Energy Armor

Energy Armor (known as Energy Shield prior to July 2011) is a Wizard skill unlocked at level 22, which uses Arcane Power to absorb incoming damage.

Background

Diablo III Active Skill [e]
Energy Armor
Used by:	Wizard
Enabled at:	Clvl 22
Skill Description
A protective barrier absorbs incoming damage. Every point of damage costs 2 Arcane Power.
Type:	Defensive buff
Resource Use:	Costs Arcane Power/time
Skill Rune Effects
Alabaster rune:	Unknown
Crimson rune:	Unknown
Golden rune:	Unknown
Indigo rune:	Unknown
Obsidian rune:	Unknown

Drawing from long forgotten texts, this magical shield of energy absorbs harmful attacks through energy resonance, draining Arcane Power.

Skill Design

The skill with lots of heritage is back in Diablo III. It's a shield that absorbs all damage taken, converting the damage to Arcane Power loss, draining 2 points of AP for every point of damage absorbed.

This skill is likely to be used by many Wizards, especially if they are going melee-style with Diamond Skin and Magic Weapon, or playing hardcore.

Skill Rank Table

• Rank 1: 75 damage absorbed. Duration: 120 sec.

Synergies

• No synergies with any of the traits are yet known.

Skill Rune Effects

• No rune effects for Energy Armor are known.

Development

Energy Armor first appeared in the BlizzCon 2009 demo (then named Energy Shield), located at Tier III in the Arcane Skill Tree and already one of the D3 Team's favorites. Flux didn't have much to say about it, unfortunately. The full quote:[1]

Not a skill I even considered using, in the easy Blizzcon demo.

Skill trees were removed shortly thereafter. At BlizzCon 2010, Energy Shield was a Tier 5 skill, making it too high-level for players to select. Before the July 2011 Press Event, Energy Shield was renamed Energy Armor. Skill tiers were also removed, and Energy Armor became a level 22 skill.

Previous Versions

Energy Armor is similar to, and might have replaced, Temporal Armor. That skill was seen in the BlizzCon 2008 demo, and had a slightly different mechanic: protecting the caster from 100% damage once every 6 seconds. Something that could be either very good, if it fended off a strong attack, or quite useless, if it fended off a weak one.

See Energy Shield for the original version of this skill.

In Other Games

Energy Armor originates from the grossly overpowered Mana Shield from the original Diablo game, where every point of damage translated into mana lost instead of life. The spell had unlimited duration, as long as the character didn't die or travel to another level.

In Diablo II, the Sorceress got a nerfed version of the same spell but with the name Energy Shield. The spell has a time limit (needed, since no levels were limited by loading) and only absorbed a fraction of the damage.

Media

You can find pictures in the Diablo III screenshot and picture gallery:

• Diablo III screenshots and pictures
• Energy Armor specific gallery contents

Related Articles

• Mana Shield (Diablo I)
• Energy Shield (Diablo II)

References

• BlizzCon 2009 Full Wizard Skill Trees
• JudgeHype.com July 2011 Press Event Coverage - The Wizard (Translated by Zediono)