Diablo's Deckard Cain Is The New Playable Character In Heroes Of The Storm

If you've ever played Diablo, you know the name Deckard Cain. The weathered old man generally serves as an adviser, rather than any sort of combatant, yet he's set to become just that in Blizzard's Heroes of the Storm.

Yes, Deckard is set to become a playable hero in HotS, and Blizzard seems to have had a lot of fun with his design. He's capable of healing and generally supporting his team, though he's susceptible to being Silenced and doesn't offer much in the way of mobility. His abilities include one that throws a healing potion on the ground for a teammate to collect, another that uses the Horadric Cube to deal damage and slow enemies, and a scroll that roots and damages.

As is often the case, it's the Heroic abilities that are best. Lorenado summons a tornado made of his books that moves in a target direction and pushes back enemies that it touches. Best of all is Stay A While And Listen, which casts a large cone in front of him. Those inside are subjected to a story he tells, which makes them fall asleep.

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"He's this big iconic character from Diablo, and he's not someone you'd expect to see fighting, but he's the face of it in a lot of ways," lead hero designer Matt Villers told GameSpot. "In the Diablo III opening cinematic he's right there, and we thought it would be really cool to have him added in. We saw an opportunity to make him work and make him feel like he can stand shoulder to shoulder with Thrall and these other characters. We really wanted to tackle that challenge and it was a lot of fun."

Kaeo Milker, the production director on HotS, added, "It's such a fun game to be a part of. This is the game we built out of the passion that our team and the community had for it. You often hear about how this game started as a custom map for StarCraft II, and it was really the excitement people had for it that pushed us to continue work on it. From past BlizzCons we had so much feedback from it that we spun it off into its own thing. We keep saying it, but it's really a love letter to Blizzard games. You get to play all these characters from other worlds and smash them all together. We really couldn't have done this without the community and their input. The game is in constant evolution, and seeing Deckard Cain be revealed during the panel--seeing all the fan reactions was really exciting and energizing for the team."

Deckard launches "soon" on the public test realm and will be released to the full game sometime after that. Blizzard has also announced it plans to release a comic, Rise of the Raven Lord, that will explore Heroes of the Storm lore sometime later in April.