BLEEDSERKER [3.1] - 2h Heavy Strike Bleed Beserker - (1 mil DPS, 8k Life)

Jump, swing, jump, swing, jump, swing, jump, swing swing swing swing swing. Cool thing is that most trash dies in one/two hits. And once we get to bosses, we can pretty much spank them until they fall over. Damage spread comes out to about 67%/33% between hits/bleed, so hits basically do all our damage when clearing, and bleed picks up the slack when doing bosses. It's also nice to have some dps ticking in the event we have to move away for whatever reason. Clearing maps can be a little messy since melee splash only reaches so far, but still pretty good.

Long story short, it's a fast-paced, survivable, high dps build for the exiles who like to beat enemies into a bloody pulp.

By default, your main set-up will look like this
Heavy Strike - Brutality - Melee Phys - Ruthless - Maim - Chance to Bleed/Melee Splash

Since bleed is based off attack damage, the obvious choice here should be going for large hits. And what better way to do that than with a 2 hander and Heavy Strike? Ideally each of our support gems not only boosts our hits, but also our bleed damage. Luckily there are 5 gems which do so. Obviously we use Melee Splash for everyday mapping, but truth be told we can still do high-end bosses with splash still on if you want to (only lose ~20% total dps doing so). And if there are enough adds, it's often the most convenient way to run.

This build can run with 5 link, but that 6L set-up is just the bees knees. So instead, I'd suggest finding the most budget 6L chest piece you can wear, even if the stats are sub-optimal. If you really can't swing it, Bleed Chance support is the least important, and you would drop that.

As we'll see in a bit, Kaom's Heart is the goal, so we'll only have a couple of additional skill set-ups to consider.

Leap Slam - Faster Attacks - Fortify Supp - Rallying Cry
Don't sweat rallying cry too much if you feel that something else will be more helpful.

Cast when damage taken - Molten Shell - Immortal Call - Punishment
Going for extra survivability and damage. As usual, you likely don't want to level up CWDT to 20, so find a good balance for yourself and mind the other skills linked to it accordingly (I like my CWDT level somewhere in the teens).

Ancestral Protector - Melee Splash - Culling Strike - Blood Rage
Attack speed for days and AoE culling strike helps to clean up the riff raff and finish off bosses. Also another free bit of dps, why not?

For the fellow nerds looking to learn, we need to take a minute to talk about Ruthless Support and what it does for us. The interaction between RS, bleed, and Crimson Dance is easily the most misunderstood thing I've ever seen in PoE. Let's examine what makes this gem so valuable to us.

Crimson Dance allows us to inflict bleeding up to 8 times. Lots of people take this as bleed stacks, but it really is 8 separate instances running at once. This isn't just semantics, that fact is crucial when you consider that the highest damage bleed stacks take precedence over low damage ones. Ruthless blows allows us to take advantage of this mechanic to the fullest.

When trolling around the interweb, most people (including Path of Building, shame on you) think Ruthless blows simply averages out to ~37% extra damage for hits and bleeds since it's a 113% damage boost once every 3 hits. But remember that bleed stacks DO NOT DROP OFF if the incoming bleed stacks inflict lower dps. It's a priority system with bias towards higher damage, not FIFO, and that is key. So if you don't have Crimson Dance, this means you'll have a 213% bleed up at all times assuming you swing at least 6 times in 5 seconds. Introducing Crimson Dance does make the calculation tricky, but not impossible. We simply need to examine how many of our 8 bleed instances are consistently up from Ruthless blows, and calculate the percentage change that way. Consider the following example:

We have an exile with an attack time of 0.2 (5 attacks per second). Within the 5 second default bleed duration, he is able to spank the bad guy 25 times, one third of which are Ruthless blows (>8). Since he will have 8 concurrent instances of Ruthless blow bleeds at any one time with this attack speed, and 0 instances of normal damage bleed (thanks the the higher damage priority), he will have the full benefit of 213% more bleed damage as long as he continues to attack. This calculation becomes a bit more complicated as attack speed slows, as you run into areas where you go back and forth between running 7 and 8 Ruthless instances at once (as an example). Interestingly though, this concept demonstrates that there is a gradient of benefit from Ruthless support with respect to bleed, and is definitely not just a matter of "averaging out to 37%" and calling it a day.

This implies three important factors. First, is that bleed chance matters over the long term. Any bleed chance missing is a chance we don't get our Ruthless blow bleed instance, so 75% bleed chance means we only get three quarters of what we should have. As long as you can hit 100% with Bleed Chance support, you're golden. Second, is that attack speed actually improves our bleed damage because of the dynamic described above, so something like Faster Attacks support actually helps us do more bleed. Neat, huh? Third, is that everyone's bleed modifier from Ruthless blows is going to be different based on the character's attack speed. So everyone will have to calculate/estimate their own true percentage modifier to know their dps. I found that making a table in excel is very helpful for this, and you'll note that we achieve the maximum benefit at an attack speed of ~0.2 (or ~5 attacks per second) as described above. If your attacks per 5 seconds is evenly divisble by 3 (24, 21, 18, 15, etc.) then you will have a relatively simple calculation (213%, 199%, 185%, 171%, respectively). If your toon's attacks per 5 seconds is a little messier, like 19.4, then feel free to estimate the modifier based on the even breaks around it.

