The Massive Expansion Recap - Everything We Know So Far

Last update on September 9.

The Massive Expansion Recap - Everything We Know So Far




New Class
The Crusader is the new class announced for the Reaper of Souls expansion. Here is everything we know about him so far, plus some nice art and videos from Gamescom!
  • Uses Strength as main stat (Source)
  • Has confirmed Flails, Two-Handed Flails and Two-Handed Swords so far and focuses on Shields, adding their defense as damage. There are Crusader exclusive Shields in the game
  • Plays mid-range
  • Resource is Wrath (not confirmed how it's generated) (Source)
  • Crusaders come from the same order as the Paladins and are, in fact, an elite branch of it (Source)
  • The Crusader starts at Act I, like all other characters (Source)
  • He has a very dark sense of humor (Source)
  • Skill Categories: Primary, Secondary, Defensive, Utility, Laws, Conviction (Screenshot)
  • Active Skills: (Source)
    • Punish - Hit your enemy. Your hits increase your sense of combat, which improves your ability to block. Requires a shield. (Cost: 5 Wrath) (roughly translated)
      • Retaliate - When you block, you do extra damage
    • Slash - Ignite the air in front of you, damaging all enemies (Cost: 5 Wrath)
      • Long Reach - Increases the range of Slash
    • Justice - Throw a hammer of justice at your enemies. (Cost: 5 Wrath)
    • Scourge - Scourge your enemies, surrounding them in threads of hallowed power. The threads cut and bleed enemies they attach to, and will seek out new enemies to latch onto and punish. (Generate: 5 Wrath per attack)
      • Bound Fate
      • Razor's Edge
    • Laws of Justice - Active: Increases armor for the Crusader and his allies, while Laws of Justice are active. Passive: When you block an attack, you and your allies take less damage for a short duration. Requires a shield. Cooldown: 30 seconds
    • Laws of Valor - Active: Increases the damage of the Crusader and his allies, while Laws of Valor is active. Passive: When you critically hit, you and your allies do more damage for a short duration. Cooldown: 30 seconds
    • Laws of Fate - Active: Increases the speed of the Crusader and his allies, while Laws of Fate is active. Passive: When you dodge, you and your allies run faster for a short duration. Cooldown: 30 seconds
    • Sweep Attack - Spread a mystical plague in the air in a large arc, dealing heavy damage on enemies in front of you (Cost: 25 Wrath) (roughly translated)
    • Shield Glare - Temporarily blind enemies in front of you with your shield. Requires a shield. Cooldown: 12 seconds
      • Emblazoned Rune Shield - Blinded enemies sometimes explode when on low health
    • Judgement - Roots enemies for 4 seconds. Cooldown: 20 seconds
    • Heaven's Fury - Creates an area of holy power that burns and damages enemies (Cost: 40 Wrath)
    • Consecration - Creates sacred ground around you that heals both the Crusader and his allies. Cooldown: 20 seconds
      • Shattered Ground - The enemies within the area in effect take damage
    • Shield Bash - Blasts enemies in front of you. Requires a shield. (Cost: 25 Wrath)
    • Fist of the Heavens- Call a bolt from the sky damaging enemies in the area. (Cost: 30 Wrath)
      • Tempest of the Heavens
      • Well of Retribution - Create a well of holy lightning at the target location that will electrecute nearby enemies
      • Lightning Rod
      • Reverberation
    • Blessed Shield - Hurl a celestial shield through the air, smashing it into enemies and ricocheting it between them (Cost: 25 Wrath)
      • Staggering Shield
    • Blessed Hammer - Summons a blessed hammer that revolves around you damaging enemies. (Cost: 10 Wrath)
    • Provoke - Taunts the enemy to attack you for 5 seconds. Cooldown: 20 seconds (Generate: 50 Wrath)
    • Falling Sword - The Crusader is launched in the air and lands on his enemies. Cooldown: 15 seconds (Cost: 25 Wrath)
      • Part of the Cloud - You create a lightning storm that covers the ground where the character falls, hitting enemies with lightning
  • Passive Skills: (Source)
    • Indestructible - You gain 1% armor for every 5% life that you lose
    • Wrathful - Wrath regeneration increased by 5% for 3 seconds after a block
    • Wrecking Ball
    • Against All Odds - When surrounded by 4 or more enemies within 15 yards, you gain 10% Crit Chance for 5 seconds
    • Finery - Gain 34 All Resist for each gem of different color on your gear, if you have five different gems you'll gain another 34 All Resist
    • Heavenly Strength - Enable the crusader to hold a 2 handed weapon in main hand, but only if you have a Crusader shield in the other, in addition you lose 10% movement speed
    • Holy Cause - 10% more Holy damage on weapon. Also proc coefficient increased by 10% on Holy weapons
    • Vigilant
    • Long Arm of the Law
    • Stand Your Ground - Increase block chance by 5%, reduce dodge chance by/to X%




New Level Cap - 70
All existing classes will get:
  • New Skills
    • ​The number of new skills for each class will vary between classes (Source)
  • New Runes
  • New Passives


