Diablo Immortal Interview - Blizzard on Adding the Druid as the Ninth Playable Class

We sit down with Diablo Immortal's developers to talk about the new Druid class and how it differs from the Druids we've seen before.

Diablo fans have been eating well in recent years, thanks to the return of the all-time classic Diablo 2 with Diablo II: Resurrected, the long awaited debut of Diablo IV (which has already received its first of multiple planned expansions), and the free-to-play Diablo Immortal designed for on-the-go devices like smartphones and tablets.

In 2025, Diablo Immortal is a more polished and expansive experience than it was when players first encountered it in 2022. And with the arrival of the game’s ninth playable class this week, in the form of the Druid, it’s something that action RPG and Diablo fans should check out or dive back into. With high production values, new story content, and hours of dungeons and demon-slaying action on offer, it’s impressive how much free stuff you have access to.

And how much fun it is to transform into a Werewolf and wreak havoc on a group of enemies.

Ahead of the Druid’s debut in Diablo Immortal, we got the chance to sit down with Ryan Quinn, Senior Narrative Designer, and John Yoo, Lead Systems Designer, at Blizzard, to talk about Werewolves, Werebears, and all things Diablo Immortal. From insight into designing a new class (via bringing back a franchise staple) to the secret sauce that makes Diablo so much fun to play.

 

Diablo Immortal

Genre: Action RPG
Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
Publisher: Activision Blizzard
Release Date: Initially 2022 with Ongoing Updates and Seasons
Classification: M
Author: Kosta Andreadis
Date: July 01, 2025

New and Familiar

The Druid is already a playable class in Diablo 2 and Diablo 4, which means there’s a lot of existing material to draw from. However, for the Immortal team, it’s take on a Diablo staple still needed to feel different, and new. This led to the addition of new transformation or shapeshifting skills that call upon new creatures, such as Stags and Ravens, while also maintaining the core Werewolf and Werebear forms that have defined the class for decades.

"We knew right away that we had to keep our Druid inherently familiar, but at the same time make it unique and diverse in our own game."

“The Druid was a lot more difficult for us to develop than the other two classes, because the Blood Night and the Tempest were new to the franchise, so it was kind of a blue-sky approach,” John Yoo tells me. “We can think of whatever we want in terms of their skill set and how they play, and it's all based around the narrative behind what those classes are. The Druid had a rich history, lore, and, most of all, an expectation. We knew right away that we had to keep our Druid inherently familiar, but at the same time make it unique and diverse in our own game.”

Of Werewolves, Werebears, and Stags

“It was a huge challenge trying to figure out what new transformations we could do to push the envelope,” John Yoo continues. “How can we make our transformations feel more impactful and visceral than those of Druids in the past? And how do we add new elements to their arsenal that people have never experienced, but at the same time make people recognise that this is still the familiar Druid that they love? I'd say it was challenging, but the team knocked it out of the park on all fronts.”

"There are elements of Diablo 2 that we felt like we couldn't jettison in the interest of being weird or fresh. We’ve got to have the Werewolf and the Werebear."

Of course, this process required several stages of testing and iteration. For example, the new Stag ability that has you leap a few times and knockback enemies in a big final ground slam went through various iterations to feel “right”, with the initial version looking more like an out-of-place bouncing deer. The team even toyed with adding Dire Boars, but they ultimately decided that they looked weird and not as cool as summoning a pack of wolves.

“We talk about Immortal as the sequel to Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction,” Ryan Quinn says. “On the creative side, it's crucial for us to strike a balance between the new and the familiar. We want you to be able to look at this character's silhouette. We want you to be able to see their abilities and go, okay, that's a Druid. There are elements of Diablo 2 that we felt like we couldn't jettison in the interest of being weird or fresh. We’ve got to have the Werewolf and the Werebear.”

“With Diablo Immortal running on multiple platforms, including mobile, we tend to think a lot about fluidity and doing big movements, big skills with a single action,” Ryan adds. “And so, that made us feel like we could take the classic Diablo Druid and add enough newness and uniqueness so that it didn't feel like we were just giving you another copy of the Druid in Diablo 2 and Diablo 4. Which we love, but we can't just do the same thing. We also want people to be able to play and enjoy every Diablo game at once. And so it doesn't serve the player base just to give you something that we have already given you.”

The Difficulty of Designing a New Class for All Players

Here’s the thing: all Diablo players have their favourite or go-to classes. In Diablo 4, for me, it’s the Rogue and Barbarian, and when I jumped into Diablo Immortal for the first time in 2022, it was Demon Hunter - my favourite class from Diablo 3. This is a roundabout way of saying that adding a new class to an action RPG in the Diablo franchise is exciting, and something that a lot of players, like me, love playing around with, even if we have our faves. 

