Beta Wizard

[ursustas]

As way of introduction to this thread, it is primarily about my experiences playing a Wizard in the Diablo 3 Beta and hopefully may way of sharing the experiences in a way that is more than just numbers. Feel free to ask any relevant questions :)

Random Files: http://ursustas.com/d3/
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/ursustas

Below is the original post .. thrown up in a moment of excitement and frenzy .. around 2 hours after I started playing the game ..

Trying out the spell Electrocute .. it is insane!

As you attack enemies the lightning jumps between them .. but as they thin the lightnings starts to lash out at nearby objects as it runs out of 'wet' targets.

---

I walk through an endless outdoor graveyard where the fog and pale moonlight bringing the very shadows alive. While others would tread with caution, I stride confidently .. for the endless fount of arcane power within washes away my fear ..
Almost gently raising my arm, lightning lashes out before me blinding those who stare into the flash. Blood and body parts from the unfortunate undead who cross my path splatter across the tall wet grass as the licks of my lightning cause nearby objects, such as tree limbs and gravestones to explode into fragments.

When the dust has settled and silence returned, I glance back the way I have come .. my soft footsteps have not left a sign of my passage, there is nothing but the wasteland of rubble and charred corpses to mark my journey.

[ursustas]

Wanted to post something quick before I crash .. tired enough the screen is blurry ..

Not alot of spoilers in the Beta .. a few hints but no grand plot reveals .. I really don't like spoilers myself, but I think you can safely watch clips and read about people playing the beta without regretting it :)

Wow what a beautiful game .. only stopped occasionally to admire the scenery (probably should have done more of that .. but wanted to experience it all) ..very interested in my 2nd play through and how different the areas/mobs are.

Playing through as a Wizard and exploring everything/not rushing, took around 4-5 hours to reach the end of the road (with several few pauses to post bugs) .. ended up level 9.

I pretty much burned through it all trying the different skills but when in trouble, being pretty tired .. ended up using Electrocute .. it also looks insane (I like blowing everything up .. statues/desks/monsters).
The next few days I plan on playing the other classes to get a feel for them and then most likely repeating the Wizard but going to avoid using Electrocute next time around and see what else works well .. looking up the skill tree's I anticipate that various combinations of skills and runes (once unlocked) will have nice synergy .. but at low levels there are only a handful of basic choices.
I also want to see how the mobs scale/adjust to my level.

Didn't really get a feel for what the gear was like .. except for a nice +10% wizard damage orb in my offhand .. I found a few other nice pieces but nothing that I remember fondly. Not understanding precision, etc makes it hard.

Only tried the game out on my desktop sofar (which is a beast) .. currently game bugged on my laptop (blank screen, just a mouse cursor).

One thing I didn't know about that I love are the new shrines. They give a 2 minute super buff (+25% magic find or +25% experience or -25% damage received .. etc.) .. getting the buff tends to make you reckless as you try to make the most of it .. I really like the length of time they last :) .. quite a rush :) Elixirs are the same, the ones I had lasted 5 minutes .. but no pauses for pretty things when you are on the juice ;)

The one thing I didn't like was the respec anytime .. which was weird as I had imagined that I would find other things more annoying .. perhaps the experience was to surreal ;)
As a wizard I imagined that I was memorizing the spells from my spellbook .. but honestly the respec anytime feels to me at least that making choices with skills is pointless and that you are generic and not defined by your choices .. you can change them whenever you want. As runes and gear come into play I would anticipate that this would ease somewhat as you would stick with your favourites most of the time, but I think I still would prefer a time delay system .. something along the lines of once you change a skill you cannot change another for x minutes (perhaps your level in minutes). So at low levels you can experiment but as you get higher you can only change them once per hour (at level 60 for example). I think this would still let you be strategic with your skills but make the choice a bit more meaningful and strategic. You also would have to be careful what you swap in harder difficulties if you had to live with the choice for 30 minutes or an hour .. it still lets you vary your character but perhaps I would feel that my choices mattered.

Edit: posting screenshot as a separate post simply to avoid it distorting the layout of this post so much.

[ursustas]

http://ursustas.com/d3/defeated_d3_beta.jpg

[manabanana]

VERY COOL! congrats on getting the beta. Thanks for the screenshot.

