[PATH OF EXILE | 3.25] - GLADIATOR REWORK - IS IT ANY GOOD? 

Potential damage from one bleed application is based on the base physical damage of attack that caused it: 70% per second if the target is standing still (reduced to 10% if an enemy monster applied it). If the target is moving or are affected by Aggravated Bleeding, bleeding deals additional damage equal to twice the base, for a total of 3 times the base damage (210% per second). No idea where i got that 270% from, maybe it got changed at some point but the Core Info is the same.

Straight from the patchnotes: Ensnared Enemies no longer always count as moving.

The wording on War of Attrition is "EVER been in your Presence." So, there is no reset. The boss could teleport or you could die and come back to the fight, and you'd still have the more damage multiplier from before. I think that's the only way that single word being there can be interpreted.

If you need 20 sec to kill a boss, that is a ramp up to 20% more from o%. Which averages out to arround 10% more dmg in your instance of that boss fight. The longer the fight, the more dmg you gain. Another way to brake the "top percent" builds and trying to help everybody else reach them with shittier gear.

Just 1 thing about the "block chance is lucky if you've blocked recently" thing, I'm pretty sure if you have block cap (at a base of 75%) that having Lucky block means that when you get hit, you roll that 75% twice for an effective ~90+% block chance. Pretty sure you misunderstood what they meant there, but wording in PoE is always pretty confusing, so I can see why

The whole Champion sharing fortitude is an ass idea

I think you made a point - bleed bow glad now sucks. I don’t think I can conclude that Glad as a whole is still bad.

I love your content, this one was a miss, essentially this wasn’t a look at the rework, this was a review of bleed bow in 3.25, they pushed the ascendancy to be melee focused, if you are melee the benefits are huge, instead of the passive damage bonuses being a part of the ascendancy they buffed the skills themselves, so damage will still be way higher even missing the maim and 20% physical dot. The loss of the challenger stacks is a nerf overall for everything, but all the other points are way more interesting with the understanding they want you to be melee with this ascendancy. Also one of the biggest changes is you can get the explode with only 2 points now. So it’s not reserved for builds only wanting to do bleed as damage. You can build a hit based damage character and still get explode which is a huge opportunity for build diversity. Thanks again I do love your stuff

Finally someone sees it. Its become a meme. Scion is a better gladiator. Scion has easy access to crit bleed on bow or melee. Personally ill be tinkering with crit bleed shield crush ascendant. reworked perfect agony is amazing. Not sure if I even pick gladiator on that. Tinctures might be better for bleed and crit so... warden assassin or smth. Dunno. Gladiator is just giga stinky now. But berserker might be interesting as increased attack speed will now be the missing factor for many builds.

"This melee-centric league somehow made my ranged build worse"

Add retaliation eviscerate for massive single hit bleed.

don't care much about Duelist right now , but was wondering how players will do their dmg mitigation on witch without phys dmg taken as elemental outside of cloak of flames/ lightning coil which are still amazing ,but probably gonna skyrocket in price at least early on.

Speechless, exactly same reaction i had 😂, exalted when i saw gladiator rework, and totally disappointed when i saw the new version 😊, Seriously, wtf they have done?!? I see in 3.26 as the things are going speech like " in 3.25 0.0001% of the people played duelist class , because we murderer champion, we made gladiator dog 💩 and so on decided to remove duelist class from poe to switch it with more 💩 from poe2 that you can test for us for free " 😅😅😅😅

I’m thinking dual wield pneumatic dagger perfect agony poison molten strike glad. Tons of crit multi, more attack speed, max attack block, and capped suppress. Probably terrible and difficult to get off the ground, but it may be able to use marylene’s fallacy which is another massive chunk of crit multi.

Totally agree that GLADIATOR got worse and less versatile, Also the 2 new bleed Ascendancy Passives are kind of Waste: 1- the The Jagged Technique ( Aggravated bleed ) : Aggravated bleed chance is available on tree and Vulnerability curse (bleed builds already use Vulnerability ). 2- The Gratuitous Violence : exploding enemies is available on items and on cluster jewels.

war of attrition doesnt decay and will help the early game before scaling your gear as a bleed char, and more than skill is stronger than you think but with time you will come to notice.

