Changes

The term is nebulous; virtually everyone would agree that skills like [[Electrocute]] and [[Locust Swarm]] are "spells" but skills like [[Ground Stomp]] and [[Impenetrable Defense]] might not be considered as such.   There's no game importance to the term; it's purely a piece of terminology.

There are two several major changes to how the calculation of spell damage is calculated in Diablo III. In addition  * There are no skill points.* There are numerous changes to attributes.* Spell damage is determined by weapon damage.* Spell casting rate is derived from weapon attack speed.* Items add +% spell damage. (Removed during development.)* [[Runestones]] vastly increase skill variety. These factors combine to greatly modify the performance of spell itself increasing casting characters in damage with Diablo III. See the following sections for more details.  ===Skill Points=== The removal of [[skill points ]] is one of the biggest of the many changes to the [[combat]] engine in itDiablo III. Characters get one skill to start with, and various passive additional [[Active Skill Slot]]s become available at Clvl 3, 6, 12, 18, and finally 24. Characters thus have a maximum of six skills boosting all or some group of spellsenabled past Clvl 24, though the Wizard's stats six so chosen can be switched around endlessly ((see the [[respecs]] article for details). Without skill points, skills are factored in when determining damageall balanced (roughly), and +%spell damagethey scale up with Clvl, attributes, equipment, found on and more. This makes many itemsmore skills viable for the end game, is essential to maintaining a rapid killing speedand allows much more skill experimentation.

Just as The entire attribute system was overhauled in Diablo III. See the [[strengthattributes]] article for more details, but in terms of spell damage, the key information is that spell damage is calculated much like weapon damage, with a base value that is modified (increased) by attributes, equipment bonuses, weapon stats, and more. This entirely changes the [[dexteritybuild]] dynamics for casters, who could use attribute points purely for vitality or equipment requirements in Diablo II.  ===Spell Damage=== Spell damage is calculated much like melee weapon or ranged attack damage was calculated in Diablo II. This is a big change, since in Diablo 2 spell damage was determined chiefly by equipment bonuses, skill points (including synergies), and Clvl. In Diablo III players with caster characters are as dependent upon good equipment, especially weapons, as combat characters.   ===Casting Speed=== In Diablo III, casting speed is determined not by an inherent character property, but by the item equipped. Faster hitting weapons allow for faster spell casting. Furthermore, [[DoT]] effects have their "tick rate" set by the weapon that inflicts the damage. This also makes faster attack bonuses as useful for mages as for combat characters, and provides a crucial part built in advantage to lighter damage/faster weapons, and a penalty to higher damage/slower weapons.   ===+% Spell Damage Affixes=== Early in Diablo III's development, the developers talked a great deal about the importance of +% spell damage modifiers. Their initial design theory was that mages would focus their equipment goals on assembling as much +% damage as possible, much as combat characters do. Over the course of the game's development, this system changed, and as of the Beta test +% spell damage calculations for equipment seems to have been removed from the game. Some may still appear at higher levels, but if so it will likely be a fairly rare modifier. Interestingly, +% damage bonuses on weapons has been greatly diminished in importance as well, with the accuracy % bonuses quite small. For instance, numerous high level Legendary items have +30% or less bonus damage. As a result, modifiers such as +attribute bonuses are much more important and impactful on total character damage .   ==Spell Damage Explained== In December 2011 one of the lead developers of most physical Diablo III's skill attackssystem, the [[attributesWyatt Cheng]] will matter , posted a lengthy and highly-informative write up of the current functions and issues with the skill damage system. [http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/blizzard-explains-spell-casting-damage] <blue>Okay so first I’ll start by saying that all of your math is correct, (except for the one exception case that I’ll mention later). The conclusions are all based on information you have available, so mostly I’m going to mention a few things to consider, and then I’ll fill in with additional information to complete the picture. First, a few qualitative comments: Yes, your build absolutely matters. Some builds may be well designed to favor 2-Handers, and some may favor 1-handers. So the general statement of “The correct weapon depends on your build” overrides everything else I write. Additionally though, two general rules of Diablo weapon speeds still applies – spilled damage matters, and speed matters for combat effectiveness. In WoW, you might use a 1.5 second cast spell over a 2.5 second cast spell because you simply can’t afford to stand still that extra 1 second. How many spells in WoW do you cast purely by virtue of them being instant cast or castable while moving? In Diablo, virtually every spell accuracy is working off of your weapon speed, and the need to be able to quickly move 1/10th of a second sooner sometimes matters. Spilled damage matters too. Many aspects of Diablo involve fighting hordes of small monsters. When a monster has only 150 health, who really cares that you hit it for 300 damage instead of 200 damage? Either way it’s dead. And if it’s dead with a faster weapon, that means you can get to the next monster faster. This means that a weapon with a 1.3 (attacks per second) speed that can 1-shot enemies actually has a 30% killing throughput increase over a weapon with a 1.0 (attacks per second) speed. “But I don’t care about these edge cases”. Well first, I would argue that in Diablo III, these aren’t edge cases, they are a core part of the gameplay that come up all of the time.

