Ultimate Bleed Bow Gladiator Passive Skill Tree & Gem Links

Out Of Date

March 5th, 2023, 14:59

Path of Building

Path of Building for this build is available here

Included is the recommended set of mid-game gear, a full skill tree, and all the gem links needed to get the build to tick.

We use the Path of Building Community Fork for all of our builds, which is highly recommended. If you are encountering errors importing the build, please ensure you are using the Community Fork.

Notes on the tree:

Excess points are used to acquire more Jewels and/or Cluster Jewels (see Path of Building)
You can pick up additional Life/Evasion as needed for defense near Gladiator start, in Golems Blood and Cloth and Chain. The primary reccomendation remains following the PoB.

Cluster Jewels

Our default recommendation is to use Two Large Cluster Jewel with four Medium Cluster Jewels and 3 Small Cluster Jewels. See the provided Path of Building for examples. As with most builds, you want as few small passive nodes as possible on each.

Large

We recommend looking for Large Clusters with Added Small Passive Skills grant 12% Physical Damage and _Added Small Passive Skills Grant: 12% increased Bow Damage to find the correct notables.

For the regular Physical damage cluster you will be looking for the following:

Battle Hardened — solid damage and a nice defensive increase.
Force Multiplier & Furious Assault — both provide similar damage and fill the suffix slot.
Master the Fundamentals — solid damage and can be superb if it allows you to itemize damage more heavily elsewhere in your build (e.g. on amulet).

For the bow cluster you will be looking for:
*Feed the Fury — Solid damage, clearspeed increase and life sustain.
*Fuel the Fight — Decent damage and mana leech, essentially mandatory.
*Heavy Hitter — Massive raw Damage.

Medium

It’s very helpful to have gem sockets on your mediums in order to socket regular jewels for maximum damage. Look for these notables:

Wasting Affliction — highest damage
Rend — second highest damage and adds duration, which can be conducive to uptime on heavy movement and positioning fights
Vivid Hues — strong damage and adds a little extra Life Leech if you aren’t already capped per second
Student of Decay — Worse than the other alternatives damage wise, but provides chaos resistance and can be considered on a tight budget.

All of the DoT candidates for mediums are decent, but we recommend having at least Wasting Affliction and filling in with what you can find. Use Path of Building to check for your own character.

Gems

We use separate links for our single target skill and our clearing skill in order to optimize the links.

Puncture 6-Link

Puncture 4 Link in Assailum

Split Arrow 6-Link

Ensnaring Arrow 4-Link

This link is mainly for bosses. Bleeding targets that are moving suffer 210% Increased Damage from the effect, however, bosses are often stationary or erratic with their movement. Ensnaring Arrow makes targets always count as moving, which means we are always getting the full effect even on bosses that are stationary.

If you don’t already have a Vulnerability on hit ring, I recommend using this link instead:

Ensnaring Arrow
Greater Multiple Projectiles Support / Barrage Support (preference)
Hextouch Support
Vulnerability

Alternatively you could run a Mirage Archer Support instead of the ballista, if you prefer. This is entirely personal preference.

Auras 4-Link

Mobility/Utility 4-Link

Frenzy Frenzy helps maintain Frenzy Charges on bosses while Blood Rage is purely for attack speed. You can drop Frenzy Frenzy if you have frenzy charge on hit on your chest and replace it with your own preference (vaal skill, CWDT, etc.).

Dash Dash is also a great option but you’ll need to drop one other gem for Second Wind Support support for best results.
For this to work ideally you would need to swap between Blood Rage and Frenzy Frenzy in the same socket, between clear and bossing respectively.

As this build primarily is structured for play with the Assailum helmet, this means that you essentially have an “open” sixlink with no forced socket combinations.
This could be utilised for a big aura link, you could place various of the utility gems in there or whatever you feel like. Don’t be afraid to experiment with this link, until you find what works for you.

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