[3.6] What Happens When You Fully Invest Into Bleed Damage? Blood Magic Gladiator

Path of Building: https://pastebin.com/VmXubMsv

Hows it going, ItFightsBack here, and today I am going to go over a fully bleed focused Gladiator build I made in the Synthesis league. This is not only a typical build guide where I show off my super powerful character, but more of an exposé on the state of pure physical attack builds and bleeding in the current state of the game. That is not to say that the build is bad, but with the level of optimization on this character, I feel it is nowhere close to as good as it should be.

I will quickly go over the character. I crafted 2 axes myself from fractured of celebration siege axe bases using jagged and corroded fossils. The last video I uploaded goes through the entire crafting process. Both weapons have t2 flat phys, 60% chance for bleeding to deal 100% more damage, and crafted % phys with chance to impale. One is 375 pdps and the other is 368 pdps so with respect to bleed damage specifically they are effectively 600 and 588 pdps weapons. I spent 17ex making these.

Next I have a Circle of Guilt with implicit global phys damage, increased herald of purity buff effect, and herald of purity reduced mana reservation which is important as I am using blood magic. I have an impresence with corrupted +1 max res which allows blasphemy vulnerability to cost no mana. The other ring is a steel ring with essence crafted flat phys, intelligence that is needed along with life and resists. The belt is a stygian vise with life and resists, I should have a better one with some chaos res but whatever. The jewel is life and flat phys.

The gloves have t1 flat phys and life, essence crafted attack speed and more resists. Boots have life resists and move speed. I did not take the time to run lab for leech. The helmet I purchased with the reduced malevolence mana reservation, and crafted life and resists with pristine fossils. The chest I purchased already 6 linked for 6ex which has life and resists, and I spent 3ex to craft an additional curse onto it. I could definitely have more life on this character. The Cospri’s Will Unique chest armour would be a great place to start when making a build like this while providing a source of poison as well, however there is no life at all on it so you would have to stretch pretty hard to make this work in late game scenarios.

Flasks are an eternal life flask Catalysed of staunching, sulphur flask with freeze immunity, witchfire brew for damage over time and despair which causes enemies to take increased damage over time, a lions roar for more phys damage, and an aquamarine for curse immunity.

Before I go over gem links let’s look at the passive tree. I am a gladiator taking blood in the eyes for bleed chance and maim on hit against bleeding enemies causing them to take 10% increased physical damage. Gratuitous Violence gives more chance to bleed, bleeding enemies explode dealing aoe damage, and 25% more damage with bleeding. Outmatch and Outlast gives chance to gain frenzy and endurance charges, More physical damage at max frenzy and phys reduction at max endurance. Lastly is painforged which is block stuff.

On the rest of the tree, I have a ton of life, a couple leech nodes, a few bleed nodes, the axe wheel on the left side, a rapid expansion jewel to increase the ground slam angle, templar AOE nodes and reduced mana reservation which frees up around 400 life. I have resolute technique for hits cannot be evaded, blood magic and mortal conviction which gives 50% less mana reserved, and crimson dance allowing bleeding to stack up to 8 times while dealing 50% less damage. So at 8 stacks of bleeding I am doing 4 times more bleed damage. You may be wondering why Blood Magic since you have so much life reserved. Malevolence was not initially in the plan for the build which takes up 1300 life. I got the helm enchant and rolled with it. This build was planned more for a dps check than something I am going to play long term.

For gem links in the chest I have ground slam linked with melee phys, multistrike, brutality, unbound ailments which is important for increased bleed duration, and deadly ailments. Gloves have ancestral warchief with bloodlust, maim, and mele phys. Helm has vaal double strike with bloodlust, brutality, and melee phys. Boots have enduring cry, war banner, and herald of purity linked with bloodlust. Everything is linked with bloodlust so that only my ground slam is applying bleed stacks as the hits of everything else would overwrite the higher damage ground slam hits. Left weapon has malevolence giving more damage over time and skill effect duration, and vulnerability linked to blasphemy which causes affected enemies to take 39% increased physical damage and 30% increased phys damage over time. Lastly is leap slam, faster attacks, and fortify.

