From the moment Blizzard released paladins in Diablo 4 early for pre-ordering its Lord of Hatred expansion, the game was full of them. Everyone, it seems, has been counting down the days to try a class they’ve missed since Diablo 2.
Starting on March 11, when Diablo 4’s next season begins, paladins will be free to play for anyone logging into the game. You can join the holy warrior fans and play one yourself until level 25 without needing to pre-order the expansion (or owning the base game). Access to the class will end on March 18, but that still gives you a full week to see what they’re all about.
Paladins are easily the strongest class in the game in the current season. However, they won’t be quite as powerful as they are when the next season starts. Blizzard has fixed some bugs that were making them a little too good, but it’s left a lot of the popular builds untouched, like the ‘aura minion’ setup where you just walk around and melt everything around you.
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I’ll warn you though: It’ll be hard to play other classes after a paladin. Not only do they have an arsenal of flashy skills that singe enemies with holy fire, they’re basically a teaser for the class reworks in Lord of Hatred. Where other classes have legendary items with bonuses to specific skills, paladin legendaries buff a variety of things, making buildcrafting much more intuitive.
They’re also a great choice for the theme of Diablo 4’s next season: the Season of Slaughter. It’ll be a slightly shorter season because the expansion is coming out very soon, but the focus will be on killing loads and loads of monsters to keep a kill streak going. The more monsters you kill, the more powerful you become, and paladins are particularly suited for barrelling through hordes of enemies with their heavy armor and shields.
Lord of Hatred’s second new class, warlocks, won’t be available until it’s released on April 28. I recently had some hands-on time with the class and was surprised at how distinct they feel from necromancers despite their specialty in summoning demons to fight for them. They’re kind of the opposite of paladins, obsessed with demonic knowledge and literally opening portals to hell with some of their skills. It’s going to be extremely hard to choose between the two new classes when the expansion drops, so I’d get as much time in on the paladin while you can.
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