New Video Showcases Leoric, the Skeleton King

by JR Cook - 9 years ago     show comments

A new video from the CM team has our boy Cloaken dropping all the science on Leoric, the new Warrior hero from Diablo who’ll be coming out sometime in the near future.

Cloaken does a solid job of showcasing exactly how Leoric will get engaged in gameplay, so I won’t worry about rehashing that here. The bottom line is that his Undying trait means that he’ll be a constant threat on the battlefield; you’ll be able to tell an inexperienced Leoric player from an expert by whether or not he stays active after dying.

While the goal of any player is to avoid dying in order to avoid the respawn timer, the fact that Leoric benefits from dying to a certain extent will likely govern the kinds of comps that pick him up. That being said, everything he can do while dead is avoidable if the enemy heroes have reliable mobility, and if the opposing team can keep Leoric zoned out from reducing his death timer, he’s more a nuisance than an actual threat.

However, Leoric’s ability to continue harassing the enemy team while dead will likely make for some very interesting engagements: if a dead Leoric is able to pop himself up when his teammates are falling back from a team fight, it could turn the tides, especially if a well-timed March of the Black King is available to crush the enemy pursuers.

Leoric serves as an interesting contrast to the Butcher, who comes across as more of a dangerous hero-killer. Leoric’s emphasis on minion-killing and his ability to harass the enemy team makes him more strategic than devastating, but he draws attention the same way the Butcher does: eliminate the Butcher in order to remove his stacks of Fresh Meat and consequently cut his damage output, but avoid eliminating Leoric when he can position himself to make you pay for it.

All told, it’s another very interesting addition to the Heroes lineup, and we’re really interested to see the impact he has on the game.