Charged Bolt

Charged Bolt is a Tier 1 skill from the Wizard's Storm Skill Tree, launching electric charges that travel randomly on the floor, dealing lightning damage.

Background

Diablo III Skill [e]

Charged Bolt Active, 5 ranks
Used by:	Wizard
Skill Description:
Launch a volley of 3 electric bolts that deal X-Y lightning damage each.
Skill Details:
Type:	Direct Damage
Quantity:	1-2 damage
Effect:	Random bolt
School:	Lightning
Mana cost:	2
Cast time:	Instant
Duration:	None
Cooldown:	1.5 sec
Synergies:	None
Requires:	N/A
Prereq of:	N/A

The true essence of Electromagnetism exists on the threshold of the Ethereal and the Physical Realms. While it is very efficient to transform Mana into electrical energy, it is extremely difficult to control. This spell calls into being multiple pockets of lightning which seem to have a will of their own.

The Wizard has not only the fancy illegal spells at her disposal. Charged Bolt, something even the newest of Vizjerei neonytes learn, is one of the few spells she picked up in actual classes at the old mage clan, or possibly at Zann Esu before they kicked her out.

Skill Design

The Wizard and her carpet.

The spell familiar from Diablo I and Diablo II returns in Diablo III. As previously, Charged Bolt send out a smattering of randomly-scattering charges, each of which deal minor damage to any enemy that passes over them. The strength of Charged Bolt comes not from the damage of each bolt, but from the carpeting effect of repeated casts, since it's a spell with very low mana cost. These can turn the floor into a field of death for any enemy without lightning immunity.

The spell summons three little crackling bits of lightning that zig and zag a bit, but move in a more or less straight line away from the Wizard. It seemed that the bolts spread out quite a bit more than they did in D2, and that made it hard to hit anything in front of me with more than one bolt.[1] That's not how it looks in more recent screenshots though, where the bolts seem to carpet the dungeon floor quite nicely. More testing will be required.

At BlizzCon 2009 the damage had been lowered from 1-8 to 1-2, but the mana had also gone down significantly (to 2). Using this spell together with high spell crit would likely stun enemies a lot, considering lightning crits now stun targets.

Skill Rank Table

Rank 1: 1-2 damage per bolt.
Rank 2: 2-4 damage per bolt. (projected)
Rank 3: 3-6 damage per bolt. (projected)
Rank 4: 4-8 damage per bolt. (projected)
Rank 5: 5-10 damage per bolt. (projected)

Synergies

None known.

Skill Rune Effects

None known.

Development

Charged Bolt was introduced in Diablo I, where it was, as it is now, a very cheap spell to cast multiple times in hopes of killing many enemies with a carpet of lightning. The Diablo I Manual describes "true essence of Electromagnetism exists on the threshold of the Ethereal and the Physical Realms. While it is very efficient to transform Mana into electrical energy, it is extremely difficult to control." The spell calls in pockets of lightning that just crawls around randomly, in a general direction.

This first version of the spell increased number of charges as well as damage when higher levels of the spell have been found.

The second iteration of Charged Bolt was a Sorceress spell in Diablo II, and is basically identical in design. It's one of few Tier 1 spells in the skill trees that scale well even at higher levels, being quite useful at max level.

The Diablo 3 version of the Charged Bolt was first shown at BlizzCon 2008, and was still in the game by 2009. In 2008 it had a much higher mana cost, and significantly higher damage than in 2009, indicating the spell is now more used for the "carpet effect" of previous games. It's is assumed to still be available in Blizzard's internal game build today.

Previous Versions:

Charged Bolt (BlizzCon 2008)

Media

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

References