I've been thinking about ways to make more skills and damage types/playstyles viable. One of the ideas I keep coming back to is the concept of bleeds. I always like to see monsters' health slowly draining away rather than dropping in huge chunks at lesser intervals, so the playstyle of bleeds appeals to me. Currently, each class has one skill (unless I've missed any) that provides a bleed (note that I've only included skills that use the word "bleed." Skills that just deal damage over time aren't included.):
Rend
Impale - Chemical Burn
Exploding Palm
Hex - Painful Transformation
Spectral Blade - Deep Cuts
Bleeds are also available as an affix on weapons, such as that on Skorn. As things stand now, I'd say that only Rend and EP are used with any frequency and the damage from the weapon affix is generally considered negligible. How might bleeds become a viable source of damage then? I'll explore the question in terms of both skills and gear.
Skills
I think if I want to make bleed builds viable, there needs to be more than one source of bleed damage for any given class. Some skills could be slightly altered to change from "deals damage over time" to "causes the target to bleed." I'll get to why I think there should be a distinction between the two and why it's important shortly. For now, a couple examples might include:
Grenades - Gas Grenades (change to "Shrapnel" or similar)
Passives could get in on the fun too. Here you'll see why I think bleed damage should be differentiated from other standard damage-over-time skills. I'm sure there's a few from each class that could possibly benefit, but I'll stick to one example for each:
Pound of Flesh - Add a flat increase to bleed damage to the skill, or increase bleed damage when you pick up a health globe, similar to the Gruesome Feast mechanic
Numbing Traps - Add "The movement speed of enemies affected by bleeds is reduced by x%"
Each time you deal damage with a bleed effect, you have a chance to gain 1 Spirit (not sure which passive I'd add this to; maybe just replace one of the plethora of useless Monk passives instead?)
Blood Ritual - Instead of regenerating 1% of your health per second, "gain life equal to x% (~15%?) of bleed damage dealt"
Add bleed tick functionality to Arcane Dynamo (at a reduced chance to gain a stack)
I feel like these changes would give players of all classes good options to build their characters around bleeds, should they so desire. But I still don't think we'd be competitive with today's standard cookie cutter builds. That's where the gear comes in to help.
Gear
Since bleeds deal damage on set intervals and can't crit, they won't benefit from CHC/CD/AS, which most current end-game builds rely heavily upon. Average Damage would be a poweful addition to a bleeder's arsenal, but I think we'll need more to be competitive with crit builds.
I'm unclear on how weapon affix bleeds work, but I think they just deal their damage as advertised (e.g. 6339 - 9562 over 5 seconds), which is clearly not worth it. I think the best solution would be to change it to a percent of the damage caused by the strike that triggered the bleed. Otherwise, it could be changed from flat damage to a percent of weapon damage and/or increased by main stat damage bonus. Either way, weapon affix bleeds need to be more desirable.
I think the only way that a bleed build would be able to truly compete with a crit build would be to add mechanics to the game that benefit bleeds. This could come in the form of both legendaries and set bonuses, and this section will borrow heavily from my ideas on set bonuses that you can read about here (and isn't as long as this post). Some of my ideas for unique mechanics that bleeders would rely on for their damage:
When an enemy is affected by a bleed, the damage of any subsequent bleeds applied is increased by x%; OR
Enemies take x% additional damage from all attacks for each bleed effect active on them
Bleed damage ticks benefit from x% of your Life on Hit
Each time an enemy suffers reflected damage, there is a chance that it will begin bleeding for x% of the damage received over y seconds
I especially like the last idea, beacuse it opens up another realm of builds concentrating on thorns damage and/or reflective skills, such as:
Overpower - Crushing Advance, Ignore Pain - Contempt for Weakness, Tough as Nails
I realize not all of these necessarily make a viable build, but I think some could.
I believe that a more passive, DoT-based gameplay is definitely missing from D3, and while it seems it's not the "ideal" strategy from the devs' point of view, I think many players enjoy this playstyle and it's certainly not without precedent in the Diablo franchise, as any former Poisonmancer can attest to. What do you think about the idea? Would you like to see DoT builds become more viable? Do you think that even with the changes outlined here bleed builds would be able to compete with crit builds? Post your thoughts and suggestions!
There is some guy that stacked the most possible bleeds in game and it made quite an interesting build,
to me personally i would like the bleeds to be more powerful, but i use skorn, and the bleed is already nice, specially in pvp since the dmg seems to not be mitigated. xD
Edit: the bleeds do stack, but not like normal stacking,
if u apply 1x 5k dmg bleed on top of another 5k dmg bleed (they both last 5 secs) it will apply both, but not 1x10k bleed over 5 secs, it will not renew or refresh the existing bleeds, it will apply more, like 2x 5k dmg bleed.
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Those Who Do Not Know True Pain Cannot Possibly Understand True Peace...
Skills
I think if I want to make bleed builds viable, there needs to be more than one source of bleed damage for any given class. Some skills could be slightly altered to change from "deals damage over time" to "causes the target to bleed." I'll get to why I think there should be a distinction between the two and why it's important shortly. For now, a couple examples might include:
Gear
Since bleeds deal damage on set intervals and can't crit, they won't benefit from CHC/CD/AS, which most current end-game builds rely heavily upon. Average Damage would be a poweful addition to a bleeder's arsenal, but I think we'll need more to be competitive with crit builds.
I'm unclear on how weapon affix bleeds work, but I think they just deal their damage as advertised (e.g. 6339 - 9562 over 5 seconds), which is clearly not worth it. I think the best solution would be to change it to a percent of the damage caused by the strike that triggered the bleed. Otherwise, it could be changed from flat damage to a percent of weapon damage and/or increased by main stat damage bonus. Either way, weapon affix bleeds need to be more desirable.
I think the only way that a bleed build would be able to truly compete with a crit build would be to add mechanics to the game that benefit bleeds. This could come in the form of both legendaries and set bonuses, and this section will borrow heavily from my ideas on set bonuses that you can read about here (and isn't as long as this post). Some of my ideas for unique mechanics that bleeders would rely on for their damage:
I believe that a more passive, DoT-based gameplay is definitely missing from D3, and while it seems it's not the "ideal" strategy from the devs' point of view, I think many players enjoy this playstyle and it's certainly not without precedent in the Diablo franchise, as any former Poisonmancer can attest to. What do you think about the idea? Would you like to see DoT builds become more viable? Do you think that even with the changes outlined here bleed builds would be able to compete with crit builds? Post your thoughts and suggestions!
to me personally i would like the bleeds to be more powerful, but i use skorn, and the bleed is already nice, specially in pvp since the dmg seems to not be mitigated. xD
Edit: the bleeds do stack, but not like normal stacking,
if u apply 1x 5k dmg bleed on top of another 5k dmg bleed (they both last 5 secs) it will apply both, but not 1x10k bleed over 5 secs, it will not renew or refresh the existing bleeds, it will apply more, like 2x 5k dmg bleed.
Those Who Do Not Know True Pain Cannot Possibly Understand True Peace...
Top 10 Solo Wizard Leaderboard - North America
Highest: Rank 6 // Greater Rift 42 12m40s
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Top 10 Solo Wizard Leaderboard - North America
Highest: Rank 6 // Greater Rift 42 12m40s