Bleed Puncture Duelist Gladiator Build Guide - Path of Exile 3.24

Table of contents:

> Basics

> Mechanics

> Playstyle

> Class, Tree, Pantheon, Masteries

> Equipment

> Flasks

> Skill Gems

Bleed is a physical damage ailment associated with attacks. When an enemy is inflicted with bleed, they take more damage over time - which is tripled if they're moving, as that makes them hemorrhage much faster. Puncture, the skill featured in this build, is centered exclusively around inflicting this powerful DoT. We use a variety of mechanics to make our DPS go through the roof, while also being much better defensively than most builds in PoE.

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Basics

Puncture will always cause bleeding on hit. It also modifies the duration of the bleed, setting it to 8 seconds instead of the usual 4 seconds, which makes the damage much more reliable on a single target. We put it in the Assailum unique helmet, which grants us the Snipe skill. Snipe makes the skills linked to it become Channeled instead - which means charging up the shot to release it, offering us as much as five times the damage when we release our shot.

Pros and Cons

+ Great boss-killer

+ Huge defenses

+ High protection against all kinds of damage

+ Scales really well with investment

- Requires channeling in one place

Mechanics Used

Ensnaring Arrow - This skill is really powerful. When you hit an enemy with it, their movement speed gets slowed and they're tethered to the ground. While tethered, even if they're standing in one place, they count as moving - which triples our bleed damage, which is why we always want to have that debuff up against endgame bosses

• Challenger Charges - These charges are generated by the Arena Challenger notable from the Gladiator subclass. We use them mostly for clear, as they boost our attack speed and movement speed by 20%. They are generated when we kill enemies during sand stance, which is one of two states a player can be in: Blood or Sand. These are changed by using either of the Blood and Sand/Flesh and Stone skills (we use the latter).

• Crush - This effect removes our enemies' physical damage reduction, making us deal pure damage to them. Our source of that is the Vanquisher notable, which is really powerful.

Useful Links and Path of Building

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Playstyle and Leveling

Leveling

We can use Puncture early into the game, just like Split Arrow. You might want to use a second character or ask someone to get you the necessary gems, as not all of them are normally available to the Duelist class.

Playstyle

Basically, for clear we want to be in the Sand mode of the Flesh and Stone skill to generate Challenger charges more reliably. We use Split Arrow, as it has high innate hit damage and it fires a LOT of projectiles.

For single target, we want to switch to the Blood mode of the Flesh and Stone skill, as it will increase our damage greatly. We intend to charge up our Snipe/Puncture skill and fire it from afar. Once we land the ten second long bleed, we want to run up to our enemy to keep them inside of our Flesh aura and use the Ensnaring Arrows to slow them and triple our damage.

Map Mods

Avoid Physical Reflect and Temporal Chains, as they are quite deadly for this build.

Class, Tree, Pantheon

Passive Points

• Tree for level 100

The main version of the build

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Masteries

• +50 to maximum Life
• 10% increased maximum Life, 10% reduced Life Recovery rate
• 10% less Damage Taken from Damage over Time
• 60% increased Bleeding Duration
• Determination has 25% increased Mana Reservation Efficiency
• Moving while Bleeding doesn't cause you to take extra Damage
• You take 30% reduced Extra Damage from Critical Strikes

Class

• Blood in the Eyes (Normal): It adds a high chance for attacks to inflict bleeding, which is much needed in the early game. It also comes in with a variety of other bonuses, like inflicting Maim (slowing the enemies' movement speed) and Blind (making them less likely to hit and evade).

•Gratuitous Violence (Cruel): This is the most important point on the Gladiator passive tree. Bleedsplosions are immensely important for any bleed build, as they make the clear bearable. This node also comes with a huge, 20% more damage bonus to physical damage over time - which bleed is.

•Arena Challenger (Merciless): Speed, speed and more speed. These charges make our clear much faster, as they boost both our movement speed and attack speed.

• Outmatch and Outlast (Eternal): Since we don't really block any attacks, as we're using bows, the only remaining node we can take is the Outmatch and Outlast, which will generate us charges during clear, buffing our damage and defenses.'

