bleeding vs energy

[Dixon Sider]

so i have used both of these elements and i have been analyzing their effects while playing the game. I see a lot of information online about all the elements, and no one knows for sure what anything does. One common mistake that i see is that bleeding sucks.

Bleeding does not suck. when playiong on the hardest difficulty, the massive armor on the enemies make base damage really low, but DoT's seem to not be negated at all. What I have been doing for most enemies has been applying the dot, roll away, hold block, repeat. bleed seems to have a lower magnitude dot tick than energy does. This is the reason most people on forums are saying that bleed sucks.

One thing that is really cool that iv noticed, is that bleed can be refreshed, and energy can not. If you havent played mmos then you may not know what that means, so il explain. if you add a bleed dot on an enemy, it will tick for 10 seconds total duration (not actual, just explaining what refresh means). If you hit the enemy 5 seconds later, the original dot will have 5 seconds left, but it will be replaced by a new dot lasting for 10 seconds. So you will have a dot that lasts for 15 seconds if those are the only times you hit the enemy. energy dots do NOT refresh. This means that if the dot lasts 10 seconds, and you hit the enemy 2 times over 5 seconds, you will only have a 10 second duration for the dot.

So why is refreshing better you might ask? that means that as long as you hit the enemy at least once every 10 seconds, the dot will never fall off. but say if you have an energy weapon, and you hit the enemy once every 3 seconds, you will hit him 9 seconds after applying the original dot, it will not refresh, and the next time you hit the enemy, the dot will be applied again new. But you will lose 2 seconds of dot duration. So with energy you are almost guaranteed to lose some dot damage, where as with bleeding you will be able to keep the dot active for the entire duration of the fight.

I have not been explicitly testing anything, just paying attention to the mechanics. I have also seen some times where my bleed dot looks like it is stacking. I can not confirm yet, but if anyone would want to check this out, it would be pretty nice to know. I have had many times where my dot will rip through an enemy but theres almlost always a companion hitting the same enemy as me so i may be imagining it. I may test this along with many other things when im done with my first playthrough. Another thing to look at would be the duration of dots. I think that bleed lasts a lot longer than energy does. but i dont know for sure

to make a long story short... bleeding is dope

[Snorty]

I didn't use any of them yet (early in the game), but thanks for the information!

[Kotory]

Agreed. Bleeding is extremely effective in my experience.
On hardest possible diff lvl its life saver cuz it can easily eat away more target health than damage from direct hits . Especially with two handed axe cuz it has wide swings + radial attack finisher > multiple targets with bleeds > disengaging with backpack

Other 2 outlaws enchants are mystery for me. So bleeding is the only one pure damage enhancer.

[Dixon Sider]

Originally posted by Kotory:

Agreed. Bleeding is extremely effective in my experience.
On hardest possible diff lvl its life saver cuz it can easily eat away more target health than damage from direct hits . Especially with two handed axe cuz it has wide swings + radial attack finisher > multiple targets with bleeds > disengaging with backpack

Other 2 outlaws enchants are mystery for me. So bleeding is the only one pure damage enhancer.

I think radiation lowers defense. Reflect is a debuff thats applied on people that are hit by the weapon, but no clue what it is. I noticed when an enemy hit me with a reflect weapon i had a countdown similar to bleed and radiation show up in the same spot, but i never figured out what it does. and no one online is certain of it anywhere iv looked. If you go the outlaw path, bleed is the way to go.