Fire.........

Does the wizard seriously not have fire its disposal? I just finished reading the skill trees which can be found here ( http://www.diablowiki.net/Storm_Skill_Tree ) and there were no fire skills!
Wizards have Arcane spells
Wizards have Lightning spell
Wizards have Energy spells
Wizards have Ice Spells
only...

I personally liked the skills I saw, I feel they are emphasizing more strategy than lots of damage and I Love adding runes to the skills to completely change combat, but what I don't like is the absence of fire.
Does anyone know the reason of this?
Have they mentioned why they are going to remove fire altogether from the magic based characters?
Is this blizzards way of making the wizard different than Diablo 2's Sorceress?
Or have they simply not finished the fire animations yet and are going to add fire to "Tier V"?

I think it would be awesome if they saved the last Tier for purely fire skills and made them the most powerful. I know blizzard is doing their best, and know how what are the right decisions to make in the game. But if wizards could not cause any havoc with fire, I will be really disappointed.

Im surprised I havent seen a single other thread on this topic. Am I the only person who loves the Sorceress's fire skills in Diablo 2?

Edit:

As of now only one skill, the Wizard's Hydra, is fired based. (and I'm only assuming it is, I havent seen it yet). The wizard alone cannot conjure fire.

Maybe they thought using fire on demons spawned from hell didn't make that much sense.

then the ice monsters on arreat summit might as well be ice immune as well
heck, lets disable all the ice abilities while in act 5 =P

Honestly I don't know, that was more of a joke than anything. I'm betting they just haven't gotten around to adding the fire skills, there's certainly a chance to really dazzle players with fire spells with updated graphics. I don't see why they would add ice and lightning then just leave out fire.

I do recall a posting by a blizzard representative about the Wizard class implying that they wanted to make sure that people know that this is not a Sorceress, whom focuses on the elements.

Wizards are supposed to use many of the arts that were forbidden magic, or rather sinister and dangerous in origin (outside the obvious of fire, ice, lightning).

Pure magic, conjuring storms, warping time and space among them. Besides, its not like they didn't include fireballs in the game- check out the Witch Doctor's "Skull of Fire", which apparently can be thrown over objects and walls, bypassing obstacles. Superior to a fireball in every way, and still looks awesome.

Personally, I know I will enjoy the Arcane skill tree for Wizards- time warp, teleport, copy, etc. I love alteration/manipulation spells.

---

Q u o t e:
You've heard of the witch doctor, yes?

---

I meant fire skills for the wizard.

If you read my post you should have probably inferred I was talking about wizard fire skills.

what would you call disintegrate?

Blizzard mentioned that they wanted to have more variation in the types of skills between classes, rather than everyone having a fire ability, etc.

As I said, the backstory for the Wizard is that she does believed she was above trivial elemental magics, and sought out the forbidden, arcane and demonic arts instead. Disintegrate doesn't look to be a Fire attack, necessarily, more of just a beam of destructive energy. The coloration is what makes you think of fire.

Although to answer another poster's comment earlier, I did find it rather dumb to have so many Fire skills in a game where 3/4 of the enemies are spawned from Hell and should theoretically be fire immune anyway.

In my rush to see the skills, I didnt check the witch doctors fire skills, as long as some good fire spells are in the game in one way or another, im happy =)
Im glad the absence of fire skills in the wizards tiers has to do with the lore and not "running out of space" or anything of that manner
either way i prefer they keep the skills that they have made for the wizard so far, they look amazing!

---

Q u o t e:
You could mistake disintegrate as fire based, but it's actually a beam of pure energy, and is classified as arcane damage.

---

How exactly does disintegrate kill monsters? I often read the disintegrate ray were a ray of heat.
But by your definition it wouldn't be heat, but some kind of destructive arcane "force"?

Disintegrate doesn't look like "normal" arcane damage, it's not even purple. That's probably the reason many people think/thought of it as a ray of heat. Why is it red?

Meteor Storm and Hydra are the only revealed ones so far right?

