Dagger of the Sadistic Cult, Blood Sword, bleeding in general

[Sample goblin]

It requires a buff. There aren't many ways to apply bleeding while building around it and if so, there are major flaws to those builds.
-Knife Storm has way too long cooldown for this to be effective,
-Blood Sword is ebarasingly slow and underwhelming in damage,
-Throwing Knives scales with Tactis, waste of slot, while the Dagger doesn't bring enough damage to cover it.
Itself, without crits, it's nearly useless in use.


Also regarding bleeding and comparising it to Poison or Fire - why is it so weak? Fire afffixes provide +100% damage to a burning target, while fire is on it's own pretty strong and popular throughtout the game weapons, affixes, mechanics. Poison is really strong, I can paifully agree to a 50% bonus. But 30% bonus on a bleeding target? Why? Bleeding is usually short, affects few targets and is nerfed to the ground!

What do you think?

[Protolisk]

You are forgetting the brutality/tactics scalling Sinew Slicers and Meat Grinder skills, which also provide bleed damage. However, they too have signifigant drawbacks, as the Meat Grinder is in a very small area, and the sinew slicer seems to be blown up in 1 hit while other turets can last 3-5.

I agree though, all sources of bleed are very finicky and don't mesh well together with the dagger, seem to fit more with tactics than brutality, and is extremely small damage boost on that affix makes it appeal even less. Maybe the dagger should be a brutality/tactics weapon, or the throwing knives.

Not to mention that while weapons seem to get 50% bonus to posioned targets, some skills get a 100% boost instead. Don't know if that's a graphical error or not, but it seems weird when the bleed bonus is just so small.

[Sample goblin]

I was about to add those up, but both aren't really significant in any way. They just just apply bleeding while taking up a slot. Wow.

What I'm talking about specifically is the affix +30%, because it is right now a joke more or less. The whole bleeding mechanics could use a little of improvement in numbers, because it smells like just a stale leftover of the nerf that hit bleeding way, way earlier in the development of the game.
Whereas other elements got buffs later on.

I actually like the thing with poison, because it shows that poison should be tactics exclusive, not brutality/survival.
That's basically what I'm aiming at - making bleed brutality oriented, poison tactic oriented, and fire in between. What's now is purely fire all over the place with poison somewhere behind, but still catching up.
Bleeding on the other hand... Is just laying down, sobbing quietely. With the exception of Knife Storm, which is an absolute armageddon of a skill.

By the way, it kinda disturbes me that Torch is a direct upgrade to Blood Sword atm :v

[815|Shouldabeen]

If you're talking about proccing the crits from Dagger, they also proc from poison, which rolls 100% (or nearly) of the time on phaser after it's leveled to ++. Phaser has something like a 3.6s base cd and with cdr talent it is up very frequently.

In terms of bleed being weak, I agree completely. The only time bleed is good is on double TKs, Knife Storm, or if you're lucky enough to get a Blood Sword that rolls the AoE bleed.

Also not sure why bleed only gets a +30% increse when poison gets 50% and burning gets 100%.

Next time you get a chance, try Dagger or Sadistic Cult with +poison and +burning damage along with a phaser that has ignite and poison. The damage output is quite nice. Still not as nice as assassin dagger tho.

Publicado originalmente por SpeedingBanana:

I'm aiming at - making bleed brutality oriented, poison tactic oriented, and fire in between.

not to be rude, but this is a very bad idea. you would just be reducing the amount of elemental affixes each tree can play with, ultimately hurting everyone and making the game less interesting.

[Sample goblin]

You basically disregarded my whole thread, just by saying that there is exactly one thing among many nearly useless that solves the problem. I'm aware of the Phaser, upgraded it myself, but as you noticed - why should I get Dagger of the Sadistic Cult, when I can simply equip Assasin's Dagger, with similar affixes, and basically one shot most of the mobs?
I once made a run with Phaser only, on two skill slots + Assasin's Dagger. I thought - eh, I'm not gonna survive till Incomplete One. And what happened? It was third time I saw the sign "Work in Progress".
Phaser is strong on it's own and I like it, but binding brutality runs specifically to this skill emphasizes what you said in your last sentence.

And I'm not trying to force this 'bad idea', I just noticed how skills get +100% on poisoned targets, while weapons tend to get +50%. I just imagined that skills would stay at +30% on bleeding, while swords, bows, etc would get twice or thrice of that.

However, my point still stays at the fact, that bleeding mechanic needs some improvement. In numbers mostly, since I feel like this is not fair compared to other elements.

