Spectral Blade

Spectral Blade is a Tier 1 skill unlocked for the Wizard at level 2, dealing powerful damage in melee range.

Background

Diablo III Skill [e]

Spectral Blade Active, 1 ranks
Used by:	Wizard
Skill Description:
Summons a spectral blade that strikes each enemy in front of the Wizard 3 times causing X-Y physical damage with each hit.
Skill Details:
Type:	Direct Damage
Quantity:	1-2 up to 5-10 damage
Effect:	Melee
School:	Physical
Mana cost:	4
Cast time:	Instant
Duration:	None
Cooldown:	Unknown
Synergies:	None known
Requires:	N/A
Prereq of:	N/A

Spectral Blade is used for Wizards willing to meet their enemies toe to toe. It's a powerful melee spell that will kill most enemies early on.

Skill Design

Mirror Images casting Spectral Blade.

This skill was the default left click attack at the BlizzCon 2008 build, and also used heavily in the BlizzCon 2009 demo and it worked quite nicely. It was a melee+spell, hitting anything up close with all 3 slashes, but extending the slashes far enough that targets out of melee range would be hit by one or perhaps two of the attacks. Each slash could also strike multiple targets, making this one potentially quite damaging against multiple, close-range enemies.

There is a slight casting delay on Spectral Blade, making it too slow to stun lock enemies. A Wizard who uses this one at the point blank range where it's most effective will be hit back by any targets who do not succumb to the first assault.

This spell was tweaked since the BlizzCon 2008 version, when it did 1-6 damage per hit, but hit 1-3 times. That allowed a huge spread of damage, from 1-18, and the team must have found it worked better to keep this low level skill a bit more predictable in damage range.

As for the function, it had the same graphic, sound effect, and casting speed as it did last year. There was one noticeable change, though. This skill now does 3 hits every time, a modification that (seemed to) remove some of the technique out of using it. Last year, 3 hits were usually granted on point blank targets, while enemies at the edge of the skill’s range (who were generally not yet in melee range of the Wizard) were most likely to take just a single hit. I didn’t actually use this one much, with so many other, more interesting spells on offer, (and since I very seldom allowed enemies to get into melee range) so I can’t say if it really does always hit three times, but it was very effectively putting down almost anything I hit with it.

Also note that the level 1 and 2 values are projected, since "new" Wizards in the Blizzcon demo started off at level 12, with all 12 points already placed. Three of which were in this spell.

Hands On Description

Flux's BlizzCon Wizard gameplay report offered extensive coverage of the lower level Wizard skills. Here's what he said about Spectral Blade.

Spectral Blade is a magical attack that deals physical damage to enemies very near the Sorceress. The skill creates a lattice of straight lines of power that overlap like a half dozen toothpicks tossed down in a heap. It's got a cool, sword-slashing sound to go with it, and can be seen (and heard) repeatedly in the Wizard game play movies from BlizzCon. The skill hits each enemy in front of the Wizard up to three times, dealing 1-5 damage.

Wizard cleaving some Zombies.

Using this skill is almost like using Bash, or Cleave, or some melee Barbarian attack, if those skills had extra range. Spectral Blade hits enemies at melee range, but can also nail them a yard or two distant, though it seemed like the multiple hits of damage were more likely to occur if the monster was right in front of you, where the lines overlapped. The initial temptation is to use this skill against anything that can be hit by it, but after a bit of practice (and a lot of running out of mana) I realized that it was more effective if I aimed it. So I started letting the monsters get into range, and tried to position myself so that I had several zombies in a bunch, where each slash of the Spectral Blade would have a chance to hit all of them more than once. This immediately cut my mana use since I was using the spell less often, and it was more fun to use it that way. It became a bit of a challenge to try to take out zombies or skeletons in one Spectral Blade, instead of 2 or 3. Especially when I had a couple of them overlapping.

I was not able to use it enough to figure out just what the odds of getting multiple hits were, or if they could all hit even when there were multiple enemies in the target zone, since the damage can vary so much. Spectral Blade can deal 1-5 damage with 1-3 hits, so I could do 1-15 damage with each use of it. Plus, since all 3 hits were added up and dealt at once, there was no way to tell if I'd landed 1, 2, or 3, especially since 3 hits might only do 3 or 4 damage, while a single hit could do 5. Still, it was a fun skill to use, and the multiple hits to multiple targets over a larger-than-melee range made it fun to play with. I enjoyed using it in crowds and watching multiple enemies take hits.

It's not a spell that can be used machine gun style though, even if enemies are in range. There's a short delay after each cast, a cooldown that's longer than the Wizard has with her projectile spells. As a result Spectral Blade doesn't look like a real boss-killer. It also didn't seem to stun or interrupt the attacking motion of monsters, the way melee attacks sometimes did, so it's not a way to render targets helpless while you slash them to bits.

Skill Rank Table

Rank 1: 3 Hits with 1-2 physical damage per hit. (projected)
Rank 2: 3 Hits with 2-4 physical damage per hit.
Rank 3: 3 Hits with 3-6 physical damage per hit.
Rank 4: 3 Hits with 4-8 physical damage per hit.
Rank 5: 3 Hits with 5-10 physical damage per hit. (projected)

Synergies

None known

Skill Rune Effects

None known.

Development

Spectral Blade was first shown at BlizzCon 2008 when the Wizard was unveiled. It was changed slightly in the BlizzCon 2009 version, increasing the number of hits to always be 3, but lowering the damage per hit instead to even it out.

Previous versions:

Spectral Blade (BlizzCon 2008)

Media

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

Spectral Blades in action.
Mirror Images casting Spectral Blades.
Closeup of the blades.

References