New Act
  • New City - The Survivor's Enclave (Source)
  • The route in the expansion follows Westmarch - Bloodmarsh - Pandemonium Fortress (Source)
  • Other areas include a Zakarum Cathedral, Moldering Waterway, Old Storehouse and the Wolf Gate
  • There are more, not yet announced, parts of the Act (Source)
  • Seamless transitioning between interior and exterior zones
  • All exterior parts of the Act should be fully randomized
  • The entirety of Westmarch has a completely random city tile set (Source)
  • Similar in size to Diablo 3's Act II
  • Much darker than what we're used to in Diablo 3. "You quite literally have to wade through a knee-deep carpet of pale, rotting corpses in order to pursue your next objective. When you walk through, the sounds are truly wrenching, and the ambiance of it is enough to make even the Mad King Leoric wish he'd thought to decorate similarly." (Source)



New Lore
  • New Boss in the game - Malthael
  • The ex-Archangel of Wisdom, Malthael, is now the Reaper of Souls. He can take the souls of his enemies and is Death incarnate. During the opening cinematic we can see him fight against Tyrael and taking the Black Soulstone. His main goal appears to be to end the Eternal Conflict
  • Malthael's actions seem to be "justified", since El'Druin cannot harm him (Source)
  • Malthael's ultimate goal is to destroy Sanctuary (Source)
  • Malthael's scythes do not have a name and he no longer uses his chalice - Calad'ar (Source)
  • We will be seeing the Archangels in the expansion as well as some of the Evils (Source)
  • Hell is in chaos due to the missing Evils (Source)
  • The Black Soulstone being buried in the cinematic took place beneath Bloodmarsh, a playable zone outside Westmarch (Source)
  • A Necromancer NPC will be present in the new Act (Source)
  • The Horadrim have been made anew by Tyrael. One of the new faces from the order, with whom players will get familiar, is Lorath Nahr (Source)
  • Two Books were found in the game by French site Judgehype. The first signed by Urzael, the second by Hamish Bode. Here are their rough translations:
    • "We must do everything in our power to bring down the Nephalem so that the collection of souls is not interrupted. This will be the key to victory for Malthael."
    • "I can hear them. The voices speak to me again. What? Death comes? I can not die! I can not! I'm too big for my life to go away and. Please tell me how I can avoid my fate. You want me to do this? Yes, I will! I promise. I will do anything."


New Feature: Loot Runs
  • Part of the new Adventure type game mode (includes Nephalem Trials, Bounties, Exploreation) (Source)
  • 15-20 minute completely random dungeons! (Source)
  • Random weather! (Source)
  • Random enemies! (Source)
  • Random boss... or even 2! (Source)
  • Multitiered (several levels deep)! (Source)
  • There is something you need to do to unlock Loot Runs in the game. Will be announced at BlizzCon


New Feature: Nephalem Trials
  • Part of the new Adventure type game mode (includes Loot Runs, Bounties, Exploration)
  • Nephalem Trials are portals located around the world (Source)
  • They are challenge-based trials (Source)
  • Monsters come in waves with increasing difficulty (Source)
  • Bigger efficiency - bigger rewards, in the forms of Resplendent chests (Source)
  • They are meant to be trials that the Nephalem made for each other to test their skill (Source)



Loot 2.0
  • Less items will drop in comparison to D3 Vanilla.
  • Vanilla farming run would give 256 normal, 399 magic, 275 rares and 1 legendary item, in Reaper of Souls the same run would give 73 normal, 266 magic, 83 rare and 6 legendary items! (Source)
  • White items will be useful as a new crafting reagent.
  • Smart Drop is a system which gives each item a chance that its affix rolls will be focused on the class currently being played.
  • From some of the items seen (3k DPS and 300+ mainstat weapons), the new Level 70 items will have more potential and (eventually) overpower all current Level 63 Affix Items.
  • All Legendaries can roll at all levels (with power/affixes and level requirement that match that level).
  • Legendary will be build-changers, by drastically changing particular skills (Source)
  • How Account Binding works is still not finalised (Source)
  • Currently there are stars on the tooltips indicating how rare an item is (Source)
Legendary Effect Examples:
  • A fist weapon that refunds the Dashing Strike spirit cost if it hits an enemy more than 25 yards away. (Screenshot)
  • A wand that has a chance to summon Hydras when you kill an ememy. (Screenshot)
  • A (reimagined) Puzzle Ring that summons a goblin which, after picking up 40 white items, will drop a Yellow item (with the chance of it being a Legendary). (Screenshot)
  • A Crusader Flail that has a chance to pull enemies towards the character and slow them. (Screenshot)


