What Are Malignant Hearts in Diablo 4, How To Use Them, and More

Malignant Hearts will play a huge role in Season 1 of Diablo IV, so you must be wondering how they work and what they are? Rest easy, we’ll explain everything you need to know in this guide.

With Season of the Malignant just around the corner, it’s good practice to research the main mechanic of the season. Malignant Hearts represent new sources of power that you can socket into your jewellery slots. There is more than meets the eye, however, and every class has specific Hearts it can get, in addition to more general versions. Let’s take a look at what are Malignant Hearts all about in Diablo 4.

What Are Malignant Hearts and How To Use Them?

Malignant Hearts are seasonal items that can occupy a socket spot in your jewellery — your two rings and amulet. There are four colour-coded types of hearts:

• Vicious Heart: Red socket, offers offensive power.
• Brutal Heart: Blue socket, offers defensive power.
• Devious Heart: Pink socket, offers utility power.
• Wrathful Heart: Black, can fit in any socket, offers “super” powers.

Malignant Hearts can be crafted at Cormond’s camp, but more importantly, they can drop from monsters. Each defeated Malignant Monster is colour-coded with the heart colour it can drop. For example, killing a blue Malignant Monster will make it drop a Brutal Heart.

Once you have a heart in your inventory, you can socket it to a corresponding slot to gain its power. These powers can be build-altering, so make sure to check which ones work the best with your build.

How to Get Malignant Hearts?

To get Malignant Hearts, you will have to defeat Partly Corrupted monsters. These monsters will then be reborn into Fully Corrupted enemies that are more powerful than the already enhanced versions. After defeating this stronger foe, they will drop a Malignant Heart. 

You will have to use the Cage of Binding, a seasonal quest item, to perform a ritual. This ritual will finally reveal the Malignant Heart’s power and allow you to socket it.

How to Craft and Salvage Malignant Hearts

Besides dropping from monsters you kill, you’re also able to craft Malignant Hearts. To do that, visit Cormond’s wagon at his camp. Here’s where you can craft and salvage hearts. You can salvage any unwanted Malignant Hearts, with each dropping Ichor of its specific colour. Vicious, Brutal, and Devious hearts can be salvaged for 5-15 Ichor, while Wrathful hearts provide 2-5 Ichor of all other colours.

When crafting Malignant Hearts, you are able to choose the type (colour) of the heart, but the one you receive will be random, scaled to your level. You can craft them using 35 Ichor of the other two types. For instance, crafting a Vicious Heart takes 35 Brutal Ichor and 35 Devious Ichor. Fortunately, any heart you craft can be either general or specific to your class. That means that you can’t get a Druid-specific heart when crafting as a Rogue.

Full List of Malignant Hearts in Diablo 4 Season 1

There’s a total of 32 Malignant Hearts coming in Diablo’s first season. Blizzard has released the full list of Malignant Hearts that you can get. They have outlined that the stats in question refer to a character at level 20, but that as you gain levels and grow in power, so will the stats associated with each heart. Note that these items can only drop for seasonal characters, and not in the Eternal realm.

General

• The Picana (Vicious, Offensive): Critical Strikes electrically charge the enemy for 0.75-2.50 seconds, causing lightning to arc between them and any other charged enemies dealing 68-136 Lightning damage.
• The Dark Dance (Vicious, Offensive-World Tier III): Every 5 seconds while above 60% Life, Core Skills cost 68-51 Life instead of your Primary Resource. Skills that consume Life deal 10-20% increased damage.
• Tempting Fate (Vicious, Offensive-World Tier III): You gain 40-60% Critical Strike Damage but your Non-Critical Strikes deal 20-15% less damage.
• The Lionheart (Brutal, Defensive): You gain 10% Barrier Generation. You Heal 3-7 Life per second while you have an active Barrier.
• Revenge (Brutal, Defensive-World Tier III): 10-20% of incoming damage is instead suppressed. When you use a Defensive, Subterfuge or a Macabre skill, all suppressed damage is amplified by 250% and explodes, dealing up to 1360-2040 Fire damage to Nearby enemies.
• Prudent Heart (Brutal, Defensive-World Tier III): You become Immune for 2.0-4.0 seconds after you lose more than 20% Life in a single hit. This effect can only occur once every 110 seconds.
• Determination (Devious, Utility): Resource draining effects are 40-50% less effective. In addition, gain 3.0-8.0% increased Resource Generation.
• Retaliation (Devious, Utility-World Tier III): Deal 510-680 Fire damage to surrounding enemies whenever a Crowd Control effect is removed from you.
• The Calculated (Devious, Utility-World Tier III): After spending 150-200 of your Primary Resource, your next attack Stuns enemies hit for 2 seconds.
• The Malignant Pact (Wrathful, Super): 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 85-102 damage.
• Creeping Death (Wrathful, Super): Your damage over time effects are increased by 30-40% for each different Crowd Control effect on the target. Unstoppable monsters and Staggered bosses instead take 110-130% increased damage from your damage over time effects.
• The Barber (Wrathful, Super-World Tier III): Critical Strikes and all subsequent damage within 2.0-4.0 seconds is absorbed by your target. Then, the absorbed damage erupts onto surrounding enemies. Stored damage is increased by 10% per second.

