Diablo 4 Revives An Abandoned Diablo 3 Class To Appease A Big Angry Tree

In the year and a half since its release, Diablo 4 has already reinvented itself a few times, through the Vessel of Hatred expansion and through frequently changing seasons that add new mechanics. For the upcoming Season 7, Diablo 4 is taking some of its biggest swings to date, remixing the abilities of a Diablo 3 character class players want to see return and giving them to everyone.

Dubbed the Season of Witchcraft, Season 7 has players searching all around the world of Sanctuary for decapitated heads to return them to the tree that owns them. Yes, I know how strange that sounds, but that’s just how Diablo 4 works. The season’s storyline focuses on the Tree of Whispers, an ancient entity that’s central to endgame progression, and just so happens to be a giant tree covered in stolen heads. As the Season begins, some of those heads have gone missing and they’re causing all sorts of trouble around Sanctuary, even without bodies.

To hunt down the missing heads, players ally with a coven of witches who protect the Tree of Whispers and gain fabulous new powers in return. By defeating new Headrotten enemies, you’ll gain Restless Rot, which is used to purchase those new powers. They’re divided into three different schools, focusing on damage, debuffing illusions, and healing, broadly, and you’re free to mix and match them as you see fit.

The new ability system in Season of Witchcraft already looks like one of the better seasonal mechanics in Diablo 4, but it’s a connection to a past game that has some players really excited. As Diablo 4 systems designer Sean White spells out in a video digging into Season 7, many of the witchcraft powers being added come directly from Diablo 3’s Witch Doctor Class. Ever since the announcement of Diablo 4, players have been hoping that the Witch Doctor would return. That’s partially because it’s a hell of a powerful class when played properly, but it also has to do with just how flavorful the class’ abilities are. Swinging swords and throwing fireballs are fun and all, but the Witch Doctor’s ability to throw gobs of poison and summon plague-ridden wildlife makes it unique among Diablo 3’s classes.

While the Witch Doctor isn’t returning, a few of its abilities are. They include Piranhado (literally a tornado made of piranhas that devours enemies) and Firebat Servants (which summons flaming bats to attack). My personal favorite, though, is the Poison Frog Servant, a giant, poison-spewing frog companion that follows your character around for support. It sounds like a useful skill, sure, but the main reason I can’t wait to unlock it is that the Poison Frog is also inexplicably adorable — at least compared to the rest of the grim and gory Diablo 4 inhabitants.

Speaking of weirdly cute animal companions, Season of the Witch also introduces a new non-combat pet as a reward for completing the entire seasonal battle pass. Dorian the Raven represents the first bird pet in Diablo 4, and while he’s not quite as colorful as the poison-spitting frogs also arriving in the patch, it’s still a pretty nice reward.

Plenty of more functional items will also drop as part of Season 7’s battle pass and quests, but perhaps the most exciting update is available to everyone. Up to this point, changing builds in Diablo 4 has been an utter pain. With dozens of pieces of armor, runes, abilities, and other modifiers to choose from, swapping from one playstyle or even just one gear set to another can take a long time. The Season of Witchcraft finally puts an end to that with the Armory. Going forward, players can save multiple builds and instantly swap between them, so you’ll no longer have to keep a spreadsheet to keep track of all the variations of your character you want to try out.

I can’t say collecting heads for a magic tree is something I expected to do even in Diablo 4, but now I can’t wait to do just that. Diablo 4’s Season of Witchcraft launches on January 21, directly after the current season ends.