Path of Exile

Deathwing said:

Assuming reliable aggravation is the real bait.

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Exactly. Glad block is pretty crazy. Lucky block will give effective block of 94(?)%

Haven't played properly since like 2016 but gonna come back for this crazy expansion. I was exclusive HC back then which was a nice balance of adrenaline but having logout scripts for oh shit moments. Is that still viable or does everything one shot these days and too much progression is locked behind rippy bosses?

Deathwing said:

Huh? I'm being serious, fishing for aggravated bleeds while trying to line up fist of war and ruthless is going to be annoying.

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The amount of Slayer/Chieftan bleed setups I see taking ~45% aggravate on the tree and using fist of war+ruthless+volatility is fucking incredible.

Just the worst kind of PoB warrior nonsense, cause it isn't even obvious from the config how bad it's going to actually play. ESPECIALLY since according to the QA the initial bleed can *never* be aggravated unless you're a gladiator:

If you aggravate bleeding on hit, and inflict a bleed with that same hit, the new bleed will not be aggravated. You'd have to hit again to aggravate it. The Gladiator's Jagged Technique passive is the only way to apply an aggravated bleed in a single hit.

That doesn't seem like *that* big a deal to me. Poison builds have ramp times and are still very good and very popular. Slayers can get endurance charges as a defensive layer basically for free and can also get brutal charges or affliction charges with a Maven belt at high value.

ronne said:

The amount of Slayer/Chieftan bleed setups I see taking ~45% aggravate on the tree and using fist of war+ruthless+volatility is fucking incredible.

Just the worst kind of PoB warrior nonsense, cause it isn't even obvious from the config how bad it's going to actually play. ESPECIALLY since according to the QA the initial bleed can *never* be aggravated unless you're a gladiator:

If you aggravate bleeding on hit, and inflict a bleed with that same hit, the new bleed will not be aggravated. You'd have to hit again to aggravate it. The Gladiator's Jagged Technique passive is the only way to apply an aggravated bleed in a single hit.

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Single hit yes. But I still think Jagged Tech Glad is bait, or at least unless you are slam/eq bleeds its not anything to write home about.

Now taking Bleed for the crit and other benefits such of bleedsplosions is not bait. Glad will be fine.

Slayer is looking juicy cause of the endurance buff. Chieftain its just stupidly solid everywhere. Warcry (kind of helps with endurance stuff), easy max res, huge more multi on most skills,

Did Archmage not get touched, might try a variety of that.

Or maybe Hiero Powersiphon Totems? That's another asc that can take adv of the endurance buff

Deathwing said:

Slow hitting build is what lets you fish for Fist of War and Ruthless procs. By saying Jagged Technique is bait because you can massage it with attack speed likely means you're giving up the nearly 100% from Fist of War and maybe also Ruthless. There's also some noninsignificant exertion bonuses.

Do you have a PoB that makes aggravating bleed a nonissue?

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I think people are really missing what was written in the FAQ. They are saying the passive tree stuff can only ever cause an *existing* bleed to become aggravated, meaning that you attack > apply a bleed > attack again with ~45% chance to aggravate the previous bleed > what happens if the 2nd bleed is a bigger roll than the first and it overwrites? You get no aggravate at all.

Throw ruthless/fist of war/volatility/ryslathas in to the mix and the way bleed needs to 'fish' for larger hits for big bleeds and the tree aggravate is never ever going to actually work for you aside from specifically like crimson dance lacerate? And I'm pretty sure crimson dance is just flat worse than a single large bleed in almost every meaningful way.

Cerzi said:

Haven't played properly since like 2016 but gonna come back for this crazy expansion. I was exclusive HC back then which was a nice balance of adrenaline but having logout scripts for oh shit moments. Is that still viable or does everything one shot these days and too much progression is locked behind rippy bosses?

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I usually just look at several guides for league starters, then pick what I most would like to play, then go from there.

