Diablo 4: Vulnerable Explained

This article is part of a directory: Diablo 4: Complete Guide & Walkthrough

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How Vulnerable Works

How To Use Vulnerable In Your Build

Skills That Make Use Of Vulnerable

There are tons of ways to deal damage in Diablo 4. Critical Strikes, Overpower, and Lucky Hit are all interesting mechanics that practically beg to have builds made around them, but in the mix of all these flashy effects, there's one damage-oriented status effect that often gets lost: Vulnerable.

The Vulnerable status effect isn't unique to Diablo 4. Many other games have their own equivalents, and if you're like most Diablo players, you likely assumed that Vulnerable works much the same way it does in other games, but that's not quite true. Vulnerable is far more complicated than it appears on the surface. So, if you're looking to work Vulnerable into your build, here's everything you need to know about this unique status effect.

Updated by Chad Thesen on July 15, 2023: There are many builds that make use of this status effect, some new embedded links have been provided to make it easier to navigate to these articles. The first will link to the Barbarian builds, while the second link will send readers to the Necromancer. All classes have some means of applying Vulnerable, but not all of them make that the focus point of some builds.

How Vulnerable Works

The player makes a group of enemies vulnerable, and they make the player vulnerable.

Vulnerable in its purest form is a status effect that increases your damage against enemies. Certain attacks and skills will apply Vulnerable, or have a chance to do so, and will specify a duration. If you hit that enemy again while the status effect is applied to them, you'll deal 20% extra damage.

You can tell when you make an enemy Vulnerable by watching them. When the effect applies, a large yellow "Vulnerable" will pop up where the enemy is standing, and their health bar will glow purple for the rest of the effect's duration.

Finally, keep in mind that Vulnerable doesn't just apply to enemies. Various elites and minions in the game can also make you Vulnerable to their damage, which is indicated by a broken glass texture over your health gauge. Since you'll be significantly weaker when you're Vulnerable, it's a good idea to back off and wait for the effect to end.

How To Use Vulnerable In Your Build

A player looks at the Vulnerable Damage stat and skills that make enemies Vulnerable.

Using Vulnerable in your build comes down to two things: understanding how the damage works and finding ways to make the status effect more valuable. At the moment, Vulnerable damage seems to operate in a slightly different way than most of the damage in the game. Instead of getting lumped in with most damage increases, it seems to apply after all the other calculations have been completed, making it much more valuable.

For example, the skills and effects that increase your damage against stunned enemies will all be calculated together using your base damage and then that final result will be increased again by the extra damage from Vulnerable. This means hitting a Vulnerable enemy will often increase your final damage more than you think it should, and no matter what build you're going for, Vulnerable will always be a good addition since it doesn't clash with other damage increases.

As far as making the Vulnerable status effect more valuable, plenty of skills operate off of hitting or killing Vulnerable enemies, letting you tag additional effects onto these already easy-to-kill targets. However, sometimes all you need is to apply Vulnerable as fast as possible. In that situation, something like the rogue's Shadow Imbuement skill works wonders, applying Vulnerable to any enemy in a wide AOE blast.

With other gear and skills, you can increase the amount of extra damage you do to Vulnerable enemies too. It's also important to note that these increases are additive, meaning a 5% increase in Vulnerable damage would take your total damage increase against these enemies to 25%.

Skills That Make Use Of Vulnerable

Some classes will make more use of this Status than others, you will find a list for each skill, along with its class and its description. These skills have been grouped by their classes to make it easier for you to look through them based on the classes you are currently playing. Some builds that rely heavily on this status can be found for the Barbarian and Necromancer.

