It's been around three months now since Blizzard revealed the "Rise of the Necromancer" expansion for "Diablo 3" during Blizzcon. January 2017 also saw a live Blizzard Q&A session that focused solely on the Necromancer as a playable character. Now that "The Darkening of Tristram" has passed and patch 2.5.0 live, the focus has shifted back to Diablo 3's summoner.

Priests of Rathma

While not many details have been revealed about D3's Necromancer, Blizzard's overview gives a good deal of information behind the lore and what to expect with the class. What most fans want to know is the release date and price of the "Rise of the Necromancer" DLC.

Sadly, these were not given during Blizzard's Live Q&A, as community manager Brandy Camel said both just aren't ready for public reveal. However, there are some highly plausible speculations right now regarding price.

'Reaper of Souls' at $19.99, 'Necromancer' Could be Cheaper

The "Rise of the Necromancer" DLC could potentially retail at the same price as the "Reaper of Souls" expansion: $19.99. However, according to Mic, it's more than likely that the upcoming expansion won't be as expensive.

For $19.99, "Reaper of Souls" added the new Crusader class, as well as a fifth game Act for story mode. It also introduced a brand new Adventure Mode, which enabled players to freely explore the "Diablo 3" world.

Going back to the overview, the Necromancer DLC unlocks the Necromancer as a playable character, adds two additional character slots, a portrait frame, pennant, banner, and banner sigil. All players receive an in-game pet, but only PC players will get two additional stash tabs.

Exciting enough, but the Necromancer expansion doesn't add as much as the previous one. Mic pushes the price down to a more budget-friendly $9.99, which seems reasonable.

Post-Summer Release?

Fan speculations slate the Necromancer release date for August or September 2017.  Following one thread in particular on the forum, one user mentions how the Armory patch, or patch 2.5, is expected to come out during summer 2017. The Necromancer is evidently expected to follow shortly thereafter with a post-summer release.

As this guess is based on previous "Diablo 3" patch releases and little else, it doesn't hold much weight. Without official word from Blizzard either, it looks like fans will have to make do with speculations for now. Regardless of release date, there's no denying that "Diablo 3: Rise of the Necromancer" is one of 2017's highly-anticipated releases.