Diablo III Wizard Class Preview
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Magic Missile is the Tier 1 active skill from the Arcane Skill Tree. It's a lot less interesting and complicated than Spectral Blade. Magic Missile is basically a Firebolt that deals Arcane Damage. Using this skill fires a small purple projectile that moves across the screen in a straight line and at a fairly fast pace, and it can be cast repeatedly without any cool down time. Firebolt like, as I said. It deals 7-15 damage, which seems like a lot compared to Spectral Blade's 1-5, but not when you realize that Spectral can hit up to 3 times, that it costs 1 less mana, that it's very unlikely to miss entirely, that it can hit multiple targets at once, and that it's got a slower casting rate, thus making it less mana expensive, whether you like it or not.
At low levels against basic monsters, MM is just a simple projectile. It's got some interesting properties later on though, since each point you place in the Tier 3 skill Improved Magic Missile adds 1 to the number of missiles fired, and increases the damage of each by 8%. (You can also add to the number of shots, their damage, and more, with Skill Runes.) Improved Magic Missile was too high level to be used at Blizzcon, but Wizards have been seen firing multiple Magic Missiles in screenshots and gameplay movies, and the projectiles seem to be aimed like Multishot, or the Necromancer's Teeth; they spread out more or less, depending on how far away from your character you aim when you click them. Furthermore, it looks like multiple Magic Missiles can hit a single target, which could keep this one useful even late in the game, if fired at point blank range.
A last property of Magic Missile comes from its damage type. Arcane is a new type of damage in D3, and critical hits scored with Arcane Damage (silence) monsters for 4 seconds. This property hasn't been explained yet, but the consensus is that a silenced monster will be unable to use some of its spells, such as Skeletal Mages losing the ability to resurrect their slain minions.
