson runed Mirror Image to both provide a bit more defense as well as some much needed damage output. Assuming that the images cast fairly often this seems worth it. An Alabaster runed Blizzard provides a high chance to freeze as well almost guaranteed critical hits which means higher damage. (Anyone know the % increase for a spell critical?)

The second build changes things up a little and uses Arcane damage from Magic Missile, Disintegrate, and Arcane Torrent to keep enemies slowed and away from you. The Crimson rune in Torrent synergizes nicely with the other 2 spells greatly increasing your damage output.

Right now I think I like the second build a bit more.

What do you guys think? Have you come up with any Hardcore builds?

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?

99% sure it counts as a spell.

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 like it. I'm not sure it deserves a 5/5 on Damage, but that's just my opinion.

Armor wise I'd say Indigo runed Energy Armor. I suppose since you do have Diamond Skin that you could go with Storm Armor instead.... I can't make a build without Energy Armor though, it's simply too powerful in my mind.

Edit: Thanks for the link to that one video with most of the skills, that was great. I just wish the Meteor shots had been a tad longer, wasn't clear if it was insta-dropping or if it had been cut that way. Also couldn't see the cast rate of Mirror Images =/

Quote from Clypheous

Even though part of my goal behind this build was maximum damage, I also wanted to try to do that without using Crimson Runes, because, assuming that you can select them and it's not totally random, I think that they will be the most expensive for awhile until people realize that maximum straight damage isn't necessarily the same as maximum killing power and the ability to move through mobs quickly.

I understand and agree with you. People also need to remember that Blizzard has said Rank 7 runes will be remarkably rare.

Quote from h4n4

you could take stormarmor+golden rune . this way u can spam disintegrate + reg mana at the same time. so u dont need a signiture.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#jUPkgO!bXZ!ZZZZbb

you can channel disintegreat or arcan trrent for ever. also ray of frost will be very long channelable.

And while you stand in place with an armor that gives no form of defense what-so-ever you'll watch as the minions of hell cut you into little pieces.

Very similar to the build I'm thinking of. I'm not sure you need the Obsidian rune on your Blizzard though. It seems like the combination of Disintegrate and Temporal Flux should be enough slowing for you. As far as I'm aware Disintegrate has 100% pierce meaning a quick 360 spin should have everything on screen slowed.

Here's what I'm thinking of: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#ZUhQPO!fZX!baZYYZ

It's a little light on defense, but the slow from Disintegrate along with the Mirror Images seems like it would be fine for at least Normal and Nightmare. Stuff should be melting with the damage output I think.

Meteor is kind of up in the air. Runed Indigo it's clearly the highest damage spell the Wizard has assuming all 14 hit. My big question is how possible that is.

I'm also really curious as to if your Mirror Image's spells will use your runes as well. Would triple Crimson Familiar be possible? If they use Magic Missile do you get the AP regen? I don't see a lot of builds taking Crimson Mirror Image, but I think it's awesome. It clearly depends on how much they cast and how much they just sit around acting like decoys.

Potential problems I see:

1). No AP generation

2). At max AP you'll be able to cast Explosive Blast once. (100 base - 20 from Energy Armor = 80 AP) You'll also have a total of 3 seconds of Disintegrate. (Assuming gear can't increase the size of your pool, which so far I'm fairly sure there's been no proof of).

A potential solution to these issues would be to drop Galvanizing Ward for Prodigy. You'll get 5 AP per cast of Spectral Blade that way. Alternatively you could change the Alabaster rune in Spectral Blade to Golden and get even better AP regen. In any case, as I've stated in another thread Galvanizing Ward (in my opinion) is terrible. See the Arc Wizard thread if you care to read why.

Quote from RasputinFTWGG

I think you are absolutely right - although there is something else to consider and that is spell casting speed (spell global cooldown). The channeling spells like ray of frost do a set amount of damage per second (and as far as I know channeled damage doesn't scale any further with increases in casting speed from gear, etc). This means that although ray of frost might do more damage per second than per magic missile cast, if the casting speed is increased through gear to allow more than one magic missile per second, the actual damage per SECOND (not per CAST) of magic missile can exceed that of ray of frost.

Amirite?

It depends. Using WoW as an example, they made it so that haste increases the damage of Mind Flay (a channeled spell). In Diablo II with Inferno I don't think increased casting speed increased the damage.

I would imagine that they'll make casting speed do something for Disintegrate and Ray of Frost, otherwise they'll quickly be outstripped by cast spells and never used.