Which statsHOWEVER, for those who are insistent on maximizing theoretical DPS and how they'll be calculatedAP usage, is not yet knownwe’ve decided to cover you anyways.

The biggest change to spell casters in Diablo III is the addition of +% spell damage modifiers. These sorts of modifiers were found on some [[passive skills]] in Diablo 2However, as well as on a very few uniques and runewords, but they were uncommon, and were not required what you choose to kill effectively. As a result, casters put in Diablo 2 were much less itemyour off-dependent than the combat classeshand, and found it easier should you choose to concentrate on [[Magic Find]], resistances, hit pointswield one, and other non-damage bonusesmatters.

This will not be the case in Diablo 3First, no matter WHAT you use, where mages '''must''' add considerable +% spell damage from modifiers to stay ahead you are getting a bunch of the monster hit point curveextra stats. A high level [[Wizard]] or [[Witch Doctor]] in Diablo 3 will no more be able In addition to kill quickly with no +spell damage than DPS from Attack and Precision, you’re getting whatever other item stats are on your offhand. So you’re trading off a [[Barbarian]] or [[Monk]] could succeed with a junk weapontheoretical Arcane power efficiency boost for the stats of an offhand.

A quote from Flux's post-Blizzcon 2009 Wizard write up explains this Furthermore, if you use a shield, you’re getting a big armor boost. If you haven’t played Diablo in a while, people easily forget, but a lot of Sorceress players used a shield in Diablo II. For some players there is a “fantasy” of “I don’t need a shield ’cause I don’t plan on getting hit”. The reality is that we don’t let you get away with that in more detail: [http://diabloDiablo. You get hit.incgamersWe don’t have heal, tank and DPS roles in Diablo, so everybody in Diablo eventually takes damage.com/blog/comments/full-wizard-skill-trees]

::When viewing the listed damage on each spellAdditionally, it’s important if you choose to keep in mind that those are not absolute numbersuse an orb, in D3every wizard Orb (and witchdoctor Mojo) comes with +dmg on it. They’re much like weapon So if your mainhand does 8-10 damage; modified by at 1.4 (Attacks Per Second) speed, and your wizard’s attributesorb adds 3-4 damage, then that means you’re doing 11-14 damage at 1.4 speed. In many cases the orb + the stats on the orb completely closes the 15-25% DPS gap between 2-handers and 1-handers. Add on top of that +dmg from your character levelrings and amulets, by other skillsand currently with internal tuning numbers (this may not be how we ship), and but 1-handers + offhand out-DPS 2-handers almost all of the time. It takes a luckily rolled 2-hander to out-DPS most 1-hand + offhand setups if you can also by spare some +dmg on your equipmentrings and amulets. Finally, fast weapons are better at fishing for procs. Diablo has lots of very cool proc effects. Chance to gain Arcane power on critical hit. Chance to summon a fetish on spell cast passive on the Witchdoctor. Lots Faster and more frequent casts means more opportunities to fish for procs. Where does that leave us? Well currently for internal testing of types Inferno mode, 1H+Orb is overwhelmingly better. You get more damage, better mobility, more stats, and more proc fishing. 2H gets you better Arcane Power efficiency. If anything I’m currently worried that 2H is too weak. The most likely solution on this front will be to reduce the amount of items +dmg found on rings and amulets to reel in D3 carry modifiers that boost spell the damageadvantage of 1H+Orb. However, the value of Arcane Power efficiency varies the more you have to run and move. If you’re running and moving constantly, usually by then AP efficiency lets you drop big bombs like meteor and Hydra when you finally get to stand still. Since the amount of running and moving varies from situation to situation, I’m actually fairly happy with where things are. On the topic of Disintegrate and Arcane Torrent, we’re actually currently considering a percentagechange to make them drain AP faster, to match the drain rate on all other skills. I haven’t decided yet whether it’s better for the game for the philosophy on AP to remain consistent across all skills, or if it’s cool that 2 skills break the rule. (Ray of Frost breaks it too BTW). I am currently leaning towards having it drain AP faster because although I absolutely LOVE having different skills for different builds, I also think that when it comes to your resource system, having some standardized themes is what makes it possible to design all the OTHER skills/systems that break those rules. For example, standardized “fast weapons drain AP faster” is also what let’s us do “Arcane power on Crit” that let’s you feel like you’re cheating with all the skills.