Pantheon

• Soul of the Brine King: We want it solely for the Cannot be Frozen upgrade, as freeze is the most annoying ailment of them all.

• Soul of Tukohama: We stand in one place a lot, since that's what we have to do to make use of Snipe. Tukohama will help us by giving us some life regeneration and physical reduction.

Anointment

• The cheaper anointment is the Avatar of the Hunt notable, as it gives us all kinds of useful stats like armor, movement speed and damage. The more expensive one is the Influence notable, which gives us a LOT of damage through auras.

Equipment

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Helmets

• Assailum is the only true option for this build, as the damage it offers through the Snipe skill is ridiculous. They're relatively cheap, so try to get one with a good, usable enchant - like the Ensnaring Arrow, Puncture or Vulnerability ones.

Boots

• Rare Boots - For the endgame you want rare boots. There is no real other options, as this slot doesn't really benefit bleed builds that well DPS-wise.

Mods you should look for on rare boots are:

• + to movement speed
• + or higher to Maximum Life
• +% to one elemental resistance
• +% to another elemental resistance
• +% chance to suppress spell damage

Get the faster bleeding and onslaught effect implicits by using the eldritch currency.

Gloves

• Rare Gloves - This build can't really make use of any of the unique gloves in the game, that's why we want to focus on rares.

Mods you should look for are:

• +70 or higher to Maximum Life
• +35% to one elemental resistance
• +35% to another elemental resistance

Body Armour

• Belly of the Beast is the cheapest option for this slot, as it can offer us a large increase to maximum life, especially early into the game. It used to be expensive, but it's been outclassed by many endgame items, so it's really cheap now, even early into the league.

• Rare 6-link Armor - we intend to use that in the endgame, as it can give us great defensive options for relatively cheap due to the eldritch implicits.

Try to look for armours with these modifiers:

• +120 or more to Maximum Life
• +% chance to suppress spell damage
• +% to chaos resistance

The Eldritch implicits you want to craft on this gear piece are the Damage Recouped as Life and Determination effect mods, which make us way more sturdy.

Weapons

• Arborix - This bow has bonuses depending on us using the Dash movement skill recently. It lets us save a gem slot, a passive point we normally spend on the Iron Reflexes keystone, and it comes with a nifty amount of average physical damage. You can craft it for cheap by vendoring the Beltimber Blade, Grelwood Shank and an Orb of Fusing together.

• Silvertongue - This bow is probably the coolest looking item in the game. It has a high average hit and a cool mechanic. It makes projectiles pierce all enemies after they fork, which requires us to change a support gem in our Split Arrow gem setup (from Pierce to Fork support).

• Rare Bow - this is the best choice for this build, although the most expensive one too. We care about as high of a physical damage hit as possible and the %to physical damage over time multiplier crafted mod. We don't really need the %chance to bleed, as we are capped on that.

Rings

• Rare Rings are the main option for this build.

• +60 or higher to Maximum Life
• at least +35% to two different elemental resistances
• added physical damage to attacks
• +% to chaos resistance

IMPORTANT! We want at least one of our rings to have the Curse Enemies with Vulnerability on hitas this is our source of the most powerful bleed-supporting curse.

Belts

• Rare belt - this is the cheaper option, opt into using it only if you cannot afford a Ryslatha's.

• + to Maximum Life
• +% to one Elemental Resistance
• +% to another Elemental Resistance
• + to Strength

• Ryslatha's Coil - although expensive, this is by far the best belt we can get. High maximum life and strength are only a cherry on the top. The most important stats on it are the less minimum and more maximum attack damage stats. They can roll different values (rerollable with divine orbs). Minimum should be as low as possible, while maximum should be as high as it gets. Remember to use the Abrasive catalyst on it.

Quiver

• Rare quiver - this is main option for a damage quiver on this build.

• + to Maximum Life
• +% to Damage over Time Multiplier with Bow Skills
• + added Physical Damage to Attacks
• %increased Damage with Bows

• Drillneck - this is the cheapest option, which gives us all kinds of useful stats, like increased damage, attack speed, maximum life and added physical damage. Use it when you can't afford a better rare quiver.

Amulets

• Rare Amulet is the only real option for this build.

