Diablo III- Skills Article CXXIX: The Wizard, Primary Skills- Spectral Blade

Spectral Blade: A series of invisible blades slashes at a short but broad cone in front of you, dealing an average of 135% weapon damage to each enemy in the area.

Spectral Blade is the most damaging of the four Wizard Primary skills- and with good reason.  The maximum range of the base spell is something on the order of 8-10 yards, meaning that a Wizard build that is not prepared specifically for close combat will probably get itself killed trying to use the spell.  That said, the damage can get quite impressive- enemies at melee range will take somewhere from three to five hits from the skill, making it a disturbingly effective way to kill things for a skill with no Arcane Power cost.  This quickly outclasses Shock Pulse for close-range damage, and with the prior skill ineffective at medium ranges, there is little reason to select Shock Pulse once Spectral Blade becomes available.

Deep Cuts: A series of invisible blades slashes at a short but broad cone in front of you, dealing an average of  135% weapon damage to each enemy in the area and causing them to bleed for 35% weapon damage over the next 3 seconds.

The only way of directly adding more damage to Spectral Blade, Deep Cuts is a slight bit of a letdown in that the added damage is dealt over time, and doesn’t actually care how many blades hit the target.  That said, more damage onto this already heavily-damaging spell is very nice, and can enable a sort of hit-and-run tactic for a Wizard who relies on it.

Impactful Blades: A series of invisible blades slashes at a short but broad cone in front of you, dealing an average of  135% weapon damage with a 5% chance of knockback per hit to each enemy in the area.  Enemies hit by this spell have their movement speed Slowed by 60% for one second.

Impactful Blades is the form of Spectral Blade for Wizards who want to use the spell but find close combat a bit too risky.  With the ability to slow things, letting you halfway kite enemies with the skill, this rune can make things a lot easier for a Wizard who focuses on longer ranges but needs the higher damage to finish things off if they survive the use of the entire Arcane Power pool.  The knockback effect supports this, but its small chance of actually happening keeps it from being even slightly reliable.

Siphoning Blade: A series of invisible blades slashes at a short but broad cone in front of you, dealing an average of  135% weapon damage to each enemy in the area.  Each time you use this skill, you generate 1 Arcane Power for each enemy you hit.

This is probably your most effective way to boost your regeneration of Arcane Power.  Since the cone of Spectral Blade is broad and enemies that close to melee with you will like to do so all at once, it’s rare that you’ll need Arcane Power badly enough to rely on a rune for your primary skill and have only one or two targets to hit with Siphoning Blade at the same time.  Tacking such a powerful resource-restoring effect onto the most damaging Primary skill for Wizards is a great boon to the class as a whole, with the only difficulty being the short range.

Healing Blades: A series of invisible blades slashes at a short but broad cone in front of you, dealing an average of  135% weapon damage to each enemy in the area.  Whenever this skill scores a critical hit, you heal for 8% of the critical hit damage.

Initially, this doesn’t seem like such a good rune- without a heavy investment in critical hit generation, a heal only on critical hits should be erratic.  However, Spectral Blade swings five or six times with each casting, meaning that you actually have a lot of chances of scoring a critical hit.  In a situation where you’re fighting in melee range, this will mean a fairly regular rate of healing, typically once every other cast even without heavy investment in critical hit frequency.  In addition to being useful when your Arcane Pool runs out, as that often means combat has been ongoing for a bit, it can also be used as a general purpose way to stay on your feet in closer combat.  Stacked with the right defensive skills, Healing Blades will take you far.

Thrown Blade: A series of invisible blades slashes at a 20 yard broad cone in front of you, dealing an average of 135% weapon damage to each enemy in the area.

A massively effective rune for Wizards who use Spectral Blade as a damage tool and not just something to kill time while Arcane Power charges, Thrown Blade keeps the damage and number of attacks on Spectral Blade the same- but stretches all the attacks out in distance, allowing the attack to hit considerably more enemies for a much greater overall damage total.  While the range isn’t as absolute as Electrocute or Magic Missile, the sheer volume of area on this form of Spectral Blade makes it a must-have for multiple target fights.