I was leveling up my Wizard in the Diablo 3 beta when at some point I shot a giant purple arcane orb at my enemies and it exploded, knocking them all to the ground. Having not read the tool tip for the skill before I through it on my action bar, I was pretty impressed with what just happened. I tried throwing, what I now knew as ‘Chaos Orb’, at another group of demonic minions, and sure enough they all toppled to the ground. I’m familiar with AoE in World of Warcraft, but it’s almost always centered on your character. The idea that a Wizard can throw an exploding AoE is pretty bad ass.

Then it dawned on me, this would be a great skill to use when farming content that is slightly lower level than I am. I may not be the skill of choice for progressing characters who are challenging content they haven’t played before, but it would be very powerful when you’re trying to skill monsters who are slightly lower level than you are. I wondered, what other AoE skills are out there for other classes. Here is what I found:

Barbarian

The Barbarian has several frontal effect skills, including a Cleave and their Hammer of Ancients. They also have a couple basic AoE like Leap Attack (8 yards, 70% damage), Ground Stomp (12 yards, 70% damage) and Rend (9 yards, 70% damage three times). The hallmark of their AoE abilities, though, is their Earthquake ability which is usable every 120 seconds and consumes 50 fury. It hits all enemies within 18 yards for 240% weapon damage and 150% weapon damage 8 times over the next 8 seconds. This will pretty much obliterate anything in sight. Along with these powerful skills they have a situational Revenge ability (similar to the Warrior’s in WoW) which does 150% damage to enemies inside 8 yards and leach 5% life from each. Finally, their Overpower ability can be used every 15 seconds which hits all targets inside 9 yards for 150% weapon damage. The warrior is definitely a strong AoE fighter.

Demon Hunter

The Demon Hunter isn’t shy about blowing shit up with its AoE abilities. It has a few basic path skills that attack everything in the path between it and its target. While they are not exactly the AoE abilities I was hoping to find they are: Chakram (135% weapon damage) and Elemental Arrow (125% weapon damage). They have at least one trap, which requires a monster to come close to and set off, it’s called Spike Trap and does 100% weapon damage to everything within 8 yards. Similar to the Wizard’s Chaos Orb mentioned above, their Bola Shot does 79% weapon damage to everything 7 yards around the original target. Finally, the Demon Hunter has at least 5 other Hatred consuming abilities with varying cooldowns: Fan of Knives is a character-centered AoE that does 450% weapon damage to everything within 10 yards as well as snaring all the enemies. Multishot require 15 hatred and is similar to Volley in that they both do 140% weapon damage to all the targets in the targeted ‘area’. This pattern continues with Rain of Vengeance (40 hatred, 30 second CD, 133% weapon damage to random targets all over) and Cluster Arrow (50 hatred, 200% weapon damage to everything in the area). The Demon Hunter has a lot of interesting AoEs that will need to be experimented with before one comes out the clear winner.

Tomorrow we’ll take a look at the Monk, Wizard and With Doctor. Keep in mind all the mentioned skills can be modified with various runestones that are not yet included in the beta. Most skills aren’t even in the beta yet either.

Important: Many of the strategies and tips I share here were originally inspired by the people at the Diablo 3 Gold Secrets Forum. If you're serious about making the big bucks in Diablo 3, or just being the best players, you need to signup ASAP.