Reaper of Souls: Introducing the Crusader

by Whitney "Neinball" Fairchild - 11 years ago     show comments

The Crusader is the new class for Diablo III’s upcoming expansion, the Reaper of Souls.  The Crusader is going to balance the class list bringing a second Strength based class to the lineup, making the total number of playable classes now six.  While many players were expecting two classes in the expansion (a la Diablo II’s Druid and Assassin in LoD) this will not be the case.  The devs have made it very clear the Crusader is going to be the only new class coming in RoS, much to the dismay of all those hoping for the return of the Necromancer.  Personally I was expecting a Str based shapeshifting class created using the early Demon Hunter concepts Blizz had designed around a half-human/half-demon hybrid.

The archetype Blizzard is going for with the Crusader is to give the player the feeling that they are taking on the role of a living tank.  Crusaders are heavy armor wearing juggernauts that wade through the forces of darkness shrugging off the attacks of any opposition they encounter.  Below are all the known skills we were shown in the playable demo at Gamescom.  I left out the resource costs for the skills to cut down on clutter since the resource system is far from finished and will likely change over time, so no need to worry about skill costs vs benefits just yet.

Active Skills:

Primary

• Punish – Hit your enemy. Your hits increase your ability to block. Requires a shield.
  • Rune Retaliate – When you block, you do extra damage
• Slash – Ignite the air in front of you, damaging all enemies
  • Rune Long Reach – Increases the range of Slash
• Justice – Throw a hammer of justice at your enemies.
• Scourge – (Wrath Generator) Scourge your enemies, surrounding them in threads of hallowed power. The threads cut and bleed enemies they attach to, and will seek out new enemies to latch onto and punish.

What is really interesting about the Crusader’s primary skills is that the majority of them all consume Wrath, the Crusader’s resource, instead of generating it or being practically free like all of the existing classes.  As I said earlier, the resource mechanic is far from complete but we can still gleam some information from Blizzard’s potential ideas for the class.  Will the resource generation for the Crusader be more akin to the Witch Doctor and Wizard where Wrath will generate over time?  Will he generate Wrath from being hit enemies or generate passively by the number of enemies within X yards?

I’m very curious since the mechanics of the resource generation will greatly influence their play style.  Classes like the Demon Hunter, Wizard or Witch Doctor can open up fully from the get-go and can even be built to have nigh infinite resources.  The Monk and Barb start off empty and have to pool their resource before they unload, but general their abilities hit like trucks since their ‘builder’ skills are a little weaker.

Secondary

• Shield Bash – Blasts enemies in front of you. Requires a shield.
• Fist of the Heavens– Call a bolt from the sky damaging enemies in the area.
  • Rune Well of Retribution – Create a well of holy lightning at the target location that will electrocute nearby enemies
• Blessed Shield – Hurl a celestial shield through the air, smashing it into enemies and ricocheting it between them
• Blessed Hammer – Summons a blessed hammer that revolves around you damaging enemies.
• Sweep Attack – Spread a mystical plague in the air in a large arc, dealing heavy damage on enemies in front of you

The secondary skills are a good collection of melee and ranged spells showing off the hybrid nature of the Crusader.  I really like the kit they are showing off so far with being able to choose what type of Crusader you want to play.  Whether you want to be a spellcasting cleric type or a holy warrior cutting through the legions of hell, there will  be set of skills open to your play style.

Defensive

• Shield Glare – Temporarily blind enemies in front of you with your shield. Requires a shield. Cooldown: 12 seconds
  • Rune Emblazoned Rune Shield – Blinded enemies sometimes explode when on low health
• Judgement – Roots enemies for 4 seconds. Cooldown: 20 seconds

Not a lot to see here yet but these spells seem to have a bit more group utility then actual defensive mechanics.  I love seeing group buffs on classes in general since it fosters group play and if the rest of this skill category gets filled with more defensive mechanics for the party and not just the Crusader the better it will be.  For what we get to see, Judgement could be nice for group play getting monsters stuck together for a CM Wizard to open up on.

Utility

• Consecration – Creates sacred ground around you that heals both the Crusader and his allies. Cooldown: 20 seconds
  • Rune Shattered Ground – The enemies within the area in effect take damage
• Provoke – (Wrath Generator) Taunts the enemy to attack you for 5 seconds. Cooldown: 20 seconds

More utility in the Utilities section.  Unless Blizzard buffs healing in RoS I don’t see Consecration being very useful unless they come up with some really good runes, I’m looking at you Inner Sanctuary.  Provoke fulfills the tank archetype and will be a godsend to your fellow players (in HC at least) if used at the right time, it’s also one of the few Wrath generators seen so far.

