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Thoughts On The State Of Melee Bleed Builds In Path Of Exile 3.22 - How To Improve?

Nov 17, 2023

Melee combat in Path of Exile 3.22 is in a very less than ideal situation right now, but no melee archetype is worse than Bleeding.

Current Bleed

The current state of Melee Bleed builds dates back to changes made in POE 3.14 and 3.15 that ultimately led to the demise of the archetype: Bleed Slams.

The problem, however, may not be the changes themselves, but the fact that Crutch of Seismic Cry and Elder Bleed weapon modifiers almost entirely takes the damage of these builds. Therefore, Melee Bleed builds need a lot of improvements.

But developers have done some rework on Ascendancy in recent leagues. Among them, no Ascendancy is more deserving of change than Gladiator. So with any luck, I feel like melee changes will come, eventually. But really, the change they should make in the meantime is buff, the damage these builds do so they’re at least playable.

In this guide, I outline a few ways developers can achieve this.

The State of Melee Bleed in Path of Exile 3.22

Ascendancy Reworks

As I already mentioned, how do they do that? I think Ascendancy Reworks could go a long way towards improving the blood and melee builds.

This may require more targeted changes to Gladiator. But one of the blood concepts I wanted the most was the ability to inflict blood using all damage types instead of just physical damage. This would be similar to Pneumatic Dagger in Heist, which allows all damage dealt by Dagger to cause poison damage to avoid confusion.

Here, this doesn’t mean you’ll be able to cause blood with spells, as all blood modifier chances in the game only apply to attacks. But it will open avenues to explore weapon crafting and weapon selection.

You can also use Elemental and Chaos damage to cause blood. Even the non-bleed specific melee Ascendancy changes can be an enormous improvement. Take Berserker, for example, which could also use some updates to feature more options.

Path of Exile 3.22: Gladiator Ascendancy Reworks

Passive Skill Tree

Speaking of more options, Passive Skill Tree needs more blood options. There are only two Bleed Mastery Clusters in the entire Skill Tree, while Poison has four Clusters and Ignite has six or more Clusters.

If you also include all Fire Damage over Time Multiplier Clusters, you’ll also need to spend POE Currency to add 1-2 additional Clusters for even more utility. Similar to the fresh attack, Ignite Clusters added in Trial of the Ancestors league. New Ignite Clusters have Concussive Force Notable, which deals more damage to Ignite hits, thus stunning enemies.

Path of Exile: Concussive Force

Mechanical Support

Blood would be great in terms of utility, but one of the most ridiculous things about Bleed is its Ailments mechanic. Over time, Bleed deals damage based on the base damage of the hit that caused Ailments. But it does more damage when the target moves.

There is a way to use Ensnaring Arrow to force the target to count as movement. This means that as a melee building, you’ll need to change your weapon to a bow in order to use Ensnaring Arrow to force the target to move countless times to deal more damage.

Melee Bleed builds can avoid this paradoxical situation by simply giving us a melee support gem that applies this effect.

Path of Exile: Ensnaring Arrow

Bleed Calculation

Also, the damage calculations caused by Bleed Ailments may need to be updated. Currently deals 70% of base damage every second for 5 seconds, increasing to 210% of base damage. If the target moves ideally, or if we get more of the effects of Ensnaring Arrow, the damage can be substantial.

But without this, I’d like to see more damage when the target doesn’t move and the moving component stays the same. This way, you don’t have to rely so much on forcing the target to move to deal meaningful damage.

Closing

I really like Bleed mechanic because it’s more interesting than Poison and Ignite, but we need more tools to make it work. What are your thoughts on the current status of Melee Bleed builds for Path of Exile 3.22? have a beautiful day!

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