The Druid

In short, the Druid's a Necromancer.  But, he's also a Barbarian.  No, wait, he's a Sorceress.  In fact, he's something in between all three.

It's unlikely that a long-term playing Druid would have points in all three trees.  The stronger Druids will probably develop two of the three trees to avoid spreading too thin.  Druids gain 2 hit points per life and 2 mana points per energy.  It might seem that they're not getting enough hit points because of this, but you have to see what shape shifting can do...

The Druid Summoning Tree

A Necromancer has to ability to control an entire army.  A Druid doesn't work like that.  He uses a limited number of summoned creatures more effectively than a Necromancer to have a more elite fighting force.  In order to make up for a lesser number of minions, he uses support summons - vines and spirits - to enhance his creatures and killing power.  The strategy involved in keeping your weaker vines and spirits alive while battling the enemy will be the challenging part of playing a Druid with this tree.  Down the left side are the spirits, ghost-like entities that you summon to power up you and your minions.  On the middle column are the summons, which start with Ravens and proceed to wolves and bears.  Then, along the right side are the vines, plants which assist you in offense and defense.  All of these are killable by your enemies.  In fact, the vines were especially vulnerable to attacks; keeping them safe from harm was a challenge.

The Spirits
Spirits follow you and your party.  Ghostlike beings, they hover in the air and try to get out of the way when there's action.  They have no actual attack power themselves, but they boost you and your minions - think of them as mobile aura producers.  There are 3 spirits which assist you against evil.  At level 6, you gain the chance to have the Spirit of Barbs.  It's basically a thorns aura.  Additional levels in this spirit increase the damage returned to the monsters as they attack you.

The next spirit isn't obtainable until level 18, when the Heart of Wolverine becomes available.  It has one purpose: to raise AR.  This is very useful if you decide to go one shape shifting route - more on that later.

Finally, the level 30 spirit is Oak Sage, a powerful spirit which adds a percentage of hit points to your party.  The usefulness of this spirit is clear - if used in conjunction with other Druid skills, the amount of life obtainable is very impressive.

The Summons
At level 1, the Druid gains the ability to summon Ravens, small birds which peck at the eyes of their foes.  These are the equivalent of Necromancer skeletons: useful early on but quickly losing their ability to do damage against tougher enemies.  They dart back and forth and are great distractions to your enemies.  Interestingly, they last a specific number of hits before disappearing instead of just staying around until death.  You also don't get an extra Raven per skill point - instead, an additional Raven is awarded you on the 4th or 5th point (and that's how the wolves in the tree work as well).

At level 6, you obtain Spirit Wolf, a wolf that was listed as having a "teleport ability," although I didn't see it happen myself.

The later skills in the column include a more powerful wolf form and a grizzly bear, of which you only get one - however, it has high hit points and damage (and stuns its enemies).

The Vines
Another support creature along with spirits, the vines dig around the ground.  When they surface, they're highly vulnerable to attack, and die quickly.  The more confusion in a battle, the greater the opportunity for a vine to perform its function.  At level 1, you obtain the Plague Poppy, which is a basic poisoner vine.  The name of the vine doesn't exactly inspire fear, so it might be changed by release.  Next up is the Cycle of Life at clvl 12, an interesting vine which eats up corpses to give 5% of your life back to you per corpse.

The final vine wasn't working in the build I was playing.

The Druid Shape Shifting Tree

This tree is divided into the Bear and Wolf shapes.  The artwork for this tree was out of synch with the code in the build we played, so it was kind of a mess to look at - the recent expulsion of the Condor shape had left this tree all out of whack, with arrows that pointed to nothing, skill boxes appearing in wrong places, and even completely blank skills appearing in the tree.  The skills in this tree are highly subject to change, so I'll stick to generalities.  When you shape shift, you enhance what you're currently wearing.  You always want to make sure you have your best items on before you shift shape - make sure you have the best set of weapon/shield (yes, you can block from your shield even in a shifted shape).  What I didn't have a chance to test is if increased attack speed on weapons pays off while in shifted form.  Also, if you're in wolf form, you can't summon bears, and if you're in bear form, you can't summon wolves.  Each form has its own skills to boost your attacks and abilities while shifted, and they're not compatible between forms.