[Jaago]

I envy you. :) Thanks for sharing your experiences; I can't wait to get my hands on the game whether it is in two weeks or six months..

How does the resource system feel like? As in does it impose interesting restrictions on skill usage.

[TheMythe]

Great summary, cannot wait to play the wizard!

[PlayerTwo]

Would you mind giving us a little detail on how the controls work?

I am watching one of the beta videos and it looks like you have two spots for skills. Are those for right and left mouse click?

I am assuming with the 6 skill limit we will want to use all of the skills...can you assign hot keys for them and still have something for your regular attack?

Thanks.

[ursustas]

How does the resource system feel like? As in does it impose interesting restrictions on skill usage.
Hard to know at level 13, the higher level powers will likely cost more and have longer cooldowns. I think the wizard regenerates mana so quickly that the cooldown on spells will be holding us back.

At low levels I feel the wizard is far faster than the Barbarian at clearing .. while the Barbarian never pauses the wizard kills so fast .. or perhaps I suck at the Barbarian!


it looks like you have two spots for skills. Are those for right and left mouse click?
Yes. You can drag your abilities onto the left or right mouse click which makes a wizard pretty easy if you bind a spell such Eletrocute to your right button .. keep clicking down the corridor and you will either fire a spell at monsters near your mouse or move to that point. You can also hold shift which prevents you from moving and thus enables you to spam spells at inanimate objects and blow them up (and also avoid inadvertantly running into a battle) You may want to avoid binding a spell to your right button because if surrounded you will find it hard to move unless you can find somewhere to click that doesn't have a monster :P

1-5 activate other skills, I had Frost Nova bound to 1 which was basically my get out of jail card if I was surrounded or facing a boss or teleporting enemies.

I am assuming with the 6 skill limit we will want to use all of the skills...can you assign hot keys for them and still have something for your regular attack?
You have 5 slots on your bar and you can replace the left and right hand (one is a basic attack and the other is your weapon/wand) .. so you have 7 spaces to put stuff (6 if you leave one for health potions).
I cannot find a way to use more than these slots .. so if you want a variety of potions/scrolls/etc on your bar I believe you will be sacrificing skills.

[perplex]

My apologies if this has been asked/revealed anywhere else, but I came across the interactive skillpane for Wizard, and noticed the arcane cost for certain skills.

How much Arcane Power do a Wizard have from the beginning? And, in D2 we could increase our manapool, will this be the case in D3 as well, or is influencing the regeneration rate our only option?

[ADest]

1-5 activate other skills, I had Frost Nova bound to 1 which was basically my get out of jail card if I was surrounded or facing a boss or teleporting enemies.


How do you activate/use skills that are set to 1-5 in the menu bar at the bottom of the screen? Do you just press f1-f5 and the skills activate?

[ursustas]

How do you activate/use skills that are set to 1-5 in the menu bar at the bottom of the screen? Do you just press f1-f5 and the skills activate?
You press the numbers 1,2,3,4 or 5 above the letters Q,W,E,R or T ;)
As a wizard I used shift alot to force myself to stand still, but I will probably dual bind a few of these to extra buttons on my mouse.

One thing I only just noticed (thanks to your question) was that pressing the numbers on the numpad have your character 'say' something ingame, it appears each character can say different things for each key.

Perhaps these are used to direct the followers .. will have to try it out later.

Male Wizard
numpad 1: Get over here. Just stay with me. Come along. Follow!
2: Take this. Here. You want this?

Female Wizard

will have to finish this later ..

[StarMage]

Thank you for sharing your experiences in-depth! It is much appreciated. I hope you do the same with your experiences with the other classes.

I had a question: What if we wanted to use all our hotbar slots for skills then just open our inventory everytime we want to use a pot?

I know we most likely won't have enough skills to fill up the hotbar during the beta, but could you pretend that all slots were taken and just rely on pressing your inventory hotkey whenever you needed a pot to find out if it's really worth the hassle? lol

[ursustas]

What if we wanted to use all our hotbar slots for skills then just open our inventory everytime we want to use a pot?
You could leave your inventory open or tap it quickly and right click a pot .. that drinks it from your inventory.

