Diablo III- Skills Article CLV: The Wizard, Passive Skills (3 of 6)

Prodigy: When you deal damage with a Primary skill, you regain 4 Arcane Power.

Prodigy essentially reverses your class mode between a Generator class and a Regenerator class.  I’ll add more on that later in another article, but the gist of it is this- if you have a Primary skill that you use regularly and like using, and your other Active skills are very high in Arcane Power cost, you should pick up Prodigy.  Many Wizards don’t want to use their Primary Skill if they can help it, and only keep it up long enough to wait for their Arcane Power pool to refill.  While these Wizards will also benefit from Prodigy, unless they have a lot of single-shot high-cost spells (like Meteor), the benefit is going to be mostly going to waste.  Relying on Ray spells or Arcane Torrent means spending your Arcane Power consumption gradually, in a way that doesn’t let you whip out your Primary skill in between shots- and so for Wizards that lean on those, this effect is really relatively minor compared to its benefit for a Wizard who alternates Primary Skill attacks with Arcane Orb.  Every Wizard should consider this, but the Arcane Power pool refills so quickly that many Wizards don’t actually need the skill.

Astral Presence: Your maximum Arcane Power increases by 20 and you regain 2 Arcane Power per second.

This Arcane Power generator comes with an enhancement, and is far more suited to prolonged-attack Wizards than Prodigy.  Where Prodigy relies on breaking between attacks to use the no-cost Primary Skill, Astral Presence is always adding more Arcane Power to your pool, and thus very well suited to continual attacks like the Rays or Arcane Torrent.  If you don’t like using your Primary skill or aren’t always in a position to use it effectively, Astral Presence is a much better choice for Arcane Power generation than Prodigy.  Also, the increased Arcane Power pool means that Astral Presence is more strongly suited to Wizards who alpha strike than Prodigy is- a larger pool means more Arcane Power to blow all at once.

Illusionist: Whenever a single hit deals more than 15% of your Life in damage to you, Teleport and Mirror Image refresh.

This is a very carefully aimed skill.  Evasive long-ranged Wizards will often love this skill- they tend to have weaker defenses and lower Life pools, so they’ll be taking larger hits when they do get hit- and when they get hit it will usually be because their defensive skills aren’t available right then.  This is slightly more dangerous than a cooldown improvement such as Evocation, but it’s far more reliable- you know that the skills will be available as soon as you start getting seriously attacked, rather than hoping that you don’t get into too much trouble during the (admittedly short) reduced cooldown time.  Wizards who are better prepared to be taking damage shouldn’t even consider this skill- if you’re a close-range Wizard and there’s anything short of a champion melee monster or a Hammer Lord that deals that much damage to you in one swing, you have far greater defensive problems than ‘I can’t teleport yet’.