Introducing the Wizard

In the Facebook comments on my article on the Barbarian, someone objected to my notion that the Barbarian was the only returning class, arguing that the Wizard is really just a renamed Sorceress. But much like the Barbarian, Blizzard has made some substantial changes to the "caster" class that lead to the Wizard playing dramatically different to the old Sorceress. A change for the better?

In my review of the Barbarian I have put a heavy spotlight on the flow of combat and the feeling of character growth that is so vital to (action-) role-playing games. Everything the Barbarian does has a certain force behind it, monsters fly all over the screen if you hit them which creates a very "real" feeling of power. Without spoiling the rest of this article, I have to give away that to me, the Wizard is severely lacking in that area. Most of the Wizard's low-level spells are projectiles of sorts, which could do with a bit more of a kick behind them. The damage potential is there but it doesn’t feel that way; monsters collapse instead of being torn into shreds or knocked all over the place.

Now much of this could be dismissed as pointless bickering but the reason why I put so much emphasis on it is that the Wizard doesn't give me a lot to work with in these first 13 levels. Combat is fairly straight forward, and as you will see in the following paragraphs, not quite the spectacle I experienced with my last character. Once again Blizzard has revampedn what used to be the "mana" mechanic in order to promote more active gameplay but at least in the early stages of wizardry, they haven't quite found the proper balance yet. The Wizards primary resource “Arcane Power” (AP) now behaves much like energy does for Rogues in World of Warcraft, with the time to refill from empty to max being just a few seconds.

Young Wizards are thrown into the world with not a great many things at their disposal: A wand (doubling as the Wizard's auto-attack), and only one spell, Magic Missile. As the name indicates, this is a "standard" single target projectile which, unsurprisingly, will replace your auto-attack immediately due to the insane amount of AP regeneration. It is also the first one of the so-called "signature spells", which reduce in AP cost with every level your character gains, making them more efficient in the process. Once again I have to ask why there even is such a thing as a wand attack if there is no reason to ever use it. Magic Missile will basically never drain your AP and the spells that can are on a cooldown high enough to allow sufficient regeneration between casts.

The first few levels are rather monotonous for Wizards, there isn't much incentive to use anything but Magic Missile. Frost Nova works very much like it's WoW-equivalent, Ice Armor is a concept grandfathered in from Diablo 2. Shock Pulse and Wave of Force are utility while Spectral Blade isn’t much of anything at the moment. While all of these spells are nice to have (and remember, at this point in the game you can only have one more spell next to Magic Missile) none of them seem necessary or even fun. I used Frost Nova as my second spell because it seemed the sensible choice but I doubt it made much of a difference.

Actually, scratch that, I know it didn’t make a difference because the one time I needed it, it didn’t work. At the risk of going of on a tangent, let me introduce you to what is quite possibly the most imbalanced mob in the game right now: The arcane enchanted bastard. You see, arcane enchanted monsters in Diablo 3 summon tentacles that cast massive amounts of arcane bolts right in your face with no way to fight or kill them (that includes them not being affected by Frost Nova, hence my rant). They do however count as obstacles so if you find yourself backed into a corner by them, there’s not a whole lot you can do. They are also cast at a massive distance to the original mob and usually pop up before you see the actual boss. Put two and two together and you can see where this is going; combining my Wizard and my Barbarian I died a total of seven times; six times due to arcane enchanted mobs.
Electrocute at level six marks the time when the Wizard finally gets something that resembles an AoE attack, an area casters usually excel at. I am pointing this out because Sorceresses in Diablo 2 could get their first AoE at level two and the Barbarian gets Cleave at level four, as I pointed out in my last review. While Electrocute is a fun skill to have, it seems to arrive a tad bit too late for my liking. Since it costs just a bit too much to be used constantly, I used it in conjunction with Magic Missile for the rest of my first two playthroughs.
Blizzard likes throwing players a curve ball and as such, Magic Weapon at level seven introduces the idea of a melee wizard, a build that has been the feature of some prominent YouTube videos lately. Whether or not the build will be viable for Inferno difficulty remains to be seen, in the current stage of the game gearing up and playing it feels a bit too much like a chore to me.

Arcane Orb is a single target “explode on contact” spell with a harsh AP cost, too much to be a viable AoE alternative to Electrocute and too weak to push Magic Missile off my bar for single targets. I didn’t see much reason to change my skillset in these levels.
As with every class, level ten unlocks the first passive slot and the Wizard is given two choices, Power Hungry and Temporal Flux. Power Hungry fixes an issue I had in the very beginning, namely that there is no such thing as “AP orbs” to be found; by the time I got this skill however I found myself approaching infinite AP without it already. Thus, Temporal Flux was my passive skill of choice, providing some welcomed, albeit unneeded, crowd control.
At this point you might have noticed that almost all of the Wizard's skills scale off weapon damage, another new addition to the Diablo franchise, and a welcomed one at that. It provides the player with an actual incentive to get new weapons instead of just looking for a "stat-stick" with the best modifier and holding onto it for the rest of their character's life. Hopefully this will lead to a bigger variety in endgame equipment for casters in the finished game.
To sum up my experiences with the Wizard, I was entertained but not impressed. Blizzard is steering the class in the right direction, weapon damage scaling and a better "mana" pool especially at the lower levels were needed changes but something still feels a bit off about this game's equivalent of the "Glass Cannon". Granted, it's impossible to judge the validity of a class without knowing its whole skill set but at least at the current stage of the game, there is undoubtedly room for improvement. If that happens, you'll be sure to hear about it right here on gosugamers.net.

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