Quote from Jackzor

Well I think you don't regenerate any AP while channeling spells. Besides, even if it does cost 0 AP with golden Storm Armor, you'd still be a sitting duck the whole time. But either way its certainly interesting. And as far as I can tell your 0 AP logic lines up.

Based off of Diablo II this wouldn't be the case. Of course that was Mana and this is AP and we'll really have no idea until we can actually test all this out.

The thing is, with AP regeneration, 3 AP/sec may be free meaning you don't even need the armor. The uber passive already provides 2 AP/sec meaning you only need 1 AP/sec from anything else.

On the discussion of the Crimson rune, I would use that for non-Hardcore as well. Near immortality seems too good to give up for Hardcore though.

The spell does feel waaaay too passive, and the Indigo and Obsidian runes just don't seem to make any sense. Maybe the familiar's attack speed is like 10 a second?

Quote from Groanan

Lethal Decoy, runed for Simulacrum: for 75 spirit you make a decoy that lasts for 26 seconds, and if you die in the interim, you take the dummy's place at full health.

Serenity, runed for Ascension: 35 Spirit, 60 second cool down, gives you an invincibility shield for 6.5 seconds

Near Death Experience (secondary trait): When receiving fatal damage, you are instead restored to 35% of maximum Life and 35% Spirit.
This effect cannot occur more than once every 90 seconds.

The familiar only kicks in when you are below 25%, I wonder what happens if you are at 26% health and hit by something big enough to 1 shot you.

Wow, that first one is pretty incredible although I imagine 75 Spirit is a large amount and likely not as spammable. The other ones seem okay to me (although still powerful yes), since they have rather long cooldowns.

You mentioning the 26% life thing made me think of a nice combo to the Alabaster Familiar.

Obsidian Force Armor makes it so any hit that is over 26% of your max life is reduced to 26% of your max life. That would at least make it extremely unlikely for you to ever be killed with the Alabaster Familiar up. Seems like a great combo for Hardcore or Inferno. Or both!

Now, I'm sure most people will think this is a troll from the title or something along those lines, but when combined with the Alabaster Rune, this spell seems ridiculously powerful (especially for Hardcore).

For those who don't know what it does: "While you are below 25% life, the familiar will absorb up to 8 attacks directed at you. If it absorbs all it's attacks it will disintegrate."

The part that makes this crazy is that Familiar has no cooldown. Meaning as soon as your familiar has absorbed it's 8 attacks you can just summon another one for only 20 AP. Or be extra safe and recast the spell before it dies.

Obviously we don't know how well this will work, if at all, but it at least seems pretty powerful. What do you guys think?

You've made a few mistakes here that I feel the need to point out.

Dis: 120max ap | 11ap/sec = 10.90 seconds of spam * 234 damage = 2552 total damage
RoF: 120max ap | 20ap/sec = 6 seconds of spam * 434 damage = 2604 total damage

Assuming you're attacking a single target yes. But Disintegrate pierces and hits everything in a line meaning that it's damage output is ridiculously higher. RoF is slightly better for single target, yes.

Then in regards to "Blue" Electrocute. Prodigy gives AP per cast, not target hit. You'll get 5 AP a cast, not 50. (I know you didn't claim that, but I just wanted to make sure.) Your other point for taking this skill is it's "massive AoE damage" which leads me to believe you're forgetting the part where damage is cut by 30% each bounce. Here's some math with silly numbers:

Let's assume your base damage on Electrocute is 1 - 300(Six times what the calculator lists as base damage), and lets assume you get lucky and always deal max damage from that disgustingly huge damage range:

1st target - 300 damage
2nd target - 210 damage
3rd target - 147 damage
4th target - 103 damage
5th target - 73 damage
6th target - 52 damage
7th target - 37 damage
8th target - 26 damage
9th target - 18 damage
10th target - 13 damage
Total damage = 979 damage

So for a free spell, assuming you manage to increase the base damage by 600% through gear and are lucky enough to do max on every bounce, you can do a fairly reasonable about of damage with it. The more realistic damage in that example though is to half the damage due to the range, so a total of 489 damage spread across 10 targets on average.

In my mind Magic Missile with the Golden rune is a better source of damage and AP generation. With Prodigy you'll get 19 AP a cast and using the same 6x base damage assumption your damage will be 240 - 360. Better AP, less damage (although FAR more reliable), but then, the point of it is to generate AP for your harder hitting spells, not the damage.


In regards to the Teleport CD I would imagine like others that it doesn't reset each time you cast the spell. I'm pretty sure I read something from Blizzard specifically stating they DON'T want people teleporting around to avoid content.




Of course, all of this is fairly ridiculous as we have no idea what realistic numbers are and the fact that Level 7 runes are supposedly insanely rare.