Paragon 2.0
  • The Paragon system has had a huge overhaul. It is no longer per-character, but account wide (Source)
  • Instead of the current bonuses your account gains 1 Paragon Point per level to spend on different stats
  • No longer has a cap (Source)
  • Stats are separated into 4 tabs. Here are the stats themselves and the number they'll increase with each Paragon Point. You can also see a screenshot of the new Paragon tabs below: (Source)
    • Core: Strength - 5; Agility - 5; Intelligence - 5; Vitality - 5
    • Attack: Crit Chance - 0.2%; Crit Damage - 1%; Attack Speed - 0.2%; Cooldown Reduction - 0.2%
    • Defense: Health % - 0.5%; Resist All - 5; Armor - 0.5; Dodge % - 0.2%
    • Utility: Run Speed - 0.5%; Gold Pickup Radius - 1
  • Paragon Points can be respecced (Source)
  • The cost for respeccing does not scale, it will be constant (Source)
  • Each Paragon Level adds one paragon point to all your characters. You can distribute them differently for each character
  • Retroactively Paragon Points will be determined by your overall experience gained so far, not the sum of your Paragon level number for your characters (Source)
  • Paragon levels are separate for Normal and Hardcore modes (Source)
  • Dying in Hardcore does not take away from your earned Paragon Points (Source)
  • It's not yet determined if already dead characters will contribute will Paragon Points when 2.0 arrives (Source)



New Artisan: The Mystic
Enchants existing gear - can reroll one affixe of Rare and Legendary items
  • The player can choose one property from an item and reroll it as many times as they want (Source)
  • When you chose to enchant an item there is a list of stats presented, from which you can pick (Source)
  • One of the stats in the list will always be the original stat on the item, in case the other choices don't appeal to the player (Source)
  • The enchanting fee is paid before the player can see the options (Source)
  • As of right now enchanting gear binds it to your account (Source)
  • It's not yet decided if guaranteed stats on Legendary items will be able to be rerolled (Source)
  • Sockets are currently one of the options for enchanting (Source)
  • Enchanting a stat on a low level item will bring up options from the character's current level (Source)
  • While this has no direct source a lot of people have said that they've seen it on Gamescom. Here are some of the new recipes and their ingredients. Take it with a spoon of salt:
    • Transmogrify:: 1 demonic essence, 1 fiery brimstone, 1 shadow stone
    • Enchanting: 1 demonic essence, 1 ghost essence, 1 gem (higher tier = better roll)
    • Salvage reagants: whites = ghost essence, shadow rares (Act 5 rares) = shadow stone
Transmogrifies items - changes the look of your gear and right now it looks like it'll cost you Demonic Essences and/or Rare and Magical items (Source)
  • Items needs to be "unlocked" in order to be transmogrified to


The Existing Artisans
  • New Gem - Diamond (Source)
    • ​Weapons: increases damage to Elites (3% @ Flawed)
    • Helms: reduces cooldown of skills (11% @ Flawed)
    • Armor: increases All Resistance (10 @ Flawed)
  • New Recipes for the Jeweler and Blacksmith
  • It's still to be determined if new Legendary recipes will be added to the Blacksmith (Source)


New Monsters
  • Several new affixes have been created and one has been mentioned - Crossfire. Our appropriately named forum member TheCrusader has attended Gamescom and explains that the Elite summons an orb of fire that bursts in 4 directions. In normal 1 fireball took approximately 25% of his character's HP (Source)
  • Many new monsters have been added to the game - the Seraph, Summoner of the Dead, Executioner, Death Maiden and a few not-yet-named ones.
  • One of the new ranged enemies has the new behaviour of moving away while shooting at you






Quality of Life
  • Toughness is a new stat displayed in the inventory, that so far seems to show the EHP of the character (Source)
  • Nephalem Valor now stacks from very early levels (confirmed for 30+) (Source)
  • There will "probably" be 1-2 added character slots (Source)
  • Followers now have side-quests in Act V. We're going to meet the Scoundrel's brother! (Source)
  • There are talks of the Stash being increased
  • Every new boss you kill has a guaranteed Legendary item drop
  • Many social features are being improved, but nothing is in a state of being announced as of now (Source)
  • This is still under development, but so far it looks like Run Speed cap will be increased (Source)
  • There are graphical improvements in the expansion, like new shaders (Source)
  • Blizzard are trying to increase the gold bid cap on the Auction House, but there are technical and legal difficulties with it (Source)


Pre-Expansion Patch
Blizzard have announced which features will be unlocked with the expansion and which will come as a pre-expansion patch. Here's what you'll get if you don't buy the expansion:
  • Paragon 2.0
  • Loot 2.0
  • Loot Runs
  • Nephalem Trials

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

We want to implement a lot of the new systems and features in a pre-expansion patch for free. That should include Paragon 2.0, Loot 2.0, Loot Runs, and Nephalem Trials. For now, you'll need to purchase the expansion to play as the Crusader, explore Act V, unlock the Mystic, and level up to 70. These details may change as development moves along, but we want some of the core gameplay improvements to be available for everyone.



Misc
  • Beta should begin this year! (Source)
  • The expansion will not come at the same time for all platforms (Source)
  • There will very likely be new features announced before or during BlizzCon!
  • There might be some changes to the basic difficulties in Diablo 3, but that is one of the things left for Blizzcon (Source)


Things NOT in the Expansion
  • There won't be a second class announced (Source)
  • There won't be more than the 1 announced Act
  • There has been nothing announced about PvP so far (Source)
  • There won't be rune words in RoS (Source)
  • There won't be a new Follower in RoS (Source)

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