[:1]Has been posted. See the main page for the full post, with links and images and much more on the char and skills, etc. Here's a quote of just the skill part.
http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/com...-report-wizard
Quote:
Like the other characters, Wizards had 3 skills to start with, with 8 points invested into them. Each character seemed to have one skill with 5 points, making it pretty much their main/best attack skill. The other two skills had just 1 and 2 points between them, and were basically support. All of the skills became vastly more effective when improved with a runestone. Runestones dropped in the demo, but rarely, and in my limited demo time I didn�t choose to spend much of it sifting through item drops.
Characters of three of the classes (Wizard, Witch Doctor, and Barbarian) had two runestones in their inventory to start with, but I couldn�t determine if the type of those 2 were random, or as pre-set as the skills on each class. I played the Wizard twice, but they were my first two games and I wasn�t noticing everything yet. I played the Demon Hunter 5 times, but that class didn�t have runestones activated yet.
The Wizard�s pre-set starting skills were:
Magic Missile
Description: Fires a missile of energy causing X-X arcane damage.
Magic Missile immediately became my main attack skill. It was set to the right click and had 5 points invested into it. The level five MMs were quite powerful, capable of killing almost any normal monster with a single shot. The casting rate wasn�t that fast though, which was good and bad. Good because you could cast MMs forever, since they weren�t fast or expensive enough to deplete your Arcane Power. Bad because I wanted to kill faster. Faster!
The projectiles are very easy to hit with; they don�t move that quickly; slower than arrows, but much faster than some spell projectiles like Arcane Orb, and they�re pretty large. If you clicked on a target or shot them more or less at the monster, the MM would hit it. Naturally, MM + runestones = wonderful.
Runestones show nothing of interest when you hover over them in your inventory. There�s a very basic description that�s identical for all runes. Something like, �Socket in a skill to modify its function.� The tool tip is identical for all runes, no matter their quality. They don�t give any kind of hint about the general bonuses they may provide, etc. To get a more informative tool tip, you have to open your skill window, which shows your active skills; the ones you actually have a point in and can use. You click another button on that window to open the full list up beside that window, and its in there that you can add skill points, add new skills, or place runestones.
When you click a runestone and hover it over that window, then you see the tool tips that describe what that particular rune will do in a skill. I�m sure they�ll expand on those descriptions, and maybe even include a pop up image or short movie to demonstrate the modified effect, but as of Blizzcon the information was pretty minimal. With an Indigo rune Magic Missile said something like, �Increase the number of your Magic Missiles.� With an Alabaster rune the tool tip was something like, �Makes your Magic Missile a homing missile.�
Though I didn�t try it out, I noted that a Crimson rune in MM would increase the damage. This wasn�t needed, since it was killing almost everything in one shot anyway. I didn�t note every rune effect in MM, but the two I did get to try out were Indigo and Alabaster.
Indigo/Multishot was awesome. That probably goes without saying, and was demonstrated nicely in this year�s Blizzcon character panel, but the 2nd level runestone granted me 3 missiles per cast, with a proportional increase in damage. It felt like getting multishot in one of those old arcade side scrolling fighter plane games. Pretty much FTW. Triple missiles turned mobs into shooting galleries, and my wizard�s killing power was literally tripled. It worked like Multishot or Teeth in D2; multiple missiles would not hit the same target, but it was awesome against mobs, and pretty much guaranteed a hit against even the fast moving/dodging ones (though there were very few with evasive moves in the Blizzcon demo).
On the other hand, and Alabaster rune for homing MM was lame. It wasn�t a truly homing shot, like Guided Arrow. It just let the MM change direction once, at about a 90 degree angle, and only after it had traveled maybe half the screen in distance. If you shot past a monster near you, there was zero chance that the MM would hit it. The purpose of the �guided� seemed to be a way to shoot targets behind a mob. Say there were a bunch of monsters nearby, with a boss or shaman or caster back behind them. With the guided MM you�d be able to shoot off to the left or right, and your missile would make a sharp turn about 10 yards out, heading for the enemy in the back row.
In theory.
I never had that scenario to attempt in the Blizzcon demo, and there weren�t any fast moving or running or dodging enemies that the homing MM might have helped with. Well, maybe the Treasure Seeker but I didn�t get him in the game with the homing MM wizard, and besides, his movement was more like, �Run really fast off the screen, then stop and wait until the player caught up, before running again.�
As it was, I found the guided MM almost useless, and just shot things directly, while wishing I had another Indigo rune to switch to MS MM.
Spectral Blade
Description: Summons a spectral blade that strikes enemies in front of the Wizard X times causing X-X physical damage with each hit.
Spectral Blade is the Wizard�s melee-range spell. It got a lot of screen time in the Wizard gameplay, and I described it in detail in my 2008 Blizzcon report (quoted on the wiki page) and mentioned it in the Battle Arena report too, so I�ll be brief here. I used it a few times in the demo this year; it did potentially more damage than MM, even with fewer skill points, but the melee range thing isn�t what you want to be doing with a Wizard. Better you kill them from a distance with MM than use a slightly more damaging skill at melee range, when they can hit you back. Being hit is for grunting meat shields like Barbarians and Monks; sophisticated classes like Wizards don�t like to get their uniforms smudged by filthy monster paws.
