Diablo 4's Best Malignant Heart Is Now Way Better In Patch 1.1.1

Diablo IV's patch 1.1.1 update has made an already incredibly sought after Malignant Heart, the Barber, even better, making it a best-in-slot pick for many of the game's classes and builds. To add icing to the cake, Blizzard additionally released a hotfix to increase the drop and craft chance of Wrathful Hearts and Wrathful Invokers, which should make acquiring the Barber even easier.

Introduced as part Diablo IV Season 1's Malignant Heart system, the Barber is a Wrathful Malignant Heart that causes critical strikes and the subsequent damage for several seconds after that crit to be absorbed by a target, with the amount of damage increasing over the course of the duration. After a few seconds, all the damage absorbed by the target then explodes, dealing damage to both the initial target and surrounding enemies.

This was incredibly strong to begin with, but the Barber suffered from a number of bugs and unintended interactions from the outset of Season of the Malignant. For starters, a bug caused it so that the damage of other players would also be absorbed, which was great for the player with the Barber equipped, but made it so other players near that player wouldn't appear to be doing any damage. A number of abilities that benefited from Lucky Hit effects and other interactions also wouldn't function while an enemy was under the Barber's damage absorption effect, throwing a wrench into some builds.

It seems most of those issues have now been resolved with update 1.1.1. As prominent Diablo content creator Wudijo explained in a recent video, the Barber is now massively buffed thanks to these fixes.

"The Barber is absolutely, by far, the best Heart now for basically every build that can use it because you don't really have a downside anymore" Wudijo said.

Wudijo said that there will of course be some exceptions, and some players may simply not enjoy the "delayed damage" playstyle the Barber brings and choose to go with other options. But for everyone else, he said it's time to start farming up on Barber Hearts, as they will be a major part of getting the most out of builds for the rest of Diablo IV Season 1. He went so far to joke that "this is the Season of the Barber now."

Thankfully, Blizzard's latest hotfix makes finding the Barber even easier than before. The chance of acquiring a Wrathful Invoker when crafting (which can be used within Malignant Tunnels to spawn a Malignant enemy for a chance to receive a Wrathful Malignant Heart) has been increased from 3% to 15%, and getting a Wrathful Heart from crafting it outright is now a 10% chance, up from 2%. Wrathful Invokers now have a chance to drop from elite enemies as well. That should mean players will have more opportunities to acquire Wrathful Malignant Hearts and, hopefully, the Barber.

In addition to changes for the Barber, Diablo IV patch 1.1.1 introduced a number of promising buffs for Barbarians and Sorcerers. It also massively increased monster density within dungeons and buffed the health of boss monsters at higher levels. For everything that changed in the most recent update, be sure to check out the full Diablo IV patch 1.1.1 patch notes. The game's most recent update comes in the wake of its controversial Season 1 update, something Blizzard said it doesn't plan to do ever again.