I'm playing around with the demo on PS3, so apologies if this is or would be more obvious in the full version, but can the Wizard be forced to use a physical weapon?

Maybe it's just that the current selection of powers isn't wowing me, but I would like one of the buttons or triggers to be a guaranteed physical attack, instead of having that only happen when mana is depleted.

Characters in Diablo 3 pretty much never use basic physical attacks. Even melee characters just rely solely upon skills. As a wizard the closest thing you have to a melee looking attack is spectral blades. It is possible to play a wizard by staying up close with enemies throughout the game on all difficulties but even then you will likely never swing your weapon. To all classes the weapons are more just stat sticks that may or may not play a part in the skill/spell animations the class uses i'm afraid.

You can assign basic melee attacks from what I recall of the PC version (so it may have changed) but they are usually so vastly inferior to the skills and spells there is no real reason to do so.

This person is correct. Even on PC where you can use a basic melee attack, it's kind of dumb to do so because your skills are much more powerful and every class has some "free" skills that don't use their respective pool (mana, arcane, fury, etc.).

Ok, so does that mean if I have a weapon that says +1 life per kill, or 2-3 frost damage, would those apply no matter what attack I'm using, as long as I'm holding the weapon when it happens?

Yeah, those weapon stats will apply on all forms of attack. So for example if you have a weapon that grants life on hit, and then drop a twister amongst the enemies each time it hits anything it will grant you life. I made a mage who pretty much just stands in melee range of everything and just spams them leeching back life faster than enemies can kill him.

All offensive skills tend to describe their damage as x% of weapon dps. All effects across all equipped gear that you have will work for your skills aswell. In the wizards case from what I recall intelligence is their offensive/primary stat, so getting more of it means more damage. Also beyond that getting lots of vitality is a good idea as well in order to stay alive.

When I first saw this thread I thought you were just asking in general. Then I saw "Diablo III" and got a little sad. This is a topic that needs answered!

One of the many shit show portions of diablo 3, weapon choice is irrelevant, and every class is a caster. So lame.

@example1013 said:

That does seem crummy. Not that I'd want a mage to do melee too often, but to make it basically pointless...On the bright side, that means I'll be almost guaranteed to spend that 60.00 on something else, so, Thanks Blizzard !

Weapon choice is still very very relevant. And you still melee attack with melee classes. Just because they have different types of melee attack modifiers via abilities doesn't change the fact that you are still hitting dudes, only that now instead of only ever having the exact same default melee attack over and over the entire game you now have around 15-20 different things your basic melee attack can potentially do in addition to just pure dmg.

Fast weapons, slow weapons, dual wielding, going one handed plus shield or one handed plus a secondary item or two handed weapons, all of that still matters when considering builds and how you want to make and play your character. And the most weapon focused class the barbarian has different bonuses for using different weapon types (while other classes can get class specific bonuses from using their class specific weapons). This is in addition to all the other attack modifiers that weapons can come with, do you want crit or lifesteal, or a socket, or a stat buff, or some unique on hit effect, etc.

If you want to melee go with a monk or a barbarian and melee attack to your hearts content.

If you want to melee as a mage you can still do so, just unbind the ability from the default attack and melee away. You will just be less efficient and rightfully so for a mage.

Edit: also a correction on a post by @gravier251 all spells and abilities don't take weapon %dps they use weapon %dmg. Which means certain abilities like for example, instant cast one off big spells will do much better with slower weapons even if they have less dps on paper doll, while for example channeled spells or main attack abilities might do less damage per hit while using fast weapons but they will come out and do their damage more often.

@tennmuerti: ok, thank you for the clarification. From the previous posts, it sounded as if weapons were ONLY used as stat modifiers now.

I guess really this all came from being dissatisfied with some of the early level spells, and wanting alternatives to those. I'll check out unbinding to see if that works out. If not there's always barbarian to mess around with.