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It's a Bug Bleed Life! (Swarmbleed Build....for those wanting a change)

Primalist
#1

Hello again gents. I like to think outside the box for builds, especially when I don’t see one shared on talked about too much on here. Today I present my Bug Bleed build that I am currently working on. I would like some critique and would also like to open some thought to going bleed instead of poison for Swarmblade.

At the moment, when I am ramped up, I can have ~55% doge rating and ~2k armor. I am taking a page from Mr. Dredd (shout out to Dredd builds for ideas) and using Eterra’s Boots and Spriggan tree to generate rage through vines. Since I had extra points, I toyed around with where to put them and think I like where I settled. Taking the thorn shield passive in the druid tree, then using Spriggan to both buff thorn shield’s armor/duration/procs adds a nice defensive layer to the doge you are generating. This is by no means finished and would like some thought/critique about where I should take this.

I have been messing with bleed duration here and from general game play and hitting the dummy, it seems to bring out the highest bleed ticks. It seems counterintuitive as you generally want bleeds to tick faster, but what I am finding is that with the super high attack speed (~200%), the duration comes in handy to keep stacking bleeds. It does ramp up slower at first than bleed builds without duration, but then the ticks that start rolling start doing big chunks off of boss bars. I am still missing a few more passive in druid to help this out as I went for defense first then offense as the dps is fine currently.

Now, I know I am missing crit avoidance. I can’t seem to find a way to squeeze this in outside of a blessing probably as I am going for doge rating and capping resists plus adding life in any spot as this build is using quite a few uniques. Ideally, Salt the Damn Wound will finally drop for me and I can do some more messing around. Currently, you have 80-90k dummy bleed ticks after about 3 seconds. Wengari Axe seems to be the end axe as Dragonborn does not have bleed increased effect and you have plenty of bleed stacks through dive and just attacking with arm slash. I do have idols I can switch around for more dps, but I am enjoying my HP pool and the buffer with it.

Note: I am not using bleeding heart. I originally thought that maelstrom and tornado will stack bleed on me but after watching some other game play, I guess it isn’t the case as you are not directly casting it. Irregardless, it has not been needed currently and gives you more flex as that would eat another slot with a unique.

#2

Interesting build!

Why did you put points in Thorn Shield nodes (Spriggan Form)? These apply only when you’re a Spriggan.

Swarmblade can sustain its rage. Try putting one point in Springer’s Fury, for example. It will give you rage on dodge, and you have high dodge.

Why the physical conversion of Tornado? Is it for consistency of damage types and for the global increase?

#3

As far as I’m aware, the Thorn Shield proc from Thicket of Thorns takes the Spriggan form nodes into account since Thorn Shield is a skill that can go on your skill bar rather than a proc/subskill from a skill.

#4

Actually, it uses the thorn shield nodes in spriggan like Llama said. There are times when you go on a lucky streak and it keep recasting itself after it expires. For areanas in monoliths, you start seeing 4+ shields up at any given time which will push you to >50% armor. This is while also maintaining 50% doge.

No free points to do that. Plus if there is a rare or boss, then you won’t run out of rage. Vines are there to supplement you through the monos, but really without them Tornado will empty your rage super quick. I had 3/3 army of tempest and even with 12 vines out I was proccing Tornado too often and draining my rage. I was messing with storm orbs at that time and they just aren’t worth the investment I found.

You mean maelstrom right? Makes it scale with physical damage and damage over time which is what I am stacking for bleeds. And yes, you get global physical increase which in turn buffs your bleed damage. Generally have 12 up at anytime and peaking at 20.

1 Like
#5

I’ve finally been able to start investing in Fetid Resilience in the Druid tree. It’s pushed me from 90k dummy bleeds to 115k with 2 points >.>

I also got a neat T6 bleed duration helm that I stupidly didnt increase the endurance on, so it’s now a temp until I can get my hands on something better.

#6

Imo you should ditch eye of the storm and swift wings(since you have high attack speed and will be proccing tornado every few seconds)
DW dragonbone axes and max the storm orbs and lightning proc in tornado since generic chance to bleed on hit applies to them too and you can stack up much more bleeds that way.

#7

I’ve thought about that but I am losing bleed effectiveness by changing from the Wengari Axe. Like, I lose about 1/3 the dps because even if you are stacking more bleeds if they are less effective or do less damage, you do less damage over all. At 200% attack speed for armblade slashes and Dive proccing 5 bleeds every 2.5 seconds, stacking bleed isn’t too big of an issue now.

Guess I am still trying to find the sweet spot. I want to see if I can make the bleeds I stack now count in the sense that they get as strong as possible and last as long as possible. I will mess around a bit more as I am about to hit 80.

#8

30% bleed effectiveness on the 53 base is not much compared to lets say 100% inc bleed chance IMO (assuming both are well rolled) and that’s not counting the extra 3 bleeds from every lightning/storm orb proc. In any case eye of the storm and swift wings are a waste anyway for swarmblade proccing tornado since with 200% attack speed you will be casting it more than every 2 sec and it will just keep overwriting one.

