Questions of a lowly barbarian about bleeds

Barbarian
1

First, I would like to preface that I am level 77, clearing some NMs dungeons in the 45-50s range. I am not at the endgame yet, but I have played a decent amount. Yet, I still do not understand how bleed actually work.

First, let’s talk about Gushing Wounds. By itself, this key passive seems fine and straightforward.

The issue is that it should technically allows ALL of our bleeds to crit. Even the bleeds which already scale in proportion with our direct damage skills, like Berserk Rippling or Two Handed Sword Mastery. If taken strictly at face-value, the passive should technically allow our bleeds double-dip twice with crit damage, and do significant damage

Say we try to calculate the bleed damage dealt with Sword Mastery (20% of damage is converted to bleed). Imagine that a barbarian land a hit with a HotA that does 400k damage with vulnerable, and then you calculate the extra 500% crit damage. In theory, the mob should take 2M direct damage from the crit. Then, we should take 20% of that amount and this should be the base bleed damage dealt. With Gushing Wounds, that 400k bleed damage should be multiplied by 500%, resulting in a 2M damage bleed, in addition to the 2M damage from the crit. That should be how it should work, in theory.

In practice, the bleed is insignificant. After hitting for like 2M damage with HotA, I’m not even sure the following bleed is doing 200k damage.

I got confused, so I did some tests with some basic skills. The bleed does not make any sense. I began with a 59k crit bash on a vulnerable target, and that did 10 ticks of 263 bleed damage. So a total of 2.6k bleed. Waaay less than the expected 12k bleed damage. Then, i followed with a 2200 damage bash, that did 10 ticks of 850 damage, for a total of 8500 bleed. I then did a 8500 crit, that did 843 bleed ticks, for a total of 8430 bleed damage.

What I concluded for sure is that the bleed from Sword Mastery has a base damage that is independent from the damage dealt by the skill itself, and it does not crit at the same rate. Both seem to have an independant crit chance. The bleed portion of the damage also does not seem to gain benefits from vulnerable.

I also did a some tests with rend, and the crit rate from the bleed seems to be much lower than the direct damage from rend. My hypothesis is that the bleed probably uses the base crit rate, and is not modified by talents or glyphs, but it is a wild guess that could be totally wrong.

Has anyone done significant testing with bleeds? I would be curious to see how they actually work, and what I might be mistaken about.

2

Have you checked to see if there’s any difference on the tick amount when critting with Flay and Rend?

Abilities that bleed without upgrades that provide for it to bleed.

I’m curious if the chance to crit a bleed is
falling into the same issue we’re seeing with the CD reduction or fury regen only working from some sources if it’s a “natural” bleed, and not a bonus added to an ability.

3

From my tests, a crit on the initial damage of flay does not have any effect on the damage over time part of the skill.

A hit on the direct damage of flay (for me about 200 damage) can either be followed by a dot that deals ~900 damage per tick, or a ~4k damage per tick dot.

A crit on the direct damage of flay (for me about ~1k damage) can either be followed by a dot that deals ~900 damage per tick, or a ~4k damage per tick dot.

4

I assume the 200 damage you meant non-crit.

Beyond that, if you go hits on 20 mobs, do any of the bleeds increase or decrease?

The intended wording of the ultimate is vague as well, when compared to the the other broken items I mentioned.
——-
When causing an enemy to Bleed, you have a chance equal to your [Critical Strike Chance] to increase the Bleed amount by 100% of your Critical Strike Damage bonus.
[Overpowering] a Bleeding enemy creates an explosion that inflicts X [11%] Bleeding damage over 5 seconds.
———

The BLEED is able to roll a crit, rather than the ability itself.

So I wonder if that crit is based off of non-crit, non-vulnerable skill damage.

I’m also curious if you remove the ultimate, what do your bleeds with rend/flay show compared to before.

5

Yeah, the 200 was a hit, not a crit. I fixed it.

But further tests with flay and bash seems to indicate that vulnerable DOES seems to increase the bleed damage.

However, bleeds seems to react sightly differently from other skills in their relation to the vulnerable status effect. Let’s take bash with 2h sword mastery, for example.

For me, a lvl 1 bash does about 2k damage, without any buffs and no vulnerable. The first hit applies vulnerable, but does not benefit from it. A 2nd bash will do about 9k damage, because it benefits from vulnerable. In my case, both bashes will do the same bleed damage : both will add 150 damage to my ticks of bleed.

That led me to the conclusion that vulnerable did not increase bleed damage. However, I was totally wrong.

If I wait a couple of seconds, my bashes now do 2k damage per hit, and add ~55 damage to my bleed ticks.

How can a 2k bash simultaneously apply a 150 bleed per tick, and 55 bleed per tick, without the Gushing Wounds?

Step by step, here is what seems to happen:

  • Step 1 : Bash 1 does 2k damage
  • Step 2 : Bash 1 applies vulnerable
  • Step 3 : Bash 1 deals 55 base bleed damage, multiplied by vulnerable, thus it now deals 150 bleed damage per tick.
  • Step 4 : Bash 2 does 9k damage
  • Step 5 : Bash 2 deals 55 base bleed damage, multiplied by vulnerable, thus it now deals 150 bleed damage per tick.
  • Step 6 : Vulnerable drops
  • Step 7 : Bash 3 deals 2k damage
  • Step 8 : Bash 3 deals 55 base bleed damage per tick

It seems to indicate that damage modifiers (crit or vulnerable) on the direct damage portion of a skill does not influence the bleed damage. What truly matter is if the bleed portion of the damage either crits, or is applied when the enemy is vulnerable.