Heroes Of The Storm’s First Expansion Adds More Diablo Goodness

Heroes of the Storm has been officially out for a good two weeks now, and that's apparently the right amount of time to wait before releasing its first expansion pack. This new expansion, dubbed Eternal Conflict, will focus solely on the addition of heroes from the Diablo universe. This expansion had been announced a while back, but apart from The Butcher and a new map, not much else was known. Two more heroes have been announced so far, but from the trailer that was released at E3, we can definitely expect more in the next couple of months. [youtube id="-RYw5wAKKc0" width="600" height="300"] After the heavy hero that is The Butcher, King Leoric the Skeleton King joins the eternal struggle for the heart of the Nexus. What makes Leoric such a massively important addition to the game is that he can, essentially, not die. I don't mean it in a "he's indestructible" way, even though I do think it'll take a lot to bring him down, I mean it in a "he never actually leaves the battlefield" way. When you finally bring Leoric to his untimely demise, he doesn't disappear and respawn at his base, he instead turns into a Wraith. If any Evolve players are reading this, you know that anything called a Wraith can only mean trouble. And that's exactly what's happening here; in wraith form, you can't inflict damage, but the damage you would've inflicted brings down the time you have left before you respawn, and when you finally do, you simply drop in where your wraith was. I can hear someone in the back going "well, that's unfair!", maybe it is, but maybe his timer is double the length of a normal hero's? We'll have to wait until launch to find out. The abilities Leoric has can either make him a control hero or a massive tank. To achieve the latter, he has an ability called March of the Black King, this allows him to become unstoppable while he marches forward, swinging his weapon as he goes. This not only inflicts massive amounts of damage, but it heals him with every hit landed. His control ability, Entombed, is slightly more tame, as he simply traps an enemy hero in one spot. Similar to Brightwing's Polymorph ability, Entombed transforms the enemy hero into an actual tomb for the remainder of the ability's effect. After the announcement of King Leoric, The Monk was said to be in development, as well. From the trailer you can see he can leap forward to attack enemies, but he can also leap back to heal allies, so he joins the likes of LiLi as a support character. What makes the Monk extra special is the fact that he will be able to choose his own ability at the start of each match. This will set the tone for the rest of the match, as he'll either be damage or healing oriented, and this will obviously dictate the traits that will be available to you during the match. Apart from the two heroes, the Treasure Goblin from Diablo 3 (I hate that guy, actually) will apparently be making an appearance at the start of each match. Killing him will give your team extra gold, which is a weird addition as Heroes of the Storm doesn't use gold in its gameplay. Maybe a more Dota/LoL/Smite-like gold feature will be added as well? We'll have to wait until the 30th of June (it's so close!) to find out for sure.