Want to know about the Diablo 4 classes? Ever since the game was revealed back in late 2019, fans have been speculating what each of the five classes will bring to the game. Currently, all five classes have been revealed: Necromancer, Rogue, Sorceress, Barbarian, and Druid.
Every Diablo 4 class has its own unique skill tree, allowing players to pick which abilities they want to use. Unlike Diablo 3 which featured set character designs, the appearance of each class in Diablo 4 can be customised, even down to the skin colour of each character. Diablo 4’s release date may still be a few months away, but with the Diablo 4 beta going live this weekend, there’s still plenty to be excited about. Here’s everything you need to know about the Diablo 4 classes.
Diablo 4 Necromancer
The final Diablo 4 class has been revealed at the Xbox and Bethesda Showcase 2022: the Necromancer. In previous Diablo games, if you want to sit back and watch your companions do all the hard work for you, the Necromancer is your best option. Fortunately, there’s much more depth to the undead summoner this time around as the class has two types of resources to think about.
The Necromancer’s primary resource is Essence, a regenerative resource that used to cast a variety of powerful spells. In addition to simply waiting, you can also build Essence by using basic skills. Corpses are the Necromancer’s secondary resource, allowing the class to use the remains of nearby fallen enemies. These corpses can serve multiple purposes, from summoning skeleton minions, to creating traps for incoming enemies using skills like Corpse Explosion. As the master of the undead, the Necromancer can use a variety of weapons, including swords, daggers, wands, and they’re the only class that can wield scythes.
Our best Diablo 4 Necromancer build focuses on raising an undead Shadow Army to do your bidding for you. This build uses a number of classic Necromancer spells from Diablo 2 like Corpse Explosion to create giant AoE clouds of damage, destroying waves of enemies in an instant. Watch as your army consisting of skeletal warriors, mages, and huge golems wreaks havoc on everything and everyone in sight.
Here are the Necromancer’s playstyles in Diablo 4:
- Blood
- Bone
- Darkness
- The Army
Blood
Utilise the power of Blood magic to drain the life from your foes while empowering yourself and your party. These abilities tend to restore health, so you primarily want to use them when you find yourself in a dangerous situation with very few offensive options at your disposal. For example, Blood Mist allows you to become invincible for a short period of time as you transform into a bloody mist. This skill also drains the life of any nearby enemies, keeping you safe and protected once the ability ends.
Bone
The majority of the Bone abilities use large amounts of Essence as they rip their way through enemy minions. Bone Spirit, a returning Necromancer spell from the Diablo series, is the perfect example of this. Using this spell, players can summon the spirit of a skeletal spectre to track down a target and rip part of their soul away. Bone Spirit causes an AoE blast once it targets an enemy, dealing massive amounts of damage to any minions in the area. The other Bone spell we had a chance to see is Bone Prison, an AoE attack that traps enemies inside a circular wall of bone. Once you have caught a group of minions, you can wipe them all out with Bone Spirit.
Darkness
Embrace the Darkness by using powerful damage over time spells to slowly drain multiple enemies of their life. These Shadow spells typically harm enemies with debuffs, making it easy to subdue your foes as they struggle to land attacks on you. An example of this is the Darkness spell, Blight. Blight summons a ball that explodes on contact with an enemy, transforming into a pool of poison which damages anyone standing in its area. Darkness spells can be combined with Bone abilities to trap enemies in place, forcing them to succumb to poisonous effects while trapped within a prison made from bone.
The Army
Summon a horde of skeleton soldiers to fight alongside you using the skills featured in The Army. While players are able to strike the perfect balance between all four playstyles if they wish, Diablo 4 lets you create completely unbalanced builds. If you decide to invest your skill points into raising skeletons and golems, you can do exactly that. The Diablo 4 quarterly update blog goes into detail about how players can create this exact build: “If a player wants to have the maximum number of summoned units possible then they will only have to dedicate two buttons to their skill bar: one to raising Skeletons and the other for their Golem.”
Diablo 4 Rogue
Like in the first game of the series, Diablo 4’s Rogue is a hybrid class. They can use both ranged and melee combat, and has appropriate skills that you can spec into. If you choose to focus on melee combat, the Rogue can use swords and daggers, while players that decide to go with a ranged combat strategy can use bows and crossbows to fire arrows and bolts at foes. The Rogue also has class-specific quests that no other class can do, which can be found in the sanctuary.
What makes the Rogue stand out thus far from the rest are the three class specialisations: Combo Points, Shadow Realm, and Exploit Weakness. The Shadow Realm allows a melee focused Rogue to lure their target into a dark void, but it also has the rather cool side effect of briefly making foes outside of the void disappear, so the Rogue can safely take out the enemies in the void first. The Exploit Weakness specialisation shows icons that indicate a foe’s weakness, giving you information to kill them quickly, while the Combo Points specialisation allows the Rogue to build up points to spend on using skills.
