Diablo 4’s first season, Season of the Malignant has just launched. Before you dive into the new Seasonal content, here are the changes and additions you need to know about.
How to Access the Seasonal Content
Before we dive into the new content, we’ll just clear up how Season Content works n Diablo 4 and how you can access it.
Currently, A Post-Campaign Character in the Seasonal Realm is required to participate in Seasonal Content. This means you’ll be unable to progress the Battle Pass, Season Journey, or Seasonal Storyline without one.
Completing the Campaign can be done in the season if it’s your first time in Diablo 4, or if you’ve played previously, Eternal Realm Characters will also enable you to skip the campaign. You’ll only ever need to complete the campaign one time, and this will be available for all future seasons.
It’s also worth noting that any past progress any characters have made on collecting the Altars of Lilith or clearing the Fog of War from the map will carry over. This contributes a fair bit to Regional Renown. For additional information regarding the Renown system, check out our Renown Guide.
If you want to learn more about how Seasons work, we have a full guide detailing everything you need to know about Diablo 4’s Seasons. It covers everything in much more detail, including all the ways you can prepare your account for future seasons.
What’s New in the Season of the Malignant
Below is a quick recap of what’s new to Diablo 4 in the Season of the Malignant. The Season of the Malignant begins on July 20th, 2023, and is expected to end in October 2023.
Seasonal Story
The Seasonal Story follows Cormand, an ex-priest for the Church of Light as he seeks out information regarding the Malignant and how to fight them. This story goes in-depth on how the Malignant came to be, and the lore surrounding them.
Malignant Elites
The Season of the Malignant adds additional new Elites, known as Malignant Elites. These powerful foes drop a Malignant Heart on death, giving you an opportunity to use a new Consumable called a Cage of Binding to capture their power for yourself through a special ritual.
Malignant Hearts
After successfully completing a ritual and caging the Malignant Heart, they function like Gems. Malignant Hearts are able to be socketed into gear; however, unlike Gems, these have special color-coded sockets that pair with them and can only be placed in the proper color Infested Socket.
Each type of Heart above has its own color that it uses and a specific category of effect. Wrathful Hearts are special because they don’t have their own dedicated Infested Sockets, instead using any Infested Socket. Below is a table of all 32 Malignant Heart effects you’ll be able to find.
Note: The table below is best viewed on a large screen. If you are browsing on a phone, turn it horizontally for a moment.
| Type | Class | Name | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brutal | All | Lionheart | Gain 10% increased Barrier Generation, heal for X Life per second while you have a Barrier. |
| Brutal | All | Prudent Heart | You become Immune for 2-4 seconds after losing more than 20% Life in a single hit. This effect can only happen once every 110 seconds |
| Brutal | All | Revenge | 10-20% of Incoming damage is suppressed. When you use a Defensive, Subterfuge, or a Macabre Skill; suppressed damage is amplified by 250% and explodes as fire damage, hitting nearby enemies. |
| Brutal | Barbarian | Resurgent Life | While below 40-60% Life, increase healing from all sources by 50-60%. |
| Brutal | Druid | Agitated Winds | When 8-13 enemies are close, automatically cast Cyclone Armor. This effect can only happen every 10-20 Seconds. |
| Brutal | Necromancer | Decrepit Aura | When 5 enemies are near you, gain an aura that automatically curses surrounding enemies with Decrepify for 5-15 Seconds. |
| Brutal | Rogue | Trickery | When you use a Subterfuge Skill, leave behind an unstable Shadow Decoy Trap that taunts enemies. The decoy explodes after 6 seconds, dealing X Shadow Damage. |
| Brutal | Sorcerer | Spellbreaking | After taking Elemental Damage, gain x20-40% Resistance to that element for 5 Seconds. |
| Devious | All | Calculated | After spending 150-200 of your Resource, your next attack stuns enemies for X Seconds |
| Devious | All | Determination | Resource-draining effects are reduced by 40-50%. Additionally, gain x3-8% increased Resource Generation |
| Devious | All | Retaliation | Deal X Fire damage to surrounding enemies whenever a Crowd Control effect is removed from you. |
| Devious | Barbarian | Punishing Speed | Your skills have a 20-30% to knock down all enemies for 1.25 seconds when that Skill’s Attack Speed is higher than 20-35% |
| Devious | Druid | Inexorable Force | Up to 30-50 Distance Enemies are pulled toward you while you have an Ultimate Skill Active. |