So you may be looking at this and think like I do that this build should melt anything in the game. It is not terrible, but it by no means is amazing. Looking at path of building it shows I have 12491 shaper bleed dps. That does not factor in the 60% chance to deal 100% more bleed damage on the weapons. That is effectively 60% more damage. 12491 times 1.6 = 19985 dps times 8 stacks is 159884 shaper bleed dps. That seems pretty pathetic. So if I were to compare that to my other damage over time build I get 346440 shaper dps with only a 5 linked level 21 vortex and a staff I bought for 40 chaos, and that damage comes out instantly, I don’t have to stack it up 8 times. That is also without factoring in the Elemental Overload, Arctic Breath, Cold Snap, and Vaal Cold Snap DPS that I can layer on top of it without any reliance on flasks for damage.

Let that sink in for a minute. If I factor in all damage sources I have just under 400,000 shaper dps. Vaal double strike and flasks only last for so long, and I do not see that this factors in the more damage ground slam does closer to targets. Let me know if I could have done something better, aside from a fossil crafted level 1 Maim on the chest which would bring the dps to 459,000. I could also boost the damage higher using Ruthless instead of multistrike, but if you actually play this game you know you constantly must be moving moving or you will die in almost all cases, so it is harder to reach your 8 bleed stacks. I don’t think the problem is with my build at all. Most of my gear is unobtainable by the average player. In my opinion this build should easily destroy everything in the game and yet it does not.

So let us look at how it might be made better. I will start with the crimson dance notable passive before I go into the attack stuff in general. Crimson Dance currently reads you can inflict bleeding on an enemy up to 8 times, your bleeding does not deal extra damage while the enemy is moving, and 50% less damage with bleeding. If this instead said bleeding you inflict can stack, and your bleeding does not deal extra damage while the enemy is moving, and bleed damage is not scaled by critical strike multiplier, then with 7.09 attacks per second, and 7.2 second bleed duration, I could reach 51 bleed stacks assuming I could attack uninterrupted for 7.2 seconds. That is very unlikely, but in that case I would hit just over 2 million shaper dps from bleeding alone. That is more along the lines of what I would expect from a build like this, and let me remind you that is with 2 600 pdps axes with respect to bleed damage. This would allow the potential for a build like this to be playable and feel decent. I am not done there however. I want to talk about % physical damage reduction and endurance charges on maps. This is a massive slap to the face to any pure physical build, and I will explain why it feels so bad. There is an equivalent % elemental resistance mod that can roll on maps, along with elemental equilibrium. This can lower the effective damage of an elemental build, but there are many ways to mitigate it. There are many sources of elemental penetration, there are curses, and there are sources of exposure that lowers resistances as well. When it comes to physical damage, there is nothing of the sort, the enemies are just harder to kill now and you have to deal with it. I did not know this until recently, but endurance charges currently give 15% physical reduction and elemental resistances to enemies, while only 4% to players. So a boss on a red map with 40% physical damage reduction, and monsters gain an endurance charge on hit, that you will definitely have to hit 3 times with have 85% physical damage reduction. Sure vulnerability causes enemies to take % increased physical damage, but the enemy is still going to mitigate 85% of that added damage. While I am on vulnerability, the physical damage over time does not currently scale with gem levels as does the raw increased physical damage taken. Anyways the point i am trying to make here is that there needs to be a way to mitigate enemy physical damage reduction. There could be a new stat along the lines of physical damage penetration, or armour breaker or whatever you want to call it. A perfect place to put something like this is on the Brutality gem. This gem gives a massive more physical damage multiplier while nullifying any chaos or elemental damage. With all of the very plentiful sources of physical damage as extra of an element, or non chaos as chaos, this gem needs to be WAY better. Leaving it exactly as it is while adding say a 20 % penetrate armour would feel really good. Sprinkling other sources of this in other areas would really open up the potential for pure physical damage builds. Using the brutality gem also massively lowers the number of useful flasks you can use. The last thing I want to mention is that there is also a mod that gives 65% chance for monsters to avoid bleed, blind, and poison in red maps. This just feels bad. I know ignite builds have to deal with a similar issue as well. Reflect maps already exist and can force you to not be able to run that map. This is not as big of an issue as the other things I mentioned, but I still think it should not exist as it punishes very specific niche builds. If there was a map mod that said monsters have a 65% to avoid lightning damage, players would be pretty unhappy about that.

That is all for me. If there are any other ideas you have about how pure physical or bleed builds can be improved let me know in the comments below. I really hope with the melee changes coming in 3.7 some things are done to address some of the issues that I raised here. However, even if they are, I doubt I will play it because without fractured items it is going to be so much harder to acquire weapons anywhere close to to the level that I currently have, but maybe they won’t need to be in order to play this type of build. I am ItFightsBack, Subscribe for more path of exile content, and thanks for watching.