I hope you like warlocks. Well, if you're someone who regularly delves into Diablo, I hope you at the very least don't detest warlocks with all of your hellish heart. Because yesterday evening's Diablo 30th anniversary shindig was rather heavy on warlocks, with the class coming to not just Diablo 4's next expansion, but also Diablo 2 and Diablo Immortal. Meanwhile, Diablo 2: Resurrected has moseyed on over to Steam.
You would think that adding an all-new class to an old game like Diablo II: Resurrected would be a happy event, but then you also likely have never experienced ARPG players in public forums and subreddits, who primarily appear to be the angriest of human calculators. That appears to be the case among players of the game, […]
After 25 years, Diablo 2 finally has a new playable class. The Reign of the Warlock expansion dropped today, and it’s easily the most substantial update Diablo II: Resurrected has ever received. We’re talking about a complete game-changer here – not just some minor tweaks or balance patches.
This isn’t your typical DLC either. Blizzard packed in a brand-new class, revamped endgame content, and quality-of-life improvements that players have been begging for since the game’s original release. Whether you’re a returning veteran or someone who’s been grinding Terror Zones for months, this update fundamentally changes how you’ll experience Sanctuary.
The Warlock: Master of Forbidden Arts
The star of the show is obviously the Warlock. This mysterious scholar spent years lurking in shadows, studying demonic magic that most sane people would avoid. Now they’re ready to unleash that forbidden knowledge on the demon hordes.
What makes the Warlock unique? For starters, they can levitate their weapon. Yeah, you read that right. This passive ability lets you equip a two-handed weapon in one hand while wielding an off-hand item simultaneously. No other class in Diablo 2 can pull that off, which opens up some seriously creative build possibilities.
The class revolves around three distinct skill trees, each offering a completely different playstyle:
Demon Binding – Your Personal Army
Think of this as the summoner’s dream tree. You’re not just raising skeletons here – you’re enslaving actual demons to fight alongside you. The Warlock can summon three types of demons: Goatmen for melee combat, Tainted for ranged attacks, and Defilers for binding enemy souls together.
But here’s where it gets interesting. You can only bind one demon at a time, and binding strengthens both you and your demonic servant. Each demon grants unique abilities and auras that complement your build. Don’t like your current demon? Consume it. Seriously – you can drain its life force to gain temporary buffs like increased movement speed, bonus to all skills, or even powerful auras.
The consumption mechanic varies based on which demon you devour, creating a dynamic risk-reward system. Do you keep your Goatman for sustained damage, or consume it mid-battle for a crucial buff when things get dicey?
Eldritch Weapons – Mind Over Matter
This tree is all about weapon manipulation and hexes. Forget traditional melee combat – Eldritch-focused Warlocks use telekinesis to control their armaments. You can imbue weapons with powerful curses that cripple enemies, drain their life, or make them explode in spectacular bursts of gore.
The tree also lets you create ethereal duplicates of your weapons or throw them with deadly precision. Combined with the Warlock’s ability to dual-wield two-handed weapons, you can build some absolutely devastating combinations. A two-handed axe in one hand, a Grimoire in the other, and astral projections flying everywhere? That’s peak Warlock energy.
Arts of Chaos – Pure Destruction
For players who prefer keeping their distance while raining hellfire on enemies, the Chaos tree delivers. This is your caster archetype, focused on destructive magic damage through fire and void elements.
Warlocks conjure Miasma – deadly projectiles formed from pure entropy. Master this tree, and you can unleash Apocalypse to incinerate entire screens of enemies. Or go even more extreme and tear open the Abyss itself, creating a vortex that draws in and annihilates everything nearby.
The visual effects alone make this tree worth trying. There’s something deeply satisfying about watching demons get sucked into a void of your own creation.
Terror Zones Get a Major Overhaul
Terror Zones aren’t new to Diablo II: Resurrected, but Reign of the Warlock completely reimagines how they work. The rotation cycle now changes every 30 minutes instead of every hour, keeping the action fresh and preventing players from falling into repetitive farming patterns.
