Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls: details on the Crusader, character upgrades, legendaries

With the Diablo 3 expansion Reaper of Souls coming up, Blizzard earlier today at BlizzCon gave us the lowdown on what to expect for the upcoming new character, the Crusader. Plus, the Diablo 3 production team also talked about the upgrades existing characters will get. Perhaps the most important point was items, though: legendaries will get a huge fix in the next patch. Read on for the details.

The Crusader

For Reaper of Souls, Blizzard started off thinking about the Crusader as some sort of a Paladin. It ended up as dark type of Paladin. It will be a knight in battle-scared armor, a war machine made human, that is melee-heavy but still stands out from Barbarian and Monk.

Though it is a mid-range melee character, it also has some magical abilities. The Crusader weapons are a flail and shield and it is powered by the righteous wrath, which I believe is similar to the Barbarian’s fury points. The righteous wrath is basically points to spend on casting abilities and spells. I doubt the Crusader can dual wield weapons (Barbarians and Monks can), and Blizzard at BlizzCon didn’t explain how its DPS would be affected or calculated.

Crusader final sketch.

The Crusader’s skills are very AOE oriented. Its range abilities, as seen at BlizzCon for example, can bounce among enemies. In some way, Crusader adopts parts of Diablo 2’s Paladin skill sets such as Slash (similar to Paladin’s zeal in Diablo 2), Blessed Hammer, and Fist of the Heavens.

Existing characters get some love

Barbarian: New skill: Avalanche. An AOE skill with huge rocks falling down from the sky. Barbarian, as you can probably see, gets the least of the attention as the community currently finds the character a little overpowered. A nerf is probably expected among Barbarian community in the next patch, but that wasn’t discussed in BlizzCon.

Wizard: New skill: Black Hole. It sucks opponents into a single point, dealing massive damage, and my guess is that it allows the wizard to better focus its spell on a single location. Magic missile will have a rune to do cold damage. Every wizard’s favorite spell in Diablo 2, Frozen Orb, is also back in Diablo 3.