My experience as a wizard when I decided to see how tough I was by wading in amongst it .. is that we are not overly fragile .. a boss or a pack of mobs will take a few seconds to drop your health bar down from max .. it's why I don't think a little latency will matter as much as it has in the past .. of course that .. obviously this is plenty of time to drink a potion .. but you don't want to drink a potion .. why?

When you are killing mobs you are continually getting health globes .. they take a few seconds to fill you up. Potions fill you up instantly but have a substantial cooldown before you can use them again ..

Typical scenario I have encountered is that as you run into a huge battle and start attacking and getting hurt, you get a health globe (hopefully before you are too injured) .. this almost certainly fills you up as a low health wizard (at low levels) but it takes a few seconds .. this repeats so basically it just depends whether you are taking more damage or healing more ..

Strategically when getting swarmed or when uncomfortably injured .. we have a few abilities to buy us time to heal up (or reposition) such as Frost Nova (Freeze enemies for 4 seconds) and Diamond Skin (5 seconds of damage absorption) that I would use before drinking a potion .. not because I was cheap but because once I drink a potion I only have one option left while my potion is on cooldown (at low levels, at high levels you can choose to have more) .. if I use a protective spell I can still use a potion but I also have a chance of healing up with a health globe or lasting until my protective spell is off cool down again ;)

I have burned the odd potion or two though ;) .. esp. when you kill a bunch of mobs at range and the health globes drop on the other side of the room and other mobs walk to stand over the top of them .. then again I was trying to see how many mobs I could gather up and still survive ;) Normal mode for the first 10 levels or so is pretty easy.

I will personally keep the pots on my bar as I think digging through my pack in the middle of a battle where I am dying is .. probably not going to help the situation .. and it breaks the immersion for me ;)

[ursustas]

How much Arcane Power do a Wizard have from the beginning? And, in D2 we could increase our manapool, will this be the case in D3 as well, or is influencing the regeneration rate our only option?Several items have a bonus that returns energy whenever you make a kill .. but at low levels they are unnecessary as we regen. at a pretty impressive rate.
I have seen life regen items but do not believe you can increase regen of energy pools except by the items that return energy on kills. Not sure if there are items that increase the maximum of your pool, I haven't seen one yet.

A wizard has 100 Arcane Power and by default regenerates 750 Arcane Power/Minute .. so you regen 12.5/second .. or you regen your entire pool in 8 seconds.

Perhaps a few screenshots will explain this more .. posting below (so it doesn't distort this post) vitals for a level 1 and level 3 wizard. Same gear. From this you can infer the stat's that go up each level (I think it is linear) and the ones that need a boost from gear ;)

[ursustas]

http://ursustas.com/d3/D3%200.3.0.7318%20BETA%20Wizard1.jpg

http://ursustas.com/d3/D3%200.3.0.7318%20BETA%20Wizard3.jpg

[perplex]

Thank you for the reply and the screenshots. I guess being capped to 100 Arcane Power is a good thing, since we can't line up two, or even three, of our heavy hitting nukes without some sort of delay in between (unless we can get a crazy amount of AP back after each kill).

Nice to see character screen in high detail as well! Out of curiosity, does the three small green bars to the left of the Arcane Power globe do/indicate anything? :)

[ADest]

You press the numbers 1,2,3,4 or 5 above the letters Q,W,E,R or T ;)
As a wizard I used shift alot to force myself to stand still, but I will probably dual bind a few of these to extra buttons on my mouse.
One thing I only just noticed (thanks to your question) was that pressing the numbers on the numpad have your character 'say' something ingame, it appears each character can say different things for each key.
Perhaps these are used to direct the followers .. will have to try it out later.
Male Wizard
numpad 1: Get over here. Just stay with me. Come along. Follow!
2: Take this. Here. You want this?
Female Wizard
will have to finish this later ..

Cool, thanks. And yeah, The quotes are kind of a nod to D2 I'm guessing, in that game, since VOIP wasn't supported, you could have your character 'say' things by pressing the number pad keys. Stuff like "Help me!" "This way!" "I want that." "This is for you." and so on. Now that VOIP is enabled, I can only imagine they left these quotes in as an easter egg.

[ursustas]

Thank you for the reply and the screenshots. I guess being capped to 100 Arcane Power is a good thing, since we can't line up two, or even three, of our heavy hitting nukes without some sort of delay in between (unless we can get a crazy amount of AP back after each kill).
I have seen item buffs that increase your maximum AP pool and another buff that return's energy on a kill.


