Heroes of the Storm Reveals Necromancer and Wizard From Diablo Universe

Blizzard has announced two new playable characters for its free to play MOBA Heroes of the Storm. Both Xul the Necromancer and Li-Ming the Wizard are from the Diablo universe. Blizzard veterans will finally have a chance to raise a skeleton army again as a Necro, an inch not last scratched since the glory days of Diablo 2.

HotS director Dustin Browder claims the announcement of two Diablo characters coinciding with the start of the new Diablo 3 season are not related. Either way, its a happy coincidence for fans of the long running action RPG series.

The two new characters play very differently with the Necromancer taking on the role of either an assassin or split pusher depending on ability builds while the Wizard is solely a very high skill cap assassin. In a long interview with Gamespot, Blizzard revealed their intention to raise the general skill level of players in Heroes of the Storm. This bodes well for the competitive scene and for attracting players from more 'hardcore' MOBAs like League of Legends and Dota 2 where individual performance is more highly rewarded.

With the addition of a hero like Li-Ming, is it part of Blizzard's intention to push the skill level of players up higher?

The short answer is yes. The longer answer is that we're always making different heroes of different skill requirements. We've got Raynor, we've got Li Li, we've got a bunch of characters that are very easy to get into the game with. We'll probably add more of these down the road as well. Right now we're getting a fair amount of feedback from our players that they want to be challenged a little bit more. I want those opportunities as a player as well. I think you can see us look to put in some more challenging characters for a little bit. We may sometimes revert, and go back to some character that feels like hey, the mechanics for this character would really feel nice if it was easy to play, and we'll do that. But I think if you're asking is there a general trend in the coming months to make the characters more challenging to play, absolutely.

[Director Bustin Browder speaking to Gamespot's Zorine Te on January 21, 2016 Source]

My takeaway from the interview is that I finally have proof that dirty Raynor pickers really are low skilled scrubs. Its also exciting to see Blizzard delve deeper into their history for character ideas. Heroes of the Storm already included novel characters like The Lost Vikings, who knows what other classic heroes and villains will make an appearance later this year?