Is Glad's Jagged Technique a dps-decrease with heavy investment in bleed? (follow-up from RAQ)

Hi all,

I am quite excited about the Gladiator rework and want to create a bleed-based build. But after yesterday's RAQ release I am confused about aggravated bleeding and Jagged Technique. But maybe I am misunderstanding things.

Based on the RAQ, 1) aggravated bleeding and normal bleeding are separate dots, 2) both can be on a target at the same time and deal their damage, 3) only the highest of each does damage. So far so good.
But it also states aggravating bleed only aggravates bleeds already on the target (not new ones), and the only way to apply and immediately aggravate a bleed is with Jagged Technique.

To me, if I understand this correctly, a non-Jagged Technique build but with 100% chance to aggravate bleeds (on crit, stun, whatever) can have two bleeds on the target (one aggravated from the previous attack, one normal from the most recent attack), while with Jagged Technique you can only have one bleed on the target (because all bleeds are aggravated immediately).

Is this understanding correct?

No. You will still get both bleeds on a glad. It's just that with any other ascendancy you have to hit a second time (to proc aggravate) to get an aggravated bleed. With glad it will apply both bleed and aggravate on the first hit.

The RAQ is going into mechanical specifics for min maxers whereas the nodes are worded in a way that's compact and easy to understand. For most players it will seem like the aggravated bleed is just a buffed bleed stack. In practice it's 2 separate ailments in order to maintain the 1 bleed stack cap without causing snapshot/inconsistency problems.

Ah, thanks for clarifying that!