【Girls in the Night Traffic】

The Girls in the Night TrafficNecromancer player class is being resurrected in Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls, and after a hands-on at BlizzCon, it's one of the most enjoyable classes the game has to offer.

Mashablewas able to test the Necromancer at BlizzCon after sitting down to talk with Diablosenior game designer Wyatt Cheng and lead game producer Rob Foote, who were able to offer some insight into the revamped class last seen in Diablo 2.

Although we had a limited time to test the Necromancer, it was one of the most satisfying classes to play in Diablo 3, primarily due to its dark and unique abilities (some of which are making a return from Diablo 2).

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Not every ability was available to test during the demo, but here are the ghastly skills we were able to try:

• Siphon Blood-- This basic attack is a single-target channeled spell that steals enemies' blood to regenerate your life and Essence (which acts as a parallel to mana).

• Command Skeletons-- Necromancers have an band of 10 skeletons that attack nearby enemies. By using Command Skeletons, you can focus them onto a single target and give them a damage boost.

• Bone Spear-- Bone Spear sends a boney projectile through the air, damaging every enemy along the way.

• Corpse Explosion-- When Necromancers kill enemies, a corpse is left on the ground. Corpse Explosion turns up to 10 corpses into gory blood bombs that cause damage to nearby enemies, thereby creating more corpses and allowing for endless Corpse Explosions until a particular group of foes is dead. It's the most gory and satisfying attack in the game.

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• Decrepify-- Decrepify envelops a targeted area with a crowd-controlling curse that causes enemies to slow down and do less damage.

• Blood Rush-- Similar to the Wizard class's ability to teleport, the Necromancer can launch forward with Blood Rush.

• Army of the Dead-- A massive army of skeletons animate and attack a selected area with Army of the Dead, although with that much power there's a long cast time.

With a controllable skeleton brigade to contain waves of monsters, the Necromancer is able to sit back and use ranged abilities to take on anything thrown its way. And maybe it's just the death metal fan in me, but Corpse Explosion is a fantastically spammable move that seems to fit really with the theme of the Necromancer and Diabloas a whole -- plus it would make for a cool band name.

The Decrepify/Corpse Explosion combo works as a great one-two punch of crowd control and massive damage, and Decripfy is helpful for escaping when paired with Blood Rush. Throw a Bone Spear in the mix and you can rack up mass kills pretty quickly.

The only thing missing from the Necromancer (at least in the demo) was a good ability for taking on solo bosses. Command Skeletons is a good way to focus some damage on a single opponent but the best abilities the Necromancer had at its fingertips were all area-of-effect attacks, where the damage affected multiple enemies at once.

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For the majority of Diablo's hack-and-slash, dungeon-crawling action though, the abilities we had were effective and fun to use.

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Coming four years after Diablo 3's release, the Necromancer will be the seventh class in the game, but the class itself has existed since Diablo 2. Senior game designer Cheng told Mashablepeople have been asking for the Necromancer since D3first came out.

"The [design] teams have always had this groundswell of desire -- and the playerbase has always wanted to see the Necromnacer again, so I think the time is right," he said.

Although the people seem to have gotten what they've asked for, Cheng said people are worried about how the class will fit into D3. The team has received questions from players about how different the Necromancer will be from the existing Witch Doctor class, which from a distance look pretty similar. Cheng doesn't think this will be an issue for the Necromancer (which is still in development).

"If you've played the Witch Doctor before, the Necromancer's going to feel really different."

"I don't think that's going to be a problem at all -- I think there's a lot of design space to make them really different," Cheng said. "If you've played the Witch Doctor before, the Necromancer's going to feel really different. Even thematically it's not the same"

The Witch Doctor relies on the critters and animals it can summon paired with poison and fire abilities that deal damage over time, whereas the Necromancer uses bone and blood skills with much more control over its minions. Lead game producer Rob Foote played a hardcore Witch Doctor in the previous season and said that control is a huge factor in how the Necromancer plays.

"Being that field commander is really important," Foote said. "With the Necromancer, you have all these skeletal minions that are fighting alongside you, but you have the ability -- say if a Rift Guardian spawns or an elite spawns -- you can press a button and direct your minions to attack that single target."

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As someone who has played a lot of Witch Doctor, this definitely held true during the demo. Not just controlling minions, but controlling the battlefield with Decrepify and being able to kite enemies through corpse-laden areas to take advantage of Corpse Explosion really makes the Necromancer feel unique in Diablo.

The Necromancer will be available to purchase in the "Rise of Necromancer" pack coming in 2017, which does not yet have a release date or price. To use the upcoming pack, Diablo 3players need a copy of the Reaper of Soulsexpansion (PC) or the Ultimate Evil Edition(PS4 and Xbox One).

Topics Gaming