Heroes Of The Storm's Next Character Is Diablo 3's Malthael, And He Sounds Devastating

While Overwatch has been getting a lot of love in Heroes of the Storm lately, the game's next playable character hails from Diablo. Malthael, the bad guy from Diablo III's Reaper of Souls expansion, is officially on the way to HotS.

Blizzard revealed the news on Twitter, sharing a link to his profile on the HotS website. This offers a rundown on all of his abilities, and he sounds like an incredibly powerful Assassin, particularly for dealing with high-health enemies. His trait causes any non-structure target hit by his basic attack to receive the Reaper's Mark debuff for four seconds. Anyone with the Mark on them is revealed and loses 2.5% of their maximum health every second for the duration. In other words, a single basic attack will deal damage equivalent to 10% of an enemy's max health.

All of his basic abilities also involve Reaper's Mark. Death Shroud creates a wave that inflicts the Mark on everyone it hits. Soul Rip causes nearby enemies who are marked to take immediate damage, with Malthael also healing himself based on the number of targets hit. And Wraith Strike causes Malthael to teleport through a marked enemy, dealing damage and refreshing the Mark's duration.

In terms of Heroics, one choice is Tormented Souls. This grants Malthael armor and causes him to shoot out souls around him, repeatedly inflicting Reaper's Mark to anyone hit. The other choice is Last Rites, which sounds particularly interesting. This can be used on an enemy and, after two seconds, causes them to suffer damage equal to 50% of the health they're missing. It also comes with its own repeatable quest, which reduces the ability's cooldown by five seconds anytime someone dies while under Last Rites' effect. The cooldown can be lowered to as little as 15 seconds.

A release date hasn't been announced, but characters typically aren't revealed too far in advance of their debut. Likewise, we haven't yet gotten any videos of Malthael in action, but you can likely expect to see those soon.