Nice to see character screen in high detail as well! Out of curiosity, does the three small green bars to the left of the Arcane Power globe do/indicate anything? :)
Latency Bar ;)

[ursustas]

Worth noting, not sure if it is random mobs or they changed something server side .. but when I played through on a Wizard originally, I took my time to kill everything .. it was very, very easy, I think i came close to death once.

Ran through tonight 1-10 (repeated a few sections .. I want to try disintegrate) and there were several times I nearly died O.o .. elemental mobs that explode on death and several 'named' mobs .. perhaps it was just a lucky/unlucky run .. had to burn a few potions ;) Packs of mobs seemed more numerous .. or perhaps it was rushing through the content faster. It certainly felt more perilous.

[JustAnotherOldGeezer]

I'm curious about these two questions::

1. What is the best academic spell? (magic missile, electrocute, spark pulse or w/e)
2. Which single-target spell do you predict will be the best boss killer?

[ursustas]

1. What is the best academic spell?The 4 rapid cast spells are academic spells, they will eventually all end up costing 1 Arcane Power each to cast.

Impossible to say which is the best without knowing runes .. also it depends very much depend on the mobs you are fighting.

At range vs packs of non lightning resistant mobs, Electrocute looks amazing (jumping to nearby objects reducing rooms to rubble) but it's damage is unpredictable.
Up close vs packs, Spectral Blade (based on weapon damage, hits all enemies) is more effective, though a wizard doesn't typically want to be too close.
I have a feeling towards endgame it will be rare to find a build that does not include Magic Missile, runed, on one of your hotkeys.
I think Spectral Blade will be useful, esp. in groups.


2. Which single-target spell do you predict will be the best boss killer?

Endgame .. Magic Missile (runed) + Ray of Frost are my prediction's .. subject to the boss's immunities.

(Images of Rapid Cast spells below)

[ursustas]

Also see post further down for full list of Actives and Passives:
http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8017695&postcount=27

http://ursustas.com/d3/MagicMissile-0.3.0.7318.png

http://ursustas.com/d3/ShockPulse-0.3.0.7318.png

http://ursustas.com/d3/SpectralBlade-0.3.0.7318.png

http://ursustas.com/d3/Electrocute-0.3.0.7318.png

http://ursustas.com/d3/Wizard-Skills-Actives-0.3.0.7318.png

[ursustas]

Experimenting on uploading a few videos to youtube .. went an purchased fraps and after a bit of research used Handbrake (normal profile but changed RF to 22) .. just a test video up there now to test the recording and encoding .. let me know what you think of the quality (recommend 1080p or higher) .. it's horrible footage considering it's content .. I just snapped a little bit of what I thought would challenge the process (darker areas with fog)
http://www.youtube.com/ursustas

Details about the encoding here: http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=810135

[JustAnotherOldGeezer]

The 4 rapid cast spells are academic spells, they will eventually all end up costing 1 Arcane Power each to cast.

Impossible to say which is the best without knowing runes .. also it depends very much depend on the mobs you are fighting.

At range vs packs of non lightning resistant mobs, Electrocute looks amazing (jumping to nearby objects reducing rooms to rubble) but it's damage is unpredictable.
Up close vs packs, Spectral Blade (based on weapon damage, hits all enemies) is more effective, though a wizard doesn't typically want to be too close.
I have a feeling towards endgame it will be rare to find a build that does not include Magic Missile, runed, on one of your hotkeys.
I think Spectral Blade will be useful, esp. in groups.



Endgame .. Magic Missile (runed) + Ray of Frost are my prediction's .. subject to the boss's immunities.

(Images of Rapid Cast spells below)

I was thinking Magic Missile as well for killing bosses.

It's single target, can be controlled easily (just click on the monster you want dead), easily targeted from a distance, and is augmented by this great passive:

-Temporal Flux: Whenever you deal Arcane damage, enemies are slowed by x% for x seconds

... since magic missile is the only pure arcane damage dealing rapid fire academic spell, you've essentially turned your magic missile into a cold skill (with the slowing effect). Then factor in 'Charged Blast' runestone effect to boost damage even further, and you have a lot of opportunity to tele, focus fire, slow the boss, and dish out huge damage while your cooldown spells recharge.