Skill	Class	Description
Enhanced Flay	Barbarian	Flay has a 15% chance to make the enemy Vulnerable for 2 seconds. Double this chance when using a Two-Handed weapon.
Violent Double Swing	Barbarian	Hitting an enemy with both hits of Double Swing makes them Vulnerable for 1 second.
Enhanced Rend	Barbarian	Dealing direct damage with Rend extends the duration of Vulnerable on enemies by 2 seconds.
Violent Rend	Barbarian	Rend deals 12% increased damage to Vulnerable enemies.
Pressure Point	Barbarian	Lucky Hit: Your Core skills have up to a 10% chance to make enemies Vulnerable for 2 seconds.
Mighty Charge	Barbarian	Damaging enemies with Charge makes them Vulnerable for 2 seconds.
Enhanced Kick	Barbarian	Damaging enemies with Kick makes them Vulnerable for 4 seconds.
Enhanced Steel Grasp	Barbarian	Steel Grasp also makes enemies Vulnerable for 2.5 seconds.
Expose Vulnerability	Barbarian	Dealing direct damage with a Weapon Mastery skill causes your next Core Skill to make enemies Vulnerable for 1 second.
Elemental Exposure	Druid	Lucky Hit: Your Storm skills have up to a 10% chance to make enemies Vulnerable for 1 second.
Enhanced Wind Shear	Druid	Wind Shear has a 20% chance to make enemies Vulnerable for 4 seconds.
Fierce Storm Strike	Druid	Storm Strike has a 50% chance to make enemies Vulnerable for 3 seconds.
Innate Cyclone Armour	Druid	Enemies Knocked Back by Cyclone Armor become Vulnerable for 3 seconds.
Raging Tornado	Druid	Enemies hit with Tornado have a 10% chance to become Vulnerable for 3 seconds
Supreme Cataclysm	Druid	Lightning strikes from Cataclysm make enemies Vulnerable for 2 seconds.
Natural Hurricane	Druid	Hurricane has a 15% chance to make enemies Vulnerable for 3 seconds.
Ferocious Ravens	Druid	Enemies inside the swarm of Ravens when it is activated become Vulnerable for 3 seconds.
Ghastly Bone Prison	Necromancer	Enemies inside Bone Prison are Vulnerable.
Supernatural Bone Spear	Necromancer	Bone Spear makes the first enemy hit Vulnerable for 3 seconds.
Paranormal Sever	Necromancer	Every 4th cast of Sever makes enemies Vulnerable for 2 seconds.
Initiate's Bone Splinters	Necromancer	Bone Splinters has a 20% chance per hit to make enemies Vulnerable for 2 seconds.
Plague Corpse Tendrils	Necromancer	Enemies damaged by Corpse Tendrils are made Vulnerable for 3 seconds.
Mystical Frost Nova	Sorcerer	Frost Nova makes enemies Vulnerable for 4 seconds, increased to 8 seconds against Bosses.
Greater Frozen Orb	Sorcerer	Frozen Orb's explosion has a 25% chance to make all enemies hit Vulnerable for 2 seconds. Frozen Orb always makes Frozen enemies Vulnerable.
Destructive Ice Shards	Sorcerer	Hitting an enemy with 5 Ice Shards in a single cast makes them Vulnerable for 2 seconds.
Flickering Frost Bolt	Sorcerer	Frost Bolt makes Frozen enemies Vulnerable for 3 seconds.
Ice Blades	Sorcerer	Lucky Hit Chance: Conjure a pair of ice blades for 6 seconds that rapidly slash enemies for damage and have a chance to make them Vulnerable for 2 seconds.
Enhanced Cold Embuement	Rogue	Lucky Hit: Cold Imbued Skills have up to a 30% chance to make enemies Vulnerable for 3 seconds.
Primary Puncture	Rogue	Puncture now throws 3 blades in a spread, each dealing 35% of its base damage. Hitting an enemy with at least 2 blades at once makes them Vulnerable for 2 seconds.
Improved Barrage	Rogue	Every third cast of Barrage makes enemies Vulnerable for 2 seconds.
Forceful Arrow	Rogue	Lucky Hit Chance: 40% Fire a powerful arrow at an enemy, dealing damage. Every third cast makes the enemy Vulnerable for 2 seconds.
Fundamental Invigorating Strike	Rogue	Hitting an enemy with Invigorating Strike while you are below 50% Energy makes them Vulnerable for 3 seconds.
Blended Shadow Embuement	Rogue	Shadow Imbuement’s primary explosion makes enemies Vulnerable for 2 seconds.
Subverting Concealment	Rogue	The Skill that breaks Concealment makes enemies Vulnerable for 6 seconds.

NEXT: Diablo 4: All Classes, Ranked