::On a side note, I found numerous wands, staves, and even pieces don’t think you actually get any potential DPS increase by being able to squeeze in an extra cast in between casts of armor with values between +5-25% spell damage, and that was just in meteor because the early stages time of the game4. We know nothing about higher level equipment bonuses, and it’s entirely possible that 8 seconds is the D3 team is projecting high level characters amount of time it takes to have +100%regenerate back the AP cost of Meteor, +200%, or who knows, +500%but it’s not like any additional AP just ‘disappeared”, you still have it. A 65 AP cost spell damagegives you a 35 AP buffer to pool over multiple casts. So let’s say that you figure out your theoretical breakpoint is “6. If so they’ll be adjusting the base spell damage accordingly, which might make it look very low 9 electrocutes in between every meteor” and you think you’re going to get an extra cast if you can get that to our untrained eyes“7 electrocutes between every meteor”. That’s not really correct because 6.9 actually plays out as “Meteor // 6 Electrocutes"... repeated 9 times followed by “Meteor-7 electrocutes”.

::Here’s an example from early in the gameTo be even more pedantic, (but I know you theorycrafting folks geek out on this stuff anyways), that was mentioned this has never actually come up as a balancing issue in the [http://www.diii.net/blog/comments/full-witch-doctor-skills/ Witch Doctor skills report]. The skill tree listed damage on my level 2 Skull any of Flame spell was 6-9, yet with our internal tests because a level 12 Witch Doctor my Inventory screen showed 19-29 Wizard never stands still shooting long enough for this to ever actually matter. The truth is that spell. I don’t think I had more than +50% spell damage from equipment, so assuming the display values aren’t wrong (you’re going to weave in [http://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Lying_Character_Screen D2’s infamous LCS] style)other skills, there are considerable bonuses added or have to damage from character attributesspend time moving, which are then further boosted by or whatever else long before anything in the spell damage bonuses on your equipmentprevious paragraph matters.

::This is all part of the D3 team’s plan to make all of the attributes useful to all characters, and to make more types of modifiers useful-Wyatt </essential to spell casters. We don’t know enough yet to judge how well it’s working, but it should be a substantial change from how spell damage was calculated and scaled up (or not) in D2.blue>

One type of "spell" that can't be considered a skill is something cast by a [[scroll]]. There were several scrolls found in Diablo III during development, but as of the beta test only two remain:  * The [[Scroll of Identify]] works just as it did in Diablo II. These items are only much less needed in Diablo 3, since blue (magical) items do not need to be identified. Only Rares, Sets, and Legendary items require Identify scrolls.* The [[Scroll of Companion]] is a few new type of these spell. These summon a small "pet" that scurries (or flaps) around the dungeon, picking up gold for you.  '''Removed scrolls:'''[[File:Wd-firebats1.jpg|thumb|400px|Witch Doctor casting [[Firebats]].]]* The [[Scroll of Wealth]] was present during development, but was removed in Diablo III2011. Its function has been replaced by the [[Cauldron of Jordan]]. * The [[Scroll of Town Portal]] was also present during development, but was removed since it provided an easy and exploitable escape hatch. The [[Stone of Recall]] allows quick trips to and all characters can use themfrom town, but there is a lengthy casting time, which is interrupted if the player moves, casts a spell, attacks, etc, during it.

The [[Scroll As a useful memory of Town Portal]] is not in Diablo III. It how important the +% spell damage modifier wasset for, during much of the gameread this quote from Flux's development, but was removed after the team decided that allowing an easy escape to town was defeating their efforts to make combat more meaningful and intensepost-Blizzcon 2009 Wizard write up: [http://diablo. See the Town Portal page for more details and quotes from the developersincgamers.com/blog/comments/full-wizard-skill-trees]