Game intel
Diablo II: Resurrected
Diablo II: Resurrected breathes new life into Blizzard Entertainment’s acclaimed ARPG and its expansion, Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, from beginning to end.…
This caught my attention because Diablo II: Resurrected is the kind of game whose balance was treated like archaeology for decades – and then Blizzard dropped a paid expansion in 2026 that immediately rewrote the rules. The new Warlock class from Reign of the Warlock has sprinted to the front of Season 13 ladders thanks to Echoing Strike builds that behave like a physical shotgun: blistering area damage, immunity-agnostic output, and surprisingly fast scaling into endgame.
The Echoing Strike build is the simple story to tell: it fires physical projectiles in a wide, shotgun-like pattern that bypasses many of Diablo II’s classic elemental immunity headaches. Because it deals primarily physical damage, it sidesteps the “monster immune to X” problems that have forced many older builds into narrow optimization. Add passive pet auras and the Warlock’s fast level curve, and you have a setup that trivializes some of the newest endgame encounters introduced by the expansion.
Multiple outlets and community threads have documented how ladder runners are leaning Warlock for the rush to level 99 – so much so that Blizzard ran a promotion to immortalize the first 300 Hardcore Warlocks to hit level 99 on a statue at its Irvine campus, an event that kicked off with Season 13’s February 20 launch. That prize underscores how Blizzard is leaning into the expansion even as debate swirls.
The reaction has been predictably loud. Reddit threads and forum posts are split between players demanding nerfs for Warlock builds that “make content feel trivial” and those noting older melee classes already struggle to compete in the live-service-style ecosystem the expansion implies. Massively Overpowered cataloged this push-and-pull: many players want a hammer to come down, while others point out broader balance issues that predate the Warlock.
Adding another layer: Path of Exile co-creator Chris Wilson’s public commentary has been read two ways. Some outlets quote Wilson defending Blizzard’s choice to keep Reign of the Warlock changes gated behind a paid expansion — preserving the base game as a “museum” era — while other write-ups highlight his criticism that presenting the expansion without a new act or a clearer value proposition was “a strategic mistake.” In short: respected devs see both merit in preserving the original experience and legitimate questions about how Blizzard packaged this expansion.
If you’re logging Season 13 on PC or consoles, expect two things: a lot of Warlocks, and a loud conversation about balance. Other classes like Sorceress and Paladin haven’t vanished — they’re still viable — but tournament-style and ladder-toppling runs are leaning heavily on Warlock builds right now. That will affect group composition, auction-house economies (if you’re into trading), and the early meta discovery window where guides and gear paths get locked in.
Blizzard hasn’t yet pushed a balancing hotfix, and they’ve signaled future expansions may depend on player feedback. That gives the studio room to nudge Warlocks down if community outcry becomes technical and sustained, or to leave things be and let the meta settle naturally. Either way, this feels like a watershed moment: a 25-year-old game behaving like a present-day live service — and gamers are already deciding whether that’s a healthy evolution.
Warlocks from the surprise Reign of the Warlock expansion have reshaped Diablo II: Resurrected’s meta at Season 13 launch. Echoing Strike builds are the early kingmakers thanks to physical, shotgun-style damage and fast scaling; the community is split between calls for nerfs and arguments for preserving the original game experience, and Blizzard has yet to patch the class.
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