Now couple this with the Arcane Dynamo spell (which gives the next non academic spell a damage boost after x number of magic missiles) and you've got a boss slaying combo.

Surprising that arguably the most boring skill will be potentially one of the most lethal if it scales well.

[melianor]

Thanks a lot for taking the time with this and sharing your playing impressions ursustas. :D

[perplex]

let me know what you think of the quality (recommend 1080p or higher)

The quality looks good to me!

I'll be sure to check your channel for new videos every now and then. Keep'em coming! :crazyeyes:

[ursustas]

Thanks a lot for taking the time with this and sharing your playing impressions ursustas. :D
You are welcome.

More stuff .. Wizard Actives and Passives as at Beta 0.3.0.7318:

Passives: PDF (http://ursustas.com/d3/D3Beta-WizardPassives-0.3.0.7318.pdf), DOCX (http://ursustas.com/d3/D3Beta-WizardPassives-0.3.0.7318.docx)
Actives: PDF (http://ursustas.com/d3/D3Beta-WizardActives-0.3.0.7318.pdf), DOCX (http://ursustas.com/d3/D3Beta-WizardActives-0.3.0.7318.docx)

[isak viking]

You are welcome.

More stuff .. Wizard Actives and Passives as at Beta 0.3.0.7318:

Passives: PDF (http://ursustas.com/d3/D3Beta-WizardPassives-0.3.0.7318.pdf), DOCX (http://ursustas.com/d3/D3Beta-WizardPassives-0.3.0.7318.docx)
Actives: PDF (http://ursustas.com/d3/D3Beta-WizardActives-0.3.0.7318.pdf), DOCX (http://ursustas.com/d3/D3Beta-WizardActives-0.3.0.7318.docx)


tyvm my friend

[ursustas]

Posted level 5 and level 10 screenshot here showing character sheets and discussing Arcane Power
http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?p=8022858

[talukita]

I have some questions about the skill bar:
_ So you have 7 places to put skills? Then why does the calculator only let you have 6 skills?
_ With long duration skills like Armor, Familiar, Archon,.... can you do things like putting those skills in the bar, buff them, then change them with other skills while still keeping the effect? Like the Armor spells IIRC at lvl 60 they will have 120s duration (240 if combined with Galvanizing Ward) and that's long enough for you to switch spell. I know this is annoying or somewhat bm but it's actually save you 1 slot of spell, which is REALLY important.

[ursustas]

So you have 7 places to put skills? Then why does the calculator only let you have 6 skills?Main reason, auto attack (ie. basic weapon attack) takes a slot if you want it. You could also use them for consumables/potions so you do not have to keep your inventory open (hoping they disallow drinking healing potions at least from your inventory).


can you do things like putting those skills in the bar, buff them, then change them with other skills while still keeping the effect?I hope not. Just tested using spell Magic Weapon, when swapping the spell out you loose the effect. IMO it should also reset your Resource to 0 .. if it ends up being allowed in combat at all.

BTW .. added a few more videos http://www.youtube.com/ursustas .. this time with pretty heavy quality/AA settings from ATI's control panel overriding the game. If interested used these settings: http://ursustas.com/d3/D3-ATI-Override.png

[ZharTheMad]

ursustas, I have a couple of questions about spectral blade :D

Can weapon elemental damage (fire, lightning, arcane, etc.) carry over to the skill? when enchanted with magic weapon, monsters leave a purple aura.

Does life steal, knockback and other modifiers proc when using the skill?

Thank you again for all of your contributions. :)

[soilantgreen]

ursustas, I have a couple of questions about spectral blade :D

Can weapon elemental damage (fire, lightning, arcane, etc.) carry over to the skill? when enchanted with magic weapon, monsters leave a purple aura.

Does life steal, knockback and other modifiers proc when using the skill?

Thank you again for all of your contributions. :)

Weapon elemental damage definately carries over, and I would assume but couldnt confirm the others would as well.

Using a fire damage weapon in the screenshot below, shows up pretty clearly.

http://i53.tinypic.com/e0mmw.jpg

[ZharTheMad]

@soilantgreen: Thanks, man. You made lots of people happy with that info. :D