At level 1 you have access to the shape changing mastery and the wolf shape.  You can't get the bear shape until clvl 6.  The mastery adds to the hit points and duration of your metamorphosis.  As an example of how extreme this can get, I took a Druid to level 20 mastery and level 20 bear shape, and he had almost 2000 hit points (at only 60 vitality, too)!  Imagine that with an Oak Sage spirit...now you see why 2 hit points per life isn't too little. 

This is the skill tree that resembles Barbarianism.  With boosted damage, hit points, AR, and other effects that provide life steal, a Druid can turn from a wuss-like Necromancer to a deadly demon-basher.  However, if he wants to, he could go a completely different route and deal magic-induced destruction...

The Druid Elemental Tree

Want to be a Sorceress?  Well, it's not exactly the same thing, but then again Sorceresses don't get to have minions boosting their abilities and defending them from monster hordes.  A Druid can ditch the shape shifting and become a spellcaster.  The two trees are really incompatible; you can't cast these elemental spells while in a shifted shape.  The tree is divided into fire and wind skills.  Fire runs down the left side while the Wind skills run down the right.  One of the interesting design issues with these skills is that you can't cast them continuously like a Sorceress can, blanketing a screen with her destruction.  Instead, there is a delay period built in after you cast a spell (I'd say around 4 seconds).  This is done because all of these skills have lingering effect animations, and to prevent mass spamming of a skill.  Thus, the skill box turns red after you cast a skill until the time period is up and you're free to cast again.  As you can see from the shot, the last two skills in the tree weren't working yet and were unavailable in the build we played.

The Fire Skills
First up, as you can see right from the shot, is Firestorm, a skill which acts much like Diablo's fire tendrils.  Two lines of fire extend out to burn monsters in two directions.  This skill is available right from level 1 and looks like a typical level 1 skill - powerful early on but limited in the long run.

Next, at level 12, is Eruption.  Eruption causes the ground to literally fall out from under the enemy, letting hot fire rise from the pit of Hell to burn your enemy.  It sounds cooler (pun intended) than it looks, but the look of the spell is being worked on.  It appears to be, in essence, a large area of effect fire skill.

At level 24, we have Volcano - little is known about this skill, and even less about the ultimate skill in the tree, the level 30 required "Armageddon."  It requires every other skill in the tree and wasn't working in the build we were playing.

The Wind Skills
The far side of the skill tree is composed of the forces of wind.  At level 6, Arctic Blast provides the equivalent of Inferno.  It works very much like Inferno, but does cold damage and shoots a blue "flame."  This is one of those skills that can have far-reaching strategical advantages; if the range of the skill gets long at high levels, a Druid can stand behind his minions and "chill out," so to speak.  Might make a great party skill.

One step down is the clvl 12 required Cyclone Armor, a skill that's the tactical equivalent of the Necromancer's Bone Armor.  It reduces elemental damage instead of physical damage, however (I know a lot of Necromancer fans who wished they had that!).  This skill is a safe bet as a must-have - it even works while you're shape shifted if you cast it beforehand!

Lower skills in the tree include Twister at level 18 which releases 3 small tornadoes and Tornado at level 24 which releases one large tornado.  Finally, at level 30, is Hurricane which wasn't working in the build we played.

As you can see, this class is quite varied.  What's the best way to play him?  As a spell caster with minions to defend him?  As a death dealing shifted shape?  Should he go for high speed attacks with wolves and a wolf form, or beasts with high hit points and damage with the bear route?  Time will tell.  I had a lot of fun in the bear form, which I played for most of the day, but that's mostly because it was the first one I tried with my created Act 5 character.  Here's four more shots of the Druid in action.

