How does bleed work and how do you scale it?
I am specifically interested in the mechanics of bleed within the scope of the blood mage. First some questions regarding bleed in general. If any of this is unknown as of right now, please explain how it worked in Poe 1.
- If an enemy is already bleeding, does any damage contribute to additional stacks?
For example, if I only have 100% chance to bleed with a single skill because it has lacerate support, will that still be the only guaranteed way to inflict more stacks or does any damage add to bleed magnitude if the enemy is already bleeding.
- Is it correct that each bleed stack takes a percentage of the initial hit and deals that amount of damage over a certain amount of time?
If this is true, does changing the bleed duration make it deal more/less damage or just affect how spread out that damage is. Also, how does the bleed timer interact with aggravated bleeding? If a normal bleed inflicts the same damage regardless of the ailment duration, then only the remaining time after the bleed is aggravated affects how “optimal” the damage is? Therefore, a longer duration would be beneficial unless the bleeding is aggregated from the start.
Now regarding the blood mage node that states: “Gain 10% of Damage as Extra Physical Damage. Elemental Damage also Contributes to Bleeding Magnitude”
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If I inflict the bleed with an elemental spell, does the bleed still do physical damage?
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If the bleed only does physical damage then elemental scaling will only affect the magnitude based off of the initial hit right?
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Is there any point in looking into armor break if the source of the bleed is an elemental spell? Or does armor/physical damage reduction not affect the bleed calc at all?
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Is the damage as extra physical just a good bonus or is there a way to take additional advantage of that if I’m using elemental spells to trigger the bleed.
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If the elemental damage only scales the initial hit then how do you even make bleed worth it? In other words, since bleed is a percentage of the initial hit, why not just keep hitting with that instead of investing in bleed? Does scaling damage over time etc to enhance the bleed damage eventually cause the bleed to deal more than the initial hit? If this is the case then to make the ascendency work you’d have to scale elemental damage for the initial hit, crit for the life remnants, chance to bleed, AND damage over time?
Comments
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No; the enemy bleeding does not let other skills add bleed stacks for free. Also note that the game keeps track of all bleed stacks, only one will deal damage at the time.
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Yes. Bleed duration gives it higher total damage. I think your understanding of aggravation is correct.
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Bleed does phys still yes.
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Elemental scaling will affect the hit yes. But phys scaling will NOT affect the bleed from that damage. Your damage increases only apply before the bleed value is calculated.
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Armor does not affect the bleed damage. Except if you have ‘inc dmg vs armor broken enemies’ or something.
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It’s probably just a nice bonus. Technically phys contributes more to stun but it’s probably not significant.
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Great question :) you can scale bleed with affliction/bleed magnitude and duration, so it’s usually easy to make the bleed do more total damage than a single hit. But yeah. You kinda need a big boom that cannot go off often, to make it worth it.