When you run Fields of Crimson, you lose:
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Two weapon stats that can be used for Damage to Vulnerable Targets, Damage to Close Enemies -70.5% damage each, - 141% damage total
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Aspect Slot which can be used for Edgemaster’s Aspect (40% damage at max resource) or Accelerating Aspect (50% attack speed for 5s after crit). -181% damage total or 141% and 50% atkspeed.
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It’s a unique weapon so it’s much harder to roll high level on it so lets add another -20% 785-800 ilvl damage difference. -201% damage total or 181% and 50% atkspeed.
When you run Fields of Crimson, you gain:
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Decreased cooldown for Rapture, which won’t be even used that much because you can’t stack bleed that fast for good explosion damage and having Weapon’s Master Aspect on boots is more than enough to use it constantly with 2 charges and 8 second cooldown.
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1.400 damage in bleed every second enemy stands in the puddle, that I managed to get up to 6.500 at best with pure bleed and all nodes for Physical Damage Over timer. Lets say you will stack this 10 times to get 65k bleed, it will take you 40(!) seconds to do it with 4 second cooldown on rapture. I can easily get bleeds up to 300k in seconds with other weapon.
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10% increased damage from bleed to enemies in puddle.
So in total, without accounting laughable damage from the puddle you lose 191% total damage or 151% and 50% atkspeed. There is no point for using Fields of Crimson, unless you are running low-tiers and you want to clear slightly faster.
It’s extremely fun to play and it feels good to stack bleed on enemies around you just to explode them into a bloody mess, it feels like a missing piece in bleed/thorns builds that rewards you for playing right - calculating bleed damage on mobs, so you don’t overcap on and precise positioning (dashing behind enemies, stacking them in 180 degree arc on you). But damage is extremely low and reward is non-existent.
Solution: Move reduction to Rupture cooldown into Legendary Aspect of the weapon, give it at least one damage boosting stat and make the puddle do damage based on % of the damage dealt by the explosion. This way it will reward players for playing right and won’t be broken because it will require some time to set it up.
Take example from Gohr’s Devastating Grips (Whirlwind explodes at the end, Dealing total 26% damage of it as fire) that do exactly the right thing for whirlwind builds and is a legendary that you build your character around or complements your build like like you said in promo for the game.
Without a working legendary for Rend or Rupture bleed/thorn builds are just slightly tankier (because of the damage reduction from bleeding enemies and kiting abilities) parody of burst builds that feels unrewarding and awkward to play, because you can never truly realize your full bleed potential.
. It seems like the most benefit you get from this in NM tiers is more sources of bleed, so you reduce CDs on shouts like crazy when you start cleaving through elite packs, if you have the Unique chest piece as well.