Barbarian

• Focused Rage (Vicious, Offensive): After spending 100-60 Fury within 2 seconds, your next Non-Basic Skill’s Critical Strike Chance is increased by 20-30%.
• Resurgent Life (Brutal, Defensive): While below 40-60% Life, you receive 50-60% more Healing from all sources.
• Punishing Speed (Devious, Utility): Your Skills have a 20-30% chance to Knock Down all enemies for 1.25 seconds when that Skill’s Attack Speed is higher than 35-20%.
• Ignoring Pain (Wrathful, Super-World Tier IV): Incoming damage has a 5-15% chance of being ignored and instead Healing you for 17-68.

Druid

• The Moonrage (Vicious, Offensive): Kills have a 5% chance to summon a Wolf Companion to your side for 20-30 seconds. In addition, gain +3 to Wolves.
• The Agitated Winds (Brutal, Defensive): When 8-13 Close enemies, automatically cast Cyclone Armor. This cannot occur more than once every 10-20 seconds.
• Inexorable Force (Devious, Utility): Up to 30-50 Distant enemies are pulled toward you while you have an Ultimate Skill active.
• The Unconstrained Beast (Wrathful, Super-World Tier IV): When you are hit with a Stun, Freeze or Knock Down effect, there is a 40-60% chance to automatically activate Grizzly Rage for 3 seconds.

Necromancer

• The Sacrilegious (Vicious, Offensive): Walking near a Corpse automatically activates an equipped Corpse Skill every second, dealing 40-30% reduced damage.
• The Decrepit Aura (Brutal, Defensive): When at least 5 enemies are near you, gain an aura that automatically curses surrounding enemies with Decrepify for 5-15 seconds.
• Frozen Terror (Devious, Utility): Lucky Hit: Up to a 10-20% chance of inflicting Fear for 2.5 seconds. Feared enemies are Chilled for 20% every second.
• The Great Feast (Wrathful, Super-World Tier IV): Each Minion drains 1.0-2.0 Essence per second but deals 50-75% increased damage. With no Minions, this bonus applies to you and drains 5 Essence per second.

Rogue

• Cluster Munitions (Vicious, Offensive): Lucky Hit: You have up to a 20% chance to launch 3 Stun Grenades that deal 26-32 Physical damage and Stun enemies for 0.50 seconds.
• Trickery (Brutal, Defensive): When you use a Subterfuge Skill, leave behind an unstable Shadow Decoy Trap that Taunts enemies. The Shadow Decoy Trap will explode after 6.0 seconds dealing 680-1020 Shadow damage. Cannot occur more than once every 5 seconds.
• The Clipshot (Devious, Utility): Lucky Hit: Up to a 20-40% chance for your Cutthroat Skills to Slow by 40% for 3 seconds and your Marksman Skills to Knock Back enemies.
• The Vile Apothecary (Wrathful, Super-World Tier IV): Your attacks have a 5-15% chance to apply all Imbuement effects at 40-50% of normal potency.

Sorcerer

• Tal’Rasha (Vicious, Offensive): For each unique element you deal damage with, you deal 7-12% increased damage for 3-10 seconds.
• Spellbreaking (Brutal, Defensive): After taking Elemental damage, gain 20-40% Resistance to that element for 5 seconds.
• Spite (Devious, Utility): When you are afflicted with a Crowd Control effect, there is a 20-40% chance that the same enemy and enemies around you are also afflicted with the same effect for 3 seconds.
• Omnipower (Wrathful, Super-World Tier IV): Core Skills that launch a projectile consume all of your Mana. For every 45-35 extra Mana consumed, you launch an additional projectile, and the damage is increased by 3.0-5.0%.