Arcane Orb

Arcane Orb is a Tier 3 skill from the Wizard's Arcane skill tree, exploding on touch, delivering Arcane damage.

Background

Diablo III Skill [e]

Arcane Orb Active, 5 ranks
Used by:	Wizard
Skill Description:
An orb of pure energy deals X-Y on contact and an additional Z-A arcane damage to all enemies in the blast area.
Skill Details:
Type:	Direct Damage
Quantity:	Multiple damages
Effect:	Circle AoE
School:	Arcane
Mana cost:	7
Cast time:	Instant
Duration:	None
Cooldown:	None
Synergies:	None
Requires:	N/A
Prereq of:	N/A

The Wizard summons a glowing orb that upon touch will deal great damage to all foes and objects in its range.

Skill Design

A glowing orb of energy travels about 10 yards, before bursting in a nova of destruction. The spell looks something like the D2 Sorceress' Frozen Orb, but without the spray of ice spears as it flies across the room. It works like the Fireball of Diablo I.

This one very quickly became Flux's skill of choice for ranged attacks.[1] It dealt substantial damage with a big AoE splash, and had a reasonable mana cost. He is dubious about the listed 1-2 AoE damage, since a few of these into a group of enemies left no survivors.

The drawback to Arcane Orb is that it moves very slowly; more slowly than any other Wizard skill and this makes it very hard to hit moving targets, or back row enemies. It was not very useful against Dune Dervishes, since those monsters move side to side a lot, and when they're not walking they're spinning around in their Whirlwind mode, in which they reflect most projectiles off at odd angles. They certainly reflected every Arcane Orb fired at them, though that could be fun since my shots weren't neutralized, just redirected, and the bounces would often head right into some Fallen or other targets.

There was one scenario area in the desert (shown in the gameplay movie) where about five Dune Dervishes burst out of the ground at once. Flux didn't think to try it at the time, but in retrospect he wished he had herded the Dervishes into a cluster, and then tried throwing in some Arcane Orbs. Just to see if my Orbs would have been bounced around like pachinko balls. (Dune Dervishes only reflected floating projectiles, so Electrocute chewed them right up.)

Skill Rank Table

Rank 1: 11-16 direct arcane damage, 1-2 AoE damage.
Rank 2: 13-19 direct arcane damage, 2-4 AoE damage.
Rank 3: 15-22 direct arcane damage, 3-6 AoE damage. (projected)
Rank 4: 17-25 direct arcane damage, 4-8 AoE damage. (projected)
Rank 5: 19-28 direct arcane damage, 5-10 AoE damage. (projected)

Synergies

None known.

Skill Rune Effects

None known.

Development

Arcane Orb was first shown at BlizzCon 2008 when the Wizard was unveiled. The spell only allowed one point in the BlizzCon 2008 demo, but the BlizzCon 2009 version had up to five. The damage had been ever so slightly tuned down in the newer version, and so had mana cost. Whether the AoE damage Flux mentioned in his report truly is right or not we do not know yet.

Media

You can find pictures in the Diablo 3 screenshot and picture gallery:

Arcane Orb just exploded.
Skill animation sequence.

References