I wanted to share the build I have been working on and am still tweaking and finding better gear for at the moment. I haven’t seen a build with this concept on the forums or youtube, unless I missed it so figured I’d share for all bleed lovers and just people who wanna be different and play forge guard.
This is a take on the bleeding warpath build where we use Abyssal Echoes to pop our bleed stacks, but instead of warpath we are using Forge Strike to apply the bleeds. At the moment, I can see pops for 800-900k on the dummy with the following rotation: Forge Strike x5 > Volatile Reversal > 4x Forge Strike > Abyssal Echoes. Doing half of this rotation will result in a pop of 400-600k. In real game scenarios, if you know the mobs abilities and can anticipate them, doing the full rotation is quite manageable and will chunk the HP of the boss.
Please take a look at my linked build and skill trees. I am still debating on between lunge and ring of shields. With the amount of leech that is being generated thanks to rive (15% global), plus the leech from the relic, and leech from Rive itself I have been able to use lunge and make things a little faster.
Any input or thoughts would be greatly appreciated!
I use it in a DW setup with Undisputed (was extremely good before the attack speed nerf of double dipping AS with sword and axe) Also when you use the Rive branch to turn ignite stacks into physical damage, you can use the right branch of FS to get additional ignite stacks.
For AS speed buff I use smite instead of Volatile Reversal.
Abysmal Echoes mechanic is nice for a burst. But in most cases it’s not even necessary because the enemies tick down so fast. Nice for bosses though.
The rotation is spam FS till oom, Rive till full again, spam FS again. Put in smite whenever your AS buff runs out.
The key mechanics are very similar. My FG lacks defense though and I struggle a bit at higher corruption. But the damage is great.
I was thinking Manifest Armor might also work well in a bleed build. You can build it for a pretty nice amount of bleed chance and damage, plus some armor shred. I had been thinking of more of a Taste of Blood situation for more doubling of the bleed speed, but it would likely work okay with this setup as well, though not sure what you would drop for it.
Get titan mace, then max out the two bleed passives and a mix of plate mail and great helm to boost the effects of your gloves and chest. 2 points in each would get double chest stats and 2.5x resist pen from atrophy. Seems like it would add a nice amount of bleed damage independent of your actions.
Interesting! I’m currently working on a bleed hybrid DoT/self-buff FG, using multistrike’s decimate node with ‘Salt the Wounds’ and the chalice to take advantage of the bleed stack buffs. Hitting with volatile reversal to nuke bosses when i have to disengage (floor hazards etc.). Still tinkering to see if i can afford the -phys res% to fit Suloron’s step.
My suggestion for your build would be to try subbing volatile reversal for an autocast rotating devouring orb. The frequency of the abyssal orb hits really builds DoT stacks fast for a bigger nuke. Might be lower on the top end but the damage builds up faster? Try experimenting.
