Heroes of the Storm's New Character Will Make You Run Away

After offering a glimpse of him in action, Blizzard has now offered more details on Heroes of the Storm's next character, Gul'dan.

The Warcraft character is described as a "sustained damage ranged" Assassin who takes some clear inspiration from World of Warcraft's Warlocks. Although he has mana, he doesn't regenerate it as other mana users do. Instead, his trait, Life Tap, allows him to sacrifice health in return for an instant influx of mana. This should make for some interesting decisions where Gul'dan players are forced to decide if securing a kill or getting off an ability is worth a chunk of their own life.

Fel Flame is a fairly straightforward attack, shooting out in a straight line and doing damage to everyone it hits. Drain Life is a channeling ability that forces him to stand in place, but--as advertised--does damage to a targeted enemy that restores his health. Corruption does three attacks in a straight line, one after the other, and causes hit enemies to take damage over time. It can hit an enemy multiple times if aimed correctly, with the damage stacking up to three times.

As for his Heroic abilities, Horrify causes all enemies in an area to be Feared; this causes them to run away from the spot where it was cast for two seconds--allowing for a safe getaway or a strong initiation. Rain of Destruction, on the other hand, causes a sort of firestorm to rain down in a large area, doing damage to enemies hit by its random meteors. Gul'dan can't move while casting this.

Gul'dan doesn't yet have an official release date, but he is available for play on the game's public test servers right now. You can check him out by setting your region to "PTR: Heroes of the Storm" from the Battle.net client before launching the game.

Blizzard also recently teased another character, Diablo's Auriel. We don't know much about her at this point, but you can get a quick look at her here along with some upcoming skins and mounts.