As Lilith’s minions emerge from the shadows, Blizzard’s Diablo 4 beta showed that you’ll need to muster all your might to send them back to the fiery underworld. Two new Diablo 4 classes will be added as part of the next RPG testing phase: the Druid and the Necromancer. Ahead of its release, – Game News spoke with Diablo 4 Game Director Joe Shely and Franchise VP Rod Fergusson about what to expect.
As someone who has always played melee DPS characters, the Necromancer and Druid are somewhat foreign to me. Playing Witch Doctor in Diablo 3 (S-tier in my heart, D-tier actually), I never really extended my summoner class fantasy to Diablo’s resident ranger and dark wizard.
However, I’d be lying if the Necromancer launch trailer didn’t intrigue me, so I asked Fergusson and Shely what to expect from each class ahead of the next open beta.
Fergusson, a self-proclaimed “main necro” who just received a tattoo of the class during the Hell’s Ink tour, tells me that “the best thing is controlling the Necromancer. Necromancer customization centers around the Book of the Dead, so you can configure your army however you want.
“You can take all that customization around what your army is going to look like, and you can actually sacrifice it to make yourself stronger,” he tells me with a vaguely manic grin. “You can say ‘actually, I don’t want an army, I want to be a blood necromancer or a bone necromancer, and I’m going to take over my sacrificed army and do to me stronger.’ I like this flexibility. It’s my favorite class.”
While the necromancer deals with the dead, the druid deals with all that lives and breathes. Sadly, we won’t see his homeland in beta this weekend, but Shely promises the druid is an incredible warrior whose menagerie is key to stopping Lilith.
As for the druid, his “specialization has a thematic element. The druid can travel through Scosglen (home of the druids), and there are animal spirits there that the druid can communicate with and reward them for bringing tokens as favors. (Spirit Animals) offer customization in the form of different buffs the Druid can gain if they choose to align themselves with one of four different Spirit Animals.
“There is a strong thematic component, and there is also a mechanical differentiation,” he says. Fergusson notes that while you won’t be able to see Scosglen in this beta, there are some really cool changes to the druid’s signature shapeshifting that we haven’t seen before in previous iterations of Sanctuary.
“What you can see is that (the shapeshifting mechanics) aren’t cumbersome, it’s not like ‘oh, I have to be a bear to have bear attacks,'” Fergusson told – Game News. “Basically, for every ability you use, you transform into the animal that does it, so if you have a hit that’s a bear attack and a bite that’s a wolf attack, you’ll transition smoothly between the two forms. And then the cutting makes it possible to personalize things; You might be a bear most of the time, except maybe in towns or on horseback, but bears on horseback are awesome!
Sadly, this confirms that said equestrian mammals are “not in the game”, but that’s what we’d like to see. Diablo Social Team I see you getting there. After all, there was an hour-long livestream of the wolf beta cosmetic.
If you’re ready to dive into the latest beta, be sure to check the Diablo 4 system requirements ahead of time so Lilith doesn’t incinerate your rig. We also have a list of best games like Diablo if you can’t wait for Diablo 4 release date, I know I can’t.