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In Diablo 4's second season, the Season of Blood, you're totally not a vampire, but you sure can use their powers.
Starting on October 17, you can make a new seasonal character (sorry, it's required) and use Vampiric Powers to alter your skills. Like season 1's Malignant Hearts, Vampiric Powers transform how each class usually works. There are powers that make every skill heal you, give you a powerful bat minion, and cause your attacks to deal 80% of your Maximum Life to every enemy around you.
Vampiric Powers provide the kind of effects that will spawn entirely new builds, but they're a little more complicated to use than season 1's unique power. Enemies will drop Potent Blood and you will spend that in a new menu to unlock a random power or power upgrade. Veteran World of Warcraft players will probably take one look at the way you socket them into minor and major slots and have flashbacks of the glyph system.
Each Vampiric Power has three new "Pact" stats on it, represented by a symbol and a number. To activate an equipped power, you need to find Pact Armor with matching stats. It's helpful to think about it as if each piece of Pact Armor adds those stats into three buckets and your Vampiric Powers soak up the exact amount that they need. If your armor has one point in all three—Ferocity, Divinity, and Eternity—a Vampiric Power that only requires one point in Ferocity will soak it up while it's activated, leaving one point of the other two stats available for additional powers.
It wouldn't be a loot game if you didn't have to manage your gear, however, so there are two items that let you remove and add Pact stats to armor. You can find these items from unique seasonal enemies, open world events, the Season Journey, and something called "Opulent Coffins".
Compared to season 1's socketable Heart gems, Vampiric Powers seem to require a lot more attention. You probably won't be able to equip a few and never think about them again because you'll be finding new armor and unlocking new powers a ton on your way to level 100. You can see the varying amount of Pact stats both minor and major Vampiric Powers require in a season 2 blog post Blizzard published today.
The new seasonal questline will have you use these powers to hunt down bloodsuckers, and their leader, with vampire hunter Erys (voiced by actress and producer Gemma Chan). Sanctuary has spent centuries under attack by all sorts of hellish monsters, but I'm sure nothing will go wrong this time.
Diablo 4 season 2 will require you to start a new character from scratch, but Blizzard is adding loads of quality of life changes to make restarting from level 1 a lot easier. Everyone can skip the campaign as long as they've finished the prologue, and the leveling speed has been significantly increased. Season 2 might be the least grindy version of Diablo 4 yet, and everyone seems to be excited to jump in when it begins on October 17.
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