[815|Shouldabeen]

Publicado originalmente por SpeedingBanana:

You basically disregarded my whole thread, just by saying that there is exactly one thing among many nearly useless that solves the problem. I'm aware of the Phaser, upgraded it myself, but as you noticed - why should I get Dagger of the Sadistic Cult, when I can simply equip Assasin's Dagger, with similar affixes, and basically one shot most of the mobs?
I once made a run with Phaser only, on two skill slots + Assasin's Dagger. I thought - eh, I'm not gonna survive till Incomplete One. And what happened? It was third time I saw the sign "Work in Progress".
Phaser is strong on it's own and I like it, but binding brutality runs specifically to this skill emphasizes what you said in your last sentence.

And I'm not trying to force this 'bad idea', I just noticed how skills get +100% on poisoned targets, while weapons tend to get +50%. I just imagined that skills would stay at +30% on bleeding, while swords, bows, etc would get twice or thrice of that.

However, my point still stays at the fact, that bleeding mechanic needs some improvement. In numbers mostly, since I feel like this is not fair compared to other elements.

I would imagine that it has to do with the way bleeds stack. They can stack at a rate much faster than poison or burn, so your damage output from the bleed itself kind of offsets the fact that its modifier on weapons is much lower. Heck, two of the OP builds utilize bleeds (double tks and double Storm) to do most of their damage. They are just more in a bad place for brutality, than in a bad place overall

I agree about the assassin's dagger too, but I think what you're doing is just comparing an overtuned item (yes, assassin's dagger is definitely overtuned) to an item that's more or less where it should be at. Unless you have a save file with limited unlocks, you also cannot guarantee that you'll see an assassin's dagger every run. And please don't think I'm bashing assassin's dagger, it's my favorite weapon and fits my favorite playstyle perfectly, but you cannot argue that if you get one with double phaser that it's nearly a free win. And obtaining double phaser in a run is not difficult at all with a shop refresh, since the skills pool is pretty limited as it is.

[Sample goblin]

They stack at a fast rate, but fade away the rate even faster. Trust me, I've got some experience with that.

You are foreshadowing the bleeding mechanic problem just by presenting two weapons/skills that are overpowered and not well enough thought through in the first place. TK was pain in the neck since the beginning of the game and Fan of Knives got immensly popular after making it viable for 2+ builds after color distinction.

Don't tell me, that any other bleeding weapons present anything in your eyes. Yes, that indicates imbalance in bleeding mechanic.

Also Assasin's Dagger is considered powerful, yes, but I believe that only with the Phaser. Without it it's more likely a mutated copy-cat of the Rapier.

[815|Shouldabeen]

Publicado originalmente por SpeedingBanana:

They stack at a fast rate, but fade away the rate even faster. Trust me, I've got some experience with that.

You are foreshadowing the bleeding mechanic problem just by presenting two weapons/skills that are overpowered and not well enough thought through in the first place. TK was pain in the neck since the beginning of the game and Fan of Knives got immensly popular after making it viable for 2+ builds after color distinction.

Don't tell me, that any other bleeding weapons present anything in your eyes. Yes, that indicates inbalance in bleeding mechanic.

Also Assasin's Dagger is considered powerful, yes, but I believe that only with the Phaser. Without it it's more likely a mutated copy-cat of the Rapier.

Blood Shield is amazing, not sure why you think TK is the only good bleed weapon. Hit 1 parry on a survival build with Blood Shield, kill everything in the area. You can't pretend that blood sword is the only other source of bleed damage besides TK. IMO, blood sword is not a good item. DPS type weapons will always be overshadowed by burst damage weapons because of two things: killing trash enemies and limited windows to deal damage. This is the same reason balanced blade isn't very good. It's not in the unusable tier, but it's in the tier of weapons that's "i'll use it till I find something else."

Assassin dagger is fine without phaser. Ice bow, Ice grenade, Bear Trap, Frost Blast, Ivy Grenade, Flashbang, these all give you the ability to position behind your target to deal damage. The base damage of assassin dagger is too high. This is coming from someone who plays almost exclusively brutality builds. Any form of cc lets you dish out incredible amounts of damage with assassin dagger. And if you're lucky enough to get one with +frozen and an ice bow that has chance to not unfreeze, the game is literally just won.

[Sample goblin]

I haven't played Blood Shield anywhere beyond fist level, so I won't discuss the item. To me it was pretty underwhelming after recent patches, so I won't believe you right away as well.
Anyway, most of bleeding weapons scale with brutality, so that's another reason why I didn't consider this weapon on the list.

