Great report again!

“That’s one of the most interesting things about using Disintegrate; that it’s more effective if you’re not moving.”

Umm.. I thought you can’t move at all when disintegrating? Since you aim it with your mouse I’m having a hard time figuring out how exactly a player can move at the same time?

Am I the only one who thinks that Wave of Force and Spectral Blade makes one mean combination? Shove monsters back, spectral blade them and shove them back once they start to land melee hits on you. You negate the cool down time in spectral blade, too. Add Slow Time and Frost Nova to that combo and you’re looking at a short range Wizard killing machine?

The point is, maybe Wizard played like a Sorceress because everyone played her like it?

By that I meant that Disintegrate (apparently) differs from all other skills in the past, in that it’s better to use it without moving in between casts.  Everything in D2 is just as effective if you fire one, take a step, fire, take a step, etc. You might slow your casting rate, but the spell would do just as much damage, and for spells like Frozen Orb or Hydra or Meteor, etc, that you can’t just chain constantly, they’re just as effective if you’re doing other things between casts.

I suppose that Dis can be seen as akin to Nova or Charged Bolt, where you know one cast isn’t really going to do it, and you play to give yourself position and time to fire off half a dozen or more in a burst.  With Dis you know that just flashing it isn’t going to be effective (aside from cooking very early game/weak ranged enemies) so Wiz players will get used to not using it unless they have a position to allow them to use it for a few seconds uninterrupted.

“Am I the only one who thinks that Wave of Force and Spectral Blade makes one mean combination? Shove monsters back, spectral blade them and shove them back once they start to land melee hits on you. You negate the cool down time in spectral blade, too. Add Slow Time and Frost Nova to that combo and you’re looking at a short range Wizard killing machine? “

That would depend on how far the shove back from Wave of Force was. In the gameplay movie it’s well out of spectral blade range, and since spectral blade is most effective at melee range, where it can land 2 or 3 hits per use, I think it would pair better with Frost Nova. A Wiz would be very happy playing with a Barb too, to have the tank and to score many multi hits with spectral blade on ground stomp-stunned enemies, for instance.