Gladiator Ascendancy Rework: Disappointment for Bleed Bow Enthusiasts

The new Gladiator Ascendancy in Path of Exile seems to be worse than the old one, especially for non-melee builds.

### Revisiting the Gladiator Ascendancy in Path of Exile: Expedition League
* 🤺  The newly revamped Gladiator Ascendancy in the Expedition League has received mixed reviews, with some players feeling it is a **step back** from the previous version.
* 🩸  The changes to bleed mechanics, including the addition of "**aggravated bleeds**" which deal **270% more damage to stationary targets**, are seen as a **significant improvement** for melee bleed builds.
* 🛡️  However, the rework has also made the Ascendancy more focused on **blocking and melee playstyles**, potentially excluding popular builds like **bleed bow characters**.
* 💥  The "Gratuitous Violence" node now grants **20% of maximum life as physical damage on bleed explosions**, up from 10%, but has lost the **20% more physical damage over time bonus**.
* 🏃  The "Arena Challenger" charges, which provided movement and attack speed, have been replaced with **"War of Attrition," granting up to 100% more damage to rare and unique enemies based on time spent in combat**.
* 🎯  The "Outmatch and Outlast" node now provides damage and defensive bonuses based on **maximum Frenzy and Endurance charges**, making it more versatile for different playstyles.
* 🏹  Some players feel the changes have made the Gladiator Ascendancy **less appealing for certain builds**, particularly those that rely on **ranged attacks** or do not utilize **blocking mechanics**.
* 💬  Overall, opinions on the Gladiator rework vary, with some players praising the **new bleed mechanics** and others expressing disappointment at the shift in focus away from **certain playstyles**.

[Music] Hey guys, and welcome to a new video. Today, I want to talk about the newly revamped Gladiator Ascendancy, something that we've been waiting for a long, long time because Gladiator is one of the weakest or one of the weaker Ascendancies in the past. Has several decent builds for League starters and stuff, but usually gets outclassed by something like a champion in the long term. But this league, 325 Seltzer of Kore, we have finally a Gladiator rework. And oh boy, I think it's actually worse than it was before. Okay, so what do I mean by that? I know that everything sounds crazy with all the melee buffs and the bleed buffs and stuff like that with what is it called the aggravated bleed. Yeah, aggravated bleeds where the monster's count is moving even though they aren't. So they take the 270% more damage basically from your bleeds. This is all very, very good. But if we just break it down to the Bare Bones I

personally, I think the new Gladiator is just strictly worse than the old one, but we cannot really go champion this time around, or at least it doesn't make too much sense anymore because hey Champion got nerfed as well good. What am I talking about, basically um, now the new Gladiator ascendancy is almost purely exclusive to anything that is like a blocking character. It is kind of exclusive now to Melee build, and the bleed notes actually got worse. So let's take a look at the bleed notes because this is like depends, you know, bit of a change. Doesn't really matter too much. So we have bleeding exploded for your first excellency with a 20% Max uh life as physical damage, which is kind of insane. I personally don't really see a point why there is at 20%. I think it's a bit of a bait because in the end of the day you just need any form of explody and you should be fine no matter if it's chaos damage, fire damage, fist damage, and the values as

long as monsters explode, because monsters do have quite a bunch of life. But it used to be 10%, right? So with the um, let's move that over here. It used to be 10% explody on the gracious violence, but it also had 20% more physical damage over time, which got completely removed. On that note, so we have here the explody and more damage versus just explody for 20% instead of 10%. So the explosions deal more damage, but overall for bossing and stuff like that, 20% more physical damage over time is straight straight up missing. Then we have here the Jack technique, which is just say bleeding. You inflict is aggravated. Aggravated means that bleeding, which has been aggravated, always deals higher damage as um, as though the target was moving. So the way bleed works is uh, you deal your normal damage like 100% of your damage, which is the bleed damage, but as soon as a monster is moving, it takes extra damage, right? It gets like a 2.7 multiplier on

your damage. So, there is an insane amount of damage difference if a target is moving or not. As a melee bleed character, this is very hard to do. As a bleed bow character, you had ensnaring arrow. With ensnaring arrow, you usually had this on a mana-forged arrow setup, right? With frenzy charge generation, stuff like that. But as soon as a monster was ensnared, it counted as moving. Trying to get something moving like a searing exor or any caster bosses or Maven or something is just not going to be a thing whatsoever. So bleeding you inflict is aggravated just is a very nice quality of life. You just deal your extra damage, but it doesn't mean you necessarily deal more damage. It's just something where you get the target to be moving, right? But this thing was there before, so just quality of life. So your first ascendancy point, you basically lose 20% more physical damage, and the bleeding is aggravated is just nice to have. But I think they also had