I get your sentiment because you used an ascendancy that shows someone not weilding a bow as a bow character. But thematically, the Gladiator is 85% better or more for every other setup. Their vision for the Gladiator is to be melee, I don't think they forgot about bleed bow, I think they wanted to gut it personally.

Varunastra gets a lot of mileage out of the weapons master node, which is kind of nice. And I think you’ve underrated the power of the block nodes a bit! Turns both block and spell block into a low-investment high-reward defensive layer. Bleed bow died a bit but lots of other options open up with the ascendancy.

It's fine to have 1 ascendancy that's melee only. The goal was to fix melee, I don't care about bleed bow.

hey mbXtreme, War of Atrition explanation mentions "...they've ever been..." I suppose it means you get more damage on one direction, like you never go back to zero, even if you were killed and returned, you still have same bonus what you had before for same instance like there is no any wording about recently etc.

For me the Gladiator should Not be a char with a bow

When you say "Gladiator is worse than before," what you really mean is "Gladiator is worse than before at the things it used to do well." You have not examined Glad's new potential; therefore you cannot conclude that the ascendency is worse than before, in a broad sense. You may still be correct, but your analysis completely lacks the work necessary for that conclusion.

You can remove aggravated later on and spec into something like ultra tanky glad with 100% more damage via node (if you're ok to kill pinnacles in 1min 40secs)

Unless I'm missing something, isnt max block + lucky good because you get higher then max block? Like slightly above 90%, or something like that?

Worthy Foe Champion build got buffed xD 17M up to 48M dps, 8 fewer gems required to achieve that, two fewer reservations no enlighten to fit them and no totems, 15 Fortify (when previously it couldn't spare the ascendancy points to get it), additional impale and impale scaling on the tree. Less button presses more tanky.

Do remember that totems really didn't buff bleed, but bleed skills got something like 2x buff (considering flat removed)

Totally disagree with Aggravated, its constant 210% phys damage instead of 70% with normal bleed, but it was before? yes it still possible with 30% chance, but with the nerfs to attack speed its just not that good, there is also over 55% faster bleed damage, you will not be able to sustain that bleed instances between A > B with only 30% chance and nerfed attack speed. Its like playing with 60-70% chance to poison, you can but i wouldn't.

I think another way to view "War of Attrition" node is like Punishment curse where you deal 100% more damage (or just double damage) to enemies on low life. If your blasting through the content or boss you farm without getting much benefit from it, obviously it's not a great node. But for aspirational content on a non-busted character, I think it's a very appealing option to take.

Yes, bleed bow gladiator is dead. However "Determined Survivor" looks sick. 40-50% base block chance. Sincerely the main problem here is Weapon Master. Why would you use it? Dual wielding and different weapon type is the only option for that point to be good. Also the main problem is that Weapon Master contains "Axe deals more damage if enemy is in low life", "War of Attrition" depends on time and resets on death and "More than a skill" requires you to block recently. There is literally no base buf.

I have no clue what they thought when "redesigning" glad... the only thing i like is the lucky block part..but to take a whole ascendancy class just for some neat block chance is pretty awful..compared to freaking warden or jugg or whatever other class with insane dm potential + okish defense options

I might have calculated this wrong, but take into account that f.ex. Jack the Axe scenario, the new quality: DPS with 20% Increased Damage: 336.504 DPS with 20% More Damage: 403.8 Difference Between Increased and More Damage In this scenario, 20% more damage results in a higher average DPS than 20% increased damage. The key difference is that "more" damage is applied after all other modifiers, leading to a greater overall increase in damage output. Losing 20% multi sucks ofc, but considering this and other changes, the overall Gladiator is far superior than before.

slayer looks so much better for crit bleeds, just yoink the bleed explo with jewels.

