New Heroes of the Storm Patch Out Now Adds Monk, Freebies for Diablo 3 Players

The latest Heroes of the Storm patch is now available, and it adds a number of new things including the Monk character from Diablo III, Kharazim.

As previously detailed, Kharazim is the first support-class character in HotS from the Diablo series. He's a capable healer, though at the beginning of the match, you're free to pick a trait that allows for him to be more offensive-oriented.

Depending on your choice, every third basic attack will either heal a nearby teammate with the lowest health, deal twice as much damage, or restore some of his mana. His heroic abilities include one that makes him invulnerable and deals a large amount of damage, and another that protects a teammate from death for three seconds.

Diablo III players who log in to Heroes of the Storm anytime in the three weeks following the launch of the patch today, August 18, will get the Diablo character free in HotS. Additionally, if you reach level 70 with a season 4 character in the upcoming season of Diablo III, you'll get the new Malthael's Phantom mount in HotS (pictured above). There's also a portrait border and pennant in Diablo III that will now unlock for anyone who has reached level 12 in HotS.

Other changes in today's patch include alterations to ranked modes, the introduction of dynamic bundles (which discount their price if you own some of their contents), balance tweaks, and new AI difficulty settings.

What isn't included is the game's next map, Infernal Shrines. Although it went live on public test servers alongside this patch last week, Blizzard said to expect the map to come to the live game at some point after the patch. Infernal Shrines is a three-lane Diablo-themed map where teams fight over computer-controlled bosses who push lanes and hunt down nearby enemy players.

You can check out the full patch notes on Blizzard's website.

Other future HotS content we know about includes StarCraft's medic and Artanis, and Warcraft's Rexxar.