Diablo 4 Season 2’s best Vampiric Powers are looking rather strong

Diablo 4 Season 2 is right around the corner, and Blizzard has given us a look at the full range of Vampiric Powers you’ll be able to wield in the upcoming Season of Blood. While the recent Diablo 4 developer livestream didn’t go over them in detail, we’ve since had a chance to look at all of the powers in detail, and a few of them promise to help you craft some exceptionally powerful builds when Season 2 starts.

Diablo 4 Season 2 begins Tuesday October 17, and it brings with it the new Vampiric Powers feature and its corresponding Pact Armor to the loot-grinding RPG game. Armor that you find during the season will grant you three types of ‘pact’ – Ferocity, Divinity, and Eternity – that can then be spent to activate the various Vampiric Powers coming to Diablo 4, of which you can have up to five selected at once. You can even craft your armor with specific consumables to ensure it has the exact pacts you need.

Blizzard breaks these Vampiric Powers into two groups: ‘minor’ powers require just one to three pacts to activate, while each of the ‘major’ powers requires a total of six pacts to use. While the major powers are certainly more immediately dramatic, a little reading shows that some of the minor powers can provide rather strong effects to bolster your best Diablo 4 builds – particularly once you start grouping several of them together.

It’s also worth noting that these powers aren’t tied to specific Diablo 4 classes in the same way that many of the Diablo 4 Malignant Hearts from Season 1 are. That means you should have more room for experimentation. Some also make use of a ‘Vampiric Curse’ keyword, which causes your character to store the souls of defeated enemies and later unleash them upon other targets.

While we’re still waiting on the upcoming second developer livestream on Tuesday October 10 for details on how damage numbers and resistances are being reworked for Diablo 4 Season 2, we did already get a glimpse that at least some of the Vampiric Powers (such as ‘Feed the Coven’) offer a multiplicative damage bonus, suggesting they’ll be stronger than a lot of your average damage boosts.

What we can be sure of, however, is that some of the buffs to the likes of attack speed and damage reduction are looking rather spicy. ‘Resilience’ grants you 1% damage reduction for every 2% missing life – meaning you’ll be getting upwards of 40% damage reduction as you near death, rivaling or even exceeding some of the strongest defensive Legendary items. ‘Sanguine Brace’ meanwhile offers a big boost to Fortify potential for classes that use it, and offers the defensive tool as an option for classes that otherwise couldn’t.

‘Ravenous’ promises to offer a very consistent attack speed buff that seems like it could be rather potent if you’re already boosting your movement speed, which most builds look to do anyway, while ‘Moonrise’ lets you raise that even further for ultra-rapid attacks. ‘Undying’ gives you a very tasty heal of 3% of your max life with each skill used, and it’s doubled if you’re under half health. That’s going to be able to provide a level of sustain we haven’t really seen since the nerf to Rogue’s Siphoning Strikes.

‘Prey on the Weak’ boosts your damage against Vulnerable enemies by 16%, and applies the status effect to any enemies inflicted by the aforementioned Vampiric Curse. While we’re expecting some changes to how Vulnerable works in Season 2, given how strong it’s been to date, this should help it maintain relevance if not continue to be an essential pickup.

Among the major powers we also find ‘Metamorphosis,’ which gives your evade a four-second Unstoppable buff and damages nearby enemies, something that’ll vastly up the survivability of any classes that struggle with crowd control effects. We also see some weaker builds given big help, such as ‘Bathe in Blood’ and its 40% increased damage and 30% damage reduction while using channeled skills. It remains to be seen exactly how these Vampiric Powers will settle, but they’re certainly looking very promising so far.

Diablo 4 Vampiric Powers

Diablo 4 Season 2 contains a total of 22 Vampiric Powers, 15 ‘minor’ (requiring one to three pacts to activate) and 7 ‘major’ (requiring six pacts to activate). Here are all the Vampiric Powers available in the Season of Blood:

Vampiric Curse

Vampiric Curse is a new keyword added for Season of Blood that affects certain powers. Killing an enemy affected by your Vampiric Curse stores their soul. You can hold up to eight souls at once time, and casting a Defensive, Macabre, or Agility skill will unleash your stored souls to attack nearby enemies.