Im not here to sentence any weapon to a judgement of 'you are bad, get over it', but to find a way to improve them. Maybe, it's not the bleeding mechanic problem at all, but in the end, weapons utilising it just don't seem be effective enough apart from listed exceptions.

Blood Sword just needs a little improvement in numbers, honestly. For now you either have to strike 3 times an enemy (usually) and waste a lot of bleeding ticks or strike two times and leave enemies barely alive. I beg you pardon, you are right, dps is a dps and burst's burst, but I'm genuinely convinced that it shouldn't look like that.

CCs and AD is another topic, still. Phaser has 1.5 sec cd, while other skills vary in that area. Can't argue much tho.
But still, considering overpowered the only item that's making a Brutality build worth a try is just mistaken, if I can point that out.

[815|Shouldabeen]

Publicado originalmente por SpeedingBanana:

But still, considering overpowered the only item that's making a Brutality build worth a try is just mistaken, if I can point that out.

This is still not true. you can name any weapon outside of the 3 conditionals (rapier, impaler and sandals) and I will personally stream a winning 3 cell run with it without using phaser. I may not get it on the first try, but that's hardly the fault of the setup. Humans are prone to making mistakes.

[ChaosSabre]

You forget how absurdly fast bleed can stack. Go for a tactics build. fire off one knife storm and everything will die if shot correctly with the amount of bleed stacks it'll get. Also double throwing knives is the most hillarious build you'll ever do how easy it is to beat the game with that. In my opinion it's fire and poision that need buffs. Those are the modifiers that are really bad. Fire kinda needs oil to be fully effective while poison is only good if it's a on death affix.

[815|Shouldabeen]

Publicado originalmente por ChaosSabre:

You forget how absurdly fast bleed can stack. Go for a tactics build. fire off one knife storm and everything will die if shot correctly with the amount of bleed stacks it'll get. Also double throwing knives is the most hillarious build you'll ever do how easy it is to beat the game with that. In my opinion it's fire and poision that need buffs. Those are the modifiers that are really bad. Fire kinda needs oil to be fully effective while poison is only good if it's a on death affix.

that's what the damage synergies are for. poison and fire are not for doing damage themselves for the most part, but triggering higher damage on your primary weapon affixes

[ChaosSabre]

Publicado originalmente por 815|Shouldabeen:

Publicado originalmente por ChaosSabre:

You forget how absurdly fast bleed can stack. Go for a tactics build. fire off one knife storm and everything will die if shot correctly with the amount of bleed stacks it'll get. Also double throwing knives is the most hillarious build you'll ever do how easy it is to beat the game with that. In my opinion it's fire and poision that need buffs. Those are the modifiers that are really bad. Fire kinda needs oil to be fully effective while poison is only good if it's a on death affix.

that's what the damage synergies are for. poison and fire are not for doing damage themselves for the most part, but triggering higher damage on your primary weapon affixes

And bleed can do it without any synergies at all.

[815|Shouldabeen]

Publicado originalmente por ChaosSabre:

Publicado originalmente por 815|Shouldabeen:

that's what the damage synergies are for. poison and fire are not for doing damage themselves for the most part, but triggering higher damage on your primary weapon affixes

And bleed can do it without any synergies at all.

and that's why both bleed and poison/burn are balanced. Bleed has enough self damage to take care of business, so it doesn't get a good synergy and poison/burn do their damage through synergies

[Sample goblin]

Chaos just rambled into the topic and highlighted the only two weapons that literally don't need any buff at the moment, which we've literally just concluded some posts above.
fine
this is fine
The point of this topic was to enhance any other bleeding choices/effects, which feel really underwhelming in my hands, like Meat Grinder, Blood Sword, DotSC, Sinew Slicer, bleeding affix, even Blood Shield, but sure
let's roll over F o K and TK again and again, completely F.ucking forgetting about everything else
and then change topic to other weps and three cells shenanigans.
fine
sure, m8, do what you wanna do
Just lemme exit through that door behind you.


If anyone else reading is willing to leave their thoughts here, similar or different, the topic's open, although I won't be trying to artificially sustain it anymore. Have fun.

[Z_Raven]

Blood sword could use some kind of buff. Maybe apply 2 stacks of bleed per attack or just increase the attack speed so that it can stack faster (adjust damage for the faster attacks but keeping the same DPS excluding the ticking bleed damage).
Balance blade could use a buff/tweak to either get a crit or being able to synergies with something. Right now it's just a fast hitting weapon giving you nothing special.