It feels like a million years ago now, but there was a time when one of the hottest topics among the video game community was over whether Diablo 3 looked too colorful. In early pre-release screenshots, some saw Diablo's grim and decayed world of Sanctuary slipping down the rubbery, cartoonish path of Blizzard's own Warcraft universe.

You can't get much more "grim and decayed" than someone who literally brings the dead back to life to fight demons. Which is exactly what you can do in Diablo 3, now that Blizzard has resurrected Diablo 2's Necromancer.

With the Rise of the Necromancer, DLC wants $15 for the new Necromancer class, plus a handful of other goodies. Unlike Diablo 3's last new character, the Crusader, the Necromancer doesn't coincide with a major new expansion, storyline, or "Acts." There is new gear, much of it specific to the Necromancer, but front-to-back this is a new avenue to play existing Diablo 3, rather than "more Diablo." You still click on things in dungeons until they die. They still drop multicolored loot. Deckard Cain still says "The Skeleton King!?" that way he does.

Additional value

After a more-than-rocky launch, the Diablo 3 team has pivoted its product into a largely successful and well-loved platform. Diablo 3 is the certain sort of game that a certain sort of player can play for an entire "season" or tinker with for just a few hours in the excellent Adventure Mode. An entirely new class adds a lot of value if you play Diablo 3 not just over its five-act campaign, but for the endlessly repeatable content Blizzard is continuously adding.

That ain't me. Before the Necromancer, I played Diablo 3's story twice: once on PS4, and most of the way on PC. I had my fill and I enjoyed my time. So $15 for a single character class is a slightly tougher sell to me. It doesn't help, of course, that Blizzard calls this DLC pack Rise of the Necromancer. Maybe it's just me, but the name alone implies a unique quest line or some other kind of story content to round out the mechanical additions.























You can probably guess the crux of the Necromancer's new mechanics on your own. The Necromancer summons up hordes of the undead and manipulates death to attack, defend, and debilitate. The notion of such a "pet class" (someone who summons up allies to do their dirty work, instead of fighting directly) has always been a tightrope walk in Diablo. They take gameplay that is fundamentally about clicking furiously and as much as possible and offload that "work" onto computer-controlled allies instead. If the Necromancer's zombies and skeletons are too strong, the character (and therefore the play) would feel sedentary. If they're too weak, then what's the point of the class at all?

Diablo 3's existing Witch Doctor sidestepped that balance with smart art design. Ostensibly a pet class, the Witch Doctor casts many spells that just looked like summoning. A Witch Doctor might throw a jar of spiders to nibble at nearby foes, but mathematically it's no different from any old skill that does damage over time.

Me, the boys, and a cold corpse

The Necromancer is more traditionally pet-focused. As such, a Necromancer drifts toward the sedentary side of things. One of their earliest spells, for instance, passively summons skeletons to your Necromancer's side. When one dies (re-dies?), another rises to take its place. Since your skeletons are tangible, targetable units, however, Diablo 3's signature swarms of enemies usually split off to fight them instead of going straight for the Necromancer.

Without needing to worry about dodging or taking damage, minion-centric builds of the class feel a bit like playing the last turret in a tower-defense game. Enemies almost literally let you shoot, stab, skewer, explode, or curse them without a fight.

That's not inherently bad, though. Diablo has never been an inherently hard series. Much of the fun is instead seeing how quickly and efficiently you can tear through whole menageries of monsters. The Necromancer, it turns out, is very good at tearing. Of course, if you want more of a challenge, Diablo 3 already has a rainbow of different difficulty levels to select from.

Even so, the Necromancer teeters just a bit too far into "overpowered" territory for me. Besides being able to mitigate the hordes, the class can also stun, slow, and drain life from their enemies, as well as summoning temporary ranged attackers that buff the Necromancer further. It's a lot.

And that's not even including the big, splashy attacks they can generate from corpses. That's a new resource specific to the Necromancer. When enemies (not to mention some allies) fall, they can leave lingering corpses on the battlefield. Corpses can be consumed for the Necromancer equivalent of mana, called Essence, which otherwise only regenerates when using certain skills.

You can also use those corpses offensively—by blowing them up, for example. I'd be lying if I said blowing up corpses (which kills enemies, generating even more corpses to kill more enemies) wasn't fun. But the old joke that Diablo is the "original clicker"—a predecessor to idle games like Cookie Clicker and Clicker Heroes—has never felt more on the nose than during these mindless chain reactions.

Miscellaneous mess

Of course, to get that rhythm going, you actually need to see the corpses. That's not always easy. Between scads of minions, enemies, and more directly damaging spells, the screen gets very busy when you play as the Necromancer.

Which brings us back to value. Rise of the Necromancer is padded out with additional extras. Some of these are mechanically useful: like extra character slots and "stash" space to hold items. Many of them are cosmetic: a pair of bony bat wings, a teensy little golem pet, etc. Ironically, though, the Necromancer is the class I'd least want to strap these baubles to. Gaudy, screen-blocking cosmetics are mostly a nuisance when there are minions to manage and corpses to detonate. So at least some of the $15 DLC's value-add comes with a caveat.

For those still ferociously chomping through Diablo 3's seasons, hunting down Legendary items, or seeking out randomized Rift zones, a new way to play is likely very welcome. Besides which, Blizzard's commitment to the game has brought a bevy of free updates in between the paid slices. While it's not technically part of Rise of the Necromancer, the DLC does coincide with patch 2.6.0. It's just the latest in a string of updates that brings a grip of new enemies and challenges to Adventure Mode—all for free. In that light, $15 is hardly the worst show of support in return.

For those that don't care to play Diablo 3 quite that obsessively... well, maybe you'd like a chance to chase nostalgia. I think we're well past complaining about Diablo 3's color palette in 2017, but a blast from the series' past might still be your thing.

The Good

A class that feels meaningfully different from the current Diablo 3 cast.

Strikes a good balance between Diablo 2 nostalgia and Diablo 3 pacing.

Exploding corpses is just fun.

The Bad

No new quest/story content to go with your new character.

The cosmetics packed in can be more annoying than attractive.

The Necromancer might be slightly too powerful to be fun for some players.

The Ugly

Necromancers just, like, carry around beating human hearts as an off-hand weapon. It's kinda gross... ?

Verdict: Rise of the Necromancer offers a new angle of attack on a great, well-supported game, but it's only worth the investment for dedicated players. Try it.