First things first, let me preface this by saying that I am not necessarily asking for a buff and don’t know what I might want to see buffed either.
But, recent experience with bleed pets have not been stellar. It is not that they are unplayable or anything. But any pet build that you can make with Bleed, seems automatically better if you focus on a damage type you can convert everything into.
Once upon a time, the flat bleed from skills, items, devotions and the pets themselves in case of pets that do come with it, used to be enough. But it feels like everything either got hit with nerfs over many patches or got powercrept by everything else.
Maybe I am looking at it wrong or am overlooking something or perhaps a bleed pet build with comparable performance to other types already does exist.
So, kind of curious what everyone feels about bleed pets in the current patch.
I gave u the save file for my bleeder back few months ago, for this exact build I used and while uber nerf is not metric nor it does decent-ish right now either, it does lack the dps unlike other damage types - elementum especially, fire with the hellspawn dagger, cold with the king set and lightning with the dual birds or smth.
As far as I know if you want to make bleed pets u gotta take shaman no questions, for suport class? dunno really, I guess the same occultist for additional curse bleed RR and pet bonuses unlike useless necro (unless u add that bloody ends medal).
Only pets which does bleed is the briar dog and that would be it really, other pets do weapondamage on it’s own. My suggestion could be simply either introduce a conversion line for bleed damage type (like 100% elemental → bleed) or/and add some tiny bleed type baseline on other pets like blight fiends itself or hellhound (bird would not fit thematikly).
Also, still awaiting for that awekened version of crimson briar rings! >:C
One of the biggest problems with bleed pets is scaling bleed duration. More bleed duration would really help in cases where you happen to proc sand king amulet and crit at the same time.
Beastcaller is the best in slot set for bleed builds at the moment but it is really hard to buff without making other builds too strong. If anything I think bleed pets should maybe have their own set.
Maya hit the nail on the head regarding conversions.
The fundamental handicap of Bleed pets compared to Elemental or Vitality is that you simply cannot convert generic flat weapon damage into Bleed. While other pet builds scale multiplicatively with attack speed and 100% conversion gear, Bleed pets are strictly capped by how much flat Bleed you can scrape together from limited item mods.
Backing @AngmarDT here: Heart of the Sand King and Crimsonbriar need significantly heavier flat Bleed / Bleed duration modifiers. Giving an Awakened variant or baking innate Bleed modifiers into secondary pets (like Hellhound or Blight Fiend via medals) would finally give the archetype competitive scaling without needing new engine mechanics.
Awakening gear alone won’t change the situation. Bleed builds are basically locked into the Beastcaller set, while Briarthorn, the main source of bleed damage, hasn’t received any meaningful changes for several patches and has fallen behind the times. Even on a bleed-focused build, most of your damage still comes from two Hellhound’s direct damage rather than bleed itself. As a result, dedicated bleed builds simply can’t compete with other builds in terms of damage output.
Converting elemental DoT from pets into bleed DoT might be the only way bleed builds have a chance to become viable again.
Builds are way too homogenized nowadays. Most of them are practically locked into a handful of items or specific affixes, such as Mogdrogen’s Helm, the Dirge relic, Bloodsworn Signet, the Of Cruel Designs affix, Black Grimoire, and so on. As everyone knows, when certain items are simply too strong, everything else becomes trash by comparison（they’re not necessarily that strong on their own; they just look stronger compared to the alternatives.）.
I think engine does not support converting dots into bleed and vice versa.
Maybe it would make sense to add elemental and chaos to physical on Crimsonbriar rings and/or Sand King Amulet to make the final build physical/bleed.
Edit: Mythical Nosferatis already converts elemental to physical, so maybe chaos to physical would be nice for Hellfire.
The thread should be changed to “Briarthorns need buffs” because this is the crux of the matter. Swarmlings also need buffs as the changes to enemy AoE naturally threaten the “Zookeeper” archetype more than any changes to pets directly.
Removing the % Weapon Damage penalty and finding that sweet spot similar to Duskdeep’s Skeleton builds where prioritizing survivability will naturally remove some of the pressure to go “all damage, all the time” will do more to buff the bleed archetype than any numerical equipment changes.
I’ve talked to you about this before. You thought the buff would make it too strong, but it turns out it won’t — it’s now gotten so bad that no one even uses it anymore. Nowadays, Conjurers would rather use Dirge than Primal Instinct.
Without a specific date given, if “before” means “before FoA was released,” then yes, my statement would have been true then. Demands on pet survivability weren’t as harsh then as they are now (and also pets could be made immortal with the way pet resistance was calculated), and thus players were expected to go all-in on damage and Primal Instinct was the obvious choice.
Now there’s much more enemy AoE damage and pet survivability is at much more of a premium (and you can’t make them immortal with resistance stacking). Pets who have a chance of dying don’t need the same caution regarding damage as pets who are effectively immortal, and thus you can now safely remove the Weapon Damage penalty on things like Swarmlings and beef them up a bit.
We discussed this back in May, but Swarmlings were never truly immortal. They were only somewhat stronger on builds like Conjurers with over 200% bonus pet Health. Even then, they would still die frequently in the old Shattered Realm and against Celestials.
After these nerfs, this relic—which nobody has used for two years—has become even less appealing. Not only are the Swarmlings themselves weak, but the bonuses the relic provides are underwhelming as well.