Viper Hemorrhager is a weapon that makes me scratch my head in confusion. It supports bleeding PB’s, but it occupies the same slot as Bloodborer, a faction item? And Bloodborer has +1 to Nightblade… maybe if you get some sick double rare affixes it could be better damage-wise, but… how many bleed PB builds are there anyway? It has a lot of support, but I imagine it’s not the most pleasant playstyle to begin with.
Anyway, even if treated as a placeholder before Bloodborer, why level with bleeding PB’s? Is that a thing? I dunno, but this item seems underwhelming.
Yes, but you need to make sure you have Bleeding AoE on top such as Blade Spirit, Blade Trap, Devouring Swarm, devotions. Definitely not for Act 1, I can tell you that.
I could see someone levelling with cd Bleed PB + Circle of Slaughter + Blade Spirit. In terms of skill modifiers on item slots, it just depends on which skills you focus on out of the 3 and how. Like, I could see Viper Hemorrhager + Scarab Shell as budget/beginner Bleed Ring of Steel doesn’t get Bloodspill Cleaver as an option until way later.
You’re right that Bloodborer supersedes it as well. I don’t see anything wrong with that personally.
Maybe you can get some crazy affixes on it by resetting Yurrith? It might be better than Bloodborer then.
Although I’m not sure if it’s that quick. I haven’t trying resetting this vendor so far.
It really depends on whether the build needs the +1 Nightblade or not. The Viper does also get far more flat Bleed with the right affixes and can get some racial. The Bleed to PBlades in both skill modifiers is comparable.
Did anyone here actually try leveling with bleeding PB?
Admittingly I didn’t, but I have experience of leveling spam vit PB twice during the last year - October 2020 and May 2021. And I have to say PB is kind of a very clunky skill, it’s strong but it puts plenty of strain on player to position himself to hit as many targets as possible. After that I clearly understood that I prefer less obtrusive skills to level with.
So I’m very sceptic about that bleed PB leveling business guys. It’s going to be a complete pain in the ass to make that skill have any significant importance in your setup. Easy to miss, narrow cone, the necessity of still getting Heart Seeker for piercethrough, etc.
This is my current SSF Bleeding Caster https://www.grimtools.com/calc/r2BrxKD2
(I am not leveling it at the moment, doing something else, has now good DPS on Veteran in Act 2 I think):
As I said, it’s going to be addition for
good source of more single target damage
devotion proccing
smooth transition to Rancor Trickster
I mean I don’t see why shouldn’t I add as an additional source of damage.
Ring of Steel requires me to be very close to enemies which I don’t like it on this character.
I used it only in Act 1 because I couldn’t use Traps / Spirits then due to lack of skill points.
I have, to like lvl40 when I was thinking of making Rancor Trickster beginner guide. Started with spam vit PB and transitioned more towards bleed when you can pick up some good MIs https://www.grimtools.com/calc/RZRdx392
Although I guess PB is more of a filler
And probably Energy sucked too. Well I cheated too tbh by using Lightning Nova.
And after that I only played with Ring of Steel which did surprisingly good job.
I have a similar sketch https://www.grimtools.com/calc/r2Br86W2
If you ask me the real cheating here is you get a BS-DS Trickster build, which I know works well and is pretty self-sufficient with just that much, add 1 point of PB for a bit more boss damage and somehow voila.
Circle of Slaughter, Blade Spirit and more importantly Rend should cover AoE for crowds no? PBlades would be for more single target Bleed and for a good proccer (for example on Falcon Swoop) i imagine.
It’s not that good tbh. I expected more from these Blade Spirits. Might be the weakest of my leveling toons damage wise at this point of the game. Also Blade Spirits aggro range is sometimes annoying.
I try to be as pure Bleed / caster as possible. The final build by @Monceaux is a Rancor variant leaning more towards Bleed and less towards Pierce. Which weakens it I guess but is more fun for me.
It’s still more Bleed. Unless there’s a levelling main hand that has more to compete (Wendigo Barb’s 10 Bleed RR being the only competition I can see/think of for Trickster), every source contributes.
Spam while better for sustain later on with Demonslayer kills about half of it’s DoT potential before then.
Unless it has gotten worse in recent times, levelling a Bleed caster Trickster is something that dates back to vanilla and if I recall correctly was even strong during the mid-levels back then.
Personally if I wanted to play spam PB than I’d play optimized spam PB and don’t bother with anything else.
I always play with fillers so that’s a nice break from routine for me.
Why not add additional source of Bleed when you can. This is what Dots are about anyway.
Cooldown PB is an ok Falcon proccer with 88% proc chance on single target at 3 projectiles.
Later at 5 projectiles at 16/16 it’s 97% chance to proc Falcon on a single target.
Levelled bleed trickster three times in ssf envoirment, first time specifically trying to target farm this claw - it was disaster. Yes, its good just as it is w/o affixes for starting bleed caster but i literally found only one “of blood” claw. With so low droprates (especially when you wanna be friends with Barrowholm) its very tilting to see all of these superior of alacrity again and again. I just found out existing of “scion of crimson wakes” and that i will spend less time to farm it (just by doing normal farm content) than similar claw. Less time if i wanna start this build in ssf again
Is certainly much better than any of the others on this list. It’s the perfect match for a kalis’ka’s shield and the best 1h for physical blade arc spam until endgame. I’ve leveled couple of times with this to lvl 94, it’s obviously worse than the 2hander for phys blade arc, but still the best option if you want to play 1h+shield instead. I’m mit against a buff for this Item, but I don’t think it needs a thematic change. Also when it comes to buffing 1h spam arc, I think that the skill itself is more in the need of a buff than this MI.
I leveled a bleed blademaster with transmuted Blade arc, circle of slaughter, blade spirits and PB once. PB was OK to add on top, but when it comes to bleed, you just look for the biggest nukes, which are blade arc and CoS. You can use other abilities on top and should ofc use all the RR you can get, but using PB instead of e.g. CoS would just be trolling.
That said, PB is used a lot in (normal difficulty) speedrunning though, as it provides the best single target DPS this early into the NB tree.p
Why the hell go back then and gimp yourself?