Laws

• Laws of Justice – Active: Increases armor for the Crusader and his allies, while Laws of Justice are active. Passive: When you block an attack, you and your allies take less damage for a short duration. Requires a shield. Cooldown: 30 seconds
• Laws of Valor – Active: Increases the damage of the Crusader and his allies, while Laws of Valor is active. Passive: When you critically hit, you and your allies do more damage for a short duration. Cooldown: 30 seconds
• Laws of Fate – Active: Increases the speed of the Crusader and his allies, while Laws of Fate is active. Passive: When you dodge, you and your allies run faster for a short duration. Cooldown: 30 seconds

Laws function much like the Monk’s Mantras.  While the passive ability only gives buffs when you meet certain criteria (crit, block, etc.) the active abilities could be game changers given the long CD of the skills.

Conviction

• Falling Sword – The Crusader is launched in the air and lands on his enemies. Cooldown: 15 seconds
  • Rune Part of the Cloud – You create a lightning storm that covers the ground where the character falls, hitting enemies with lightning
• Heaven’s Fury – Creates an area of holy power that burns and damages enemies

Conviction will fill the role of the big damage, high cost/long CD skill set.  I’ll be interested in seeing what other abilities they have to complete this tier as they’ll be board clearers like Rain of Vengeance or power ups like Archon.  Who wouldn’t want to build a high cooldown reduction Crusader who just spams Falling Sword every few seconds leaping around the board clearing everything like an artillery barrage?

Passive Skills:

• Indestructible – You gain 1% armor for every 5% life that you lose.
• Wrathful – Wrath regeneration increased by 5% for 3 seconds after a block.
• Heavenly Strength – Enable the crusader to hold a two handed weapon in main hand, but only if you have a Crusader shield in the other, in addition you lose 10% movement speed.
• Stand Your Ground – Increase block chance by 5%, reduces dodge chance by 0%.
• Against All Odds – When surrounded by 4 or more enemies within 15 yards, you gain 10% Crit Chance for 5 seconds
• Finery – Gain X (assumed to scale with level) All Resist for each gem of different color on your gear, if you have five different gems you’ll gain another X All Resist
• Holy Cause – 10% more Holy damage on weapon. Also proc coefficient increased by 10% on Holy weapons.
• Vigilant – Increases your life regeneration by X (assumed to scale with level.) Increases total life regeneration by an additional 3%. Reduces all non-physical damage received by 2%.

So far we see a nice set of passives.  We have defensive talents like Finery which may end up giving Crusaders up to 350 to all resists (based on 1 res per level per gem) and others that build up your block chances.  We have utility talents to increase resource generation.  And of course we have offensive talents.  One of my biggest gripes on the Monk is the lack of good offensive passives and the Crusader is just coming in telling the Monk to go back to the monastery.   Why you ask?  Imagine this if you will, equip a skorn AND a +10% crit shield with 200+ strength.  Sounds awesome right?

The Crusader can do it with Heavenly Strength.  The Crusader can equip a two handed weapon and shield at the same time, all at the cost of -10% movement speed.  With the new paragon system or even just equipping over the move speed cap the Crusader can circumvent this drawback.  Will this get nerfed before or during beta?  Probably.  But it will be great to dream until then.  Another interesting offensive talent is Holy Cause which gives a passive 10% weapon damage as holy, but also increases proc coefficients by 10% if using a weapon with a holy weapon (holy weapons are any with a +holy dmg weapon affix.)  This means that weapons like Butcher’s Sickle will proc it’s chain attack 10% more often and with the new Legendary revamp coming in Loot 2.0 we could see some very interesting builds coming from this passive.

All-in-all the Crusader has very a solid and rounded skill set.  They have a great mixture of defensive and offensive skills and passives, some great group utility in the forms of stuns, roots and Laws.  Still one of my favorite aspects is that they look like they’ll be able to be played as a straight up caster, melee or hybrid depending on your tastes.  This is one thing I really enjoyed in Diablo II and feel that Diablo III still misses in terms of build diversity.  I also wonder while looking at the Crusader is what they may have in mind for other classes like the Monk.  Will we get revamped skills or are the new skills and runes planned for the new level cap add more depth to all of the classes?  I’m sure we’ll see once we get into the beta, which might not be all that far off.

Is it just me or will there be millions of Crusaders named after Judge Dredd?  I know mine will be. LAAAAAAW!