The new character will share abilities and play styles with the old one

Mar 19, 2014 09:12 GMT  ·  By

Blizzard has offered a few more details about the all-new Crusader Class that's coming to Diablo 3 via the upcoming Reaper of Souls expansion, saying that it has borrowed a few elements from Diablo 2's Paladin.

Diablo 3 featured five pretty different character classes designed to bring fresh abilities and play styles to the universe of Blizzard's dungeon crawling franchise.

With the upcoming Reaper of Souls expansion, which launches next week, Blizzard is set to introduce a sixth playable class, in the form of the Crusader.

The new character has been modeled after the Paladin from Diablo 2, according to Blizzard, as some abilities and gameplay styles were recreated, albeit with some changes.

Blizzard's Senior Game Designer Andrew Chambers answered questions from fans in a new article on Battle.net and focused on the relationship between the Paladin and the Crusader.

"We took a lot of the Paladin's gameplay into consideration when developing the Crusader class. We knew there were some gameplay styles we wanted to bring forward, such as using Blessed Hammer or Fist of the Heavens, and some that we didn’t, such as auras," he said.

"As we walked down the path of adding skills to his kit, we realized that even though we were being very true to the original skills when we brought them forward, they worked in new and interesting ways when combined with his other skills. For example, it’s a lot of fun to use Falling Sword to get into the middle of a mass of monsters, and then drop a bunch of Blessed Hammers."

What's more, Chambers also emphasized that the Crusader, as opposed to the standard Diablo 3 Barbarian, for example, doesn't favor close or ranged combat, as he's more of an in-between class in terms of abilities and powers.

"We tried to make him split down the middle as much as possible. His generator skills are evenly split, his spender skills are evenly split, with Blessed Hammer more of a "mid-ranged" ability. You really don’t have to kit yourself out entirely one way or the other, in fact sometimes it’s better not to," Chambers said.

Those who have already pre-purchased the Reaper of Souls expansion can already tinker with a skill calculator and builder for the new Crusader in order to test out potential builds.

Reaper of Souls launches for Diablo 3 on the PC and Mac platforms on March 25 worldwide, so you'd better start experimenting as soon as possible.