The Rogue also has access to imbue effects, similar to those that the rogue mercenary in Diablo 2 was able to use. The three imbue effects can be combined with any attack or skill to add those effects, so a ranged Rogue can use Rain of Arrows combined with the Frost Imbue effect to freeze the battlefield.
If you’re looking for a class that can truly do it all, the best Diablo 4 Rogue build specialises in both close quarters and ranged combat to become a jack of all trades. Our Cold Rogue build focuses on the Cold Imbuement skill, allowing you to freeze targets where they stand as you slash them with your blades. Cold Imbuement also applies to the Rogue’s Rain of Arrows and Methodical Caltrops abilities to give your ranged attacks the ability to freeze foes from a distance.
Here are the Rogue’s class specialisation skills in Diablo 4:
- Shadow Realm – Become immune for one second, and pull target enemies into the Shadow Realm with you for five seconds. In Shadow Realm, you become stealthed, unstoppable, and deal 50% more damage to the afflicted enemies (Also makes foes outside the Shadow Realm briefly disappear).
- Cooldown: 10 seconds
- Deals physical damage
- Exploit Weakness – You can exploit the weakness in certain enemy attacks. All hits against these enemies become critical strikes and deal 60% increased damage.
- Combo Points – Your basic attacks now add combo points. Certain skills consume combo points for additional effects.
Here are the Rogue’s imbue skills in Diablo 4:
- Frost Imbue – Imbues the Rogue’s attacks and skills with the chill effect.
- Acid Imbue – Imbues the Rogue’s attacks and skills with the poison effect.
- Shadow Imbue – Imbues the Rogue’s attacks and skills with the shadow effect.
Here are the Rogue’s melee skills in Diablo 4:
- Shadow Step – Teleports the Rogue to behind a target
- Dash – Dashes quickly in the direction the Rogue is facing
- Caltrops – Deploys caltrops behind the Rogue as they dash backwards
Here are the Rogue’s ranged skills in Diablo 4:
- Arrow Barrage – Fires a volley of arrows at foes
- Requires Combo Points to use
- Rain of Arrows – The Rogue leaps into the air and fires many arrows at the ground, repeatedly hitting any enemies in range.
Diablo 4 Sorceress
The Sorceress is the go-to class for crowd control and raw elemental damage. Wielding the power of lightning, fire, and frost, the Sorceress will be an important addition to any party looking to take down Diablo 4’s biggest threats. Although the ability to decimate waves of enemies does come at a cost – the Sorceress has the lowest amount of health out of the three classes.
Unlike the Barbarian and the Druid, the Sorceress passively regenerates mana. As a result, only one of her Minor Destruction skills generate mana. When the Sorceress is fully levelled up, she can deal game-changing amounts of damage with her ultimate skills. You may struggle to play the Sorceress as a solo player due to her glass-cannon build, but there’s no doubt she will be devastating in a party.
Keep your distance from Hell’s minions with our best Diablo 4 Sorcerer build by utilising the classes’ lightning spells to rip through enemies. The beauty of the Lightning Sorcerer is that you’re able to fight against numerous enemies without ever getting near them. You will eventually run into enemies that are resistant to lightning magic, but our build features the Hydra and Fireball spells to counter any tricky foes.
Here are the Sorceress’ Minor Destruction skills in Diablo 4:
- Lightning – Launch a bolt of lightning that deals X damage and bounces to nearby enemies, dealing 30% less to each enemy hit
- Fire Bolt – Hurl a flaming bolt, dealing X and burning nearby enemies for X bleeding over eight seconds
- Frost Bolt – Throw a bolt of frost at an enemy, dealing X and chilling them
- Arc Lash – Unleash arcing lightning that shocks enemies in front of you for X and then returns to you, restoring X Mana
Here are the Sorceress’ Major Destruction skills in Diablo 4:
- Charged Bolts – Release six bolts of lightning that course along the ground in an erratic pattern, dealing X damage each
- Fireball – Hurl a ball of fire that explodes on contact, dealing X damage to nearby enemies
- Ice Shards – Launch five shards that deal X damage each. Deals X% to frozen enemies
- Incinerate – Channel a beam of fire, burning enemies for X damage. Damage increases by X per second, up to X
- Chain Lightning – Unleash a bolt of lightning dealing X damage and jumping to X nearby targets
- Frozen Orb – Unleash an orb that chills and expels piercing shards for a total of X damage, and then explodes into Frost Bolts
Diablo 4 Barbarian
When it comes to tanking large amounts of damage, no class in the Diablo series does it better than the Barbarian. This class is known for having the highest amount of health and strength in the game, and this doesn’t look like it’ll be change in Diablo 4. Similarly to the previous games, Barbarians build Fury with each attack, giving them the ability to unleash a powerful Fury skill during combat.