Well I agree. Bleed bow is pretty much nerfed but the dual wield melee is the new king. like you get 40 block and 20% more attack speed just by using dual wield which is extremely good. In general gladiator is now a gladiator focusing on theme "Gladiator" GGG seems to be going forward this theme where they make namings make sense. They even changed raider to warden for it to make sense as a theme for those ascendancy

those block nodes are crazy good tho. with only 26 points, one unique jewel, an anoint, and a shield with 15% to spell block. You can get 78/75 true block (no glancing blows) Which is something like 95/93 effective block with "More Than Skill". Which is kind of nutty.

i think bleed bow gladiator is still good. the last point you just get retaliation skills get some block from the unique quiver or global block cluster jewels to proc the block. "Crushing Fist: Retaliate against a blocked hit by slamming a huge armoured fist into the ground in front of you." doesn't have any melee weapon or shield conditional on it as far as i can see. you get hude dps from the explode, built in ensnaring arrow to any skill, AND YOU DONT HAVE TO AVOID PIERCE ETC. ensnaring arrow was dog shit to use. and who knows with this crushing fist, get some global block and proc it once and save it for the boss, could be some huge bleed dps coming from this skill. also, the 1% more damage every second is amazing for what bleed blow was lacking, map bosses it doesn't matter, you'll murder them with a good bleed. its the pinnacle bosses where bleed was complete trash. now after 100 seconds into an uber fight they're taking 100% MORE damage which is better than anything the old gladiator could do. i think you jumped to conclusions too early on this one MBX. edit: As for the blind and maim being removed, just use the support gems on ballista totems, and again, you'll only really use it for bossing or difficult rare's or before expedition/harvest ect..

i think glad is gonna be mostly hardcore focused. The thing people don't seems to understand about the rework is that now you can easily reach 96-98% effective chance to block attacks because of the chance to block is lucky thing and it also work on spell block too by the way so you can also get a really decent chance to block spell damage too with tempest shield ... The only thing i wanna know is if the 50% chance to block from shield node apply to spell block if you equip a caster shield. if it does work that mean glad can have easy access to 75% lucky chance to block spells on top of capped suppression. add a decent amount of armor, max res/ endurance charges and you got a freaking immortal build by the way ...

I was sooo close at making a whiny post on reddit about this ascendancy... I think it is pure dogshit now... Losing frenzy charges + 10% more phys + 20% more phys dot + 10% more vs maimed enemies.... 40% more dot multi just gone on top of the frenzy charges... fcking sucks man ... Thanks for highlighting this subject!

Max block is 75. At 75 with luck you have a 94% block chance. This also applies to spell block. So you could have a 94% chance to block spells and attacks. It's not always up. But it can be if you use the new penance mark ring.

More Than Skill is the most busted ascension passive in the entire game....If your max block is 75%, Lucky gives you effectively 94% block. If you raise it beyond 75%, it gets even more absurd.

what do you thing about the Warden Ascendency? do you feel is gonna be good? or another trash?

@War of Attrition: It does say "ever been in your presence" so at least it should be a permanent debuff and not reset according to wording.

Here was I hoping I could play Lacerate Bleed Glad with Maxblock again. it looks actually better in numbers with better defence, basically 90% Block and the weapons being stronger but it seems so much worse to play. I have to get Out the old PoB from when Sirus came out and look how the actually will be like, but These Changes are weird

I mean a melee league is nice, but ngl the damage buffs to essence drain and bane are what I'm interested to test. Maybe have a crazy tank occultist this league that can output some solid dot damage. Gladiator is definitely nice for melee now but I personally don't like when ascendency's clearly only benefit one type of play given the nerf to bleed bow. I like for the ascendancies to serve as catalysts for more complex builds by benefiting more playstyles than just the one.

not only they forgot about bow bleed glads, they also forgot about CF wand glad playstyle

I think a way to go is a crit rupturing (new support gem) or sadist dual wielding (maybe with varunastra?), where your bleed is shorter but deals damage a lot faster. Crimson Dance don´t work of this, cause u don´t have the chance to stack the bleed, so all the aggravate thing sounds nice for full bleed potential, and with a minimum attack speed u could make a 1sec big damage bleed build lacerate that feel nice (in theory) BTW I really think that is the build that they show us in the simulacrum teaser

I think Lacerate glab dual wield with crimson dance will be decent. You just dont take aggrevated bleed.

i agree with most but the block is actually insane if u got maxblock/spellblock it still is lucky so u come at effective over 90% block... so i think thats pretty bonkers (LOL wrote this without checking the comments xD)

With all the losses of attack speed across the board especially rage, having 20% more attack speed from determined survivor as well as 40% block while dual weilding sounds nice af doesnt it ? Or is it just me ?

bleed bow is dead. maybe some kinda slam bleed build or lacerate.

