D4 New Class Ideas

General Discussion
1

Not a serious post just thought it would be nice to have a fun post about D4.

I would love to see some brand new classes in D4 not just old classes brought back to life, as the theme is so cool in D4 I think any new class developed in this world could be amazing.

I really like the idea of a Knight class that could take the place of both the Paladin and Death Knight (holy and unholy knight) classes. But also be a hybrid of both. Or a purist Knight class that doesn’t use magic.

They could have a special quest line where they are torn between heaven and hell and must choose whether to be all good, all bad, a mixture of both, or to turn away from both heaven and hell and hone their physical abilities instead.

Holy knight

  • paladin style abilities
  • lots of glowy (not too glowy! :slight_smile:) gold spell animations
  • book as off hand weapon
  • big glowy angel wing ultimate where you fly up then smash down into the ground. Would also work well as a dismount
  • healing abilities
  • tanky abilities

Dark Knight

  • inspired by Dark Souls style knights and Death Knights
  • black and red spell animations
  • grabbing abilities
  • draining abilities
  • life leech
  • rage mode ultimate
  • summon huge demon ultimate (like Final Fantasy VII Ifrit or something)

Hybrid Holy and Dark

  • mixture of both spell sets but having to sacrifice some too
  • hybrid spells that use both damage and animation types
  • torn between light and darkness theme
  • special hybrid ultimates
  • would be nice to see something more unique like this as we’ve seen the same classes so many times (druid and necromancer is a direction I’m glad D4 has gone in)

Standard Knight

  • no magic spell effects
  • all physical melee abilities
  • the ultimate purist Dark Souls style Knight
  • 2 handed weapons master
  • able to 2 hand 1 handed weapons
  • sword and board master
  • shield attacks that look and hit like a dmg attack not just shield bash
  • realistic heavy attacks instead of ninja anime acrobatics on a plate armour wearer

All would wear Plate armour ofc but would be affected by their magic type and have something showing their allegiance like glowy wings or something on the holy Knight.

Feel free to add any class ideas you have and maybe the devs will get some inspiration from them.

3 Likes
2

Once you play Lost Ark you’ll see how weak Diablo class design is.

3

You should probably not play or post on the forums anymore then because D4 class design is awesome so far and if you can’t see that you can always go play my little pony or something.

4

D4 class design is okayish, better than previous Diablos, but could get way better with some core game changes to further strengthen the class identity.

5

Honestly don’t care about new classes, what I care about more is making itemization work, both be impactful but not character-defining material

Would also like to see an emphasis of different playstyles, i.e. things like

DirectDamage vs AoE vs DoT, or things like

Close-combat damage vs Long-range overwhelm vs target-sniping

And a really well defined hit-effects that have different impact for each style

For example:

Melee: Crushing blow, Knockback, Armor penetration, Bleed, Stun, Backstab, Knockdown, Airbourne, Combo-hit

Ranged: Critical hit, Pierce, Shackle, Root, Curse, Ignore defences, Execute, Double-stack (DoTs and Debuffs)

AoE: Focused hit (targets in middle take more), Overcharge (targets take extra based on targets hit), Curse, Blind, Knockdown, Spectral-hit, Airbourne

Things like that…

Long-story-short, think we need to have a distinguished experience per type of attack so we can feel the difference in playstyle better (ofcourse this should at least somewhat apply to mobs as well), and based upon weapon-type used to have QUITE THE DIFFERENCE between using one skill or another (at least those that are used in semi-direct manner)

Here are some examples:

Sword:

ATK : 1500
Minimal damage: 10 (guaranteed per hit, no matter what)
Attack-speed: 1.35
Hit-Effect: Bleed (18%) **
Melee-effect-damage-multiplier: 80% **

Axe (throwable):

ATK: 1500
Minimal-Damage: 25 (guaranteed) **
Attack-speed: 1.1
Hit-Effect: Armor-pierce (5%)
Bonus-damage on thrown attack: 85% **
Backstab bonus: 50% **
Melee-hit-effect-multiplier: 15%

