Preface

From what I can gather from poe.ninja, around 0.2% of all players are utilizing bleed as their primary damage sources. That's approximately 1 in 500. Suffice to say that bleed isn't meta, nor uncommon, nor would I even classify it as rare; it's a needle in a haystack finding someone actually using it.

Now for the few brave people that are using it, they are generally broken into two groups: Lacerate builds and Puncture builds, for 'melee' and ranged respectively. The new Lacerate of Hemmorhage is fantastic for bleed, as is Puncture/Split Arrow. Both skills are rather new in the regard that Lacerate of Hemorrhage is a new gem entirely, and Puncture got massively buffed with changes to its (and Snipe's) gem quality.

I had seen a few Frenzy-stacking Lacerate builds using Ralakesh Boots with Usurper's Penance that seem very solid, but I wanted to recreate one my old favorites, Bleed Bow.

The Buffs

Puncture now gains 20% more damage with bleeding at 20% quality instead of 10% faster bleeds at 20% quality. If we use a 30% Ashes of the Stars, this is boosted to 50% more damage, on top of the 50% more bleed damage that is simply granted with a level 21 gem.

Snipe is by far the best support gem for Puncture, giving massive damage multipliers to bow attacks that benefit from large single-hit multipliers. It also saw a huge buff by gaining an extra max stage at 20 quality, that becomes 2 extra stages with an Ashes of the Stars. This change alone gives me more than 24% more damage.

Split Arrow, which is one of the most common clear skills for bleed bow, also saw a solid buff for its clear. It now receives +4 arrows at 20% qual, on top of a base 10 from a level 21 gem. With a 30% Ashes, we get a total of 20 arrows fired, with no additional sources of arrows anywhere. Throw in chain support and the clear is pretty great.

In addition to these gem changes, the addition of the unique jewel 'The Adorned' has been an incredible buff for bleed characters. In my honest opinion, I believe that bleed benefits more from The Adorned than any other archetype I've seen. The best in slot jewel for a bleed bow character is a very simple one: A magic 2-mod corrupted jewel with 'Damaging ailments deal damage 6% faster, and '+8% to Physical damage over time multiplier'. The best breakpoint outside of an incredibly expensive 150% Adorned is 138%, which boosts the 6% to 14%, and the 8% to 19%. 14% faster ailments and 19% DoT multi is basically equivalent to a well-rolled double malevolence watcher's eye, and you can freely stack these to your heart's content.

The build

I am running with a Champion, gaining my bleedsplosions through a charm mod, and opting to not use a pair of Gratuitious Violence Forbidden jewels, because opting for 2 more magic jewels for Adorned is actually solidly more dps. I chose Champion simply because it's far tankier than Gladiator for bow builds, and I hate running extra squishy characters. I am also using Fourth Vow + Divine Flesh for a good deal of defense, though if you wanted to massively boost your damage to the detriment of defense you could opt for a 6 green Dialla's Malefaction.

I am also using a Mageblood instead of a Ryslatha's Coil, which is pretty unusual for bleed builds because a well-rolled Ryslatha's can give you over 40% more dps. I am already using Volatility support, and the utility and defense of Mageblood and how easy it makes the rest of your gearing is just too good to pass up imo. Stacking Volatility and Ryslatha's indeed does give the highest maximum dps, but it makes the roll range for your bleeds incredibly large, meaning that your relatively slow 8-stack channel of Snipe can be completely wasted on a near minimum damage roll leaving you with very litte dps for your time spent risking yourself channeling.

What can the build do?

It's a pretty quick mapper that is insanely satisfying to clear with, and can easily do a few Uber Bosses, but not all. Uber Shaper is a breeze, and Uber Sirus is doable as well as Uber Exarch. Uber Cortex wasn't bad at all either, though if you get unlucky and get an avoid bleed map it might be very difficult. Uber Maven was a little dicey, but that's mainly because I suck at Uber Maven. Uber Eater is pretty tough however because the basic tentacle attack does hefty damage, and we have to stand still for about 1.2 seconds to channel our skill to 8 stages, which leaves us very vulnerable to it. I wouldn't recommend farming Uber Eater with this build.

If you were to ask me what the build is best at, it would probably be mapping stuff like Legion and Breach, as well as non-uber pinnacles, though it's totally capable of doing most Ubers.

The Budget

You can get a great bleed bow character started for rather cheap, but this variant of the build ended up being a little expensive. I spent about 200 divines crafting the bow alone, and that's with getting my fracture on the 1st try. I would say I've spent about 750 divines on the character in total, though not all of the GG stuff is required to get a satisfying quick mapper put together.

The PoB

https://pobb.in/7q7JapSG0tKH

I am well (20%) over the Pinnacle DoT cap, and at around 13M Uber DPS on average, though that can reach as high as 17M Uber DPS if I high-roll on my bleed.

End

Just throwing this out there for anyone interested in bleed bow, or anyone who didn't realize that bleed bow could actually be solid in 2024. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.