It's a gladiator my man, the class fantasy really isn't the bow

Maybe they could add a bow buff to weapon master?

'In your presence" is 8 metres according to wiki

On retaliation skills "we don't want to get hit" - Surrender blocking says hello. With 90/90 you will heal 9x whatever value Surrender has overall for 1 hit through and have leech on top. Bleed bow got nerfed for sure, but melee bleed seems to have received massive buff

Damn, so crazy that a GLADIATOR was reworked to not be a bow character XD Wtf is this take? Besides, you're just going to throw 50 mirrors at it until it works anyway, the same you do every league, what are you even complaining about???

As a casual who never killed any Uber boss, all classes are too weak for my limited playtime and budget 😂

the explodi will pigeonhole people into needing live enemies in the boss arena to work

I am very sad, Bleed bow glad is my favorite build of all time in POE,Especially back in Ritual League before the Elder mod got nerfed.

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I don't think bleed bow thematically makes sense for a melee archetype like gladiator. I am happy for the change thematically but ranger should have been better adjusted for bleed bow.

Isnt lucky block chance insane??

long time ago i played lacerate bleed max block was very nice but not soooo good damage, buffed lacerate too might be an option no?

So we get 13:48 rant just 'cause you don't like or you you don't understand the new OP Slam Bleed combo... Nice MBX, rly nice...

You're right, bow bleed is worse. Melee bleed will probably be better mostly because of general melee buff (and aggravated bleed).

I always use summon reaper bleed, but with ensnaring arrow gone, I might have to use temptest rising boots, or have my skeletons with knockback or chance to flee as well, maybe the buff will get replaced with the new Aggrevate effect😂

IMO the retaliation skills are going to be sleeper OP. They may have hurt or even killed the bow Glad but its way better then what it was before. I can't wait for gem info.

I think they just want the bleed nodes to be somewhat generic. Meaning that if you play a melee build that for some reason also bleeds for a bit, can explode packs. Which is cool, you don't have to specifically play pure bleed. Also bleed bow shouldnt have existed, that doesnt even match the theme, that's why they nuked it. On top of that, the new node which ramps up the damage is extremely broken, it makes up for the loss in 20% more multiplier. It never falls off, it's a permanant debuff on a boss. So 80% more bonus damage is pretty good I would say :D Also I think you interpret things wrong. A bleed character is in the end...a dot build. You are NOT supposed to do insane damage and kill the boss in seconds. For that you should play a normal hit build. So its only fair to keep bleed at lower damage numbers, which makes this node insane. And if it takes you 100 seconds to kill a boss, you can still be a boss killer, its not tied to the duration of the kill ( and 100 seconds is not even a lot, that's in fact pretty fast ). EDIT: Your presence is basically the entire screen. No one escapes the zone, not even Sirus.

The determined survivor node has the challenger charges.

hey I thought I wasnt going to return to poe till poe2 but here I am. Any chance you can put together a basic gem link guide for min maxing physical dmg builds? I want to do sweep. I think bleed sweep would be the best version for max dps but I have been away from the game for 5 leagues give or take. Tldr guide would be sick.

Would the gladiator now be the best ascendancy for cyclone?

It's worse ONLY for bleed bow. It's much MUCH better for bleed melee and block especially.

Sst bleed glad was my favorite character ever, but it sorta sucked ass at end game single target. Hoping it can scale single target.

