BlizzCon 2019 Diablo IV Systems and Features Panel Transcript

Welcome to the Diablo IV Systems and Features panel. I hope everybody is here to hear about our systems and features. That is the only deck we have. So that’s what you get. My name is Tim Ismay. I am a senior producer on the Diablo IV team. I have a moderate amount of knowledge about all the things we work on. Not to worry. I have a collection here of experts that have deep knowledge of all the things that we work on. So they will be talking more than I will.

David Kim here is our lead system designer. Next person down is, Angela Del Priore. She is our lead UI designer. Next to her is Zaven Haroutunian. He is our lead dungeon designer. All the way to the end there is Joe Shely, lead game designer. Now we have a ton of stuff to get into, so I am going to jump right into it, and hand this over to David Kim.

BlizzCon 2019 Diablo IV Systems and Features Panel Transcript

CLASSES

David: First, I want to say thank you for coming to our panel. Thank you for tuning in, and thank you for all the questions that you have submitted so far. Let’s get right into Classes.

So as you can see up on the screen, you saw the three classes that we have just announced: the Sorceress, the Barbarian, and the Druid. So let’s talk a little bit about each of these classes.

SORCERESS

David: The Sorceress is the master of magic. She is your fragile caster class that deals high magical damage from a distance.

So as you can see there is a good mix of returning skills, as well as brand-new skills. One of my favorites is this conduit skill. Whenever you use it, you are invulnerable, you will deal damage, and you can teleport as much as you want during the duration. I also want to talk about the chill mechanic in Diablo IV. Whenever the Sorcerer uses cold magic to attack enemies, she applies chill to the targets hit, making their movement speed slower and slower; and if you apply enough chill, the enemies get frozen completely.

So let’s check that out in this video. She is using her Frostbolt, and Blizzard skills to chill, and then freeze the enemy — as you can see.

BARBARIAN

The Barbarian is one of the main classes that everyone thinks of when they think Diablo, and of course, he is back.

If you like constantly jumping around, and charging around the battlefield while dealing heavy physical melee attacks, of course, this will be the class of your choice.

Again, this is the Barbarian that you know and love, but also he has some brand-new things about him as well. One of these things is the arsenal system allows the Barbarian to equip 4 weapons: 2 Two-handed weapons and 2 One-handed weapons — allowing to have more item affixes than any other class in the game, and you can also equip more legendaries than any other class in Diablo IV.

DRUID

The Druid is a shapeshifting class. The Druid can rapidly shapeshift into his human, werewolf, and werebear forms at a moments need. So let’s check out how that works. So as you can see, whenever you use a werewolf skill you instantly transform into that form; and whenever you use a werebear form you instantly can transform into that form. When you use your earth or storm spells, you instantly transform back into druid form. So one of the reasons why I think this is so cool is because you can tie specific mechanics to the moment you transform. So for example, one of the talents says something like whenever you shapeshift into a werebear form, you gain damage reduction for a few seconds, so not only can you pick the specific bonuses that you want, you also control the exact timing when you activate these bonuses. So you have that full control, and that is what I think is so cool about the rapid shapeshifting.

NEXT: SKILLS & TALENTS

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