#9

It depends on hit pre-existing bleed chance, though he will also have 120% bleed effectiveness from Deep Wounds/Aspect of the Boar which will make that additional (up to) 30% less useful.

His current bleed chance is 20% (Tusk Warrior) + 50% (Nightshade Fangs) + 100% (Armblade Slash from Death by a Thousand Wings) or 500% (Dive from Death by a Thousand Wings) + 100% (Armblade Slash from Blood Flurry / Gouging Spear) + 48% (Thorn Slinger) + 50% (Valdyr’s Chalice) + 27% (an idol) = 395% (Armblade Slash) & 695% (Dive)

So the bleed effectiveness from the axes is 25% incremental benefit versus an additional 200% bleed chance from Dragonbone axes which is 51% incremental benefit for Armblade Slash & 29% incremental benefit for Dive.

So the Dragonbone axes are a marginal improvement for Dive & a fairly significant improvement for Armblade Slash. If he could get some bleed chance suffixes on the axes, that would reduce the impact of switching weapon bases. Personally, I’d probably swap the chance to slow & shock to chance to bleed for an up to 52% chance to bleed. If you did that, then swapping to the bleed implicit axes would be a “mere” 40% incremental benefit for Armblade Slash & 25% (ie, no additional benefit compared to keeping the current bases) for Dive.

If you want to get all numerical. Which you probably don’t. But it’s this or I do some actual work, so… You lot should be very glad I’m such a lazy ****er.

#10

Ty for the math to clarify stuff. I personally just go with chance to proc ailment > more dmg if chance to proc < 500. Oeller had mentioned some math like that here : Miroslav100 comments on Frostbite Swarmblade. Messy T4 Julra Kill and a wall of text build guide

The best part about Dragonbone’s however is that its generic bleed and not melee bleed. This + procs from tornado and maelstrom makes for some pretty good dmg like on the frostbite version.

#11

LLama…I suck at math unless it’s calculus or statistics cause those aren’t real math, just letters and numbers.

If I understand right, Dragonborn Axe with bleed chance, attack speed, and dmg/phys would be better than the current axes? Considering I dual wield them.

#12

Yes, by quite a way (51% “more” for Armblade Slash), though you should also swap out at least one of the suffixes on the weapons for bleed on one weapon & chill on the other.

#13

Yes that will be ideal. Those were the best axes I could gamble and modify at the time. Haven’t had any axes drop for me at all.

#14

You’ll also want to swap the phys damage prefix on your amulet to a phys penetration prefix.

And get some crit strike avoidance. And probably some rare boots.

#15

Can’t ditch the boots yet as I need the rage generation. I am going to slowly wean off it, but I can’t do that without changing other things -_-

Thanks for the pointer about penetration. At the moment, I am just somewhat grabbing what I can while looking for the better update.

#16

Hello all,

I want to re-share this build after sometime. I dusted it off last week so it is still not optimized, but it’s nearly there. Really wanna try and have salt the wound drop for me so I can mess around with that. Oh, and that 2nd axe needs some fixing. I am still also messing around with my accessories, but it is running empowered smoothly.

ATM, dummy dps is 250k from just bleed. Swarm works out very well for trash clearing and speeding through monos, and it actually adds a non-insignificant dps to bosses. So, the dummy doesn’t account for that, nor does it account for Undisputed’s special.

I am thinking I am going to have to pivot from Strength to Attunement eventually so I can take advantage of the druid node that provides crit avoid per attunement. Too starved atm to get every stat you need.

I am honestly having so much fun with Locust Swarm being a part of this, I think I am gonna mess around with a pure Locust Swarm build.

As always, any thots or suggestions are welcome as I am very much a go by feel player and not math cause math makes my brain sad.

1 Like
#17

Just wanted to stop in and say THANK YOU for posting this! Just finished the main campaign with it and I’m really enjoying it so far.

#18

Hey np! Glad you like it so far.

#19

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the “+40% increased global damage over time” from “chrono strike” in the serpent strike tree additive with other “increased damage over time” like what’s on the idols? If so, rather than a 9 point investment for just an extra ~20% increase to your “increased damage over time” bonus (assuming you have around 200% already, I can’t find that stat on the build tool so I’m just guessing based on what I have). If you redistributed the points something like this, you could gain some more attack speed, extra DoT duration, and 18% kill threshold:

https://imgur.com/a/iM9Gt1X

Also, I had a pair of Atrophy drop the other night. It would have to be an LP drop with at least a good melee attack speed bonus, but I would think an extra 20-25% resist penetration for your bleeds would be significant if you hadn’t already considered it.

#20

It is, not sure if it stacks though. If it does stack then it’d be a much higher incremental benefit.


It’s separated into the various damage elements, so it’s either 493% for bleed or 332% for poison.

Getting the phys resist shred blessing from Age of Winter would probably be better assuming you can keep max stacks (& you get 2 hits from a single swing of Serpent Strike due to the Venomous Intent node).