More importantly, you now earn consumables that let you choose which Act becomes terrorized. When an entire Act terrorizes, every zone within it gets significantly enhanced. We’re talking much tougher enemies and substantially better rewards. This gives you more control over your endgame grinding routes and lets you optimize for specific loot.
Hell difficulty introduces Heralds of Terror – deadly hunters that stalk you like prey. Each subsequent Herald that tracks you down becomes exponentially more dangerous. It’s a brutal mechanic that keeps you on your toes even when you think you’ve got your farming route locked down.
Defeating terrorized Act bosses now has a chance to drop special statues. Collect all five and combine them in the Horadric Cube to unlock access to the expansion’s ultimate challenge.
Colossal Ancients: The New Pinnacle Boss Fight
Speaking of ultimate challenges – the Colossal Ancients represent Diablo 2’s first true pinnacle boss encounter. This brutal gauntlet demands flawless execution and total mastery of your build.
The fight works like an escalating nightmare. Strike down one Ancient, and the remaining foes grow stronger and unlock new abilities. It’s a brutal test that separates casual players from the truly dedicated.
Successfully defeating these gargantuan threats rewards you with unique jewels that require level 75 to use. Each Ancient drops one of two possible jewels:
Talic drops Defender’s Fire or Defender’s Bile
Korlic drops Protector’s Frost or Protector’s Stone
Madawc drops Guardian’s Thunder or Guardian’s Light
These jewels function similarly to Gheed’s Fortune – you can only have one equipped across all your items at once, though you can hold multiple in your inventory. This limitation makes choosing the right jewel for your build crucial.
More Than 30 New Items to Hunt
Reign of the Warlock introduces over 30 new items including Sets, Uniques, Runewords, and an entirely new item type called Grimoires (or Books). These powerful tomes serve as the Warlock’s off-hand equipment and can roll Warlock staff mods plus inherent elemental weapon damage.
Daggers received a significant upgrade too. White daggers can now roll up to three points in random Warlock skills, making them excellent Runeword bases. To support this change, Blizzard moved daggers to vendors like Akara, Drognan, and Malah while removing them from gambling.
Notable new items include:
Hellwarden’s Will – A unique Death Mask offering both Faster Cast Rate and Attack Speed, letting multiple classes hit important breakpoints with a single item slot.
Sling Ring – Features the rare stat of negative enemy Magic Resistance, making it invaluable for magic-damage builds.
Opalvein – A unique ring with random elemental damage percentages. Finding the right element for your build might take some farming, but it’s worth the effort.
The expansion also adds five new Runewords: Authority, Coven, Void, Vigilance, and Ritual. Each targets different build archetypes and equipment slots.
Sunder Charms Get Reworked
Sunder Charms underwent a complete overhaul. The old versions still exist, but Reign of the Warlock introduces Latent Sunder Charms that only drop from Heralds in Terror Zones. These are significantly rarer than before.
The tradeoff? You can craft Latent Sunder Charms into Renewed Sunder Charms with additional powerful stats like Faster Run Walk, Faster Hit Recovery, or bonuses to All Attributes. This change makes Sunder Charms rarer but way more customizable and build-defining.
Quality of Life Improvements Players Actually Wanted
Beyond the new content, Reign of the Warlock delivers on quality-of-life features the community has requested for literal years.
Stackable Stash Tabs
Gone are the days of maintaining dedicated gem mules or scrolling through pages of Perfect Skulls. The expansion adds three new specialized stash tabs for Gems, Materials, and Runes. Items stack up to 99 and automatically sort into their proper categories.
The Horadric Cube can now move between tabs too, making crafting sessions way less tedious. Plus, purchasing the expansion grants two additional general stash tabs and two extra character slots.
Fully Customizable Loot Filters
Loot Filters are finally built directly into the game. You get complete control over which items display when you press the Alt key. This helps you focus on the drops you actually care about instead of wading through endless piles of junk.
The system supports custom filters that you can create yourself, share with friends, or download from the community. PC players can easily link and share their filter configurations, creating a ecosystem of optimized loot settings for different builds and farming strategies.
