Basically the title. You can vote atleast 2 and up to 3. You can vote freely depending on your preferences and experiences. Also consider melee or caster builds while choosing. I didn’t want to include pets and retaliation because they are basically the easy mod of GD. This poll will be closed at 26th June 23:59.
0 voters
Wow, I’m truly shocked to see elemental is the worst by far. I don’t think that I know much more than the rest in the community but none of my elemental builds struggle…
Really depends on what people consider by “the worst”. The worst itemization? Worst Devotion pathing? Worst skills? 
Whichever you consider. I just wanted to learn people’s choices on that. I’m aware there are lots of variables but if I ask people to consider all that it became really complicated. This is simple; I can’t say if voters played all of these damage types or not but I expect they played around atleast to compare. I knew Tri-Elemental will win and I just included that because ‘‘I had to’’ so I care the top 2-3 after tri-elemental.
I’d say bleeding is the worst since conversion is not possible at all. Oh and uh, there’s an entire race of enemies “immune” to bleeding, have fun with that. Also you can’t lifesteal with bleeding. Talk about an uphill battle.
Tri-elemental can at least avoids these pitfalls, even if it is still a meme.
Few damage types have some problems but my least favorite is chaos.
Chaos have super strong sheet damage which often leads to underwhelming results though. Most of my biggest disappointments when it comes to build performance are with chaos. And chaos feels inferior to other pure direct damage dealers - aether and pierce.
Bleeding is niche damage type with it’s struggles. At least Bloodrager is a good enough and can enable multiple good builds.
Tri-Elemental is very cool and Word of Pain/Cataclysm caster with purple green devotion route is one of my favorite builds. But this is exotic damage type, when it comes to skills and even gear.
Physical also deserve a vote. It’s too gimped by armor, so good physical builds either concert from something else or bypass armor with trauma. I’ve made 2H Cadence build with like 50-60k WD and it’s so clunky! Physical also doesn’t have that great of T3 devotions. Azraaka is better for pierce, Empyrion is OK for resistances and damage reduction (which you can get easily btw) and mediocre for damage and used to be worse with activation of melee attacks only. Oleron was improved and most physical builds these days take it, cause don’t have better options. Also Vire isn’t worth it.
I’d say that chaos has little itemization but it has quite strong for actually all types of gameplay. Like for melee we have WH/WB/Sabo (the latter is my favourite one, actually), Pyromancer for caster/ranged, same as Deceiver. And also chaos has one of the strongest legendaries in-game (though green chaos items are presented in very little numbers).
for me, unfortunately, 3-elemental builds are actually the weakest because of poor itemization and some more complex problems that probably won’t ever be solved. I mean, 3-elem deceiver/MH is super-fun to play and it has good aoe but the solo-damage is meh and actually procs have their own damage that you can’t increase by adding flat etc.
for itemization, we have 1 (one) set - cata, iirc, and some other niche items, a part of them is also weak.
Bleeding is also a very niche damage type that is limited to 1,5 sets and 1 devo path. No fun allowed.
Phys damage should be divided into non-converted (that mostly sucks ass) and converted that kicks asses instead.
Which is balanced around it.
They are actually not. They are no more resistant to bleeding than Void Leeches are to vitality or some aetherial enemies are to aether.
That is a big problem though 
I hate those with vitality builds
None of the serious undead enemies are all resistant to bleeding. The most dangerous ones with high bleed resist are Alkamos and a couple Wendigo bosses, and neither of them are a big deal. Bleeding’s actual problems are that there’s one end-all set for it while the others are all shit, and that reflected damage absolutely fucks it up.
Tri-elemental is great with green gear, there are many more options, making it easier to hit useful double rare combos.
I voted bleed/vitality simply because I hate implementing devouring swarm in a melee/caster build and the game is begging for you to use it.
lol I’m very surprised by the outcome for now; people think cold damage better than acid, vitality and physical(which includes converted physical aswell, maybe I should have seperate them). I guess it’s because a few cold caster shined out.
And lightning is better than chaos lol. I wanna know who voted pierce and aether as a bad damage type
It all depends on the scenario.Items/devo builds etc etc but i play Dawn of Masteries and Grimmilion and chaos/aether can be a mission late game.Same with Vit.I have a level 82 toon full vit build if i am not careful i will crumble on high difficulties because some of the mobs just has very good res vs my vit build.It’s a fault in my build though as i focused on single damage type.I can reroll and fix it but meh me lazy me not gonna redo skills and gear.
I choose acid, fire, and elemental. Acid is quite strong actually and offer great conversion, but from defensive point like physical res it itemization is too reliant on Occultist or Nightblade, besides, very few cc res come from acid devotion route or item.
Fire also quite good with tons of available build, demo oath inquisitor all over great fire support. My specific problem is in conversion from vitality for sustain. Cold have lot of synergy with vitality from item that enable it to get adcth from those sources. Lightning while also have a similar problem as fire, it have great devotion route that enables you to take all nodes in Ultos, Spear, and Korvaak while also have Bat, Widow and even Kraken at the same times.
Finally tri-elemental. Even using item for this damage type it’s still better to focus on one of the three. So far only Mageslayer that I have good times playing as Tri Elemental. It itemization are quite confusing likeDawnshard Pauldron or strong but require non elemental mastery to get it full benefits like Arcanor Blade.
I think your perception is skewed by the fact that you play melee in this case
I’ve checked GrimSheet and Lightning builds have more than twice as many Crate kills and SR points as Chaos builds.
In Crucible, which you are also not a fan of, the difference seems even greater.
Probably yes 
I think superboss points can’t be included to such comparements due to some class&skills have advantage againts them. Like I killed Ravager with DW Physical Defiler meme build; it’s because I didn’t get one-shotted and I have Mark of Torment so this success can not be added to physical archetypes. It’s solely class success. And I have seen people killing Crate with builds that probably get one-shotted in casual players hand.
Chaos/Tri-Element.
Bleeding is fine. I’m stunned it’s as high as it is.
Not surprising to me as perception has a greater effect on people than reality. 
Bleeding is great offensively; but defensively it doesn’t allow you to lifesteal from hits also you can’t stack CDR either with bleeding gears; so survival mechanism is either depends on healing procs or secondary damage type. And duo damage builds are not popular due to restrictions on constellation setup; there are good gears that support X+Bleeding damage but you rarely afford to focus on both equally.
Yup, it’s very tough to get both. Pierce/Bleeding can do it, others not so much. I wish Vitality/Bleeding worked better than it does… Hopefully there will be some flat Bleeding skill modifiers added to various items in 1.1.9.2 such as was suggested in your thread.