Blood Golem is a skill rune applied to the base Golem skill. When equipped on a player’s bar, he’ll run around smacking people, as a good Golem should. He also has an active component: hit the same key and he’ll teleport a short distance to drain blood from enemies, both dealing damage to them and restoring health to you. Devour is a corpse-spender skill, like the previously seen Corpse Explosion from BlizzCON. Instead of doing damage, Devour consumes corpses in the area around the Necromancer to restore Essence and health. Leech is a good old fashioned Necromancer curse, applied in an area of effect. Attacks on Leech-cursed enemies become vampiric, returning health to the attacker. The last skill I got to play around with was a mobility skill called Blood Rush. This skill allows the Necromancer to briefly phase out of the physical world and move swiftly to an area a set amount of distance in front of her. She can pass through solid objects while utilizing this skill, which seems like it will be extremely handy for Champ Packs with Waller.
All of the above skills were combined into a pre-made kit for me to use during hands-on time with the Necromancer. As with all characters in D3, players will be able to mix and match skills to their preferences, but this was the synergized kit we were provided with for the event. For the demo, the Necromancer was dropped into a rift with the simple task to kill all the guardians in the zone. The meleemancer kit felt like a well-oiled machine with a nice ebb and flow of balancing health and Essence for damaging enemies. The Essence-building of Grim Scythe felt responsive, the damage from Blood Nova felt worth the health cost, and it was extremely satisfying to use Devour on a bunch of corpses to get health and Essence back.
Upon completing the rift’s task, a new portal opened up to a boss room. I’ve been out of the D3 scene for a little while now, but the devs informed us this kind of new rift structure will be an upcoming feature. Though my time with the Necromancer was fairly brief, I felt assured that she would be able to stand toe-to-toe with all the other classes in D3 in terms of power and uniqueness.
The Necromancer will be arriving in the Rise of the Necromancer add-on pack, as previously announced at BlizzCON. Players will need to own both Diablo 3 and Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls on PC, or the Diablo 3: Ultimate Evil Edition on PS4 or Xbox One. In addition to the new class, the pack will also contain two more character slots, two stash tabs on PC, a portrait frame, pennant, banner, banner sigil, in-game pet, and cosmetic wings. The price of the pack as well as release date are currently unannounced. The devs mentioned, however, that the Necromancer will hit the Public Test Realms (PTRs) before the release of the pack and will likely be on the PTRs longer than a normal testing cycle. We’ll make sure to keep you all informed on any more information regarding the Necromancer in the coming weeks and months.