| Devious | Necromancer | Frozen Terror | Lucky Hit: up to 5-20% chance of inflicting Fear for 1.5 seconds. Feared Enemies are chilled for 20% every second. |
| Devious | Rogue | Clipshot | Lucky Hit: up to 20-40% Chance for your Cutthroat Skills to Slow by 40% for X Seconds and for your Marksman Skills to knockback. |
| Devious | Sorcerer | Spite | When you are afflicted with Crowd Control, there is a 20-40% chance for the enemy that inflicted it and all nearby enemies to be afflicted with the same effect for 1 second. |
| Vicious | All | Dark Dance | Every 5 Seconds while above 60% Life, Skills cost Life instead of your Primary Resource. Skills that consume Life deal 15-20% increased damage. |
| Vicious | All | Picana | Critical Strikes electrically charge the enemy for 0.75 – 2.5 seconds, causing lightning to arc between them and any other charged enemies dealing X Lightning damage. |
| Vicious | All | Tempting Fate | You gain +40-60% Critical Strike Damage but your Non-Critical Strikes deal 15-20% less damage. |
| Vicious | Barbarian | Focused Rage | After spending 60-100 Fury within 2 seconds, your next Non-Basic Skill’s Critical Strike Chance is increased by 20-30% |
| Vicious | Druid | Moonrage | Kills have a 5% chance to summon a Wolf Companion to your side for 20-30 seconds. In addition, gain +3 Levels to Wolves. |
| Vicious | Necromancer | Sacrilegious | Walking near a Corpse automatically activates an equipped Corpse Skill every second, dealing 30-40% reduced damage. |
| Vicious | Rogue | Cluster Munitions | Lucky Hit: You have up to a 20% chance to launch 1 Stun Grenade that deals X Physical damage and Stun enemies for Y seconds. |
| Vicious | Sorcerer | Tal’Rasha | For each unique element you deal damage with, you deal x7-12% increased damage for 1-7 seconds. |
| Wrathful | All | Malignant Pact | Cycle through a Malignant bonus every 20 kills: Vicious: Gain 20% Attack Speed. Devious: Core and Basic Skills have a 15% chance to fully restore your Primary Resource. Brutal: Every 21 seconds, gain a Barrier absorbing X damage. |
| Wrathful | All | The Barber | Critical Strikes and all subsequent damage within 2-4 seconds is absorbed by your target. Then, the absorbed damage erupts onto surrounding enemies. Stored damage is increased by x10% per second. |
| Wrathful | All | Creeping Death | Your damage over time effects are increased by x30-40% for each different Crowd Control effect on the target. Unstoppable monsters and Staggered bosses instead take x110-130% increased damage from your damage over time effects. |
| Wrathful | Barbarian | Ignoring Pain | Incoming damage has a 5-15% chance of being ignored and instead Healing you for X Life. |
| Wrathful | Druid | Unconstrained Beast | When you are hit with a Stun, Freeze, or Knock Down effect, there is a 40-60% chance to automatically activate Grizzly Rage for 1 second. |
| Wrathful | Necromancer | Great Feast | Each Minion drains 1-2 Essence per second but deals x50-75% increased damage. With no Minions, this bonus applies to you and drains 5 Essence per second. |
| Wrathful | Rogue | Vile Apothecary | Your attacks have a 5-15% chance to apply all Imbuement effects at x40-50% of normal potency. |
| Wrathful | Sorcerer | Omnipower | Core Skills that launch a projectile consume all of your Mana. For every 35-45 extra Mana consumed, you launch an additional projectile and the damage is increased by 3-5%. |
Invokers and Malignant Tunnels
Breaking down Malignant Hearts of any variety and defeating Malignant Elites will award you with Ichor matched to that type of heart. This Ichor can be brought to Cormand who can turn it into Invokers. Ichor can also Exchange this Ichor directly for the three basic types of hearts.
Malignant Invokers are special consumables that are used in Malignant Tunnels to claim new hearts. Which hearts spawn in the Malignant Tunnels are random a bit random, but you’ll be able to claim a new Malignant Heart if you have a matching Invoker by defeating the Malignant Elite it spawns.
Malignant Tunnels are new mini-dungeons, somewhere between the size of a normal dungeon and a cellar. These special dungeons contain Malignant Outgrowths, this Outgrowth will always spawn with a Wrathful (White) Heart, and a second color is chosen at random.
New Items and Balance Changes
As with any big patch, Update 1.1.0 came with some new goodies for players in both the Eternal and Seasonal Realm. There are 6 new Unique Items, 7 new Legendary Aspects, and a whole heap of balance changes. Every class and something new to mess with or try.
This patch changes balance quite significantly Most classes got buffs across the board, save for Sorcerer and Druid who also took some hits in the process. We cover the big parts of the patch and our thought in our Update 1.1 Changes Overview and Patch Notes.
We’ll also be updating all of the builds across the site so you can continue to enjoy your favorite builds.
