[3.15] Spectral Shield Throw Bleed Gladiator - tanky & fast mapping - good scaling - all content

^Someone else will have to answer, I'm playing the blood magic version and have been the whole time. It seems like pretty much everyone on poe.ninja that isn't blood magic uses a -mana chest and rings though.

yo, loving the guide so far! just got to lvl 46. Is there any way to get 100% bleed, or are we just stuck at 95%?

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CircAGG wrote:

yo, loving the guide so far! just got to lvl 46. Is there any way to get 100% bleed, or are we just stuck at 95%?

I don't think it's a big deal while leveling to have 95% chance to bleed. If you really want you can get a regular jewel with 5% chance on it. Most people will be overcapped eventually from the bleed mod on weapons having % chance on it.

SO im looking to gear this and not sure where im supposed to get the dex and int required/

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peatar96 wrote:

Is the extra damage worth it from getting a negative mana chest so that I can get rid of lifetap or should I just go straight for clusters?

Lifetap is quite decent and perfectly end game viable, and replacing it that's always a trade off.

If you swap it for Maim or Unbound Ailments damage will be quite similar, but then you will have to hunt those -15 mana chest and maybe enchant -x to mana on rings, or/and use replica conqueror's efficiency.

For me the only possible replacement for Lifetap that justifies such change of the whole setup to use mana again would be Divergent Chance to Bleed as this one scales bleed quite nicely. Though I would probably replace Cruelty first with that version of ChToB anyway, because I like the "simplicity" of a Lifetap ;]

All in all, two last gems for SST bleed are quite flexible. I've seen people using any combinations of Cruelty, Lifetap, Maim, Chance to Bleed, Unbound Ailments, Deadly Ailments here. And all of those are end game capable.

So instead of changing something here for your current gem setup right now (that's cruelty + lifetap) I would probably focus on replacing the rest of the core gems with awakened versions if you have some currency to spend, and maybe try to finish some cluster setup + optimize the skill tree.

Which skill gem set up am I supposed to follow the POB set up or the one in the guide?

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wotad wrote:

Which skill gem set up am I supposed to follow the POB set up or the one in the guide?

Three of the gems are sort of "mandatory" for any bleed flavor of SST: Vicious Projectiles, Brutality, and SST itself. The rest is rather flexible.

Your current setup can carry you to the endgame. The only replacement that could increase your bleed damage would be to swap Unbound Ailments for Divergent Chance to Bleed.

And you may want to ditch that Lion's armour, and get yourself either some rare with more life and/or influenced one with +1 to support gems at least. In you current setup that chest offers you Pierce which only increases hit damage, and not bleed, and which is completely nullified by Deadly Ailments gem you have there.
This armour is good for mid-leveling as a decent replacement of Tabula, but otherwise does very little to your current build.

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wotad wrote:

Which skill gem set up am I supposed to follow the POB set up or the one in the guide?

I think the guide is "dated" whereas the PoB is the most current and has more detail for the different levelling stages. I got to level 90 then diverged from the build guide, got some advice from this thread (primarily artisanix) and looked at lvl 100 builds on poe.ninja My current gem setup is from gamers much more advance than me and it uses lifetap now since I wanted to optimize my tree. I'm loving the new setup. Just need to save up to buy awakened/divergent versions now ;)

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The_Shamus wrote:

I think the guide is "dated" whereas the PoB is the most current and has more detail for the different levelling stages.

Actually this guide is pretty good. Definitely not "dated" ;] - author does a great job with updates.
And slight differences between written content and PoB may not be that much noticeable in game - those only show diversity of all those settings - at the end we have some flexibility here and may tailor some setups to our preferred play style.

And I don't think if that's even possible to follow any build guide for this game to the letter - shear amount of randomness and working combinations do not allow it ;]

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The_Shamus wrote:

I'm loving the new setup. Just need to save up to buy awakened/divergent versions now ;)

While waiting to accumulate that wealth for divergent chance to bleed you may want to try to put Cruelty instead of Maim there. And see how general mapping goes. If you notice a good improvement, then that divergent gem won't be a chase item for you anymore as far as general play is concerned. Well, just "a hint" ;]

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artisanix wrote:

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wotad wrote:

Which skill gem set up am I supposed to follow the POB set up or the one in the guide?

Three of the gems are sort of "mandatory" for any bleed flavor of SST: Vicious Projectiles, Brutality, and SST itself. The rest is rather flexible.

Your current setup can carry you to the endgame. The only replacement that could increase your bleed damage would be to swap Unbound Ailments for Divergent Chance to Bleed.

And you may want to ditch that Lion's armour, and get yourself either some rare with more life and/or influenced one with +1 to support gems at least. In you current setup that chest offers you Pierce which only increases hit damage, and not bleed, and which is completely nullified by Deadly Ailments gem you have there.
This armour is good for mid-leveling as a decent replacement of Tabula, but otherwise does very little to your current build.

I changed my build around a bit now changed my gems not sure which really works better or how my gem set ups are overall honestly.

My flasks are okay for now but overall it feels fine its hard to remember to keep all my buffs up like tempest, corrupting

Any tips overall on what I should upgrade next is welcome also.

My SST set up seems fine not sure about the other gem set ups.