Tier I

Charged Bolt
Active Skill
Rank:: 0/5
Description:: Launch a volley of 3 electric bolts that deal 1-2 lightning damage each.
Mana Cost:: 2
Critical lightning damage stun targets for 2 seconds.

Charged Bolt is still basically the same spell as ever. I didn’t try it at Blizzcon since it wasn’t one of the skills that came with a point already placed, and I wanted to enable new, higher level spells with the points I earned from leveling up. It’s described in detail from testing done last year, on the wiki page.

Ice Armor
Active skill
Rank:: 2/5
Description:: A field of ice slows movement and attack speed of enemies that attack you at close range, and causes 2 cold damage.
Mana Cost:: 10
Prerequisite of: Empowered Armor

Rank:: 3/5
Description:: Increases Freezing effect on nearby enemies and to enemies striking the caster.

As with the other defensive skills, this was just not needed at Blizzcon. I cast it a few times between battles, but never took any hits when I had it active.
Tier II
(Requires 5 points in skills)

Frost Nova
Active skill
Rank:: 1/5
Description:: An explosion of ice pelts nearby enemies for 1-2 cold damage. Has an additional 50% chance of a critical hit.
Critical hits from cold damage freeze targets.
Mana Cost:: 8
Cooldown: 12.0 seconds

Rank:: 2/5
Description:: Increases damage to 2-3 cold damage. Has an additional 60% chance of a critical hit.
Cooldown: 11.5 seconds
Prerequisite of: Bonechilling Cold

Frost Nova is improved over the D2 version, in several ways. It freezes, rather than chills, and it casts very quickly; so fast you can hardly even see the ring expanding out. It looked much faster and less detailed in this build than it has in previous screenshots, which I found disappointing.

Note also that Frost Nova has a substantial cool down time, though it decreases slightly with higher skill levels, Still while that sounds like an eternity after the zero cool down on this spell in D2, it’s not so bad if you use it wisely. Cast Frost Nova at the start of a battle, giving yourself some time/space to back up and pelt the enemy with projectiles, or hold it back for emergencies. Few battles in the Blizzcon 2009 demo lasted longer than 8 seconds, and not more than once or twice was my Wizard actually swarmed to the point that he needed this kind of freezing escape spell.

Electrocute
Active skill
Rank:: 1/5
Description:: Lightning arcs from the Wizard’s fingertips towards an enemy, electrocuting it for 5-15 lightning damage.
Mana Cost:: 8
Critical lightning damage stun targets for 2 seconds.

The description of this one is incomplete, since it’s got a hefty mana-per-second cost, and that makes it awesome for quick hits, especially to finish off moving targets, but not very suitable for big enemies.

Electrocute was not enabled to start with, but once I hit level 13 and earned a skill point, I stuck it right in. It’s great fun to use, and very useful too. Electrocute is basically a beam weapon, one that the Wizard fires as long as he keeps the mouse clicked. You can not move while using Electrocute, but you’re unlikely to want to, since it locks on and keeps zapping the target until it’s dead, or you’re out of mana. The second happens before the first more often than you’d like, and I found this one unusable on bosses, or even moderately tough targets like Dune Dervishes and Dark Demons, since my mana would run out long before their hit points. Other Wizard spells deal far more damage per mana, but few are as much fun to use as this one.

Electrocute was simply awesome for small stuff, especially on evasive enemies like the fluttering Sand Wasps, or those last one or two Fallen Imps who always scattered away from the battle when their Overseers and Shamans went down.  Just aim at the monster, or anywhere near it, and the beam locks on, draining that monster steadily. Smaller monsters usually died in less than a second, and I found this one far quicker than the higher damage Arcane Orb to clean up groups of weak enemies. Some screenshots show this one chaining to multiple targets, but that’s apparently a bonus from a skill rune, since higher levels in this spell only listed more damage.

Note that lightning critical hits stun targets. This one stuns (very briefly) at least every two seconds, so there must be a lot of hit checks going on, to trigger the critical hit so frequently.  That stunning is, of course, highly useful when you’re locked onto an enemy trying to charge into melee range.
Tier III
(Requires 10 points in skills)

Empowered Armor
Active Skill
Rank::
Requires: 1 point(s) in Ice Armor
Description:: Increases your armor by 5%.

Not high on the list to try out at Blizzcon, where my Wizard hardly got hit at all.

Energy Twister
Active Skill
Rank:: 1/5
Description:: Summon an Energy Twister that deals 10 damage per second to everything in its path.
Mana Cost:: 18

This one was impressive, but very unpredictable. The graphic is great; you can see that in the Blizzcon 2009 gameplay movie, and it does more in more or less a straight line, but without some sort of tank I didn’t find it very easy to hit enemies with. Arcane Orb was nearly as damaging, far easier to aim, and cheaper on the mana. This Wizard just has so many cool active spells to try out it’s impossible to get a handle on everything in a short play time.
Tier IV
(Requires 15 points in skills)

Bonechilling Cold
Passive
Rank:: 1/5
Requires: 1 point(s) in Frost Nova
Description:: Frozen targets take 25% additional damage from all attacks.

Too low level to try out at Blizzcon, this cold mastery has an odd twist, in that only “frozen” targets are given extra damage. That makes it sound like something of a specialty attack, only of use to Wizards who were really going to maximize their freezing capabilities. It’s unknown if some items will have freezing monster bonuses, or ways to raise critical hit %, since cold critical hits cause freezing.

More generally, bosses can’t be frozen, and monsters that are frozen are pretty much helpless and sitting ducks anyway, so would boosting your damage, just to them, be worth the skill points?

Ray of Frost
Active
Rank:: 1/5
Description:: Project a beam of cold energy that deals 8 cold damage per second.
Mana Cost:: 16 mana per second.
Critical hits from cold damage freeze targets.

This one sounds like a cold based Disintegrate, minus the piercing ability, but it’s never been seen in use since the very first gameplay movie, from WWI in June 2008. It was too high level to tryout at Blizzcon 2009.
Tier V
(Requires 20 points in skills)

Blizzard
Active
Rank:: 1/5
Description:: Call down shards of ice to pelt an area dealing 6-10 cold damage per second for 3 seconds.
Mana Cost:: 70
Critical hits from cold damage freeze targets.

Like a lot of other neat high level skills (most of them owned by the Barbarian) this one has been seen in videos, but never used by anyone other than Blizzard.
Storm Armor
Active
Rank:: 1/5
Description:: Surround yourself in electrical energy. Electric bolts are automatically fired at attackers for 1 to 8 damage.
Armor spells affect you and all nearby allies and you can only be affected by one armor spell at a time.
Mana Cost:: 15

This spell looks to be under construction, with no duration listed. Also note that lightning critical hits stun enemies, which would make this a lot more useful as a defensive spell, if your wizard had a higher % chance of criticals with lighting.
Tier VI
(Requires 25 points in skills)

Storm Power
Passive
Rank:: 1/5
Description:: Increase damage of all lightning and ice spells.
Prerequisite of:
***Not Yet Implemented***

The mighty Storm tree mastery, not usable or even enabled.

Reference:

Full Wizard Skill Trees

Comments

comments

Powered by Facebook Comments