like an Uber boss drop with um ailments. Still, full damage wasn't there like some boots or something. Doesn't really matter, but on the other hand, we lose the cause the chance to cause bleeding. Um attacks M on hit. Um, the chance to Blind enemies and enemies. You may take 10% increased physical damage. This is on top of all your um of your damage calculations just because increased damage taken by the enemy is a 10% overall instead of an. You deal 10% increased damage, which is almost nothing. Okay, let's talk about. So basically, these are like bleed notes. Let's talk about the other notes. Before, we had the arena Challenger charges. I think one of the best. Uh, flash forbidden flesh and Flame jewels to Yo for your Champion or for your dual list is challenging charge is the more attack speed and especially the more movement speed. It is just really, really good. Guess what on a new Gladiator. It is completely gone. And now it is the war of attrition, which says

deal 1% more damage with hits and elements to rare and unique enemies for each second they've been in your presence, up to a maximum of 100%. Um, a lot of people whisper me now on Discord and stuff and be like, Yo, Gladiator, 100% more damage. Hello, this is insane, completely buffed. That's going to be the best ascendancy in the game, while I'm sitting here, 1% more damage, blah blah blah, per second. So I get 100% more damage after 100 seconds, which is more than one and a half minutes if I do bossing on my bleed bow Gladiator or whatever, and I need like two, three minutes to kill a boss. Sorry, but then my build sucks, you know, probably 20, 30 seconds, so it's a 20% more damage or something, is quite nice to have, definitely worth to spend a point there. It's like an extra support gem in that case. Um, but the thing is like each, uh, each second they have been in your presence, like how big is your presence?

can some something like Maven when she teleports away just teleport out of your presence, and you have to restack that thing again right? And these compared to the arena Challenger charges, which was very strong for forbidden flame flesh as I said, or for the Gladiator itself. I would every day take the Challenger charge just over this like 1% Noe over here, so that would be another Point Plus for the old descendency, which basically is like I would say two out of three because I kind of like the fact that the bleeding un flick is aggravated, the moving thing is in there, but it's as I said quality of life and less button pressing, so I definitely give it the point to that one, but the bleeding damage and the arena challenging charges replaced by this is just, I'm sorry, this is just sad. Next point, we have outmatch and Outlast, which is basically um your okay. I have one extra sendy points. I don't have block or I don't wear a shield, so basically I just take that.

before I take nothing at all right, which is not too bad. Um, it's basically, um, you gain frenzy and endurance charges based on your mainhand kill, often kill. But if you have maximum frenzy charges, you deal 10% more physical damage. And when you have maximum endurance charges, you gain 10% reduced physical damage taking. So that is like a nice damage defensive layer that you can build up with like fren on kill, fren on hit, uh, or endurance charge when you have been hit and stuff, stuff like that. Maybe with a replica, uh, what is it, um, true me dude barl for replica fals, where you permanently have or at least like once you swap the auras with the aspect of the cat and stuff that you basically maintain those, right? Could also be with a replica, like with a Rach impatience boots where you count as having maximum. You could work with that, right? What do we have now is basically the Web Master, which is okay. I would say you have like more accuracy. Personally, I think most of the bleed builds, whether b

or melee is actually played with Resolute technique, so you don't have to worry about your crit strike chance, your accuracy, your multiplier, perfect Agony kind of style. You know, like forget about that, just go RT and just scale a regular do multi, and you'll be fine. So the accuracy might be something for like an on-hit based. The area of effect also like gets you into MES and scepter. I don't know if you want to play a bleed build with MES or sceps. You know, the more critical strike CH with dagger sounds pretty good. The instant leech with claws, blah blah blah. But I think the best weapons for bleeding are one and xes for gladiators. So you deal 30% more damage with hits and elements against enemies that are on low life while wielding an X, which is pretty pretty substantial. You know, 50% with a new threshold 30% more damage is quite insane. So where is my problem with this note? It locks it completely into the Melly playstyle. You know, what does

a bleed bow character. And sorry that I mention it so often, but I'm a very big bleed bow enjoyer. I enjoyed it last league, and I also played it several times, way more than any melee kind of bleed character. And I think bleed bow just feels amazing, right? So what do we have as a bleed bow character? This node is a little bit quality of life because you still have the engering arrow, but it's going to be insane for melee, right? The explode where you lose the damage, basically it's still going to be fine. Then the arena challenger charges are gone, so you're going to be slower. And I mean just some damage gain. This node is completely useless. There is not even any form of like passive bow kind of scaling in there. And the other nodes here are block nodes. And with basically a gladiator without a shield, when you have a bone a quiver, you don't have access to block. There is one difference here.