Wand:
ATK: 1500
Minimal-damage: 5 (guaranteed)
Attack-speed: 1.7 **
Hit-effect: Chill (15%) (chill = damage suffered from all hit-effects increased by 50%)
+55% Fire damage from all sources **

e.t.c.,

I deliberately made the numbers be distinguished and different (night and day, as they should) for each weapon, the Sword has a high inflict-bleed chance and a 80% bleed damage multiplier (both marked by **), the axe has a high minimal/guaranteed damage, high bonus damage for throw attacks, and a nice backstab damage bonus multiplier for those that want to play riskier, the Wand has a significantly faster attack speed than both (especially compared to the Axe) and has a really high (55%) bonus multiplier for all damage sources that are of type fire

That’s how it should feel (most of the time), items must feel like a day and night thing to emphasize one thing and neglect another, here’s another one for example

Axe (Two-hand)
ATK: 2400
Minimal-damage: 100 (+75 additionally from behind)
Attack-speed: 0.75
Armor-pierce: 25% (hit-effect) **
22% chance to reduce target’s attack damage by 50% (debuff) **

Maul (Two-hand)
ATK: 2400
Minimal-damage: 50 (+200 ** additional damage if target is dazed - bashed or stunned))
Attack-speed: 0.88
Bash: 15% (hit-effect)
Stun: 25% (secondary hit-effect, can happen only under effect of Bash or debuffs)
15% bonus damage in close range from all sources **

Staff (Two-hand)
ATK: 2400
Minimal-damage: 22 (+50 ** additional damage if is debuffed)
Attack-speed: 0.88
Root: 15% (hit-effect, debuff)
Shackle: 25% (secondary hit-effect, can happen only to targets near a rooted one, debuff)
75% increased overtime damage to targets affected by debuffs **
25% increased debuff or curse duration

Even though both are 2-hand, the Axe is obviously intended to shred armor and backstab (even reduce the risk for such thing cause there’s chance to reduce target’s damage as well) and the Maul is used for general close combat (any close-range attack, even elemental damage is increased) with high CC potential for direct fight…, and the staff is used for - obviously damage over time (77 per tick guaranteed for all overtime attacks, against debuffed)

And go with the differences even further, say if having a Dagger equipped want to have things like:

Dagger:
ATK: 1200
Minimal-damage: 6, stacks up to 5 times (when target repeatedly attacked)
Backstab-bonus: 150%
Bleed: 15% (hit-effect)
5% damage returned as life vs bleeding targets

See the difference of the Dagger compared to say a Sword (or even the Axe) now ?

Regardless, you get the idea, the important part is to have SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE in both feel (and outcome) of wielding one weapon type, compared to another, like a day and night thing (have it not even close, and stray away as much as possible from “generic” ones)

If they nail THAT PART, I think people will feel satisfied and perhaps even rather than asking for more content they might rather ask to deepen a bit the one that’s already out :slight_smile:

2 Likes
6

Death Knight could have been interesting. Now that Necro exists it might not fit in.

Could be interesting to see

Bard: Playing music to buff yourself and pets, and debuff enemies. With many skills being focused on weaving those buffs and rebuffs together, with a bit of optional rhythm gameplay to it (depending on how much you spec toward it). Other than buff/debuff gameplay, it would be fairly traditional combat, sword/shield/bow kind of stuff depending on focus.
Unique resource system representing their music. Like reserving resource for different lines/buffs/debuffs in your song.

Psychic: Able to use buffs/debuff a affecting the minds of others. Like stunning monsters, mindcontrolling them to fight for you etc. Relatively magical focused class overall, albeit affecting their own mind allows for pain suppression etc. when the need arises for direct physical combat.
Unique resource system representing their focus and self control. If you empty your resource completely you are stunned for a short time, losing all mind controlled enemies etc. The higher % resource you have left the stronger your spells and mindcontrolling etc is, making resource management extremely important for the class.

Duelist:
Focused mostly on melee weapon combat (of course still some spells and ranged options, like all classes should have).
Combo based combat. Each melee skill they have doesn’t do much in their own, but does something depending on the other attacks you combine them with. You have various openers, finishers etc. and have to weave your different skills together in different order depending in what you want to happen (more dmg, more procs, lower cost, cc effect etc).
Offering combat more like what you might get from a Fighting game, God of War and other combo heavy types of games.

1 Like
7

Warlock: Great spellcasters who focuses and harnesses magic in its purest form, in order to perform tasks of immense magnitude. So basically Wizards, except no elemental (fire, ice, lightning) abilities, but instead arcane skills that either have a magical or physical effect.

Oracle: Mystical warriors who fight with otherworldly precision that’s further aided by their incredible clairvoyance. So in otherwords Askari people who uses magic and lance type weapons.

