What is Bleeding?
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.
Energy Shield and Bleeding
The Physical Damage over time dealt by Bleeding fully bypasses Energy Shield to deal Damage directly to Life. However, a Hit must deal Damage to Life to be able to inflict Bleeding - only Damage that's dealt to Life contributes to Bleeding Magnitude.
Chance to inflict Bleeding
Chance to inflict Bleeding is obtained from various Passive Skills such as
Bloodletting or from Support Gems like Lacerate 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.
Magnitude of Bleeding
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.
Calculating the Damage of Bleeding
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.
Duration of Bleeding
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.