The Barbarian in Diablo 4 has been given a brand new mechanic: the Arsenal System. This gives the Barbarian four weapon slots, allowing players to equip both one-handed and two-handed weapons in the same build. For the first time in a Diablo game, the Barbarian will be able to equip four legendary weapons at the same time. Wielding numerous weapons at once sounds like it could become overwhelming, but each Fury skill automatically uses the required weapon to make combat seamless.
What makes our best Diablo 4 Barbarian build stand out is its ability to rip and tear through enemies by utilising a number of bleed effects. Rend inflicts bleed damage to nearby enemies, and you can take this to a completely different level using Flay to boost your damage over time. You also have access to Rupture as a mastery skill to apply to your two-handed weapons, making it dead simple to apply bleed effects to numerous enemies at once.
Here are the Barbarian’s basic skills in Diablo 4:
- Bash – Bash the enemy with your weapon, dealing X damage. This skill has a 20% chance to stun enemies for 0.5 seconds
- Requires bludgeoning weapon. Generates nine Fury
- Flay – Flay the enemy, dealing X damage and inflicting Y bleeding over six seconds
- Requires a slashing weapon. Generates nine Fury
- Frenzy – Unleash a rapid flurry of blows, dealing X damage with each pair of hits. Your attack speed is increased by 20% for three seconds, up to 60%
- Requires dual wielding weapons. Generates five Fury
- Lunging Strike – Lunge forward and strike an enemy for X damage
Here are the Barbarian’s Fury skills in Diablo 4:
- Rend – Cleave enemies in front of you, dealing X damage and inflicting Y bleeding over five seconds
- Requires a slashing weapon. Costs 25 Fury
- Hammer of The Ancients – Slam your hammer down with the fury of the ancients, dealing X damage to a concentrated area
- Requires a two-handed bludgeoning weapon. Costs 20 Fury
- Double Swing – Sweep your weapons from opposite directions, dealing X damage with each weapon. Enemies caught in the center are hit by both
- Requires dual wielded weapons. Costs 25 Fury
- Upheaval – Tear into the ground with your weapon and fling debris forward, dealing X damage
- Requires a two-handed weapon. Costs 30 Fury
- Whirlwind – Rapidly attack enemies nearby for X damage
Diablo 4 Druid
As the only shapeshifting class in the game, the Druid is able to turn into a ferocious werebear or a terrifying werewolf during a single attack. No matter what form the Druid is in, they will always have two wolf companions at their side at all times. In addition to this, the Druid is also a master of elements, allowing them to call upon the elements when in human form. Each Druid’s basic skill generates Spirit, a resource that can be used to unleash powerful Spirit skills.
Depending on how you build your Druid using the Diablo 4 skill tree, you can choose to focus entirely on the shapeshifting mechanic, become an elemental master, or create a hybrid of both. More so than the Barbarian and the Sorceress, the Druid is better suited to dealing with powerful single targets and multiple enemies due to the range of their skills. Summon a barrage of storms to deal consistent damage to everything on the screen, or switch to the werebear form to attack with one big, concentrated blow.
As a master of shapeshifting, our best Diablo 4 Druid build has been designed to focus on the Earth Bear skills to tank heavy amounts of damage while crushing minions in your path. Not only are you able to attack multiple enemies at once using Enhanced Pulverize, you also have a trusty wolf companion alongside you to rip through smaller minions. The Earth Bear Druid is especially helpful in parties where your team needs a strong tank to absorb aggro from bosses.
Here are the Druid’s basic skills in Diablo 4:
- Earthspike – Sunder the earth, impaling the first enemy hit for X damage. Each time you hit an enemy with Earthspike, your chance to deal Crushing Blow to that target is increased by 10%
- Shred – Shapeshift into a werewolf and shred an enemy, dealing X damage. This attack has a 30% chance to strike twice
- Storm Strike – Electricity gathers around your weapon, dealing X damage split between your target and up to three nearby enemies
- Maul – Shapeshift into a werebear and maul an enemy, dealing X damage and Fortifying yourself for Y
- Wind Shear – Conjure a piercing blade of wind, dealing X damage and increasing your movement speed by 5% for three seconds, up to 30%
Here are the Druid’s Spirit Skills in Diablo 4:
- Pulverize – Shapeshift into a werebear and slam the ground, dealing X damage to nearby enemies
- Landslide – Crush enemies between three pillars of earth, dealing up to X damage. This attack has an additional 10% chance to deal a Crushing Blow
- Tornado – Conjure a vortex that moves outwards and curves in a random direction, dealing X damage every second
And that’s all there is to know about the classes in Diablo 4. If you need some help playing the game after all this time, our Diablo 4 tips guide should have everything you need to bring you up to speed. Don’t forget to check out the Diablo 4 world boss if you’re making time to play the Diablo 4 beta this weekend.
