Shock Pulse

Shock Pulse (known as Charged Bolt prior to July 2011) is a Rapid Cast Wizard skill unlocked at Level 3, launching electric charges that travel randomly on the floor, dealing lightning damage.

This is an Academic spell. Academic spells cost 1 less Arcane Power every time you gain a level.

Contents

Background

The Wizard and her carpet.

The true essence of Electromagnetism exists on the threshold of the Ethereal and the Physical Realms. While it is very efficient to transform Mana into electrical energy, it is extremely difficult to control. This spell calls into being multiple pockets of lightning which seem to have a will of their own.

The Wizard has not only the fancy illegal spells at her disposal. Shock Pulse, something even the newest of Vizjerei neonytes learn, is one of the few spells she picked up in actual classes at the old mage clan, or possibly at Zann Esu before they kicked her out.

Skill Effects

The following is a very quick list. See the Shock Pulse rune effects page for a more thorough summary of rune effects, or any of the individual rune pages for numbers, screenshots, blue quotes, and much more.

Skill		Effect
Shock Pulse 3		Release a pulse of 3 unpredictable charges of electricity that deal 4 - 9 Lightning damage to enemies they hit. Cost: 15 Arcane Power This is an Academic spell. Academic spells cost 1 less Arcane Power every time you gain a level.
	Fire Bolts	Casts out bolts of fire to deal X - X Fire damage per bolt.
	Lightning Orb	Turn the bolts into a floating orb of static lightning that drifts directly forward, zapping up to X nearby enemies for X - X Lightning damage.
	Piercing Orb	Merge the bolts in a a single giant orb that oscillates forward dealing X - X Lightning damage to everything it hits with a X% chance to pierce through enemies.
	Lightning Affinity	Every target hit by a pulse restores X Arcane Power.
	Explosive Bolts	Slain enemies have a X% chance to explode dealing X - X Lightning damage to every enemy within X yards.

Skill Design

The spell familiar from Diablo I and Diablo II returns in Diablo III. As Charged Bolt did previously, Shock Pulse sends out a smattering of randomly-scattering charges, each of which deal minor damage to any enemy that passes over them. The strength of Shock Pulse comes not from the damage of each bolt, but from the carpeting effect of repeated casts, since it's a spell with very low resource cost. These can turn the floor into a field of death for any enemy without lightning immunity.

Synergies

• No synergies with any of the passive skills are yet known.

Development

Shock Pulse was first shown at BlizzCon 2008 (as charged Bolt) when the Wizard debuted, where it was at Tier I on the Storm Skill Tree. Flux was able to try it out:[1]

Three little crackling bits of lightning are sent forth along the ground, where they zig and zag a bit, but move in a more or less straight line away from the Sorceress. I didn’t use this spell much, but it seemed to me that the bolts spread out quite a bit more than they did in D2, and that made it hard to hit anything in front of me with more than one bolt. That’s now how it looks in screenshots though, where the bolts seem to carpet the dungeon floor quite nicely. More testing will be required.

It was still in the game at BlizzCon 2009; there, it had a much lower mana cost, and significantly lower damage than in 2008, indicating the spell was intended to be used more for the "carpet effect" of previous games.

At BlizzCon 2010, it was still in the game but wasn't one of the Wizard's starting skills. For the July 2011 Press Event, this skill was renamed Shock Pulse and became a level 3 skill.

Previous Versions

See the Wizard skill archive for more details on previous versions of Shock Pulse (or Charged Bolt) and other Wizard skills.
Or see Charged Bolt (BlizzCon 2008) for the original version of this skill.

In Other Games

Charged Bolt was introduced in Diablo I, where it was, as it is now, a very cheap spell to cast multiple times in hopes of killing many enemies with a carpet of lightning. The spell calls in pockets of lightning that just crawls around randomly, in a general direction.

The second iteration of Charged Bolt was a Sorceress spell in Diablo II, and is basically identical in design. It's one of few Tier 1 spells in the skill trees that scale well even at higher levels, being quite useful at max level.

Media

Shock Pulse can be seen in action on video here:

• Gameplay: Blizzcon 2008 (when it was called Charged Bolt)

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

• Diablo III screenshots and pictures
• Shock Pulse specific gallery contents

• 

  Magic carpet of death.

References

• BlizzCon 2008 Wizard Gameplay Report
• BlizzCon 2009 Full Wizard Skill Trees
• Zediono's translation of JudgeHype's pre-beta report -- IncGamers 1st Aug 2011

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