Tbh now you can play bleed bow on slayer and melee build bleed too. You can use forbidden flesh/flame to take aggravated bleed from gladiator but you can also get it pretty much from tree as far i saw we get 10% from 1 bleed note Up to 50% from 2 notes if our attack was crit so maybe perfect agony + this notes would work? 25% if our attack were exerted 50% chance if our attack stunned target 100% if our attack were older than 4sec but tbh i dont know much how it will work at the planner looks kinda bad. So if we sum some of this i would go just for 10%+25%+50from stun or 50% from crit depends on build then we got 85% without being forced to play gladiator. Also slayer got so good end charge equal to frenzy charges and we get also 4% bleed dmg multi form bleed mastery per every end charge also end charge were buffed so i dont see point for going gladiator for bleed anymore. At the end i will talk about block it looks pretty good we get lucky block but tbh we dont need it if we are spell supress cap have evasion end charges and also block capped. We dont rly need lucky block and we waste pretty much 2 point on it and small dual wield bonus which is not bad but i would prefer other passives. Tbh with that melee buff old gladiator would be maybe not op but pretty strong, stronger than he ever was. It's time to play melee bleed slayer. If we dont play bleed bow slayer then tbh anyclass would be the same for playing bleed bow it's a shame that GGG didnt look at bleed bow while they were doing that rewok. Rip anena challanger Rip old gladiator :( i hope gg will buff bleed notes on glatiator in next patch and maybe add some notes for weapon mastery to be aboe to get bonus from other weapon types also. And we need to see how this 1% more dmg per 1 sec works because tbh most player in endgame are doing maps in 2min? or sth like that and also most player are doing bosses in less tham min so maybe if we get like 2% per sec would be better.

I made a rant last night on my discord basically saying some of the same things, even for melee it feels worse. The new nodes compared to something like slayer feel so much weaker.

I'm okay with not having bleed bow anymore with gladiator. Champion is better option for that now and deadeye also can be play bleed bow, especially considering Perfect agony got reworked. Overall I like new gladiator a lot more and it is way better for newer players, who lack damage but are tanky.

What you call "Quality of Life" I call it "Damage Uptime and Gems pressure reduction... something most people, including you apparently, tend to not see.

isnt poe is about trying new things? you always seem to be thinking of bleed bow gl try something new dude this is a melee league... lucky is also great, if you block (and if you are a block character than u already mostly should) than you have more than 90% block, with your thinking 90% evasion should also be stupid and shouldn't be gone for because condition for having 90% evasion is basically investing on it... also again, 90%, of players couldn't even reach any of the endgame bosses. which means going on a bit more tankier and still being able to kill bosses and clear maps however long it takes is a big + for them. You, a veteran, should be able to manage with a little bit difference...

I feel this pain also, so much hype and then saw this change. Time to play new ascendancy I guess LOL. change it up a little

welcome back Mbxtreme!

Did anyone count how many times he says basicly?

This is an example of GGG actually balancing something for a normal person, not a streamer with 8000 hours of playtime. No hate or anything, I get not liking updates that negatively impact your personal play style, but it's kind of ridiculous to act like this is a bad change when the vast majority of people playing the game will benefit from it. It's probably a nerf overall if you are a min/maxed end game player, but for the average Joe who takes a few days to clear the campaign this is amazing. War of Attrition: a normal person takes several minutes to kill non map bosses anyway. The fact that you are seeing this comment means you are not the 'average' player. A normal person takes several minutes to kill Exarch and will probably never even see an uber. Letting their damage ramp up to literally double over the course of the fight is amazing. Jagged Technique: A normal person is not going to weapon swap to a bow to throw out an ensnaring arrow, so aggravated is amazing. They also probably don't micro enough to keep enemies moving all the time even when they can. More Than Skill: A normal person doesn't have the defensive layers to face tank end game content, so an effective block chance of 96% if you're at 75% block chance is amazing. Normal people also constantly misplay and this gives them a safety net. 20% explosions is a HUGE deal on a build that isn't min/maxed to shit. Sure, YOU don't notice the difference on your DOT capped bleed build, but a normal player who is barely clearing t16s with 1.5m dps definitely does. You have to remember most people don't have mega juiced pack density. Weapon Master: Opens up your options for what weapon you use, so you're not locked into axes, because, again, the average player isn't min/maxed enough to use other weapons and might not intuitively know that one handed axes are the best bleed weapon. What they've done here is make Gladiator an amazing quality of life ascendancy that a normal person can play in end game without relying on niche mechanics or an in-depth knowledge of the game. It's just not a crazy min/max monster that hits 3x DOT cap anymore.

