Rake feedback (and spear bleed amazon in general)

I've been using rake/bleed and I haven't found it frustrating. There's a node called Adaptable Assault that increases melee strike range after using a ranged attack. I keep a fast either normal spear throw or martial tempo'd lightning spear just to prompt it. Before using rake I use spearfield on approaching mobs. Rake is to mop after they've lost hp to the poison added by the spearfield with the envenom support. Sometimes I add lacerate to it for double damage over time. For single targets spearfield also does the main damage while rake just keep bleed up and does extra melee. I don't trust or build around a single skill for everything so the frustrations are mitigated by how each skill mixes with the others. I don't even use frenzy charges. I keep a shield instead of a buckler to avoid getting stunned by whatever enemies survive the initial spearfield or if I get overwhelmed.

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Urza_Mechwalker#7393 wrote:

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eXcuilor#0323 wrote:

Agree with most of your points, though one of my main issues remains unsolved:

Currently there is just no real support to play hybrid hence big parts of the tree regarding the huntress starting location seem useless.

We desperately need either suitable projectile attacks or support gem/tree changes to support a melee heavy bleed play style.

a notable in tree that gives hits of projectiles into bleeding enemies increase the bleed by 50%.

What is the name of this notable? Because I can't find it. Not when filtering for bleediing, projectile or even 50%.

Yeah i agree. Ive also been very disappointed with caltrops wish it worked with disengage so you could rake, disengage then that drops caltrops, spear field. Also the buff to rapid assault still doesn't make me want to use it because our survivability options are extremely lacking. Maybe if parry was actually good this wouldn't be an issue but i wish there were ways to scale life, regen, or leech anything defensive would be great. Surprisingly taking a companion has helped a little with this but also seems to require heavy investment to be any good. The skill tree could definitely use some tweaks for better pathing i feel very pigeonholed on pathing compared monk i felt it had much better survivability options.

Bleed as an ailment feels a lot better now that it can be applied to energy shielded mobs.
It still has problems against mobs actually holding a physical shield, which are immune to bleed, unless you make them drop/destroy the shield or catch them from behind when they're animation locked... (both of which are not really an option with Faridun mobs in Dreadnaught, it's just a REALLY punishing zone for bleed build - Especially since Rake has 0 range and Spearfield doesn't do well in tight spaces either.


Kinda makes me wish there was at least some damage baked into knockback support gem, just so you wouldn't feel weaker for using it (or the bleed knockback notable had 100% chance instead of 50% chance to knockback).

As for the Cull the Weak...


Half of that ability we already had with Blood Hunt. Why not just have Blood Hunt generate Frenzy charge on kill or when it hits bleeding target (and a tiny chance to also generate up to maximum amount of frenzy charges if the target was bleeding when hit) in exchange for a small-ish cooldown (like 3-5 sec).

I would enjoy having access to frenzy charges on bleed build (for those occasional uses of Spear Throw, or just to boost Disengage, or occasionally use the the serpent "ulti" skill. But having another button to use that is ALSO a teleport attack and even clutters the screen with obnoxious blue balls is kinda meh solution imo

rip is a primer
My bleed build is destroying the game i have no idea what you are on about

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MortucusInvictus#1306 wrote:

rip is a primer
My bleed build is destroying the game i have no idea what you are on about

because you haven't bothered to read ANY of the posts here. Or you'd know the problem is mechanics, not damage.. Just.. go troll somewhere else.

Damage was only mentioned for early game. I don't think you have multiple T3 and T2 supports readily available on your league starter. Unless you're one of the doofs feeding currency-selling mafias.


The matter remains. The 2 main factors of Rake feeling bad is that the actual damage dealing AoE's range on it is that of a dagger (it hits literally only mobs directly adjacent to you), not a polearm, and that it has an artificial 0.4sec freeze at the end just to allow mobs to hit you back (expecting you to animation cancel out of it by parry/dodgeroll/disengage) - that you cannot reduce by any NORMAL means (neither attacks speed nor action speed to anything to it)

Coupled with the fact you can't propagate bleed in any way (Herald of Blood may technically have physical attack AoE explosions but they do NOT cause bleed in affected targets, not even with Lacerate slotted in), your only recourse to clearing with any speed even approaching tolerable is spamming Spearfield instead. And I hate that very much, both visually and mechanically. It's a FLOOR HAZARD, it's not meant to be your AoE clear spammable!

Re: the lack of good ranged skills compatible with bleed - They made Barrage compatible with both bow and spear, so what's stopping them from doing the same with Rain of Arrows?

With a quick name change (Rain of Iron, maybe?) and a new animation, you'd have a nice AOE spear-throwing skill that'd also synergize nicely with any Frenzy-consuming builds.