"That's the biggest challenge with game design in general, trying to build content that is suitable for a wide variety of players, whether somebody is casual, midcore, or hardcore."

But, on top of this, you’ve also got players who have never tried a Druid before, or maybe this is their first time jumping into Diablo Immortal. Essentially, these are all things that are taken into account when designing a new playable class for an established game.

“That's the biggest challenge with game design in general, trying to build content that is suitable for a wide variety of players, whether somebody is casual, midcore, or hardcore,” John Yoo says. “And it all revolves around that time-old phrase, ‘easy to learn, difficult to master.’ And with that, we want to make sure that the Druid is easy to pick up for players who are brand new to the experience, who have never played a Druid before. It’s possible to be a casual Druid and just stick to one branch and stay in bear form and say, ‘I love bear form, I love being a bear, and I just like the weightiness that comes with it.’ 

“But, we also support people who want to be more proactive about their build, players who want to eek out every single DPS they can,” John adds. “That means managing your cooldowns and swapping in and out of your different forms, as well as managing your Primal Power. The big thing is we wanted to make sure that we were providing a little bit of something for everybody, and when we had an internal play test with hardcore and casual players people enjoyed the Druid because we were building a class that was visceral and fun for all the different types of playstyles that we have.” 

The secret sauce for Diablo is its fun combat

‘How does it feel to play?’ is a question that comes up a lot when trying to describe a game like Diablo. The short answer is that it’s fun, and the immediacy of the real-time combat exponentially increases the ‘fun factor’ to a point where you can see why millions of gamers sink dozens or hundreds of hours into a Diablo or Diablo-style action RPG.

"We iterated on it several times, and we even discussed cutting it all together, but we reached a point where we could see it working. Sometimes it’s a leap of faith."

When it comes to Diablo, however, the weightiness of combat, the animation, the impact of skills and magic that you can feel, and how enemies fall into a pile of loot, is in and of itself the secret sauce that makes entries like Diablo Immortal so much fun to play. And the fact that each class, skill, and ability can achieve this feeling is nothing short of impressive.

But it takes a lot of work to reach that point, with a team of designers, artists, and others, iterating until everything just clicks into place.

“We iterated a lot on trying to make sure that the Werebear felt heavy, felt powerful, and there are a lot of minor tweaks that we can do to get it to feel that way,” John You explains. “However, the reality is that we want it to be mostly invisible to the player. We don't want them to notice, ‘Oh, there's camera shaking happening here, that's happening here.’ We don't want people to notice anything. We just want people to experience and live it. That's the key part about what we're trying to do. We're trying to create a fantasy.”

“When people change into Werewolf form, they feel faster,” John adds. “They feel like they're attacking, slashing, and executing enemies. They feel very, very different. We don't want the transformation just to be a visual change. It needs to come with substance, and the substance comes with being in that form.”

“And the Werebear form, compared to the Werewolf form, needs to feel viscerally different,” John continues. “It's critical because if we don't get that right, it feels off. When we were iterating on the Stag ability, the first iteration felt off. It felt whimsical, which was not the intended effect. We iterated on it several times, and we even discussed cutting it all together, but we reached a point where we could see it working. Sometimes it’s a leap of faith.”

Of course, finding and equipping Legendary Gear is the icing on the cake

Naturally, being an action RPG with stats and items and gear and loot, Diablo Immortal is also all about the journey of creating and building an unstoppable demon-slaying machine decked out in transformative Legendary gear. Stuff that can take one ability and recontextualize how you view a class.

"I like those transformative Legendaries. They can't all be like that, but when it changes the nature of how you use an ability, to me, that’s the joy of Diablo."

And with that, we ended our interview by asking the team if there are any Druid-specific Legendaries that they’re fond of.

“I'll just shout out my favourite piece of Druid legendary gear,” Ryan Quinn chimes in. “The Bar-Ghaist Beacon lets you set your wolves on fire in a good way. They don't mind it. And it's really fun, evocative, looks great, visually cool, but very much on kit."

"We've also got an item that turns your Oak Sage into a homing missile," Ryan Quinn concludes. "This is a skill focused on defence, but with this item equipped, it becomes a ticking time bomb. I like those transformative Legendaries. They can't all be like that, but when it changes the nature of how you use an ability, to me, that’s the joy of Diablo. It's the idea that you can take one item and find your playstyle completely revolutionised.”

About the author

Written By Kosta Andreadis
Kosta Andreadis is a veteran gaming and technology writer with decades of experience across news, reviews, and in-depth articles. Between Diablo seasons, he can be found creating new electronic jams (music, not the digital condiment) and tinkering with retro gaming hardware.
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