Wave of Force

Wave of Force is an Offensive Wizard skill unlocked at Level 4, creating a force wave from the Wizard, repelling enemies and projectiles.

Contents

Background

Wave of Force in action

The Wizard uses pure Arcane force to push objects, projectiles and enemies alike away from her. The force is primary pushing targets rather than hurting them.

Skill Effects

The following is a very quick list. See the Wave of Force 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.

Icon	Skill	Description

{{{icon}}}

[[{{{name}}}]] Force

9

{{{desc}}}

	Forceful Wave	Increases damage to 203 - 234 physical damage but also reduces knockback.
	Exploding Wave	Enemies hit have a 100% chance to cause a smaller Wave of Force that does 46 - 53 physical damage and knocks back enemies caught in its wake.
	Teleporting Wave	Enemies caught in the wave have a 70% chance to randomly teleport to somewhere else nearby.
	Force Affinity	Reduce casting cost to 11 Arcane Power and cooldown is reduced to 8 seconds.
	Impactful Wave	Increases the distance enemies are knocked back and stuns all affected enemies for 5.0 seconds.

Note: Information is based on a level 60 character and rank 7 runestones.

Skill Design

This defensive spell casts a nova-like blast of light that deals just minor damage, but that shoves back enemies and projectiles.

Wave of Force is used twice in the Wizard Trailer released at BlizzCon 2008. The first is used in a room of skeletons -- it does little damage to the skeletons, but blasts all the destructibles in the room to glorious pieces. In the second example, the Wizard uses it while slowing down time, waiting for a group of skeletons' projectiles to come close, and then reflecting them back toward them.

It's hard to know how many scenarios in a fast-paced game like this where you could really benefit from using Slow Time and then Wave of Force to repel projectiles -- Out of the 8 projectiles in the above screenshot, only one or two actually came back to strike their targets. It will be interesting to see what practical uses there are for this spell as more gameplay videos unfold.

Female Wizard in the middle of casting the spell.

Synergies

Wave of Force benefits from the following Wizard passives:

Evocation is a Wizard passive skill unlocked at Level 13, which reduces all cooldowns.

Description

Name	Level	Description

<skill class="Wizard">Evocation</skill>

Synergies

No synergies with any active skills or other Wizard passives are known.

Development

Passive skills have had a long and storied history. When Diablo III debuted at the WWI 2008, skill trees included passive skills, much like in Diablo II. In 2010, it was announced that passive skills had been renamed traits and separated out from active skills. At the July 2011 Press Event, Blizzard announced that passive skills were once again in the game, replacing the traits system.

Beta

Evocation was not seen until it showed up in the Diablo III beta as a level 26 passive. In Beta Patch 13, Evocation was moved to level 28. When passives were reorganized for Beta Patch 14, it was dropped to level 13.

References

• HardRock's Wizard Passive Skills — IncGamers 6th Sep 2011
• Wizard Passive Skills — Blizzard's Official Diablo III Site

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Development

Skeleton smash.

Wave of Force was first shown at BlizzCon 2008 when the Wizard was unveiled, as a Tier II skill on the Arcane Skill Tree. Unfortunately, Flux (and other demo players) found little use for defensive skills:[1]

Sadly, I never used it, since it’s basically a defensive skill that wasn’t needed in the Blizzcon Demo. It’s demonstrated in the Blizzcon gameplay movies though, and looks pretty fun. Wave of Force casts a nova-like ring of energy that blasts out from the Wizard, shoving back enemies and reflecting projectiles towards their source. The possibilities created when teaming this with Slow Time are fun to contemplate.

Wave of Force was available at BlizzCon 2009, where it lost a little bit of damage and had a lot lower mana cost. This skill was also available at BlizzCon 2010, but it wasn't one of the Wizard's starting skills.

Skill tiers were removed for the July 2011 Press Event, and Wave of Force became a level 4 skill.

Previous Versions

See the Wizard skill archive for more details on previous versions of Wave of Force and other Wizard skills.
Or see Wave of Force (BlizzCon 2008) for the original version of this skill.

Media

Wave of Force can be seen in action on video here:

• Cinematic: Wizard
• Gameplay: July 2011

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

• Diablo III screenshots and pictures
• Wave of Force specific gallery contents

• 

  Wizard casting Wave of Force in a small room.

• 

  Using WoF to repel skeletons when fighting King Leoric.

• 

  Slow Time with WoF to throw spells back at casters.

• 

  Blasting skeletons with Force.

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
• Silva's Wizard Runestone Effects -- IncGamers 5th Sep 2011
• Wizard Active Skills -- Diablo III 12th Sep 2011

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