Wizard Battle Arena Report

[:1]Here's the Wizard section from the lengthy battle arena report I posted today. I talked about Wizard issues throughout it, in terms of tactics and strategy and such, so do check out the whole thing, but here's the most relevant part for this forum.

http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/com...-arena-report/


Quote:




Wizard

The Wizard was built very much as a glass cannon in the Battle Arena demo, though like all of the characters, she had enough variety in her skills to fight and escape.

The Wizard was clearly not given her best spells for the the Arena. Any sort of projectile would have been enormously useful: Magic Missiles, Arcane Orb, or Energy Twister. Disintegrate was very useful, and the speed of it let you hit anything in a straight line, but it wasn�t very damaging, and the fact that you had to stand still to use it made it dangerous. A skill that fired out projectiles, which the Wizard could constantly have tossed out while moving, would have been awesome.

Even better would have been some more effective �fire and forget� spells. Blizzard or Arcane Torrent would have been much easier to hit the enemy with, if less damaging than the �all or nothing� type attack that was Meteor. Hydra should have been useful for this purpose, but it was tweaked for the Arena so that only one could be active at once. A fair change; if a Wizard could have put out ten of them it would have been ruinous for the other team, but it nerfed the slow-firing dragon enough that it was not much use for the main battle.

What skills were available?

Wizard Skills:

* LMB: Spectral Blade

* RMB: Disintegrate�Runed for lower AP cost.

* 1: Meteor�Runed for bigger dmg. Did around 200-250 dmg. Chars had like 800 hps in arena.

* 2: Hydra�Runed for arcane damage/purple.

* 3: Teleport�Runed for lower AP cost.

* 4: Slow Time�Didn�t note the rune.

* 5: Diamond skin�Absorbed 100 damage. Runed to add another 50 to that, but very short duration.

Like the Barbarian, all skills were level 5 and runed. I noted more of the Wizard�s runes than the Barbarian�s or Witch Doctors, and they�re listed above.

Spectral Blade was fairly damaging, but it�s a melee range spell, and it wasn�t a good idea to get into melee range with anyone but another Wizard�who was probably zapping you with Disintegrate at the time. The Barb�s goal was to get melee on you, and a Witch Doctor could Sacrifice Mongrels point blank range, dealing far more damage than your Spectral Blade.

I�ve talked about Disintegrate a lot already. Very useful blasting, instant speed to the edge of the level, but it requires a clear line or sight, and it holds the Wizard in place while using it. Smart Wizards I saw used it a lot, but in bursts. Any time they had a clear shot they�d cook someone from a distance, ideally over one of the openings in the ground. The damage per second wasn�t huge, but it added up and was very easy to hit with.

Meteor packed huge damage; the most of any skill in the Arena demo. It was very hard to hit with, though. There were several seconds between the trigger and the arrival, and no one (intentionally) stood still for that long in the Arena. These were worth firing regularly since the Wizard was never low on Arcane Power, the cast only took an instant, and the reward for one hitting was huge. They seldom did, though. Smart players would have seen the circle showing the drop zone and tried to lead the enemy into it; Mongrels at least. Maybe next time.

Hydra was always one of my favorite skills in D2, so I was excited to use it. And disappointed. You could only have one Hydra active at a time, and it had a slow firing rate. Like Meteor, it was useful to stick these out there to let them ping away, hoping the damage would add up over time. They were very commonly used near the end of rounds, when one or two characters were chasing one on the other team. Most Wizards would cast Hydras in the path of the fleeing enemy, knowing they�d get in a shot or two and help finish them off.

Teleport was fun to use, and I was surprised at how quick it was. I�d thought with the new Diablo III animation�where the Wizard leaps up into the air before vanishing, and appears in mid-air and drops to earth on the other end�that it would be kind of slow. Not noticeable. Teleport felt as instantaneous as the Teleport in Diablo II. The delay was from the cooldown, which was around 8 seconds. This effectively turned Teleport into an emergency escape skill, one that was great during the busy scramble of an early round, but one that wasn�t so useful late game, if you were outnumbered and being hunted down.

Slow Time. One of the most useful skills in the Arena. Not just for the Wizard, but for the whole team. A Wizard who managed to cast one of these out in the center of the arena, where most of the early round action took place, gave her team a huge advantage. Enemy Barbs were nearly frozen in it, Mongrels were basically stuck there for the duration of the spell, and even other casters hated to be inconvenienced. It wasn�t as much on defense, since there weren�t many projectiles flying in the demo, but it was great to block movement.

Diamond Skin was a life saver, but only if you remembered to use it properly. I seldom did. At level 5 with a rune it absorbed 150 damage of any type, but the duration was quite short, so you had to cast it just before you needed it. Also, 150 sounded like a lot, but a Meteor or grinding Barb could do double that in a second, and Wizards with Diamond Skin on tended to feel invulnerable, and stuck around in dangerous, melee situations longer than they should have.



On the whole, Wizards were fairly glass cannony in the Arena. Seldom did they last to the end game, unless they played very cautiously. They tended to deal huge damage, but get carried away blasting with Disintegrate and get killed in the process. Teleport was a nice escape, but the long cool down meant it wasn�t that useful when things turned grim and sustained pursuit would run down any Wizard in short order.




Questions comments?|||Ray of Frost is going to own arenas so hard.

Did you notice any crits secondary effects in PvP? Because I imagine stuff like Ray of Frost or carpetting Charged Bolt will be hideously effective in PvP if you get high crit rates and crit secondaries are in effect.|||Targets stagger or stutter a bit under sustained exposure to Disintegrate, which I think is the crit causing them a bit of an interrupt. You'll note the lack of cold spells for any char, probably since as you point out, chilling would be very powerful. Not something that players could deal with their first time touching the Arena/D3, so Bliz kept the chars/skills simple in the demo.|||Well, Disintegrate crits should have silenced, at least.|||Quote:








Ray of Frost is going to own arenas so hard.

Did you notice any crits secondary effects in PvP? Because I imagine stuff like Ray of Frost or carpetting Charged Bolt will be hideously effective in PvP if you get high crit rates and crit secondaries are in effect.




imho killing barb, or energy shield based wiz, or any other vitality stacked char with ray of frost will be a huge pain|||Nowhere near as much of the pain as it will be for them to kill the Ray of Frost Wizard.|||control effects are nice ofc but i think with wizard everyone wants big damage