Diablo 4’s first season adds ‘stupid’ powerful new builds for each class

polygon.com:

Diablo 4’s first season, Season of the Malignant, is coming to the game on July 20 — just a month and a half after D4’s launch. Blizzard Entertainment detailed the new seasonal mechanics (alongside the announcement of a new class for Diablo Immortal) during a lengthy livestream on Thursday.

Season of the Malignant takes place after theDiablo 4 campaign and acts as a side story in the world of Sanctuary. After players worked to push back the forces of evil in the main campaign, a new corrupting curse has started to make its way through the rest of the world. At the start of the season, players will receive a summons to the capital city of the Fractured Peaks, Kyovashad, at level 1 to meet Cormund, a new character. Cormund wants players to capture corrupted hearts and use them to increase their own power, so they can further purge the blight from the land.

This, of course, manifests in some powerful new tools for each Diablo class. While playing the game normally in season 1, there’s a chance for players to come across a Malignant monster. These monsters are extra tough, but drop a special Malignant Heart item when they die. Interacting with this heart will respawn the enemy — making them even more difficult to deal with — and summon in a bunch of additional foes. If players still manage to triumph, the beast will drop a Caged Heart, which you can use to drastically increase your power over the course of the season.

Caged Hearts come with their own Legendary-level powers — such as the one shown above, which causes critical hits to electrify enemies — and players can socket them into their jewelry items. For the entirety of Season of the Malignant, all rings and amulets will drop with a festering socket that’s either red,