Sinbearer: Great shield bearing warriors who fight not only with faith, but also sin and purpose. So Paladins/Crusaders but with less holy magic and more thorns and physical abilities.

2 Likes
8

If you wanted to communicate stuff about itemisation maybe start a new thread about it or post on a itemisation conversation. This is completely off topic from the OP.

Nothing wrong with these suggestions just you’re posting in the wrong thread.

This sounds super cool! Would love a class like this.

Maybe it could have unique weapons like Qiyana’s from League of Legends. Throwable Chakram. Tonfa style blades like Talim from Soul Calibur.

9

There are 2 things in your idea that are good overall.

  1. generally the decision after heaven or hell and thereby then to play another class.
    This is good RPG and keeps the focus on the world.
    If this is well implemented and not just slapped down, but is also a theme in the back of the game in general, there is something that involves the player as RPG very exciting. Choosing an end class in 2 directions, with story behind it, is always a strong stylistic device in an RPG and often works well. Should for all basic classes also gladly then as a new Endgame continue to function.

  2. the pure knight without magic, but with real shield attacks will feel far more interesting, if it also comes across rough and tough, than if you just add a lot of colorful yellow or red lights to a plate class with shield and call this magic. As a second option then a fight with a two-handed sword, completely different conveyed by the gameplay, also fits well.
    And then the circle closes and in the end he then decides in the direction of Endgame for a specialization with gentle supporting magic effects in his previous fight.
    Either he merges the enemies, especially everything living, with his melee styles and steals HP, or he supports his melee talents with positive energy in his strikes, is more effective against undead and demons and blesses himself and his companions, which a Dark Knight is not able to do.
    However, the magic should really only appear minimally and not come to the fore. The core aspect of the class is technically clean, no wild, melee combat and only gets additional support from the magic.
    One thing to highlight is the vastly different playstyle, whether you play with a 1H sword/shield, or a two handed weapon and there with a two handed sword, no axes or hammers.

These 2 things sounded good, if you build that in especially sensibly and also lay out part of the game so that it doesn’t eventually just degenerate into a focused end-game one-way game, but the focus is more on the RPG in the world and its progression. To do this, everything has to be much slower in development, too, in order to define a path that doesn’t want to be worked off as a burden, but that feels natural to you, as a big main content in the game and that is carried further via add ons and content.

Then you already have a foot in the door as a reasonable basis Away from the same dynamic to sacrifice everything for the banal competition endgame. Nobody wants to see that anymore and it doesn’t work anymore, it gets boring quickly… especially the RPG players among us.

1 Like
10

I think it’s a cool way to build the 3 main plate armour classes (Paladin, Death Knight and Knight) into 1 class and allow for more classes to exist. Making role play story choices with permanent decisions behind your class, all tied into the main Diablo lore with heaven and hell theme seems fitting too.

This is my personal favourite out of the 4 options I described. The hybrid option was more of a wildcard, not sure if it would work tbh.

I love the idea of playing a purist Dark Souls style plate armour wearing Knight. No magic abilities. No magic effects. Only spell effects that make sense to the class like bleeds, shouts (buffs/debuffs), knockback, crit etc. Maybe you can only carry one 2 handed weapon, a shield and a sword. No duel wielding like the Barb keeping them unique.

The Barb also has wild, flailing, reckless attacks. Where as a person feeling the need to wear plate armour, despite being strong is more of a middleweight. Think like Brock Lesner compared to Conor McGregor. I want the class to feel heavy, that the smaller body type would have to put effort into moving the plate armour and weapons around. Think Dark Souls animations.

Slamming down a 2 handed sword to cut enemies clean in half or stabbing my sword into them and kicking them off with my foot would be awesome. A 2 hit attack where I use the pointy corner of my shield to punch a demon in the face and follow up with a backhand stunning them.

I would want this class to feel really grounded. Nothing flashy, no magic, just pure heavy slamming melee attacks with beautiful animations. Ability to use other suitable weapons like 1 handed maces, flails (D2 callback)(maybe duel wielding flails could be your one duel wield option as Barb doesn’t get to use flails, and you have to take a special talent in the talent tree), 2 handed hammers and axes.

Ultimate could be: attack and execute skills faster with no cooldowns or resource spending needed, with a huge damage reduction for a short duration. Allowing you to use all your normal attacks to do huge quick combos while being very tanky.