Major Vampiric Powers

• Accursed Touch (6 Divinity): Lucky Hit: Up to a 44% chance to inflict Vampiric Curse on enemies. Enemies with the Vampiric Curse have a 15% chance to spread it to other surrounding enemies. Accursed Souls deal 200% increased damage.
• Bathe in Blood (3 Divinity, 3 Eternity): While Channeling a Skill, you form a pool of blood beneath you. While channeling a skill in a pool, your Channeled Skills deal 40% increased damage and you gain 30% Damage Reduction. A pool can only form once every 8 seconds.
• Blood Boil (6 Eternity): When your Core Skills Overpower an enemy, you spawn 3 Volatile Blood Drops. Collecting a Volatile Blood Drop causes it to explode, dealing 60% Physical damage around you. Every 20 seconds, your next Skill is guaranteed to Overpower.
• Call Familiar (3 Ferocity, 3 Divinity): Casting a Mastery, Weapon Mastery, Macabre, Wrath, or Imbuement Skill calls a bat ally to attack nearby enemies, dealing 80% Physical damage with a 30% chance to Stun.
• Flowing Veins (2 Ferocity, 2 Divinity, 2 Eternity): You deal 60% increased Damage Over Time to enemies that are moving or affected by a Vampiric Curse.
• Metamorphosis (2 Ferocity, 2 Divinity, 2 Eternity): When you Evade you turn into a cloud of bats, becoming Unstoppable for 4 seconds. Enemies along your path take 160% Physical damage and are inflicted with Vampiric Curse.
• Moonrise (6 Ferocity): Hitting an enemy with a Basic Skill grants you 4% Attack Speed for 10 seconds, stacking up to 5 times. Upon reaching maximum stacks, you enter a Vampiric Bloodrage, gaining 160% Basic Skill damage and 15% Movement Speed for 10 seconds.

Minor Vampiric Powers

• Anticipation (1 Divinity): Your Ultimate Skills gain 20% Cooldown Reduction. Your Ultimate Skills gain 12% increased damage for each nearby enemy affected by your Damage Over Time effects.
• Coven’s Fangs (2 Divinity): Your Conjuration, Companion, Minion, and Bat Familiar attacks deal 52% increased damage to Crowd Controlled enemies. Lucky Hit: Your Conjuration, Companion, Minion, and Bat Familiar have up to a 30% chance to inflict Vampiric Curse when hitting enemies.
• Domination (1 Ferocity): You deal 24% increased damage to enemies who are Stunned, Immobilized, Frozen, or Feared. If they’re also Injured and not an Elite, they’re instantly killed.
• Feed the Coven (1 Eternity): Lucky Hit: Conjuration, Companion, Minion and Bat Familiar attacks have up to a 60% chance to restore 10 Primary Resource to you and increase your Damage by 10% for 4 seconds.
• Hectic (3 Divinity): For every 5 Basic Skills you cast, one of your active Cooldowns is reduced by 2 seconds.
• Hemomancy (3 Eternity): Your attacks deal 80% of your Maximum Life as Physical damage to nearby enemies. This can only occur once every 4 seconds. You heal for 1% of your Maximum Life for each enemy damaged this way.
• Infection (1 Ferocity): Hitting enemies with direct damage infects them with Pox. Inflicting Pox 8 times on an enemy expunges their infection, dealing 70% Poison damage.
• Jagged Spikes (1 Ferocity, 1 Divinity): Thorns have a 10% chance to deal 300% increased damage and Chill enemies for 8%.
• Prey on the Weak (2 Ferocity): You deal 16% increased damage to Vulnerable enemies. Enemies are Vulnerable while affected by a Vampiric Curse from your other Vampiric Powers.
• Rampart (1 Divinity, 1 Eternity): After not moving for 3 seconds, you gain a Barrier for 40% of your Maximum Life for 6 seconds. This effect can occur once every 20 seconds.
• Ravenous (3 Ferocity): Lucky Hit: Up to a 20% chance to increase your Attack Speed by 40% of your Total Movement Speed for 6 seconds.
• Resilience (2 Eternity): You gain 1% Damage Reduction for each 2% Life you are missing.
• Sanguine Brace (1 Divinity, 1 Eternity): When you kill an enemy, Fortify for 6% of your Base Life. While you have more Fortify than half of your Maximum Life, you gain 8% Critical Strike Chance.
• Terror (1 Ferocity, 1 Divinity, 1 Eternity): When struck, you have a 14% chance to Fear nearby enemies and Slow them by 80% for 2 seconds. You are guaranteed to Critically Strike enemies who are Feared.
• Undying (1 Eternity): Casting Skills heals you for 3% Life. Double this bonus while below 50% Life.

If you missed out on the initial livestream, read about how Diablo 4 update 1.2.0 wants to make reaching max level an achievable goal for all players. The Season of Blood will also mark the arrival of Diablo 4 on Steam, so learn about what you can expect if you’re planning to pick the game up on Valve’s platform.