The Assassin

A martial arts master, the Assassin is combat oriented, with skill required in playing her effectively.  There's lots of skill switching in the middle of a fight.  She's a very dexterous fighter who is great fighting alone or in a group; in fact, she looks like she might be able to rival a Barbarian in deadliness, even without doing as much mass damage.  She gains 3 hit points per vitality and 1.5 mana points per energy.

The Assassin possesses an inborn ability to pick locks.  She never needs keys to open locked chests!

She combines the three trees of Traps, Shadow Disciplines, and Martial Arts to have long range attacks, deadly combo moves, and passive abilities.  None of the trees alone is particularly effective, but when you combine all three you get one nasty monster-slayer...

The Assassin Trap Tree

While it's titled a "trap" tree, not every skill on this tree was what you could conventionally call a trap.  Some of these skills were grenade-like; you throw a trap and it detonates on impact.  Others were ranged attacks that fired missile style.  Some were more deadly than others, especially the ones which the femme fatal would plant on the ground to await the arrival of unsuspecting fools.

Mortal Kombat™ is the name of the game here.  This is where all the action is, and what makes the Assassin a fun and engaging character to play.  With her martial arts, the goal is to charge yourself up with continuous attacks, stacking abilities up to 3 times and then releasing one devastatingly powerful finishing move.  As you hit enemies with chargeup attacks, energies begin to swirl around your Assassin.  You can have up to three chargeups and then you can let loose with one huge attack.  The chargeups stack; you can use three different chargeups and combine their powers into your finishing blow.  However, don't confuse the chargeups with normal attacks; chargeups do not modify your normal strikes, only your finishing blow.  So, while you could use finishing blows as a standard attack, they'll be of far greater use when you combine them with two or three different chargeups.  As you can imagine, these finishing blows are devastating when used correctly, and make for great boss killers.  Also, the martial arts abilities were described as working with claw weapons and hand-to-hand combat - does this mean an Assassin will do natural hand damage?

There's no screenshot of this tree since it was still being widely tweaked; in fact, one of the level 24 skills simply read as a description "this skill will do something really cool."  Also, another level 24 skill, Dragon Breath, is apparently no longer in the game.  Mid-way through the day we were informed that the skill was removed, so this shot here might be the only one ever seen of this skill...

Chargeups
The first chargeup ability, available at level 1, is Tiger Strike.  Tiger Strike adds damage and AR to your finishing move.  This is probably one you'd look to do for every finishing move at least once, for it raises damage percentage-wise.

At level 6, the Assassin can acquire Fists of Fire, which adds a fire elemental damage component to her finishing move, along with another boost of AR.  This skill is likely to get completely replaced by the level 18 chargeup, but I'll get to that soon.

Level 12 allows the use of Cobra Strike, which - get this - adds 60%, 80%, and then 100% life steal to a finishing move!  This may seem like a lot at first glance, but remember that this life steal can only be obtained through a finishing move, and while you're powering this up you're taking damage.  Even still, I wouldn't be surprised if this ability was nerfed some before release.  The skill also, like every chargeup, adds AR.

At level 18, Blades of Ice becomes a possibility, which adds cold damage and also freezes a target with a finishing move!  Again, this would make Fists of Fire obsolete pretty fast, but then most level 18 skills beat level 6 ones.  And, of course, there's an AR boost as well.

The other chargeup abilities will be left to your imagination (hey, Blizzard has to keep a few secrets, you know).  :-)

Finishing Moves
"Finish Him!"  Those of you who have played Mortal Kombat™ can relate directly to these skills, which are used in conjunction with the chargeups to just plain embarrass your enemy.  These are what we gamers call "fun."  At level 1, Dragon Talon becomes available, which is a kick to the stomach that knocks back your enemy and provides a boost to damage and -  you got it - AR.  Think of it as Bash, and you're not far off.

