Magic Weapon

Magic Weapon is a Tier 5 skill from the Wizard's Conjuring skill tree, making your weapon magical and increasing damage.

Background

Diablo III Skill [e]

Magic Weapon Active, 5 ranks
Used by:	Wizard
Skill Description:
Imbue your weapon with magical energy granting it increased damage. Damage: X-Y. Duration: 120 seconds.
Skill Details:
Type:	Self buff
Quantity:	25-35 damage
Effect:	Self
School:	Unknown
Mana cost:	10
Cast time:	Instant
Duration:	120 sec
Cooldown:	1.5 sec
Synergies:	None
Requires:	Stone Skin
Prereq of:	N/A

When the need for physical combat arrives, the Wizard is well prepared, fusing her weapon with magical energies, cutting deeper into her foes even when using such a mundane thing as a physical weapon.

Skill Design

This skill is something of a mystery, since there's little else to indicate that the Wizard would be using weapons for damage. It is known that the Wizard's equipment will have some bearing on her spell damage, so perhaps some skills derive their damage from the weapon damage, and this skill would boost that damage?

This skill is seemingly designed for a melee fighting Wizard. Either that or it's a harbinger of more melee/weapon type skills, or just something the D3 team was playing around with in their character development.

We don't know enough about weapon damage in general to have any idea if this is a big bonus or not. Nor do we know if this damage is boosted by attributes and +magical damage item modifiers. If so it's possible that some Wizard builds could deal very good weapon damage.

On the other hand, there are enough limits on which classes can use which weapons that Wizards might be limited in their melee damage no matter what they tried.

This direction would've been useful in [Diablo 2]], what with all the "unique" builds, including the melee Sorceress[. The question is if that kind of diversity will exist in Diablo 3, or else this skill seems useless.

Skill Rank Table

Rank 1: 25-35 damage for 120 seconds.

Only Rank 1 is currently known.

Synergies

None known.

Skill Rune Effects

None known.

Development

Magic Weapon was first shown at BlizzCon 2008. Together with spells like the VERY similar Weapon Mastery (gone), Damage Resistance (gone) and Spectral Blade (still in), it gave a hint of seeing the Wizard getting the capability of going [[melee].

While the BlizzCon 2008 skills had several melee-related skills, most of those disappeared with the new BlizzCon 2009 build.

Magic Weapon was first shown at BlizzCon 2009, but was unfortunately too high level to try out by the fans. The skill is assumed to still be available in Blizzard's internal game build today.

Previous Versions:

References

Full Wizard Skill Trees