Holy Sanguinary Class Design
March 2024
March 2024
This is a passion project for a new class design within Diablo 4, an action RPG made by Blizzard Entertainment. Diablo is a franchise based around the conflict of Heaven and Hell, but Diablo 4 is the only title in the series that doesn't have a holy themed character.
So I decided to take time designing a twist on one with some design constraints in mind:
Must use holy magic
Must have unique gameplay from existing D4 classes.
Isn't a purely good character.
I designed the Holy Sanguinary, an excommunicated Priest of the Cathedral of Light with an innate attunement to blood magic. The Sanguinary utilizes blood as a resource they harvest from enemies to unleash deadly spell attacks.
To show off conceptually what some of the abilities could potentially look like, I created prototypes of the Sanguinary where it can generate and spend resources with it's unique abilities.
A generator is an ability that generates resources for a character to spend. For the Holy Sanguinary, their resource is Blood and it can be generated whenever an enemy is hit with Blood Slash.
Spenders utilize a resource that has been generated. In this case, Holy Nova costs blood and deals damage to enemies around the Holy Sanguinary.
Diablo abilities are grouped in clusters based on what they do
Sanguinary Clusters are: Basic, Core, Defensive, Outcast, Carnage, and Ultimate
Basic abilities generate Blood as a resource for the Sanguinary
Core abilites use blood to deal heavy damage to enemies.
Carnage abilities deal heavy damage at either a high Blood cost or a cooldown.
The Sanguinary can get up close and personal, with builds focused around slashing your enemies with blood and expelling it to deal massive damage.
The Sanguinary has a host of ranged abilities in its arsenal to destroy enemies from afar, allowing them to play at a safe distance
The Sanguinary has options that uses the blood harvested from enemies to heal themselves and allies. In Multiplayer, you could be the support of your group, healing and buffing your teammates.