Personally I don't have anywhere near the knowledge to start a new league as HC. I can understand people like Ziz and the likes do it, as they have intimate knowledge of skills, abilities, crafting, minmaxing and the likes so they know all the ways to minimize risk of dying. But I don't think I ever have seen a league start that doesn't get a patch after a week or so with a "oops that was overtuned". So many times I see streamers like Ziz be far into map progression and still haven't touched the new league mechanics because they don't want to die to the "new rippy mechanics".

I do understand the extra adrenaline of HC, I enjoyed trying a few times when WoW HC came out, but for PoE that might be something I'd try with a character closer to when I am done with a league, not the start of it. I usually skip a few leagues between PoE (last played now is Dec 23), but when I do play, I don't want my experience to be "oh what's this new thing, lets try, splat". Not exactly fun for me to play a new league where I try to avoid everything about it.

ronne said:

I think people are really missing what was written in the FAQ. They are saying the passive tree stuff can only ever cause an *existing* bleed to become aggravated, meaning that you attack > apply a bleed > attack again with ~45% chance to aggravate the previous bleed > what happens if the 2nd bleed is a bigger roll than the first and it overwrites? You get no aggravate at all.

Throw ruthless/fist of war/volatility/ryslathas in to the mix and the way bleed needs to 'fish' for larger hits for big bleeds and the tree aggravate is never ever going to actually work for you aside from specifically like crimson dance lacerate? And I'm pretty sure crimson dance is just flat worse than a single large bleed in almost every meaningful way.

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OK that makes more sense then and it a much larger reason to get the skill. I was thinking you could make it bleed, then blow your cries and hit again and the next bleed would aggravate. Seems clunky. Lacerate will be much more consistent, which attacks fast and therefore could spec in weapon master or maybe retaliation skills.

I've mainly been looking at the gladiator for block and bleedsplosion or as a hollow palm enjoyer. Chieftain slams look super great. And so does Glad double strike. WIth that you go crit and use bleeds to pop enemies and get fuck tons of crit from cornered prey.

So far I'm locked into Glad/Slayer/Chief/Hiero. If I were to do EQ it would definitely be on Gladiator with Jagged Tech.

Yea I'm gonna probably just yolo chieftan with any random slam skill that I like the most. It's all pretty interchangeable, the only real question is pure phys or use one of the fire converts like tec slam.

The damage numbers are so high you can pretty much flail your way in to red maps without too much trouble, which is totally fine for a leaguestart.

Deathwing said:

Largely, I agree, not worth the hassle.

But, does it really work this way?
Bleed #1 is 50%
Bleed #2 is 51% and procs aggravated

You're saying the active bleed will always be bleed #2 because its "base" damage is 51%, even though bleed #1 was made effectively 150%?

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Yea that's the primary concern, the way active bleeds work is only based on the strongest bleed application and the wording on aggravate makes it sound like it's not part of the base bleed application:

The extra damage from Aggravated bleeding is separate to bleeding's normal damage. For example, a 100 DPS bleed that becomes Aggravated would deal 100 DPS from the bleed effect, and 200 DPS from Aggravated bleeding

This puts you in that awkward scenario above where a successful aggravate only applies to the previous/existing bleeds, not the newly applied one, so if the newly applied one is a higher roll than the previous ones it'll become active and eat your aggravate anyway.

Edit: the wiki didn't have the full text, it's not quite as bad as completely overriding the old bleeds:

If you then inflict a 200 dps normal bleed, that will take precedence over the normal damage from the smaller bleed, but the aggravated damage from that bleed will keep applying as long as it's the highest aggravated bleed damage and the monster is stationary. The target would be taking 400 dps when stationary, or 600 while moving.

Yea it's really ass and makes the aggravated stuff on tree a complete trap unless you're exactly lacerate I think

The only way any kind of big slam bleed like EQ or whatever is gonna work is with the gladiator node