Siphon Souls is anti-synergetic with other bleeding skills

Siphon Souls has been complained about as a general use skill - the cooldown is much too high when you’re constantly surrounded by high-mobile enemies who can swarm the player while SS is on cooldown. I’d like to bring up another point about this skill: its use as a Bleeding skill. 22/12 Blood Boil is exceptional, giving a massive OA shred and over 300+ Bleeding per second. However, the mods for this skill have a complete anti-synergy with what the other skill bonuses suggest.

Packla’s Visage: Clearly designed for Bleeding SS + Phantasmal Blades, but PB Reaper is much, much better as Vitality spam blades, which ruins the entire point of the Bleeding component.

Bloodrender: Firstly, lol at the points in Oleron’s Rage. Secondly, it speaks volumes when Vitality Savagery is done better as a Trickster where the Nightblade class has no Vitality RR to speak of. Casting Devouring Swarm and Siphon Souls with no Cast Speed sounds awful.

Howl of the Wendigo: Clearly designed for the Valguur’s Set, but again, no casting speed for both the above + Storm Totem on either the weapon nor the gloves.

Guillotine: There is absolutely no reason to use this when the Korvan Celestial Halberd exists. Mythical Leviathan also completely outclasses it as a Physical item, so the Soldier bonuses may as well not exist.

Bolvar’s Pendant: One of the best items out there for Vitality/Bleeding Oppressors, but there’s practically no synergy between Siphon Souls and Vire’s Might, so the potential of this item is wasted.

Lagoth’Ak’s Bloodbinding: Both Devouring Swarm and Siphon Souls are secondary skills to promote a primary skill. And yet, there’s no primary skill in any of the items that give +points to these skills. Probably meant to be used with Valguur’s as well, since Storm Totem is light on node investment.

Normally, I’d provide a Grimtools link to demonstrate the issues at hand, but the equipment is so anti-synergy I can’t even think of a proper base to work off of.

  • Using SS for Cadence and Blade Arc are already sorely outclassed, as I mentioned above.
  • Savagery? Ritualist suffers sorely from lack of stats, plus it’s also outclassed by Bloodrager’s set as that’s the premier Savagery set.
  • Blood Knight’s is possible, especially with Counter Strike providing good Bleeding, but why play Blood Knight Death Knight when Blade Arc DK >>> Blood Knight?
  • Cold + Bleeding? We’ve already seen how bad that is through Korba’s Set, no sense trying to make something worse as a Necro.

The only thing I can think of is adding Bleeding mods to Bone Harvest so that Bleeding Necro can have multiple sources of bleed, while also using Soul Harvest buffs to increase the flat damage that makes it a viable Vitality/Bleeding hybrid. I would potentially replace the MoT modifier in Guillotine with a Bone Harvest mod.

Either that or find a way to mix Physical Vire’s Might and Siphon Souls. Though why try that when multiple, more superior options already exist (like Vitality EoR Oppressor or Vitality RF guns or Physical RF Oppressor)

Blade Arc

casually just ignoring bleed warder?

:grin:

because it’s possible?

not like blood knight DK is a sht build, bleed or not, siphon souls mega synergy or not, it’s a decent set that does decently


idono, kinda feel like some of these “gripes” are more like misconceptions stemming from a specific desire/for a specific envisioned build/synergy that might not pan out as simply/smooth as hoped or something, regardless of it being intended or not

Some contribution from me;

DW Bleeding-Vitality Ritualist with Blood Knight, Bloodrender+Howl of the Wendigo; Ritualist, Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.5) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

I tested this a few months ago and it was pretty bad. You get 5 sec cd and 5 sec duration on SS and it’s bleeding is not bad but the DW archetype doesn’t fit this setup since defense is pretty bad, there is too much skill to rotate(and very low CS), lifesteal isn’t that good and neither bleeding or vitality damage are good enough so their combination here doesn’t give much. It was hardly doing SR 75-76.


2H Bleeding-Vit Ritualist with Blood Knight and Death’s Reach; Ritualist, Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.5) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

Not much improvement here either, with some difference, worse siphon souls since there is no modifier here but better defense and almost same AA damage. It’s much more clunky due to low AS but atleast Scales work better with 2H. Same hardly doing SR 75-76.


S&B Bleeding+Vitality Ritualist with Blood Knight, Bloodrender+ Maw of the Damned; Ritualist, Level 100 (GD 1.1.9.5) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

This one is the most defensive among them. I wish I could use Ravager’s Bite and it’s Bleeding BH mod here which can make the build atleast something since damage is bad. But Bloodrender is must for physical>vit conversion. Used Bloodrite sloves here since there is no other gloves fit here and atleast it has good stats with good proc but I wish Brawler’s Gloves had some vitality damage and support to use it here.


Anyway all these builds are created to utilize synergetic looking(but not so much) vtality-bleeding gears around Siphon Souls. I can’t say they are all too bad but some of the mods and skill points are kinda really hard to combine in logical ways so they can use some love or even some rework.

This is the best build I was able to crafting focusing on siphon…

It definitely isnt a pure bleed build though… very much vit hybrid

Mind if I ask: outside of Siphon Souls, what is actually doing Bleeding damage on a build like this? I only see Falcon + Rend + SS + item procs, and that pales in comparison to other bleeding builds that can max out 2, even 3 full bleeding abilities.

So we have all this nice Bleeding RR, but nothing to actually use with the RR, which is the point I’m trying to make. I wish there were more Bleeding synergies in general, but Siphon Souls gear tends more toward going Vitality damage to the point where the Bleed part is irrelevant.

maybe siphon souls isn’t intended to be a main bleed skill?, but just flavour
it then has multiple bleed RR support to (maybe?) make necro, an already vitality based build, more able to support vit bleed builds like occultist (minimal bleed support too) and shaman
another potential note that could support this is how oathkeeper celestial presence bleed RR stays on acid/vitality transmuter instead of just being there for phys
no one is saying/i’m not saying the 1 “intended” build would ex be vitality/bleed Vire’s might with bleed RR siphon souls, but, maybe the options are there to bump up bleed “a bit” in necro oriented builds, otherwise normally focusing on vitality dmg
Grey’s vit-bleed PB trickster was mentioned, it actually focuses a lot more in bleed dmg than in vitality (obviously shaman and spirits allow this), tho the hybrid dmg approach is still def there
but it’s possible, and i think i’ve seen Roman try this/make GTs in discord of attempts where the bleed RR on siphon souls is more generally utilized in hybrid dmg builds (don’t think he was satisfied with the GT stats tho iirc) - but maybe/it’s possible that that is the very “intended” build direction orientation for the bleed RR mods to siphon souls, “meta” capable or not

maybe necro is supposed to be the Vitality dmg part in a build, with siphon souls (bleed RR) there then, to support the bleed portion of the other half of a build; making the Necro Bleed portion the “buff bitch” half of the build, while the other half then supports the actual bleed dmg(soldier/nightblade etc), or goes half and half on bleed vitality as ex oathkeeper or shaman
^Harvester of Death 20% total dmg mod on BH could potentially also be a decent source of WD applied bleed i assume?

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