[3.13] What the guides don't tell you about Bleed Earthquake, Observations + Crimson Dance Analysis

Hey y'all! Thought I'd make a post about some random things about Bleed EQ that you don't see much information on. I'm going to separate it based on the two types of builds.


Crimson Dance (CD) Earthquake
When looking on poe.ninja, try filtering by Gladiators using Vaal EQ or EQ. You'll find that 61% are using Crimson Dance in softcore. I couldn't find any guides talking about this so here's a couple key points if you want to copy these builds.

1. CD is definitely the safer of the two builds, but does ~1/3 of the single target damage. This higher survivability is due to a couple of reasons:



2. CD is better for mapping. Scaling off attack speed means you can zoom around with leap slam. Not needing to weapon swap means you can just EQ a couple of times per High HP rare, beyond boss, whatever and move on.

3. CD won't do very much damage unless you build for it. You absolutely need everything listed below beyond a regular Bleed EQ build:



Big Hit Bleed EQ Build (No Crimson Dance)
This is what you see on the forums regularly. Short section just for some callouts that I don't see usually mentioned.

1. Damage is NOT snapshotted when you switch weapons. This means that if you switch to your bow to hit your Ensnaring Arrow before the Earthquake's aftershock goes off, you'll be doing 90% less damage.

2. Leap Slam is a slam and can be exerted. Most of the time it does enough damage by itself (and with the Bleed explosion ascendancy node) to clear maps. Additionally an easy way to manage your exerts, is just to Seismic cry, then leap slam 4 times in preparation for a boss becoming targetable.

Miscellaneous Tips
Crafting an Axe for either build is easy with ~3x.

1. iLevel 83+ Elder influenced Siege Axe (CD) or Reaver Axe (Non CD)
2. Alt spam to hit 60% chance for Bleeding inflicted with this Weapon to deal 100% more Damage.
3. Make sure it has an open suffix and 2 open prefixes, if not scour and start over.
4. Craft "Can have up to 3 Crafted Modifiers" (2ex)
5. Craft "(100-129)% increased Physical Damage" (1ex)
6. Craft "Adds (13-17) to (26-30) Physical Damage" (4c)

This is about ~30% worse than an axe worth 10-30ex and is pretty much deterministically craftable.

Many thanks for the analysis, I am completely new with all the information you showed. Much much appreciated.

Then With a reaver axe:
1. iLevel 83+ Elder influenced Siege Axe (CD) or Reaver Axe (Non CD)

We should don´t to use CD?...

And If this is the case, why a siege axe is better than a reaver axe?...

Thanks in advance...

Thank you for compiling this information because I have been wondering why most EQ characters are taking CD according to poe.ninja and I haven't the time to go through streamer VODs (i.e. Steelmage) to find the reasoning, etc.

My question is: where's your "[CD build] does ~1/3 of the single target damage" reasoning come from?

Has anyone worked out the damage math for builds that wait for FoW/Seismic exert and get the Elder mod proc for bleeds on non-CD builds vs. just spamming EQ in a CD build with the same damage enhancers on single target (and assuming AS/Less duration balance)?

Trying to figure out which style is better for me and I am wondering if anyone has timestamps to boss fights from CD EQ characters.

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Vyr75 escribió:

Then With a reaver axe:
1. iLevel 83+ Elder influenced Siege Axe (CD) or Reaver Axe (Non CD)

We should don´t to use CD?...

And If this is the case, why a siege axe is better than a reaver axe?...

Thanks in advance...

It's not one is better than other. I think think they mean that Siege is better for CD builds probably because it has highest base attack speed to stack bleeds and the reaver axe is better for non-CD because it has highest base dmg but slow hits (bigger single bleeds)

Thank you for shining some light on the recent EQ developments - I swapped mid-league to a CD variant. Some remarks on your points:

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Faelil escribió:

2. CD is better for mapping. Scaling off attack speed means you can zoom around with leap slam. Not needing to weapon swap means you can just EQ a couple of times per High HP rare, beyond boss, whatever and move on.

The mapping experience with FoW is pretty good anyway: You Dash (not Leap Slam tough) to a group of monsters, slam once, and Dash away. For magic/rare mob groups, there is usually no need to slam a second time or use that annoying ensnaring arrow. The CD version has a higher percentage of attacking and not being able dogde. Non-CD plays more mobile than CD.

However, the biggest thing what makes CD great is the higher consistency in damage and resulting leech. Sirus felt really awkward without CD, too.

I'm still using Dash and Seismic Cry & FoW on my CD variant, it works pretty for clear. For boss fights, I do not try to time the FoW, but having an ancestrally boosted attack every now and then makes FoW work similarly to Ruthless support.

Do you guys have thoughts on Royal Axe? Having more attack speed is just a question on how fast we are going to be able to ramp up to 8 stacks, or am I missing something?

One thing I don't actually get is if you're not playing bonk style EQ why use FoW? Which is pretty much what everyone is doing.

Most generic EQ builds have 0.4 duration but you can only Ancestral Boost an attack every 1.8 seconds which is more than 4 attacks. At that point use Ruthless? Not only it does more damage with ailments than the boosted attack but instead of 1.8 you can hit hard every 1.2 seconds? Or better go MPD go CTB, like if you wanna leap into a boss and just right click with Crimson Dance, FoW makes no sense at all. And let's say you only wanna hit the boss with boosted attack 1.8x8 stacks that's 14.4 seconds to actually set it up, good luck getting that kind of bleed duration.

I truly must be missing something or people just do whatever they see on poe.ninja.

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rockmassif escribió:

One thing I don't actually get is if you're not playing bonk style EQ why use FoW? Which is pretty much what everyone is doing.

Most generic EQ builds have 0.4 duration but you can only Ancestral Boost an attack every 1.8 seconds which is more than 4 attacks. At that point use Ruthless? Not only it does more damage with ailments than the boosted attack but instead of 1.8 you can hit hard every 1.2 seconds? Or better go MPD go CTB, like if you wanna leap into a boss and just right click with Crimson Dance, FoW makes no sense at all. And let's say you only wanna hit the boss with boosted attack 1.8x8 stacks that's 14.4 seconds to actually set it up, good luck getting that kind of bleed duration.

I truly must be missing something or people just do whatever they see on poe.ninja.

Actually i have the same question about fist of war.
I'm planning to play ssf glad eq next league and now i am doing some planing in POB. And according to it chance to bleed gives more dmg then fist of war.
The only reason i can think about using first of war instead of chance to bleed is that fist of war mby deal more dmg because of warcries, and it is not reflected in pob correctly?

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rockmassif escribió:

I truly must be missing something or people just do whatever they see on poe.ninja.

chainbreaker.
also build is dead and idk what im even doing here.

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mezmery escribió:

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rockmassif escribió:

I truly must be missing something or people just do whatever they see on poe.ninja.

chainbreaker.
also build is dead and idk what im even doing here.

They don't use Chainbreaker.