Anyway, the old skills not shown are redundant, from a mechanics perspective:

Firebolt - It's Magic Missile, without a barrage of missiles. If it were ever brought back, it would have to upgrade itself into a Fireball to be on par with Charged Bolt and Magic Missile.

Fireball - Think there's Arcane Orb or somesuch skill that's an exploding projectile already?

Inferno - Has always been a maligned skill sadly. Good for slaughtering Gargoyales early on in the first one, a sad skill that's always been bugged and weaker than fireball in the second. ALSO THE OBVIOUS: This is now a Witchdoctor skill. With bats.

Blazzzzze - Wasn't a great skill idea in retrospect.

Warmth - Probably has an analogue.

Enchant - Magic Weapon has the same function in spirit. In execution, since you can't cast these on your buddy's 500 minions, it'll probably be much stronger this time around.

Firewall - Held back in case they want another class to use it. Also Acid Cloud will provide a field of death in its place. It's much more awesome, you may remember it from other RPGs as CLOUDKILL, a fluffy cloud that kills.

Honestly I love how the class looks. It looks like they've done a good job on giving each skill its own feel.

Fire is the rapid oxidation of a combustible material releasing heat and light which are forms of pure energy.

wow.. i didnt see meteor storm...
hydra by far was my favorite and its back so im happy about that
second was blaze though, if you are soloing, it comes in handy for a sorceress, just conjure it and run run run!
and the rest, like you said, are pretty much useless skills or the wizard is already using them in some manner

D2 lacked, by far and away, the most awesome Diablo skill ever created. I love what I've seen in Diablo III (particularly slow time and the new leap attack) but I don't think I've seen anything that can top Elemental from the original Diablo.

You summoned a man made out of fire who ran to the target and exploded. When you leveled it up, he ran faster. And exploded.

http://www.planetdiablo.com/diablo/spells/level3/elemental_screen.jpg

The original bone spirit was much more awesome, too.

I thought he was goofy looking. But I did love the art on that bloody wraith spell.

Personally I think a cloud that melts the monsters that are inside it is much cooler. That's just me. A fan of melting things. Devoured skin? Decapitations? Exploding ribs? No thanks, I'll just stick with the melting.

---

Q u o t e:
I thought he was goofy looking.

---

A little, I admit. But I always picked up the spell. Always. Because it's that awesome.
Think about it updated in a 3D engine with dynamic lighting. The possibilities!

Bear with me!
You are a witch doctor and you're looking at your skill tree. You've just reached level omgwtfI'mAwesome and want to reflect that in your skills. What skill would be more awesome than this:

Go to 1:40 in this video. Watch it in HQ. I promise you'll end up watching it more than once because it is the greatest thing you'll ever see in your life lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZgCVYKC3U0

You'll see a man with a shirt unbuttoned, dancing down the street. Now, set him on fire and give him a head dress, pretend he looks like a witch doctor. Throw in some "OOGAHBAGOOGAHDAH" and you have the greatest skill to ever grace a video game, ever. Of all time. The greatest. It will never be topped!

It would topple the entire battle.net economy because it's so awesome. Everybody would play a witch doctor. They'd take nothing but this skill and the passives that go with it. They'd just let the other skill points rot because there'd be no point in taking another skill ever again.

Spirit Tree:
Elemental: We at Blizzard could not write up a skill description that could accurately convey just how epic this skill is. So just click this button and watch your world get bel-air'd.
Unformed Dance: The Witch Doctor yells "OOGAHBAGOOGAHDAH" ten times as loud while casting Elemental, making all creatures on screen deficate their pants, or equivalent to pants. Next Rank: There is no next rank. There doesn't have to be. There couldn't be.
Fire Flail: Each flail of the Witch Doctor's arms, while casting elementals, shoots off a smaller version of the elemental spell. Next Rank: More elementals are spawned up to a limit of three to prevent the synapses of the user from exploding with [i]pure joy.

C'mon Bashiok, you have the power. You can make this happen!