Here, we’re going to be taking a look at the new unique rings that were added to the game with the latest Diablo 4 patch 1.2.2.

What Are Malignant Hearts?

Each of these five rings is based on a Malignant Heart effect from Season 1, Season of the Malignant.

Malignant Hearts are a selection of legendary effects that you could slot into special jewelry sockets. During Season 1. There are 8 choices of hearts from 4 types of Malignant Hearts and they are as follows:

• Vicious Heart - Offensive Power
• Brutal Heart - Defensive Power
• Devious Heart - Utility Power
• Wrathful Heart - Super Power

The new five Malignant Rings take five choices of hearts from Vicious, Brutal, and Devious types, but don’t include any Wrathful. So, there will unfortunately be new insanely broken Barbarian unique ring for now.

Where To Get These Uniques?

You’ll be able to get these rings from the Echo of Varshan boss in World Tier 3 & 4.

Varshan is a boss that you can only fight after gathering Malignant body parts and a Malignant Heart if you’re in World Tier 4 from Grotesque Debtors and Grim Favors. You can summon him in Varshan’s area beneath the Tree of Whispers.

The five Malignant Hearts from Season 1 that were chosen to model these rings after are:

1. Tal’Rasha for the Sorcerer, which increased your overall damage for each unique element you damaged with
2. Trickery for the Rogue, which spawned a Decoy Trap whenever you used a Subterfuge Skill that taunts enemies and explodes after a few seconds
3. Inexorable Force for the Druid, which pulled up to 50 enemies towards you while an Ultimate Skill was active
4. Focused Rage for the Barbarian, which increased crit chance for non-basic skills after spending some Fury
5. The Sacrilegious for the Necromancer, which automatically activated equipped Corpse Skills every second when near a Corpse

However, in season 2, these effects on rings have more to offer and they all have small tweaks and changes to the original Malignant Heart effects, so there are some differences.

Tal Rasha’s Iridescent Loop (Sorcerer)

For the Sorcerer, Tal Rasha’s ring still has the effect of stacking bonus damage for each unique element you damaged with, but now deals a little of extra damage per stack from Elemental damage 3%, and the duration of the buff lasts less time 4 seconds.

The duration nerf doesn’t really matter though since you rarely stop attacking for 4 seconds and since any Elemental damage refreshes all previous bonuses. You just need to use two different elements and then spam another element at least once every 4 seconds to keep the buff going forever.

This is a 45% overall damage boost with three stacks and a max roll, which is ridiculous and probably makes this ring a must for nearly all Sorcerer builds in the future. You'd better prepare enough Diablo 4 Gold so that you can upgrade this ring more quickly when you get it.

Writhing Band Of Trickery (Rogue)

Moving on to Rogue’s Writhing Band of Trickery ring, the basic effect is still the same with the taunting decoy spawning after a Subterfuge Skill is used.

But now, the Decoy Trap explodes faster and can only be activated once every 12 seconds as opposed to the 5 seconds from Season 1.

You can pair this ring with the Aspect of Quickening Fog or Escape Artist’s Aspect to automatically drop smoke bombs that count as Subterfuge Skills, which in turn will activate the Decoy Trap.

This ring isn’t terrible, although it’s definitely not a must have like Tal Rasha’s ring. You can pair this with any Subterfuge build to get a free pull into a group of enemies once every 12 seconds.

But it’s not enough to be a game changer with regards to your overall damage output, especially when the clone itself only deals about 8,000 Shadow damage once it explodes.

Also Read: How To Farm Uber Duriel & Uber Uniques Quickly In Diablo 4 Season 2?

Airidah’s Inexorable Will (Druid)

Next for the Druids, Airidah’s inexurable will ring changed quite a bit from the Malignant Heart effect.

It will now pull all distant enemies after casting an Ultimate Skill and for 5 seconds afterwards and additionally deal Physical damage with its pull that will scale based off your willpower.

This works really well with Pulverized builds that use the Grizzly Rage, ultimate AOE, all of the pulled in enemies, and could also work with Petrify in order to stun all the enemies as they get pulled in so they can’t fight back.

You can also build around spamming this ring effect by getting lots of Ultimate Skill Cooldown Reduction from the new Vampire Powers or just affixes on your gear.

Overall, this ring seems pretty good for Pulverized builds and maybe some other niche builds, but it isn’t exactly a must have.

Ring Of Red Furor (Barbarian)

Moving on to the Barbarian’s Ring of Red Furor, it has also been tweaked considerably from the original Malignant Heart effect of Season 1.

After you spend 100 Fury in 3 seconds, your next cast of either Hammer of the Ancients, Upheaval, or Death Blow will be a guaranteed Critical Strike with 10 to 30% bonus Critical Strike Damage.

So, now it guarantees a Critical Strike on top of extra Critical Strike, but only works on three skills as opposed to all non-basic skills.

There’s not much to say about this ring. It’s just a really good damage boost for any Barbarian build that uses any of these three skills.

Barbarians are already really strong this season with their 50-million-damage one shot builds with these skills, so this ring is a massive damage boost to an already really strong Barbarian meta this season.

Ring Of the Sacrilegious Soul (Necromancer)

Lastly, the Necromancer’s Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul.

This ring will automatically activate the Corpses you walk by with any of your equipped skills:

• Raise Skeleton - every 2 to 1 seconds
• Corpse Explosion - every 2 to 1 seconds
• Corpse Tendrils - every 16 to 8 seconds

There is no longer any reduced damage on the ability’s cast, which is a big change from the Malignant Heart of Season 1.

This ring basically allows Necromancers to throw away their keyboard and just move around with their mouths. It is ridiculously good for any build revolving around Corpses and bonuses stemming from them.

And for cherry on top, it has one of the highest Lucky Hit Chance affixes in the game, going up to 20% on max roll and max upgrade. It is another must have, like the Tal Rasha’s ring.