Tactics on the battlefield | Wizard Diablo III Guide

Last update: 01 February 2017

One of the things to remember is to use the Hydra skill in each battle. It's very important to place the hydra in one of the strategic points and to revive the creature after the skill has stopped working (it lasts 15 seconds). Continue repeating this pattern and you'll soon be doing all the actions almost automatically, without even having to think about it. Furthermore, Hydra is not only a defensive spell, but it can also be used in offensive actions, especially if your DPS value is high and if the hydra itself can additionally poison enemy units. This creature saved me on many occasions, usually while fighting champions with an immortality aura or when I was running around, waiting for the Diamond Skin skill to recharge. Obviously it's good to have gear which increases the movement speed of the main character, so it'll all work perfectly. In later stages of the game Hydra may even be able to handle some of the fights on its own, allowing the Wizard to avoid engaging enemies in battle.

Another important aspect of the Wizard build presented in this guide is that it's based on a lot of skills which temporarily boost the character's statistics and therefore it's important to always keep them active. Sometimes it's hard to focus in battle on icons saying whether the boosts are active or not, so you may consider activating everything once every few seconds. The truth is that arcane power is not needed for combat (not counting the Hydra, of course), so you don't have to pay a lot of attention to how much of it is left. My build isn't heavily based on the arcane power and I never had problems with running out of it.

While playing on the lower difficulty levels or online with at least one player that acts a "tank" and encourage enemies to attack his character you may consider using the Archon skill. The enormous damage inflicted thanks to this skill will allow you to clear out entire rooms of enemy units in a manner of seconds. The main problem with Archon is that it appears when you can receive major damage. This issue is so big that eventually it becomes impossible to survive without Diamond Skin and Energy Armor. As a result I've stopped using the Archon after advancing to higher levels, despite the enormous help it provided in the earlier journeys.

The Ice Armor active skill and the Cold Blooded passive skill present a similar problem to the archon. Until champions weren't a deadly threat to my main character, allowing them to kill or heavily injure the Wizard with only one hit, I liked both skills mentioned above. Freezing the enemies with the armor saved me many times while playing in cooperation, allowing the players to perform attacks on an immobilized enemy or giving my Wizard a chance to escape. As for the passive skill, it granted me a chance to inflict additional 20% damage to the enemies I've successfully frozen.

As I've already mentioned my build focuses a lot on the topic of melee combat so you shouldn't be afraid of increasing the speed of your attacks. This will have an enormous influence on your DPS value, probably even bigger than investing points in Intelligence. Also, by using the game's auction house you shouldn't have any problems finding good items for sale which increase the attack speed AND Intelligence at the same time. Choosing good equipment for a Wizard is important, because you want to move fast and strike hard. If you don't have enough money to buy good items from other players you may consider returning to previous acts of the game and using objects which increase chances of finding magic items. You'll gain a lot of loot from these actions and you won't have any problems fighting the weaker monsters. The only exception to that strategy is Inferno, because on this difficulty level even a short moment of disorientation may cost your character his life.