Now in its second year of existence, “Diablo Immortal” is still chugging along despite the myriad of (valid) complaints thrown against it and the game’s real money transaction ecosystem, but we’re not going to focus on that.
In late May, the game received an update in the form of a new character class, which bumps the game’s available classes up to eight. The new class, called Tempest, joins the existing Barbarian, Wizard, Monk, Necromancer, Demon Hunter, Crusader, and Blood Knight classes.
This makes Immortal the game with the most classes in the “Diablo” franchise, and Tempest is not some lazily slapped-together addition either. With a seafaring backstory, the Tempest class uses wind and water to fight the demons spawned from the bowels of Hell.
Having spent some time with the class, the best way I can describe Tempest is “Aang from ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ with Water-bending and Air-bending, but the attacks turn enemies into blood and guts.”.
As for how Tempest functions, it depends on how each player optimizes their characters from the class’ well-rounded kit of skills, and they can lean either towards being melee or ranged attackers.
This begins with the primary attack skill players choose to equip. One will let them use water whips for ranged attacks, while the other will let them use the wind to increase close-quarters damage, or if enemies are far away, players will use the wind to teleport in close.
Equipping one of these two will then form the foundation for how the other skills are picked. Skills are also influenced by the legendary weapons and armour that players have equipped.
By default, skills like Squall will allow Tempest players and their Zephyrs to teleport into enemies, but if they are using the legendary dagger Spiral Guidance, Squad changes into Gale Force, where instead of teleporting into danger, players and their Zephyrs will use hurlwind slashes from a safe distance.
There are also crowd control skills like Vortex, which summons a whirlpool that sucks in enemies and damages them.
What makes Tempest different from, say, Necromancer is the class’ mist-touched passive. Where Necromancers have to keep actively summoning the undead to fight for them, Mist-Touched causes every attack by a Tempest to summon Zephyrs, and because it’s passive, it’s always turned on.
These uncontrollable wind-based creatures will mimic skills from the Tempest’s arsenal, and whenever the player is engaged in battle, the Zephyrs will join in. Zephyrs randomly appear every ten seconds, and they last around eight seconds. Due to the speed that Tempest can attack with, Zephyrs will always be on the battlefield.
All in all, Tempest is a fun addition to “Immortal’s” repertoire of classes, and whether the class’ potential can be fully realized depends on how Blizzard continues to update the game and class mechanics.