Look for these mods:

• +70 or higher to Maximum Life
• +% to Damage over Time multiplier
• Added physical damage to attacks

Optionally:

• Any extra resistances or attributes we need.

Flasks

Flasks in Path of Exile are different from other games. Not all of them are made for regaining life and mana - a lot of them are more offensively oriented. This build's setup looks like this:

• Life Flask of Staunching - Remember to use either the Eternal or Divine life flasks - as these are the highest tier flasks in the game. It's important to get any of the bleed removal mods on these, as it's our only way of dealing with it - and it tends to deal INSANE amounts of damage.

• Bottled Faith - our main DPS flask, which grants our enemies increased damage taken while they are on Consecrated Ground, which this flask spreads on nearly the entire screen on use. It also reduces the effect of curses on us and gives us life regeneration.

• Granite Flask - is a flask giving us a huge amount of flat bonus armor. We want to roll the %increased armor during flask effect mod on it and some increased duration.

• Basalt Flask - it multiplies our armor by 1.2, being a rather large bonus to our defenses. Roll the reduced effect of curses mod on it, as that will make us nearly curse immune.

• Quicksilver Flask - this is the flask used most commonly in all of PoE. It grants us the most important stuff of all - speed :)

Jewels

Jewels are items socketable in Jewel Sockets found on the passive tree. We don't want to use any rare jewels.

On Cluster jewels, look for:

Large - Devastator/Heavy Hitter/Tempered Arrowheads

Medium - Compound Injury/Wasting Affliction

Small - Exploit Weakness

• Watcher's Eye - this jewel can roll multiple modifiers connected to the auras we use. Look for ones with Malevolence, Determination or Pride mods, as these are the ones we use.

• Impossible Escape - this expensive jewel drops from one of the endgame encounters. When socketed, it allows players to allocate passives around a randomly chosen (displayed in the description) Keystone on the tree. For this build, we want to use Iron Will keystone.

• Forbidden Jewels - these jewels let you get the effects of an ascendancy point (even outside of your subclass!) as long as you have BOTH of them socketed in. The passive points we are most interested in are Inspirational, Fortitude, Headsman, Bane of Legends.

Gems

Body

Pride = Flesh and Stone = Determination = Defiance Banner = Blood Rage = Enlighten

This is our main aura setup. All of the auras here reserve a lot of mana, which is why we want to use Enlighten with them (if you don't have it, skip Pride). Flesh and Stone is the skill we use to switch between stances (sand/stone for clear, blood/flesh for bosses). Blood Rage is a temporary buff which drains our life, instead giving us increased attack speed, leech and frenzy charges on kill.

Weapon 1

Split Arrow = Pierce = Chance to Bleed = Vicious Projectiles = Brutality = Cruelty

This is our main clear setup. Split Arrow shoots out 9 arrows by default, making it great for clear. Normally, it stops on enemies - which is why we link it to Pierce, which allows it to go through a number of enemies. Other linked support gems are purely damage focused. Cruelty will give us the Cruelty buff, which increases the damage over time dealt by our skills.

Helmet

Puncture = Brutality = Deadly Ailments = Vicious Projectiles

This is our single target setup. Active gems socketed inside of our helmet are triggered by Snipe, so don't worry about it dealing not enough damage on a 4-link. We link Puncture to damage support gems only, as we don't care about any utility, as we don't need anything else to consistently deal damage.

Boots

Molten Shell = Dash = Second Wind = Enduring Cry

This is where we put our remaining utility gems. Molten Shell adds an extra defensive buffer on our HP, which scales with our armor. We want to have it on as often as possible, which is why we bind it to our Left Click. Dash is our movement skill of choice, which we link to Second Wind to ensure its not on cooldown as often as possible. Enduring Cry can also be bound to our Left Click, as it's a great emergency button if we want to regain some maximum life and get some charges on single target.

Gloves

Lifetap = Ensnaring Arrow = Divine Blessing = Malevolence

This is our single target damage boost setup. Lifetap linked to both Malevolence and Ensnaring Arrow will make it cost life instead of mana, letting us spam them much more consistently. Divine Blessing turns our auras into temporary buffs, where we pay an upfront cost to grant the benefits for about 10 seconds without reserving any of the mana.