there is the rear guard quiver, which is a block quiver, but it's not counted as a shield cuz it's a quiver. So all these notes Here with gain 50% base chance to block from equipped Shield. Shield instead of The Shield's value will most likely not uh count at all, right? So I don't know what uh has driven them to completely forget about that bleed bow Gladiator is a thing cuz at the moment. I just see only three points that you could actually take, and it's basically is complete like a lot worse than it used to be before. As I said for M bleed characters, it's pretty much very good, especially since they go a lot into these retaliation skills. I don't know how good they are going to be. And then you have like bleed chance or at least chance to block attack and spell damage is lucky if you blocked recently, which I personally don't like because it's always like conditional. So if you don't get hit, um, or if you didn't block, then

it's not lucky, right? So, and I think as a gladiator, it should be fairly easy to gain uh Max block at this point. So, if you have Max block, what do you need lucky for, right? Just my two cents here. And the retaliation skill pod is always like um these are like new skills, um they replace the counter attacks, basically, right? And um so Vengeance repos and those kind of things are basically gone, replaced by retaliation skills, but they're also conditional. That means um there is we don't have the gem information yet, we don't know the the damage multipliers, we don't know how much base damage those have. But in the end of the day, you have to um fulfill the condition. Means uh the first retaliation skill is only usable for like a second or so or two seconds once you block, right? Another one is once you get a Savage hit, and we all know we don't want to get hit either, right? Or never at all because it's like the best defensive layer you have. But these have

to be insanely strong in terms of scaling to make it worthwhile and even like playing extra buttons, basically right the same with like the banner changes like um they don't work, they don't have mon reservation anymore but um they are now active gems where you have to put them down and while you're in the area you get the benefits for me um it's just like okay okay. I don't play banners anymore because I CBA farming up this Val to even place your banner and then stay in the area. It might be nice similar to like um what do you say totems back in the days right with un war chief un protector and stuff like that there's a boss you put them down and now you put down your banner basically right or try to get hit um and proc retaliation and and get some nice bleeds of that maybe there is a thing right but in the end of the day um I personally think that the new Gladiator ascendency is just strictly worse than the old one. It doesn't include any form

of like bleed bow or anything like that. Um, the next thing with the Champion nerves, I think it lost like the attack speed and less fortification, stuff like that. I'm just wondering what are they going to do with all these like, you know, dual this kind of things because now Slayer has still it's like, uh, his strong form basically but all the other things like Slayer, the first thing I would yoink is basically challenge charges, which is not there anymore. So yeah, it's like, it's like very, very weird, uh, what they have done to the Gladiator. In my opinion, it's as I said, worse than before and this is not what I was hoping for overall. All right, guys, uh, let me know in the comments what you think about the Gladiator rework. If you think that I'm like full of and you, uh, just have like a different opinion about all of that, I would really like to know, uh, these kind of things just to, um, yeah, repair my mind on the Gladiator as well. And yeah, thanks for tuning in, thanks for

watching, and see you on the next video. [Music]

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

mbXtreme

The Revamped Gladiator Ascendancy: A Disappointing Change

The long-awaited revamp of the Gladiator Ascendancy has finally arrived, but it is considered to be worse than its previous version.

The new changes have made it more exclusive to blocking characters and melee builds, with the bleed notes actually getting worse.

The rework offers a 20% explosion damage, but removes the 20% more physical damage over time, making it less effective for bossing and other activities, ultimately leaving many players disappointed.

Challenges with Target Movement for Bleed Characters in Path of Exile

Bleed characters struggle with the damage difference for moving targets, especially with the use of ensnaring arrow for bleed bow characters.

The first ascendancy point results in a loss of 20% more physical damage, but the bleeding is aggravated, providing a nice quality of life improvement.

The War of Attrition in the new Gladiator ascendancy offers 1% more damage with hits and elements to rare and unique enemies for each second in the player's presence, up to a maximum of 100%, causing mixed reactions among players.

Analysis of Different Character Abilities in a Game

Some character abilities in the game require restacking when teleporting, unlike the strong arena Challenger charges.

The "Outmatch and Outlast" ability provides a defensive layer and bonus damage, depending on the acquired charges, offering a strategic advantage.

The "Web Master" ability offers increased accuracy and area of effect, more suitable for on-hit-based builds, but may not be the best choice for bleeding builds.

The Decline of the Bleed Bow Gladiator in the Latest Update

The latest update has significantly impacted the effectiveness of the bleed bow Gladiator, with several nodes becoming less useful for the build.

The changes have made the build a lot worse than before, leaving players with very few viable options for the bleed bow character.

The new adjustments may also affect the effectiveness of retaliation skills and the chance to block attack and spell damage, creating a more conditional playstyle.

The Impact of Changes in the Gladiator Ascendancy

The new Gladiator ascendancy makes it easy to reach maximum block, raising questions about the need for luck.

Retaliation skills have replaced counter attacks, but their effectiveness and damage multipliers are still unknown.

The shift to active gems for banners may not be well-received by players, potentially making the new ascendancy feel weaker than the previous one.

The Impact of Champion and Slayer Changes in the Gladiator Rework

The Gladiator rework has led to the loss of certain abilities, leaving some players feeling disappointed.

The changes have made the Gladiator's performance worse than before, especially with the removal of challenge charges.

The community is divided on their opinions about the Gladiator rework, leading to a need for further discussion.