Diablo is getting a rework in Heroes of the Storm, and he looks wonderfully terrifying

Yesterday, Heroes of the Storm released the final teaser for its upcoming Nexomania event as well as a well-received balance update to the live game. What it didn’t release, however, were any updates to Diablo — something that Blizzard had mentioned nearly three weeks ago as being in the works. We didn’t exactly know to what extent Diablo was going to be updated — not until now, that is.

We’ll break things down after the video, but for now, just take a look at what Blizzard has planned for the Lord of Terror. Truly, he’s going to live up to his name (and then some!) with these changes.

The first change to note here is the one mentioned in the Reddit thread above: Diablo will now be able to see terrain details like Hanzo and Lucio. This is essentially a quality-of-life change, albeit a very important one. With how much Diablo relies on Shadow Charge — especially combined with the other changes outlined — it’s imperative that he not miss a wall when charging enemy Heroes. Before, there were instances of Shadow Charge not stunning that simply came down to bad luck and misunderstood terrain. Now, missing a Shadow Charge stun is almost entirely on the player.

In bigger news, though, are all the other changes being made — and there are a decent amount of them!

• Fire Stomp now fires in a cone, and each fireball can damage a single target “like a shotgun.”
  • The flames also deal triple damage on their return trip, making the timing and aiming of Fire Stomp much more important.
  • Diablo also heals for a percentage of the damage dealt to enemy Heroes.
• Shadow Charge now increases Diablo’s movement speed but does not grant Armor anymore.
• Level-4 talents have been updated to help increase how Diablo can gather Souls.
  • Sacrificial Soul: Stunning a Hero with Shadow Charge grants 5 Souls and 15 Armor for 4 seconds. While at 100 Souls, increase this Armor to 30.
  • Souls to the Flame: Fire Stomp grants 1 Soul every 3 times it damages an enemy Hero, and heals for an additional 1.25% of its damage dealt per Soul.
• Other talents have also been refined to create more synergy between Diablo’s abilities.
  • One example given was Eternal Flames — a talent that allows Shadow Charge and Overpower’s stun to reset Fire Stomp.
    • Combined with charges from Overpowering Nightmare — presumably a new talent — Diablo can fire off several Fire Stomps in a row (the video shows him fighting three heroes and using Fire Stomp, Charge, Fire Stomp, Overpower, Fire Stomp, Overpower, Fire Stomp, Overpower, and Fire Stomp again in a matter of 10 seconds — it’s pretty insane).

With all of these changes, Diablo looks like he’s going to be… well, overpowered (no pun intended). More importantly, though, it looks like he’ll have a bit more viability in team fights, thanks to his increased ability to generate Souls from attacking enemy Heroes. Plus, there will be a lot of potential for crazy plays out of the pros thanks to his updated talent synergy.

I’m sure things will balance out — and the tradeoff of more frequent healing instead of more frequent Armor should help that — and I’m excited as all hell to play this new Diablo. These changes will likely be on the PTR next week.