Primary Skill: Spectral Blade (Healing Blades)
Secondary Skill: Arcane Orb (Arcane Orbit)
Defensive Skill: Slow Time (Time Warp)
Force Skill: Meteor (Meteor Shower)
Conjuration Skill: Energy Armor (Energy Tap)
Mastery Skill: Explosive Blast (Short Fuse)
Passive Skills: Blur, Galvanizing Ward, Prodigy
This setup does a few unexpected things with its skill slots, but the end result can be quite impressive. Energy Armor is an immediate choice, because it increases the Wizard’s poor Armor rating by a great deal. Similarly, Spectral Blades is probably the best choice you could grab for close-range free damage, with Healing Blades’ Life-restoration standing as a good way to enhance close-combat durability. Time Warp further reduces incoming damage, this time from all ranges, and the damage increase only grants you more advantage against things at your intended optimum range.
Because of this, the skill you’ll be using more than anything else is Healing Blades- it’s free, the damage is very nice, and if you have a weapon with some good riders (such as cold damage or a stunning effect), Spectral Blade’s ability to take advantage of those is invaluable. This is unusual for a Wizard- in most cases, the Primary skill is what you do in between more important skills, but in this case, it’s the main thing you do. This is further twisted by the use of Arcane Orbit, which is meant to be cast only once per battle, before the combat even starts. Since the orbs only explode at a maximum rate of one per second and the skill’s cost is fairly high, you shouldn’t worry about recasting it in battle- it’s there to give your damage an upwards nudge, but it’s not your main sink for Arcane Power.
That would be Meteor Shower. Since you’re operating in close quarters, everything you fight with melee attacks is going to be crowding around you- a perfect situation for dropping the considerable area of effect that Meteor Shower turns Meteor into. The high cost of this skill means that Energy Tap is a strong choice for your Energy Armor rune, and encourages the choice of Prodigy to get a good Arcane Energy fund out of your main cast, Spectral Blade. Blur further supports your close combat by reducing the damage you take from melee attacks to an even lower number of Life, Galvanizing Ward mitigates that even further by regenerating you constantly, and if you find yourself needing another surge of damage while you’re still too low on Arcane Energy for another Meteor Shower, you can always lean on Explosive Blast to add more damage- Short Fuse is there because you’re not likely to be moving anyways, and will probably trigger the skill when you need the extra damage, not two seconds before you need the added damage.
Remember to keep a monitor on your Life total with this setup- while you can hold your ground a lot better than the majority of other Wizards, you’re still not really comparable to a Barbarian or Monk, and your only real way to do anything that will help you escape a melee pinch is Slow Time, which only comes around every 20 seconds. If you can’t keep an eye on your Life, then you’ll want to try something else instead.