Other Ultimate could be: having a huge amount of block chance either with shield or your 2 handed weapon like a jedi. Throwing up cool reactive block animations that blended with your normal attacking would look really cool here.

Other Ultimate could be: Rush forward, stun and then follow up with a high damage single target attack.

11

Fine, will contribute to the topic, np

Class name = Seer (Dark, pagan style, almost like the Seer from Vikings series)

Skill tree

1 - Overseer = See through enemy, their abilities, cooldowns, strengths and weaknesses, be able to reveal weak/er spots and if focus them down can impact or disable much earlier, long before it’s killed, afterlife, altars of worship or sacrifice, gain buffs or “curse” your weapon for much faster spread of debuffs… Spirituality may end up in a weirder form even, being able to “kill” yourself and become a completely spiritual being, use spiritual (Lightning or Darkness depending on a choice) damage in the form of telekinesis, telepathy and/or symbiosis ala Abathur
(Recommended main weapon - Ceremonial knife/dagger, could use Quiver too, main damage type = Poison, but can spec into some Darkness too)

2 - Overlord (Sneak and kill, skin and recycle, gather corpse remains to create amalgamized creatures, or use for extra “gear girth” i.e. secondary weapons - custom chosen corpse-components on a weapon, or “customized cloak” on top of regular armor, could also be a bit coward and disguise as one of opponents to bypass harder areas to isolate easier)
(Recommended main weapon = Club, but could work with anything a bit less ideal also, main damage type = Physical but can spec. into some Blood too)

3 - Overgrowth - master creation of everything that is nearly related to wood or darkness, throwables, vines, traps, bridges, obstacles, barriers, and even coffins (if want) to “phase out” individual creatures (Main weapon = Staff, but could use Dagger/Ceremonial knife or even Quiver too, main damage type = Darkness, but can spec into some Fire or Poison too)

Still - what I mentioned (at least for this period) is more important tbh

12

If angels and demons can have offspring, what about Demons (succubus) and Nephilim?

New class: The Tiefling (based on D&D)

Tieflings are primarily human in ancestry, but draw part of their bloodline from powerful evil beings. Each class in D4 will have a unique class mechanic. These 4 passives can be the Tiefling’s.

  • Hellish Rebuke: Melee creatures that damaged you are surrounded by flames and take damage. :fire:
  • Hellish Resistance: You have resistance to all fire damage. Start at 10% max at 100% :shield:
  • Darkvision: You can see in dim light within 10 feet max at 50 feet of you as if it were bright light. :sunglasses:
  • Flame Tongue: Any melee weapon you use also does additional fire damage. :crossed_swords:

These passives will increase in power as you level. If you pick this class these passive abilities are automatically unlocked at level 1. Regardless of how you customize your look, a Tiefling must have:

  • Horns.
  • A Tail.
  • Sharp Teeth.
13

Might as well add Murlocks as Diablo classes. :unamused::unamused::unamused:

14

I get my little blue Murlocket every season.

1 Like
15

Samurai

  • fast slashing attacks with multiple hits and wide arcs
  • dashing abilities
  • demon rage buff ability, makes you attack faster and do more damage
  • only class that can use samurai swords apart from Rogue perhaps
  • can activate buff for high miss chance
  • can use bladed tonfa and dual katana
  • wears samurai plate or ninja style armours
  • has a “counter” type ability where if hit while it’s active, teleports behind enemy for a heavy slash attack
  • think Jedi fighting style for animations or Sekiro

Ultimate: huge dash with large 1 hit damage attack, great finisher move
Ultimate: activates a buff that gives high life leech, increased damage and faster attack speed great to out-trade in pvp
Ultimate: huge aoe where you dash back and forth across the screen hitting everything
Ultimate: Giant Oni Demon red ghost spirit appears around your character and you go full metaphorical Super Saiyan and can walk around with it empowering all your attacks

16

I’m the Bat Man! heh

3 Likes
17

Have melee damage with the Barbarian.

Have range damage with the Rogue.

Have the nature spell casting / shape shifting with the Druid.

Have the death spell casting / undead summoning with the Necromancer.

Have the elemental spell caster with the Sorcerer/Sorceress.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hmm…

So far D4 is very caster heavy. It’s missing more physical damage, both melee and range.

