Diablo’s King Leoric And Monk Join Heroes Of The Storm

Plus a treasure goblin. And I’m pretty sure that Blizzard just revealed a third new hero as well.

Blizzard offered a few more details about its ongoing Diablo-themed campaign for its awesome new MOBA Heroes of the Storm last night during the E3 PC gaming show. While the campaign, which kicks off at the end of this month, will start by adding classic Diablo villain The Butcher (he of “FRESH MEAT” fame) and a new heaven-and-hell themed map, there are a ton of other Diablo heroes coming into the game as well.

First up are King Leoric, another longtime Diablo villain, and the Monk, one of the character classes from Diablo III. Both were shown in a fun new trailer the developer made for the incoming Diablo map, which they’re calling “the eternal conflict.”

They only went into detail about King Leoric’s ability kit, which makes me think that he’s gonna be the first of the two new champs to come into the game. The Skeleton King is gonna be a melee warrior with a ridiculous-sounding passive ability that makes him all but impossible to kill. Here’s how Gosugamers described it (emphasis added):

King Leoric was inspired by Dustin Browder’s mad scientist dream of creating a hero that “never dies”. His trait activates on death, and instead of respawning as normal, King Leoric enters a ghostly wraith form, allowing players to fully control him to effectively “haunt” his opponents, slowing their attacking speed and movement speed.

What comes next is truly awesome: for every point of damage he “would” [have] dealt if he were alive, his death timer is reduced. Once his death timer reaches 0, rather than spawning at the nexus, he is resurrected at the current location of his wraith.

Franky put, this is insane. At low levels, King Leoric essentially respawns immediately when he dies, creating an absolute monster on certain battlegrounds early on. In the words of Dustin Browder him self “Try to kill King Leoric early on? Tell me how that works out for you.”

Forget the fact that Leoric will be able to continually harass his opponents even after they kill him by following around in ghost form. Respawning wherever his ghost is? The only hero in HOTS right now who has a trait like this is Murky, the frog-like creature who can lay eggs that act as respawn points. And he doesn’t have much in the way of health — he’s sort of supposed to die all the time.

Leoric, on the other hand, sounds like a fully-fledged front-line tank. He has powerful melee attacks and crowd-control abilities, such as his heroic power “Entomb,” that traps people behind a three-walled gate:

…setting them up for devastating wombo combo attacks from Leoric and the rest of his team.

This guy isn’t even in the game yet, and I’m already scared. He’s proooobably gonna need a nerf or two once he comes out.

All Blizzard had to say about the Monk’s kit, meanwhile, is that he’ll be the first character to have different level-1 abilities to choose from. Currently, all Heroes characters just have two different heroic abilities (the super-powerful ones that unlock at level 10 in-game) to choose from.

The Eternal Conflict will also add a treasure goblin to the beginning of Heroes games for a limited time. For the first thirty seconds of each match, a team will be able to attack the treasure goblin in order to get gold as a reward.

Oh, and one final note. At a few different points in The Eternal Conflict trailer, a familiar-looking lady showed up on-screen:

I am 99 per cent positive this is the Amazon from Diablo II:

…who hasn’t been officially announced as a character for Heroes of the Storm yet. Blizzard has already said they’re planning to add a new character every 3-4 weeks, and planning to add Diablo stuff specifically over the course of The Eternal Conflict campaign, so she’s already a likely candidate.

Now can we get Deckard Cain next, Blizzard? I’d also accept Griswold. Or a cow.

UPDATE: Some readers have suggested that the image of the Amazon that shows up in the Eternal Conflict trailer is actually just a new skin for the existing StarCraft assassin Nova. That may very well be true — Blizzard has teased some evidence to suggest this in the past. The developers have also mentioned adding the Amazon to the game as a full-fledged hero, however, so I’m going to keep my options open.

Leoric’s entomb screenshot via YouTuber TakeDown, whose video of the character’s kit is included in the body of this article.