Magic Weapon

The bubbling purple effect.

Magic Weapon is a Conjuration Wizard skill unlocked at Level 20, making her weapon magical and increasing damage.

Background

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.

Skillrune Effects

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

<skill class="Wizard">Magic Weapon</skill>

Skill Design

This skill is clearly designed to enable a Wizard to play in the Battle-mage style, going melee combat for better or worse. The Wizard isn't really designed for that approach, but by pairing the melee damage with excellent equipment/weapon, and some intelligent defensive spell use, it may be a viable build.

Appearance

When the Wizard casts Magic Weapon on any melee weapon (except wands), the item turns purple, glowing and dripping with an Arcane light, as though it had been dipped in purple bubble bath.

Synergies

Magic Weapon benefits from the following Wizard passives: None added yet.

Development

Magic Weapon was first shown at BlizzCon 2008, when the Wizard debuted. Back then, it was a Tier V skill in the Conjuring Skill Tree. 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.

Magic Weapon was also shown at BlizzCon 2009, but was unfortunately too high level to try out by the fans. There were, however, still doubts about the viability of a melee build, as Flux elucidated:[1]

One of the odder Wizard skills, seemingly designed for a melee fighting Wizard. 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.

Beta

Skill tiers were removed shortly before the beta started in September 2011, and Magic Weapon became a level 7 skill. After trying it out, Flux again discussed its viability:

The damage added is fairly minor, certainly compared to just about any spell attack, and this is purely of use for battle mages. (As has been observed on the known Diablo III legendary items, the amount of +%weapon damage found on gear is much lower than it was in Diablo II, and figures like +25-35% are the best to be found on even the Inferno-quality legendary items. Thus on that scale, +20% is a fairly big bonus, akin to something like +200% in Diablo II terms.)

When the skill system was once again overhauled for the Beta Patch 13 in February 2012, Magic Weapon was classified as a Conjuration skill and bumped all the way up to level 20, putting it out of reach.

Previous Versions

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

In Other Games

Magic Weapon is an modified version of Diablo II's Sorceress skill Enchant, but activated like a buff, rather than cast on a target (thus it’s only of use to the Wizard and can not be shared to others).

Media

Magic Weapon can be seen in action on video here:

• No videos yet.

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

• Diablo III screenshots and pictures
• Magic Weapon specific gallery contents

References

• 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 Beta Skills Mega-report: Part Two -- IncGamers 5th October 2011
• Wizard Active Skills -- Blizzard's Official Diablo III Site

Template:Skill navbox Necromancer primary

Template:Skill navbox Necromancer secondary

Template:Skill navbox Necromancer corpses

Template:Skill navbox Necromancer bloodandbone

Template:Skill navbox Necromancer reanimation

Template:Skill navbox Necromancer curses