The Chronicle System
For Holy Grail hunters, the Chronicle is a dream come true. This new in-game tracking system records every unique, set piece, and runeword you’ve collected. It even tells you exactly when and where you found each item.
Completing sections of the Chronicle unlocks rewards you can use to show off your collection prowess. It’s essentially Blizzard’s official stamp of approval on one of the community’s most popular self-imposed challenges.
Cross-Era Character Transfer
Reign of the Warlock introduces an interesting era system that segments the game into three distinct versions: Diablo II Classic, Diablo II: Resurrected, and Diablo II: Reign of the Warlock.
Your characters exist separately on each era, meaning you can have the same character in multiple versions without them affecting each other. This preserves the integrity of each era’s meta while giving players choice in how they want to experience the game.
You can transfer characters forward from Classic to Resurrected, and from Resurrected to Reign of the Warlock. However, transfers only work in one direction – you can’t move characters backwards. This prevents people from farming new content and then bringing overpowered gear back to older eras.
Platform Availability and Pricing
Reign of the Warlock launches today across Battle.net, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch. For the first time, Diablo II: Resurrected is also hitting Steam and Xbox Game Pass.
Existing Diablo II: Resurrected owners can purchase the Reign of the Warlock DLC for $25. This unlocks the Warlock class, two stash tabs, two character slots, plus bonus cosmetics for Diablo IV and World of Warcraft.
New players can grab the Infernal Edition, which includes the base game and all expansion content in one package. Xbox Game Pass subscribers get access to the base game, but the Warlock expansion requires a separate purchase.
The pricing has generated some discussion in the community – $25 for a single class and endgame content strikes some as steep. However, considering Blizzard is delivering long-requested features alongside the new class, most players seem willing to pay up.
The Warlock Across Diablo Games
Interestingly, the Warlock isn’t exclusive to Diablo II: Resurrected. Blizzard announced that the class will appear in Diablo IV’s Lord of Hatred update launching April 28th, and in Diablo Immortal’s Andariel Rises update dropping this summer.
Actor Rahul Kohli (known for The Haunting of Bly Manor and Midnight Mass) voices the Warlock across all three games. This unified approach marks a significant moment in Diablo’s history – it’s rare for a new class to launch simultaneously across multiple titles in the franchise.
The cross-game release suggests Blizzard views the Warlock as a major addition to Diablo’s class roster, not just a one-off experiment for a legacy title.
Is Reign of the Warlock Worth It?
For dedicated Diablo 2 players, this is pretty much a no-brainer. The Warlock alone provides dozens of hours of fresh content as you experiment with different build combinations. The endgame additions like Colossal Ancients and revamped Terror Zones extend replay value considerably.
The quality-of-life improvements represent years of community feedback finally being implemented. Stackable stash tabs, loot filters, and the Chronicle system modernize Diablo 2 without compromising what made the original great.
If you’re on the fence, consider what you want from the game. Pure nostalgia seekers might be satisfied with the base Resurrected experience. But for players seeking fresh challenges and modern conveniences, Reign of the Warlock delivers.
The expansion shows Blizzard is committed to supporting Diablo II: Resurrected long-term. After 25 years, getting substantial new content for a game this old is remarkable. Whether this represents a new era for the franchise or a swan song remains to be seen, but for now, the age of the Warlock has definitely begun.
Ready to bind some demons and unleash chaos on Sanctuary? The Reign of the Warlock is available now across all platforms. Just remember – once you transfer your character to the new era, there’s no going back. Choose wisely.
At this point, Project Diablo 2 has easily become my preferred way to play Blizzard's classic. While D2 remains one of the best RPGs of all time, and Diablo 2 Resurrected gives it a fresh coat of paint, the community team behind PD2 has been delivering on its promise of updating and improving it "as if development never ceased." The comprehensive mod is a mammoth undertaking that adds all manner of features, from new items, skills, and enemies to quality-of-life upgrades, and even a full endgame mapping system and uber bosses in the style of Path of Exile.
