Diablo III, The New Nuke

Diablo 3

There is nothing more exciting than watching a mass of warriors clash on the battlefield and the two lines crashing together in a storm of battle. There is nothing as exciting unless you consider the powerful wizard hurling a wave of elemental energy into the front of the enemy lines before they meet or targeting leaders with destructive force which by itself can literally end a battle in your favor. Diablo III has taken the wizard to new levels by adding a few new devastating spells and opened the class up to both male and female wizards.

The importance of the wizard in battle cannot be overstressed. Even in situations where your forces are outnumbered the wizard can affect the outcome with spells that target an area instead of an individual. Even the barbarian can only affect, with a melee attack, one opponent. When the wizard hurls a spell it can encompass several opponents at once or jump from one to the other, draining hit points and making the battle easier for the front lines. Wizards can also be used to target enemy leaders which can throw the entire opposing force into disarray, wandering leaderless for your forces to pick off one at a time.

In the past the wizard was pretty much restricted to casting spells that channeled elemental forces to devastate the enemy. With the exception of teleport that was just about it. While these spells were very helpful in Diablo II, there were limits to the wizard’s power. Now the wizard is able to target a single individual or siege unit and completely disintegrate it completely in one round. The new electrocute spell will bounce from one opponent to another until it finally runs out of energy. This allows a player to target an enemy leader, giving the primary target the full strength of the spell and then reduce regular melee units, or even wizards and clerics who have no magical protection, power and ability to resist your front line attack for very long. But the spell “slow time” probably has the greatest effect on battle of any spell overall. This is an area of effect spell. For every unit caught in the spells effect the rate of movement is drastically slowed, as are the number of attacks available. As a player you know how much this can help you ground forces to have more attacks than the enemy. If the opposing wizard, assuming the enemy is using one, is caught it will cut the number of spells they can cast giving your wizard an opportunity to cast multiple spells, targeting the wizard, and get by whatever magical defenses the enemy possesses.

Summary

The wizard has been a staple in every fantasy role playing game since the origin of Dungeons & Dragons in the early 1970´s and will always be a character class. It is very easy for a gaming company to add too much power to a wizard class and unbalance the rest of the game. The use of magic is very tricky. The designers of Diablo III have managed to improve the wizard class without making them so powerful that only another wizard of equal power can defeat them. This has turned out to be a much feared change that will only impress every game lover.