If you want to make magic cooler, just add blood to it. There's a very simple science to it. Blood is a hot liquid that spurts from our bodies and pumps faster when we're excited - it's inherently an erotic substance. Whether you're slicing open your palm and licking up the blood's magical essence, or exsanguinating your enemies through magical osmosis, their bodies twitching powerlessly as you drain them of every drop, blood magic is very cool, very evil, and very sexy. It's perfect for Diablo, and wherever you wander throughout Sanctuary, you will find symbols daubed in blood and bodies in various states of bloodless desiccation. With the central villain Lilith very cool, very evil, and very sexy, that makes a lot of sense. Now Diablo Immortal has a blood-based class, Blood Knight, and I want it in Diablo 4 immediately.
I have never played Diablo Immortal, and I never will. I have a phone, despite Blizzard's very vocal assumption that the lack of one would be the reason a person might not play, but the whole setup has no appeal to me. Diablo 4 was the first Diablo game where I dove in deep, even though playing solo made me feel at odds with what the game was designed for. The whole thing captured a feeling of gaming as a kid again, a nostalgia for gaming unlocked despite having never experienced the older Diablo games.
I'd been advised beforehand that this was the best Diablo game for solo players, the first to have a story so impactful it stood above the endgame grind. I've been chipping away at Diablo as my Sorceress, probably with a sub-optimal build, and I'm enjoying the adventure of it all. But make no mistake - I plan to finish it and then stop. I will not be grinding for the best gear or running through the game with different classes to get the full experience. I'm approaching it like a regular RPG - I choose my character, I finish the game with them, I'm done. If I get the itch in the future I may replay it and make different choices, but otherwise it's a one-and-done for me, and that suits me just fine.
At least, it did. While I was mildly tempted by Barbarian and Rogue, I was set on Sorceress very early. In some of my tabletop RPGs, when I DM with a small party I make a combat character so they won't be shorthanded, I tend to go for Barbarian and just be a big lump of muscle the party can point wherever they want. Magical characters typically involve more thought, so I leave them alone when I'm running a campaign, but gravitate towards them in video games. I'm gonna have spells coming out of my horns in Baldur's Gate 3. That means Blood Knight could throw everything out of order.
Diablo Immortal has six classes (now seven) to Diablo 4's five, but there are other differences. Both games have Barbarian and Necromancer, but that's it. Immortal's Demon Hunter is similar to 4's Rogue (though closer to a traditional Ranger), while Wizard and Sorcerer also have a lot of crossover, but Crusader and Monk are very different from 4's final offering, Druid. There's no guarantee then that Diablo 4's next class will be Blood Knight, especially when other common classes like Bard are also absent. But Blood Knight is Diablo's first new class in nine years, so if it's popular, I can see it being added into the main game before others that might feel they should be ahead of it in the queue.
If we do get Blood Knight in Diablo 4, I might revert to the classic way of playing and make a second character to try out a new build. The temptation to wreak vampiric havoc is too great to resist. It's not enough to get me to play Immortal, but you know. What ever could be? Blood Knights aren't full vampires, but were humans bitten by vampires and then not quite saved, allowing them to morph into an 'Abomination' to satiate their bloodlust while they hunt down vampires - just when you thought they couldn't get cooler or sexier, turns out they're just Blade.
The Blood Knight is a shake-up for Diablo as the first new class in a decade, and I hope they're popular enough to be at the forefront of Diablo for years to come. It's a unique and intriguing class, different to everything out there (and probably most similar to Druid, which I have no personal interest in), and perfect for Diablo's blood-soaked aesthetic. Bleed me dry like a goddamn vampire.