Knight for sure.
1)-Holy Damage ala Battle Cleric? - Bring in the Maces, Hammers, Flails, Morning Stars, Mauls
2)-Heavy Plated Warrior w/1-hander and Shield? - Probably stick with swords, there are so many out there, let the Barbarian have axes.

Amazon/Myrmidon/Gladiator maybe.
1)-Need another melee class. Could be a hybrid melee/range.
2)-Again with new weapons, armor, and items. Thorn weapons. Spears. Nets. Etc.

Archer/Ranger maybe.
1)-Go pure range with specialized bows and crossbows. No thrown weapons.
2)-A mix of physical, poison, elemental, and arcane spell-like abilities.

Shaman maybe.
1)-Yes has Druid, but not a Witch Doctor. Good counterbalance?
2)-Could have fun with totems, relics, fetishes, runes, symbols.

Priest maybe.
1)-Yes plenty of casters, but none of them Holy.
2)-Bring forth the mighty party healer and/or party buffer.

Psionicist maybe.
1)-Plenty of ‘full’ casters, but no hybrids. Say hello to the Assassin 2.0.
2)-Use the old imagination for new weapons, armor, items, spells. More flavor.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Good thing there are many games out there in this genre that can offer plenty of ideas for new characters/classes. Maybe even introduce heroic or archetype-classes, maybe upgrades of current classes. Nothing like adding Master before a class, huh? Dual classing could make an appearance for the first time in D4. Could work with heroic or archetype-classes.

1 Like
18

Tell me more.
I’m curious.

19

I thought of another cool attack for the Samurai class.

It’s like Barb WW but when you hold the button down, they start doing a long sequence of Jedi or Nioh style attacks. The combo looks really awesome and has lots of different sword slash animations but it’s 1 button like Barb Whirlwind.

Stuff like this. Best in 2x speed to really demonstrate what I’m trying to imagine :slight_smile:

20

I unfortunately feel the need to necro this post. Because I started thinking about how much I don’t want a Holy Warrior as the Sword and Board class in some future expansion. So I started trying to think of how to do like a “Knight” class. Then I found this and here I am…

So this is similar to what I had in mind. I also thought of mixing in something like “The Witcher” or the anime “Claymore”. Thus this idea was born.

Backstory
So currently for D4 we know the setting is very bleak. Humans aren’t doing so well and are desperate from the ever present threat. So some future expansion introduces a kingdom that has experimented with creating what would essentially be super soldiers by fusing demons into humans. Tons of people would have died due to the experiments. But eventually they did it and created this new group of warriors who somehow retained their sanity.

Trained with different one-handed weapons and shields. These are trained Knights/Warriors. With their Knowledge of combat and enhanced bodies they hold back evil.

Skills
So their weapon attacks all have “Combos” so if you press an attack it will do one part of its combo. If you press it again it will do another, and then another. up to 3.

Examples

Skill 1
Dash lunge → Piercing strike(strike enemies behind target) → Quick multi jab

Skill 2
Shield Charge → Small AoE Shield Slam → Shield Shove attack (Pushes enemies away)

Now you can mix them
Dash lunge → Small AoE Shield Slam → Quick multi jab
Shield Charge → Piercing strike → Quick multi jab

So these types of skills would be called “Maneuvers” Combo like skills that can be mixed together to essentially perform your own combos. Based on when you push their skill button in the combo.

Some other type of skills would lean into the classes demon enhanced side.
This class can briefly morph parts of their body to perform powerful demon attack.

Some possibilities could be.
Sprouting wings
Changing their legs and arms
Face (striking fear into enemies)

These would be stronger attacks that don’t have combos like maneuvers. But these can be combined with them so we could end up with.
Dash lunge → Large Demon arm Cleave attack → Shield Shove attack

Other potential skills
Fear inducing shout
Demonic Flesh(defense)
Spiked Flesh(thorns)
Enemy Pull skill (like a chain spike or Demon tentacle :wink:)

You get the idea. This would be a class that is all about being up in the face of the enemy, making sure they don’t get an upper hand.

Resource.
I’m not too sure. But I was thinking potential dual resource.
Stamina would be a fast regenerating resource
and a resource based on the demon side. This would be generated by simply performing attacks and would be slower generation than the stamina.
Stamina powers your Maneuvers and other non-demon skills
Demon Rage?(PH) powers your demonic skills.

Unique class mechanic would basically be the combo system. being able to combine multiple skills on the fly.

1 Like