If you like to use Path of Building to calculate DPS, you'll need to do it in 2 parts. First note your "Total DPS" with all gems active. Luckily this excludes bleed damage. Second, deactivate Ruthless support, grab the "Bleed DPS" value, multiply it by 8 (instances), and then multiply by your character's specific modifier. If you happen to have the exact gear that I'm running, then you'll be able to achieve an attack time that gives you a full 8 Ruthless blows bleed instances (213% modifier). Then just add the two values together. You'll find that PoB sells you short a LOT of dps because of the bleed stuff. Also, don't forget to turn on the Shaper/Guardian boss option in the config or else you'll overestimate your dps.

Apologies for the long aside, but I've literally seen no one talking about this online, and I've done a lot of math and research on bleed to make this build work. The people deserve to know the truth!

Level 60
I'm a fan of max life/life regen early until we get some proper damage/leech going, so I spec into a few extra regen nodes that get changed later. Feel free to play around with that stuff as you see fit. Only priority ascendancy when leveling is the free leech IMO, everything else comes down to preference. Also, Weight of the Empire jewel is awesome, so grab a couple of those.

Level 90
Just one quick note here... Crimson Dance is NOT a huge priority early on. I cannot stress enough that CD only helps with boss fights, and can actually hold you back on the side of clearing. Only spec into it when you feel like your boss damage is lacking.

We're going for greatness here, so ideally we aim for 6L Starforge/Kaom's as our most important items.


As I mentioned before, we can do this budget, but the 6L is important. Hell, in 3.1 I got to level 88 with just a Tabula Rasa. Easiest place to pick up a 6L is with a budget chest, so start there. If you can't get Starforge, Disfavour is always nice (but about 15% behind Starforge), but Uul-Netol's Embrace and Kondo's Pride are good "cheap" options (make sure you use the correct weapon passives for your axe/sword/whatever).




For everything else, it's simply a matter of balancing our priorities as we don't need anything specific. You should be looking for the following:
Res cap > life > attack speed/stranth/phys damage > armor > everything else sucks

Now I'd like to take the time to address some common questions regarding our set-up and choices.

Why no Multistrike support? I thought you were a fan of attack speed.
I'm aware of multistrike, but long story short, it's a snowball effect of less and less bleed damage between reduced attack damage and only every third multistrike hit counting towards Ruthless blows. Because of this, Maim support is just better.

Punishment instead of vulnerability?
Vulnerability just can't compete with the damage/attack speed from punishment since, again, the majority of our damage is from hits. It's just the way the math works out.

Couldn't you run a 5L/6L belly of the beast for another skill set up for more damage?
Yes, probably, but I haven't found a compelling reason to do so. Rather, I found that the extra health and armor from Kaom's is more valuable than any skill I could think to add to the build. That being said, I freely admit this point is up for debate, and I'm open to suggestions. Maybe a stacked totem for a bit more dps?

Why Blood Magic? Couldn't you run some auras?
I could, but there's not much good stuff to pick up for this build in the way of auras. Big problem is that because Brutality Support prevents elemental damage on Heavy Strike, our hands are pretty tied. Sure, I could gain 20k dps or something from running haste, but I've found that the benefit of an easy 35% life multiplier behind Blood Magic is more valuable than any aura I'm able to add.

Your flasks blow.
Not really a question, but I agree. Sadly, there aren't great flasks options with this build other than Lion's Roar because of Brutality support. Bye bye atziri's, taste of hate, etc. Even sadder is that the one flask that could be good, a 40% Witchfire Brew, doesn't add more than 2%-3% damage on boss fights (and nothing for trash clearing) and is really more for poison anyway. Because of this, we just run what we can.

Why not roll with bloodlust support instead of worrying about keeping up bleeds?
Different strokes for different exiles. You certainly could do this, and the dps ends up being very similar. However, this bleed build is a bit of a pet project of mine, and is something I've been interested in since I started playing poe.

Where are your jewels?
Haven't been able to pick any up that I like yet. Outside of Weight of the Empire, it's actually been pretty tough to justify two passives for another jewel at this point. A work in progress though.

Why did you opt for Hematophagy and not Vaal Pact?
Frankly, this one is a close call. The leech/regen/consecrated ground combo comes out to about the same as the super leech provided by Vaal Pact. At the end of the day, the convenience of regen for things like uber lab and our Blood Magic skills, and the little bit of extra damage while leeching broke the tie for me. I've been on the fence about grabbing both, but haven't brought myself to try yet.