Next at level 6 is Dragon Tail, a really powerful skill in the build we played.  This would knock back all enemies in a radius around the Assassin and provide fire damage to the target.  Why is this powerful?  Think of it in terms of boss killing: you kick a boss and knock it back, damage it heavily (especially if you're charged up), and knock all of its minions away from you.  And then you can keep it up without chargeups to make sure nothing gets close to you while you're taking out the boss.

The later finishing moves include one that was very dear to my heart, as it simulates a move that I made with my Diablo 1 warriors oh so often.  Also, the Dragon Breath ability was removed, so your guess is as good as mine as to what finishing moves we'll see in the final version.

My roommate loved this skill tree, and had fun playing around with all the chargeup and finishing combinations.  The best thing of all about it is the lack of a "one skill you can just abuse over and over" trick (like Whirlwind on Barbarians): if you want to be good with an Assassin, you're going to need to be ready to do quick skill switching and rapid-fire combination attacks.  However, this tree lacks in crowd control abilities (except for the knockback), and that's where the Shadow Disciplines step in...

The Assassin Shadow Disciplines Tree

In this tree are the "everything else" skills, which include various passives and group effect abilities, similar to Barbarian Warcries and Necromancer Curses.  This is the tree that is a must have for any Assassin player.  Down the left side of the tree are various passives and spells, mostly boosting your character's stats.  Along the right side are curse effects to use against your foes.  Down the middle are more utilitarian abilities.

At level 1, Claw Mastery becomes a must (at least one point - besides, you need it as a prerequisite anyhow).  Claw Mastery is a passive that raises - you guessed it - AR!  I think it's safe to say that Assassins will never have a dearth of AR, which is good because it allows her to devote more points into strength to get higher damage instead of dexterity.

On the far side of the tree at level 1 is Psychic Hammer, a warcry of sorts (except that you cast it at a monster) that stuns or converts a monster and causes a small amount of damage.  Will it do this in the final version?  Maybe not, since being able to convert at level 1 is a pretty powerful ability.

The only skill at level 6 is Cloak of Shadows, a simply GREAT curse which blinds AND amplify damage's a group of monsters.  It also looks cool, turning the screen dark if you're on an outdoor level (as if the sun was eclipsed).  This skill can make any crowd manageable and easier to kill as well.  Then the Assassin can close in and mop up the blinded mobs.

Level 12: another passive, Weapon Block, becomes a possibility, and it's another must have.  Giving the Assassin a chance to block while dual wielding, she can be free of a shield and concentrate on sheer damage output with two katars.  Yes!

Also available at level 12 is Fist of Will, a casting spell that stuns and damages a group of monsters.  It also blinds the targets (get the idea that she works under a veil of darkness?).

I'll describe one more skill in this tree: Fade.  Not a passive, it's a casting spell which raises an Assassin's resistances and lowers her enemies' curse duration (curses are shortened by a whopping 50% at level 1).  I hate to sound like a broken record, but it seems like another must-have skill, since resistances are so hard to come by and you can obtain a significant boost from just one point into the skill.  The value of this skill in a place like the Chaos Sanctuary is immense.

The other skills in this tree shall remain a mystery...for now.  Two of the remaining skills weren't working in the build we played, so I didn't see all that much more.  :)

Playing the Assassin means a lot of action.  She'll move fast, attack fast, and work in the shadows, blinding her opponents and then charging up her powers for crushing finishing moves.  Her passive weapon block ability is invaluable to her for it allows her to go all offense relatively safely.  If played well, she will rarely have to face more than 3 opponents at once, and looks to be an expert boss killer.  However, don't think she can't kill crowds quickly.  Some of the higher level traps are quite wicked.  Muhahaha! 

Excuse me.  :)

Now, follow me onward to page 3 of the Expansion Pack January Report, where you can learn of what happened at the tail end of our Blizzard trip, and the next day in beautiful San Francisco.