I think the War of Attrition is being downplayed somewhat. I don't think this is a range thing for bosses, I think it's just how long you are around them, and it doesn't say it degrades or is removed or anything either. Also there are plenty of uber bosses that have phases where they are in you presence but you aren't able to damage them, which could in fact still count against them. So it wouldn't be wasted time in that case. Either way MBX talked about multiple minute boss fights being a failure on his part, but seriously once you hit like 20-30 seconds on that fight you are just ramping up continuously without having to do anything but still be alive. Hell as a joke I wonder if you being DEAD next to a boss counts as being in their presence. If it did you could benefit from simply dying next to them, getting a drink, then coming back and dealing double damage from the restart of the fight :P

100% right; there's an overall lack of focus in the nodes. The 100% more damage is good, for early game characters. In the endgame, you should be DoT capped, and it does nothing for the middle game since fights should be going faster. Weapon master is just bad imho. Jagged is just selling us something widely available on the tree; and that's a huge problem given that Ascendancies should be things that just aren't available; or if they are like the block nodes, they should be super juicy. Jagged isn't juicy. Lucky block is imho good; because that gives you an effective 93% block chance if you're block capped. That is nuts, especially if you have life gain on block. And retaliation skills are a huge question mark given we don't know anything about them.

well gladiator is meant to be melee. no gladiators were ranged ever in mythic times. so i think they are trying to keep it true to the name

Mbxtreme, what about bleed sst?

So Bleed Bow worse now? I was finally planning to play it this league...

i definitely think the gladiator is weaker for bleed. the aggressive bleeding node sounds great ... but you can get a chance to aggravate bleeding on the passive tree! so yes, it's quality of life to have it happen 100% of the time, but it really is a waste of a gladiator node.

why tf is no one mentioning the fact that they could just CHANGE BLEED ITSELF. That way we wouldn't need that agra bs. Bleed sucked mechanically. It needed a rework. GGG decides to change the asc point so bleed won't suck........ The challanger charges being gone is just stupid. Why did they have to remove that one. It was so smooth and comfy, but no everything speed related needs the hammer smash. I completely agree with everything u said mb. Bleed bow glad is now eating ass real good...... The glad rework that we got for just made me face palm. The bottom side got worse by a mile. I guess i have to migrate with my bleed bow to somewhere else....... Time to undust rupture bleed -the explosions.....

Ty for breaking this down

Correct me if I’m wrong You can hit max block at lvl 24 🤔

You are approaching these notes from a sc player perspective. Gladiator rework for HC players is amazing.

bleed bow is probably worse now, yes. but you have to balance the entire picture. lvling a bleed character got alot better and there is more and better support in total on the tree + the weapon quality buffs, the effectiveness buffs and other things like flesh & stone. if you add everything up, bleed in general should be viable now and gladiator is the superior ascendency proving the clear & absurd damage. this was the goal and it seems like ggg hit it. i made my first pob's with beta versions and simulating missing stuff and im sitting on 8m boss dps on a lvl 80 character with only a 5c weapon and a venompuncture equipped

Incoming bleed bow.... scion?

You just dont do bleed bow anymore... Never liked it for glad, been playing around with a dual wield bleed glad in the poe planner, it seems like it can be insane esp since you can easily have 85+% effective attack and spell block

No more challenger charges huge F

Evrything you mention is on point, you forgot about CF loosing access to AttackSpeed tho

Weapon master just begs you to use a varunastra

I think I player glad 3 times , 2 bleed bow & 1 kinetic blast , but to be honest It looksop as a melee bleeder/blocker 😊😅

SST Bleed Glad looks nice for 3.25

Playing poe for 12 years now, guys, just trust me on that one, do not, i repeat, DO NOT play melee unless you really want to. Melee builds were always a bait in poe, and after the initial hype settles down, all those streamers hyping up those hipster frost blades and lightning strike builds right now will all go back to their bow and spell builds, like they always do. Melee playstyle fundamentally is weak in poe, and damage was never the bottleneck of it, making all those dps buffs nice but not really impactful changes.

melee time has arrived....bows...go to the right side of the tree...