Image: Blizzard Entertainment
Diablo Immortal’s upcoming character class is a powerful half-vampire, arriving next week on July 13.
Blizzard Entertainment is finally giving the Diablo franchise its first new class in nine long years: the Blood Knight. The new class will be Diablo Immortal’s seventh playable character class alongside the Crusader, Barbarian, Demon Hunter, Monk, Necromancer and Wizard, when a new update launches on July 13 next week.
Here’s a cinematic reveal trailer for the Blood Knight:
The Blood Knight dives into Diablo’s version of vampires, a type of demon that possesses immortality at the cost of eventually being transformed into a feral, mindless thrall. According to Blizzard, the very first Blood Knight was created after a knight was infected by a rogue vampire, and had a ritual performed on himself to stop the vampiric disease from transforming him into a thrall. The ritual worked but with some unintentional side effects - the knight was given some of the vampire’s power but remained a human.
Blood Knights are constantly on the edge of transforming into a vampiric thrall indefinitely, and thus fight against their darker selves while drawing upon their power in battle. All Blood Knights were descended from this first knight, who passed on the knowledge of his ritual and combat techniques using the polearm, for whatever reason. In the present day, Blood Knights use their abilities to find bite victims and perform the curse-suspending ritual on them, and grow their ranks. They also really like polearms.
From a lore standpoint, the Blood Knights are unaffiliated with Sanctuary’s bigger factions - heaven and hell - but choose to fight for their home anyway. This is the first new class Blizzard has released for Diablo since the Crusader in 2014’s Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls expansion, and it’s certainly an unconventional one. The class will come with its own customisation options and fully-voiced campaign dialogue.
Gameplay-wise, the Blood Knight is a mid-range class who can take on foes with melee or ranged abilities. They use a polearm to keep enemies at a distance and vampiric abilities to feed on them, or trap them in shadows. They can also temporarily succumb to their vampiric disease and transform into a hulking thrall, giving them a lot more strength to toss demons around in hand-to-hand combat.
The Blood Knight will drop in Diablo Immortal on July 13 next week, as part of a new update the developer plans to talk about closer to release day. Diablo 4 also has its first season of content launching the following week on July 20, adding a whole bunch of content to the action-RPG.
