Ice Armor

Ice Armor is a Utility Wizard skill unlocked at Level 2, slowing movement and attack speeds of enemies attacking the character and damaging them a little as well.

This is an Armor spell. Only one Armor spell can be active at a time.

Background

Lacking physical armor, a Wizard needs magical protection in dangerous places. This Ice Armor will have a chilling impact upon anyone striking her, cooling them to the point where their movements becomes slower, and limiting their ability to move around as well as delivering some pain from the cold.

Skill Effects

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

Skill		Effect
Ice Armor 2		Surround yourself in a barrier of ice that increases armor by 50%, and causes 0 - 2 Cold damage to melee attackers, chilling them for 2 seconds. Lasts 120 seconds. Cost: 25 Arcane Power This is an Armor spell. Only one Armor spell can be active at a time.
	Jagged Ice	Attackers take X - X Cold damage and are chilled for X seconds.
	Chilling Aura	Lower the temperature of the air around you. Nearby enemies are chilled, slowing their movement and attack speed, for X seconds.
	Frozen Storm	A whirling storm of ice builds around you that deals X - X Cold damage per second for X seconds after casting Ice Armor.
	Crystallize	Whenever you are struck by a melee attack the bonus armor granted by Ice Armor is increased by X% for X seconds. This effect can stack up to X times.
	Ice Reflect	Attacks have a X% chance to create a Frost Nova on the attacker dealing X - X Cold damage.

Skill Design

Pretty straightforward skill. Useful especially when trying to run away from things, but also if the Wizard is occupied in melee combat, it will lower the damage she takes in a fray. It likely won't increase Armor or any other defensive stat.

The duration of the spell was shown as almost exactly 3/8 duration with 2 minutes left so it's safe to assume the duration is 6-8 minutes, but we do not know what the exact duration of the spell is.

Synergies

• No synergies with any of the passive skills are yet known.

Development

Ice Armor was first shown in August 2009 at GamesCom, seen in the gameplay demo. It was then not known if the spell was a Wizard skill or a shrine effect. The spell was seen more clearly at BlizzCon 2009, where it was a Tier I skill on the Storm Skill Tree. Unfortunately, this skill was unnecessary in the PvP demo, as Flux explained:[1]

As with the other defensive skills, this was just not needed at Blizzcon. I cast it a few times between battles, but never took any hits when I had it active.

It was still in the game as of BlizzCon 2010, but moved to Tier 2 in the new tree-less skill system. Skill tiers were removed for the July 2011 Press Event, and Ice Armor became a level 2 skill.

Media

Ice Armor can be seen in action on video here:

• Video: Blizzcon 2010 Rune Effects

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

• Diablo III screenshots and pictures
• Ice Armor specific gallery contents

• 

  Ice Armor active.

• 

  Skill icon.

References

• BlizzCon 2009 Full Wizard Skill Trees
• Zediono's translation of JudgeHype's pre-beta report -- IncGamers 1st Aug 2011

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