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I don't think anyone was more shocked than me when the annoucement popped up out of the blue that Diablo 2 was adding a new class in February 2026. This is a game that I had been playing since the summer of 2000 right before I went off to undergraduate study in college, a game that had last released two new classes all the way back in the Lord of Destruction expansion in 2001. Even though we had received the Diablo 2 Resurrected graphical update a bit more recently in 2021, that had most been a facelift which made a few tweaks aruound the edges of the gameplay. D2R shifted around some of the numbers on the various skills, added a few more runewords, and dumped in some additional high-end content for the heavy grinders. But for the most part, D2R had simply been a prettier version of the same game we had been playing for decades. There hadn't been any truly *NEW* content for Diablo 2 in decades and there was no reason to believe that there ever would be.
In retrospect, we all probably should have anticipated that Blizzard would want to release downloadable content for Diablo 2. I mean, why wouldn't they? D2 has remained a very popular game despite the passage of time and several additional sequel titles, and if the public was willing to pay for the D2R update, it was obviously worthwhile to spend enough developer attention to pull in more revenue for a genuinely new class. That class was of course the Warlock, who released in a comically overpowered state (which I have no doubt was fully intentional) before getting nerfed down to a more reasonable state a few months after release. I could see that this was going to happen and held off on playing the Warlock for a little while to let the initial surge of enthusiasm die down, wanting to get a better feel for the class when it wasn't basking in the glow of its celebratory release. But in any case, it's been five months since Reign of the Warlock came out as I'm writing this in July 2026, so let's take our first look at the new student in class.
The Warlock was designed to be flexible so that players who favor different playstyles would all be interested in trying their hand at this character. There's a direct spellcasting path in the Chaos tree (which features fire and magic elements), a physical damage route in the Eldritch tree for players who like to mix things up in melee combat, and then a group of summoning skills in the Demon tree. That last set of skills appealed to me the most, which will come as no surprise to longtime readers of this website, and also happened to be the most unique aspect of the class due to the way that the Warlock can bind hostile demons and essentially bring them over to his service. There were many, many bugs associated with the Bind Demon skill when the Reign of the Warlock DLC first came out and the skill was repeatedly nerfed over the handful of months before I created this character - the original implementation was pretty broken! It still looks like a really fun skill though and I couldn't help wanting to take it for a test drive.
Summoning Warlocks can have up to three demons in use at a time and there looks to be a number of different ways to put together a character build even within this single skill tree. Out of the four different demon summons, I decided that I didn't want to use the Summon Defiler skill as it seemed to be the least interesting. The high level Warlock guides all suggested using this skill, however they were all based around the assumption of absurd endgame gear with +25 skill points which my character would never come close to reaching. Summon Defiler binds together enemy targets and causes them to share damage taken, which again is great for really overpowered characters wanting to go into lawnmower mode and clear as fast as possible, but didn't look to be so great for what I was attempting. I would have to invest a prerequisite skill point there so I'd at least have a chance to try out the skill and see what it did in practice.
More practically though, I intended to build my Warlock around the other three summon options: Summon Goatman, Summon Tainted, and Bind Demon. The goatman reminded me of the melee skeletons from the Necromancer, good at tanking and outputing physical damage in what would hopefully be a straightforward fashion. The tainted similarly looked to be equivalent to the necromages, dealing fire element damage (oddly not lightning element) from a distance which would also helpfully make this class dual-element to get around immunities in Hell. Summon Tainted has a 20% damage synergy with the Blood Boil skill so that would also require a lot of skill points to buff up the strength of the tainted minion. Bind Demon would be the wildcard skill, taking control of enemy demons and using them as the third summon option, something I didn't even really know how it would work before starting. All of these scale off the Demonic Mastery passive skill (again clearly inspired by the Necromancer's Skeletal Mastery) which would need to be maxed as it increased summon attack rating, attack speed, and damage output. There's not enough skill points to max all of these, therefore I planned to put the full 20 points in Demonic Mastery, Summon Tainted, and Bind Demon (since the skill requires full base skill points to unlock some of its features) while leaving Summon Goatman and Blood Boil around SLVL 15. That's as far as I expected to get and I could max out those last two skills if I somehow ended up with more XP than normal.
In terms of equipment, this spellcasting Warlock would mostly look similar to other character builds that I've done. Spirit sword because it outclasses everything else in the weapon slot, Stealth armor, Lore helmet, then gamble for +skills items in the amulet and circlet slots eventually, etc. The biggest change is that the Reign of the Warlock DLC introduced a few new runewords, and there's a Warlock-specific armor named Authority which is very easy to make (Hel / Shael / Ral) which grants +2 Warlock skill levels along with 20% faster hit recovery and 30% fire resistance. That last bit of resistance even combos nicely with a Spirit shield runeword (which lacks fire resistance but has the other three types) should I decided to invest enough Strength to equip a Monarch shield. Another change in this DLC is that daggers now contain +skills for the Warlock class, like how wands have them for the Necromancer, and a new class-specific shield called the grimoire just like the Necromancer's shrunken heads. A lucky drop there could turn into a Splendor runeword and remove the need for all that Strength on a Spirit shield, we'll have to see. Theoretically I could get up to +10 Warlock skills for SLVL 30 abilities which should be more than enough.
As usual for my characters, I intend to do a single pass through the game while full clearing each area one time through. I'll have to make use of what I find along the way without repeating areas or trading/twinking/sharing gear. I've always felt that Diablo 2 is much more interesting when each character has to come up with their own stuff rather than pooling it all together and god-moding new characters past every challenge. I'll also be able to play in offline Single Player mode which should reduce issues that can pop up from lag and disconnects when running online characters on the Blizzard servers. I still don't trust Diablo 2 Resurrected enough to create a Hardcore character but I'll do my best to clear the whole game deathless and let readers know if I fall short of that goal (as I've done with several previous characters).
The name for this Warlock was pretty straightforward, taken from the Faust legend about the academic figure who signed away his soul to a demon in exchange for power. There are a bunch of different transliterations of this name from the German original and I decided that I liked the Latinized version of "Faustus" the most. I also gave him the German title of "Doktor", which is more of an academic title than a medical one, as a way of distinguishing the character a bit. Hopefully he'll be able to avoid getting dragged down to hell by his own demonic summons!
