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Diablo II is one of those storied classic PC games that’s pretty much always fun to come back to—so much so that some players have put thousands of hours into the game over more than two decades. Across all those years, though, the game itself has barely changed, becoming something of a familiar, comfortable blanket of hellfire for longtime players.
That makes last week’s introduction of a new playable Warlock class in Diablo II Resurrected’s new “Reign of the Warlock” DLC a pretty big deal. And after playing through a few Acts with the Warlock over the recent holiday weekend, I found the new option to be a great excuse to come back to a game that’s overdue for a shot in the arm.
War-locked in
How your Warlock build goes depends heavily on which of the three main upgrade branches you choose to go down. Of these, I found the Eldritch branch had been the most interesting and fun to explore. That’s in large part because of a new skill that lets you levitate a powerful two-handed weapon in front of you while still holding a strong shield in your hands. It seems a small change, but my relief was palpable in this playthrough as I was able to avoid these kinds of tough choices between defense and offense as I juggled my inventory.
Then there’s the Echoing Strike skill, which essentially lets you turn your melee weapons into ranged attacks, using a bit of mana to throw a ghostly “echo” at far-off enemies. I ended up relying heavily on this almost as soon as I got it at Level 14, spamming a long-range copy of my powerful two-handed staff, complete with its fire and poison effects intact. weapon levitation, adding an effective ranged attack to what were once exclusively close-quarters combat options is a simple change that opens up a lot of gameplay variety.
Throwing an ethereal copy of your weapon across the void is extremely satisfying.
Credit: Blizzard
Throwing an ethereal copy of your weapon across the void is extremely satisfying. Credit: Blizzard
The Demon upgrade branch has been much less interesting, in my experience. The basic pattern of summoning monstrous allies to fight alongside you and absorb some enemy attention will be broadly familiar to anyone who has played the Necromancer class. And, to be frank, I found summoning a massive army of fragile skeletons as a Necromancer to be a lot more fun than summoning a singular tank of a Demon as a Warlock early on (summoning multiple demons at once requires a full 10 points of skill tree investment).
Of the Warlock’s three Demonic partner options, I found myself leaning most on the Tainted, which can stay out of harm’s way while harassing slower enemies from afar with fireballs. The other Demon options both had their charms but often got too caught up in massive enemy swarms to be as effective as I wanted, I found. I also didn’t see much point in the skill option that let me teleport my demon into a specific fight or sacrifice itself for some splash damage; their standard, AI-controlled attack patterns were usually sufficient.
Then there’s the Chaos upgrade branch, which is focused mostly on area-of-effect (AoE) spells. My build thus far has ended up pretty reliant on the direct-damage AoE options; the Flame Wave, in particular, is especially good for quickly clearing out long, narrow corridors. I also leaned on the Sigil of Lethargy, which effectively slows down some of the more frenetic enemy swarms and gives you some time to gather your attack plan.
Something borrowed, something blue…
Combining these Chaos skills with the weapon-improving options in the Eldritch branch has made my time with the Diablo II Warlock feel a bit of a “best of both worlds” situation. The mixture of ranged combat options, area-of-effect magic, and allies-summoning abilities ends up feeling a weird cross between a Sorceress, Amazon, and Necromancer, without feeling a carbon copy of any of those classes.
I haven’t yet gotten to the new late-game content in the “Reign of the Warlock” DLC, so I can’t say how well the Warlock holds up in the extreme difficulty of the Terror Zones. I also haven’t experimented with any of the truly brokenWarlock builds that some committed high-level min-maxxers have been busy discovering.
As a casual excuse to revisit the world of Diablo II, though, the Warlock class provides just enough of a new twist on some familiar gameplay mechanics to make it worth the trip.
Kyle Orland Senior Gaming Editor
Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper.
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Arstechnica.com