I didn�t bother to rune this one, since I wasn�t using it anyway, but the effects I recall seeing were +damage, and lowered AP cost.
Explosive Blast
Description: Builds up energy around the Wizard that explodes after X seconds, causing X-X physical damage in a small radius
This was the third Wizard preset skill, and it provided some variety in play style. It�s basically a short-range nova, on a time delay. You click it, and after 1.5 seconds (at level one) it blew up, dealing fairly substantial physical damage. The time delay made it unsuitable for emergency situations, but if you got used to the timing it was fun to click midway through a battle, knowing it would blast a moment later and finish off the enemy.
You can keep fighting, running, shooting other spells, etc, while you wait, and my main use of it soon became triggering it near a pack of monsters, then running into the midst of them so when it blew up, I�d be in range of multiple enemies. The radius was fairly small, at level 1. Not much more than melee reach, so you had to be really surrounded to get much use out of it. It was also fairly AP expensive, so was best saved for special circumstances. Ideally it cleared out all or nearly all the remaining enemies, so you could then let your AP regen while you sifted through their splattered remains/item drops.
I didn�t get to rune it myself, but another Blizzcon report stated, �Another rune socketed into the Detonate skill turned the spell from a single area effect ability radiating out from the Wizard into three consecutive blasts.� That sounds pretty cool, and enough to make it a viable skill, rather than just a cute novelty thing, which was all the use I got out of the default version. As always, skill runes FTW.
Electrocute
Description: Lightning arcs from the Wizard�s fingertips towards an enemy dealing X-X lightning damage.
In my first game, when I finally forced myself to stop racing around, killing monsters and having fun, I added a skill point to Electrocute. I love beam/lock-on weapons in games, and this was probably my favorite Wizard skill to use in the 2009 Blizzcon demo. Not the most effective, (the damage isn�t that high, and it really gobbles down the AP) but man it�s fun to lock on and watch monsters cook, the beam curving and twisting as the monster writhes in agony and struggles to escape.
Okay, they don�t actually writhe or struggle to escape, but it�s fun to pretend.
When you use Electrocute, you can sweep it around like Disintegrate, but it locks onto a target and stays locked until they�re dead or vanished off of the screen. It only hits that one target, though. The lightning beam hits the first target it meets and sticks to them, cooking DoT on the target while steadily draining the Wizard�s resource. It�s not very high damage, so you�ll need to cook for a while on tougher targets, and at low levels this one isn�t very useful against bosses or champions; it�s just to AP expensive for big enemies; you�ll be out of resource before they�re out of hit points.
The value of the skill is as a very quick way to guarantee hits on small targets or moving enemies. I loved it in 2009 for fast moving small stuff like Desert Wasps, and I�d imagine it would be really useful against Fallen, or Scavengers, or anything like that. Whether it�s useful late game, or can be a main attack skill, depends on how it improves with more points, what skill runes do to it, and if you can specialize your traits and equipment to up your AP regeneration enough to use Electrocute all the time.
I certainly hope so.
The only rune I had available for it this year (Crimson, I think) added damage. That was useful, but not spectacular. I think lowering the AP cost per second would be more useful than increasing the damage, since this one was enough to deal quickly with regular monsters; it was just too expensive to use it all the time. It�s not designed as a high-damage, boss-killing skill. It�s more of a utility weapon, great in some situations, not so good for others. (Which is how all skills should be, IMHO. One-skill wonders = boring character/poor design.)
I would have loved to use it with multistrike, where the beam will chain to a second (or third) target. OR this one, from the Gameplanet NZ hands-on report: �A final rune socketed into Electrocute triggered Chain Lightning off any target killed by the spell.�
Frost Nova
Description: An explosion of ice freezes nearby enemies for X seconds and causes X-X cold damage. Cold damage chills enemies, slowing their movement and attack speed. Damage will break the freeze effect, but not the chill effect.
In my second Wizard game I added a point to Frost Nova at level 10. It�s very useful, almost OP. The nova doesn�t just chill, it freezes the non-bosses, and for more than a second, which I was surprised to see at just level one. Presumably chill time is reduced on higher difficulty levels, as it was in D2, but this was a very powerful spell for so low in the skill tree.
It�s also got quite a large radius; again more than expected. The ring goes about as far as regular Nova did in D2; more than halfway to the edge of the screen, and everything in that range is hit, since the ring passes through monsters, nailing everything, not just the front row of enemies.
As is the case in D2, this one isn�t hugely-damaging. It�s more of a change up, something to use in emergencies, or to drop into your usual skill barrage to delay the enemies. The visuals are much changed as well; it looks almost like a stone nova; sending out chunks and pieces of stuff; ice I guess; but they�re not blue or white; they�re more of a dark gray.
That odd coloration doesn�t show up so much in the screenshot, but maybe it�s changed over time; that screen is from back in 2009, since no more recent ones have been released.
The only rune I had for Frost Nova was a Golden rune and it, boringly, just lowered the Arcane Power cost. Sadly, since I was curious to see what the other runestone effects might have been.
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