The Secret Failures of Diablo 4's Malignant Hearts Unveiled!
Despite a stable queue in Diablo 4, numerous players are encountering troubling glitches with Season 1's Malignant Hearts, hampering their gameplay experience
Highlights
Controversy surrounds Diablo 4's Season of the Malignant as players express their displeasure with the implementation of contentious adjustments that have significantly weakened all five classes.One of the highlights of this season, Malignant Hearts, appears to have encountered several bugs, resulting in unexpected and unintended consequences for players.
The community expresses their dissatisfaction with Malignant Hearts, criticizing them as inferior to Diablo 3's Legendary Gems.
Introduced as the latest seasonal feature in Diablo 4, Malignant Hearts have faced criticism from players who claim that many of them are not functioning as intended. Despite the game's immense commercial success, Blizzard has recently faced a wave of backlash due to controversial changes made in the Season of the Malignant. All five classes in Diablo 4 experienced significant nerfs, prompting the Blizzard team to announce a Campfire Chat on July 21 in an attempt to clarify their decisions. However, it is clear that players and developers hold strongly differing opinions on the overall direction of the game.
In Diablo 4, the featured items for Season of the Malignant are Malignant Hearts. There are a total of 32 Malignant Hearts divided into four categories based on each Diablo 4 class. However, each Malignant Heart is unique and takes up an inventory slot, posing a problem due to the limited stash space in the game. To address this issue, players are advised to salvage the Malignant Hearts at Cormond's wagon and use the obtained Ichor to create new ones.
Although this gameplay loop seems promising, some Malignant Hearts in Diablo 4 are experiencing bugs. As reported by Xenolithium on the Diablo 4 subreddit, the Caged Heart of Frozen Terror, exclusive to Necromancers, not only affects the enemies they are fighting but also the player character. The intended effect of this Malignant Heart is to inflict Fear for 2.5 seconds per Lucky Hit and apply a Chill effect on enemies. However, if a player kills the enemy before the effect is triggered, the debuffs are mistakenly applied to the Necromancer instead.
Other Malignant Hearts are experiencing similar bugs. For instance, the Caged Heart of the Moonrage, which is only accessible to Druids, permanently removes its +3 Skill Rank to Wolves when resetting a build. Players of Diablo 4 have speculated that these glitches occur when the Malignant Hearts deactivate their bonuses in non-combat areas, such as region capitals and smaller towns. However, it is not only the technical issues that fans have had with Malignant Hearts; they also dislike them from a design perspective.
Many fans consider the bonuses provided by most Malignant Hearts in Diablo 4 to be much less impressive than the Legendary Gems in Diablo 3. The boons either rely on specific situations to activate consistently or have negligible numerical effects on a player's build. While it was expected to encounter some bugs with the release of Diablo 4's first season, the community has shown less patience for the game's shortcomings compared to its initial launch. Hopefully, the developers will address these growing frustrations through the upcoming Campfire Chat and find a satisfactory compromise with their customers.
Diablo 4 is available for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
