Use your favourite features in-game with our Desktop AppBleeding is a Physical-aligned Damaging Ailment in Path of Exile 2. You'll often find Bleeding-related stats on their respective clusters, typically at the bottom of the passive skill tree, near the Mercenary start location.
Tip: check out our guides on the other Damaging Ailments: Ignite and Poison!
Bleeding is a Damaging Ailment that deals Physical Damage over time by default and is inflicted by a Hit. The base Damage dealt by Bleeding only accounts for the total Physical Damage in a Hit. Bleeding does not stack by default; only the highest Damage source of Bleeding on a target will deal its damage. However, all instances of inflicted Bleeding will persist on a target for their full duration, with the next highest Damage instance dealing its Damage once the current highest has expired.
Bleeding deals 100% extra Damage if the target is moving, or if the inflicted Bleeding is Aggravated. This extra Damage is not applied twice if the target is both moving and the Bleeding is Aggravated.
Aggravated is a state that can be applied to Bleeding to make the Ailment deal extra Damage as though the target was moving. You can Aggravate Bleeding with modifiers such as the one on the 
Aggravation Passive tree notable. Aggravate only applies to the instance of Bleeding on the target that's currently dealing Damage - all instances of Bleeding need to be Aggravated separately. An instance of Bleeding will remain Aggravated for its full Duration.
Note: Corrupted Blood is not Bleeding and does not share any stats with Bleeding.
The Physical Damage over time dealt by Bleeding fully bypasses Energy Shield to deal Damage directly to Life.
Note: 
Chaos Inoculation prevents this interaction by making you immune to Bleeding.
Chance to inflict Bleeding is obtained from various Passive Skills such as Bloodletting or from Support Gems like Bleed III socketed into the relevant Skill. Modifiers that increase your chance to inflict Ailments, such as '15% increased chance to inflict Ailments' on the 
Exposed Wounds Passive tree notable, will act as a multiplier to your chance to inflict Bleeding and will not add their percentage directly to this stat. Obtaining 100% chance to inflict Bleeding is crucial in a build that's relying on this Ailment to carry its Damage output.
Incision is a Debuff that applies a chance for the target to be inflicted with Bleeding. Each stack of Incision on a target causes incoming Hits to have a 10% chance to inflict Bleeding, up to a maximum of 10 stacks. All Incision is removed when a target is inflicted with Bleeding. You can further invest into the Incision mechanic to improve its effect or cause the Debuff to apply other effects. For example the Incision Notable Passive Skill with improve the effect of Incision by 50%, causing each stack to add a 15% chance for incoming Hits to inflict Bleeding, whilst another Notable, Thousand Cuts, will cause each stack of Incision to also make the target take 2% increased Physical Damage.
The default Magnitude of Bleeding is 15% of the Physical Damage of the Hit that inflicted the Ailment, dealt as Physical Damage per second. You can improve the Magnitude of Bleeding by obtaining modifiers that scale Bleeding Magnitude, such as 
Lasting Trauma's '30% increased Magnitude of Ailments you inflict', which would increase the base Magnitude of Bleeding to deal 19.5% of the Physical Damage of a Hit per second.
Note: modifiers to Magnitude do not affect Bleeding Duration.
The final Physical Damage dealt by the Hit prior to the target's mitigation will determine how much Damage is dealt by Bleeding - this includes any modifiers that scale your Physical Hit Damage, such as 'increased Spell Damage' if the Hit was a Spell, or 'increased Melee Damage' if the Hit was a Melee Attack. It also includes whether or not the Hit was a Critical Hit, but does not include modifiers on the target that specifically apply to Hit Damage, such as Armour Break.
Bleeding has a 5 second Duration by default and can be increased with modifiers to Ailment Duration or Bleeding Duration. Increasing the Duration of Bleeding will increase the total amount of Damage dealt by the Ailment across its full Duration, but not the Damage dealt per second. You can improve Bleeding DPS by obtaining modifiers that make Bleeding or Ailments deal damage faster such as Fast Acting Toxins, making the Ailment deal its full damage over a shorter period of time.
Damage modifiers such as 'increased Physical Damage' are applied when calculating the Damage dealt by the Hit, and thus the Magnitude of Bleeding, and are therefore not applied a second time directly to the damage dealt by Bleeding. Instead you can utilise modifiers that scale the Magnitude of Bleeding as they essentially function as direct Damage multipliers. For example Deterioration increases the Magnitude of Damaging Ailments you inflict by 20%, which also includes Bleeding.
You can also apply modifiers to the target to make them take additional Damage from Bleeding. For example, Shock is an Ailment that makes the target take increased Damage from all sources, and can be used to improve the Damage that the target takes from Bleeding.
The Bloodmage Witch ascendancy can allocate the 
Blood Barbs notable that provides the modifier 'Elemental Damage also contributes to Bleeding Magnitude'. This modifier changes the Bleeding calculation to also include any Elemental Hit Damage in addition to the default Physical Damage. All of the Elemental and Physical Hit Damage is summed and used to calculate the Damage dealt by the inflicted Bleeding.
Note: Elemental Damage is Fire, Cold and Lightning Damage.
The 
Apron of Emiran Unique Body Armour has the special modifier 'Bleeding you inflict is Aggravated'. Unlike common methods of Aggravate which can only Aggravate a pre-existing instance of Bleeding on a target, this modifier will guarantee that any inflicted instances of Bleeding are Aggravated for their full Duration.
Blistering Bond can improve your defence against incoming Damage from Bleeding on you by making you take Fire Damage instead of Physical Damage from this Ailment, which can then be mitigated by your Fire Resistance.
