Bleed Shield Crush (Crimson Dance)

Okay, I know there's been quite a few shield crush build theories and discussions recently on this sub. But I've put together a decently geared character on PoB using Shield Charge as an analog and it's actually looking really strong despite lacking the ability to use a strong MH weapon with the good bleed mods you'd find on "normal" bleed builds.

https://pastebin.com/WPWB55cL

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I made the shield 2500 armour, which I think is perfectly achievable via Deafening Dread essence crafting. And the tree is level 98, which to me is fine because its something I know I can achieve. You can knock a few points off and it doesn't make too much of a difference.

I don't know how the base phys on a level 20 Shield Crush compares to a level 20 Shield Charge so I left it at lv 15 in the PoB.

I also left the skill as a 5 link to account for support gem nerfs and there is no quality on any gems or any level 21.

I left most of the gear affixes open and only went with 3 stat jewels, not even including a watcher's eye.

So the core idea of this build (besides a good shield) was to build around Blasphemer's Grasp to make up for some damage. I went with full elder items on this to maybe take advantage of the "remove an ailment when you use a flask if all equipped items are elder" I think this mod probably won't be changed as it requires a pretty decent investment to gain access to, so it should help us with the nerfs to ailment flask interaction. I'm not sure if making the shield an elder base makes it harder to roll with essence but I am confident it won't be too much trouble to hit 2500+.

I went an interesting route with the weapon, deciding to craft an Elder Gemini Claw. The first reason is that I really like the life and mana on hit mechanic from the claw implicit, and the second reason was that one of these with DoT multi and chance to bleed suffixes will be incredibly cheap. All it needs is an open prefix to craft another 20% Phys DoT Multi. So our MH gives us life/mana on hit, 38% bleed multi, and the remaining chance to bleed we need to reach 100%. The other option I thought of was a Jack, The Axe; this axe is really cool as it provides the chance to cause bleeding we need and the Thirst for Blood skill it grants gives 20% more bleeding damage and 400 life regen per nearby bleeding enemy (up to 5, or 2000 life regen/s). Though to fully utilize our blasphemer's grasp we would want an elder influenced one, and these are pretty rare, so an elder Jack, the Axe might be prohibitively expensive.

To account for the armour scaling I modified some stats on the amulet for the extra 2-3 phys per 15 armour.

I didn't add in the fact that this skill can shotgun as we are not scaling hit damage, but the fact that it can shotgun allows us to use Crimson Dance with 100% uptime. And I ignored changing the base attack time to match what shield crush will be as that does not affect bleed DPS, only the time it takes to reach 8 stacks with crimson dance (Shield crush will be faster at this too as it can hit twice per attack)

As it stands this build is sitting at just over 1.25 million sirus bleed DPS in it's current state (5l, no gem quality, lv 15 shield charge, and no active flasks, no helmet enchant, no frenzy charges) Which it's not the best, even for bleed builds, but I think there is quite a bit of room for improvement. I don't think it would be too hard to push over 2 million, and I think with more investment it can reach maybe 2.5. IDK what it can do if you throw cluster jewels in the mix, I just don't like using them. EDIT: This build can reach over 4 million bleed dps with considerable investment (At least on the current patch of PoE)

With the defenses of the gladiator I think this build can do just fine with most of the endgame bosses, but I think it will shine in mapping, delve, incursion, heist, labyrinth, sirus, and possibly the new league mechanic. The bleeds explosions are incredibly satisfying and I think Shield Crush will be fun to play, which is the most important part.

The only thing I think this build is really missing is more life sustain, either life leech or regen, but there are plenty of open spots to fit these in somewhere. 2% regen on boot enchant, or life leech on some open affixes, or possibly life on block if you can manage it somewhere.

Thanks for reading if you did. Hope this helps if you were interested in this type of build. It should also be a smooth league starter if you wanted it to be.