#Diablo 3 reaper of souls new classes full#

Heaven's Fury started as the idea of bringing the hand of god down from heaven. The team has an idea for a theme or general attack method for the class, then designs a skill that fits. It provided a way for the often surrounded Crusader to clear surrounding enemies, and kept with the theme of righteous wrath for the class.ДЄ skill often comes from brainstorming. The skill summons a giant pillar of light from the sky that breaks into small bolts that seek out enemies.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Fist of the Heavens was a skill that saw no change from conception to implementation. They still managed to keep the homage to the Paladin class, however, by revamping it into a skill called Slash, which itself has a rune called Zeal. However, it proved hard to make dynamic, and was so powerful it threatened to turn the Crusader into a 1 button class, so they scrapped it. Much like the old Diablo 2 Paladin's Zeal, it increased attack speed and number of monsters attacked with each strike. Justice throw out a hammer to smite foes, then Blessed Shield threw a holy glowing Paladin's shield at ranged mobs, where it richocetted between them, preserving that physical, bruising feel.Д¬rushing Resolve was another skill the team tested for the Crusader. Justice and Blessed Shield were shown as one possible Paladin combination. However, these ranged and AoE attacks still have a component of that wrathful physicality of the melee, a combination of the physical and mystical. The AoE attacks also compensate for the slowness of his melee attacks by allowing him to hit more monsters at once. When his Wrath is full, he uses it to unleash powerful ranged and AoE attacks. His righteous anger fills constantly, and can be generated via melee attack skills. The design for the skills then, had to keep all this in mind, in addition to the original dark paladin motif. The Crusader is meant to be a wrathful, powerful melee, but in order to differentiate it from the monk and barbarian, they decided to give it a variety of ranged attacks as well. The skills should reflect the roots of the class. This allows the Crusader to retain that sense of physically and barely-restrained wrath that is its conceptual trademark while using the concept of a ranged melee. The Crusader holds for a moment, as if gather energy, then releases it in a rush of energy, thrust his shield forward and causing a wave of energy to emit from it. We also saw the animation for a new skill, shield bash. They were finally able to bring under control by working not on action, but on reaction - how the flail reacts to being used or moved. Early tests had it whipping wildly all over the place, as if it had a mind of its own. The animation team had a hard time getting it to act quite right. The final design ended up with the Crusader looking more active and battle-ready to allow those animations to flow better, but still kept that stoic look.ДЄnother issue came into play with the signature flail weapon. While it did project the stoic, solid presence they wanted, it looked awkward when the Crusader leapt into action. For example, they showed an early concept of the Crusader's 'Stoic' Idle animation. Once the concept was complete, the next step was to animate the Crusader, give it a presence in game. They knew they wanted the Crusader to be bulky and blocky, but it took many weeks of reiterations before they settled on the look of today, with the shield, the flail, and the tabard.

#Diablo 3 reaper of souls new classes full#

The idea came together of having a dark paladin, full of righteous wrath, a 'knight in battle-scarred armor' to stand for humanity in its darkest hour. In this case, the team wanted a righteous paladin type, which would work as a good answer to Malthael, the angel of death and main villain of Reaper of Souls. Designing a new class is one of the most complex tasks in an RPG, but it starts with a simple concept. The first section of the panel introduced the new class, the Crusader. On the second day of BlizzCon 2013, the Diablo 3 team hosted a gameplay systems panel in which they covered some of the new systems coming to the Reaper of Souls expansion, including not only the Crusader class, but information on changes for the existing classes and some of the new itemization tweaks we can expect to see in Loot 2.0.