Damage on Bleed, Armor Break, and Damage Conversions

Long story short, I'm playing a Merc and want to know what the point of having increase PhysDamage% + Armor Break actually DOES for the class, because my understanding is that:

A) Increased PhysDamage% does not convert to increased EleDamage because it sees modifiers AFTER the conversion has happened, not before.

B) Armor Break does not contribute to Bleed Damage at all, because Bleed uses the (base Hit damage?) of the attack before damage modifiers are applied to hits, despite Bleed being the PhysDamage Ailment type (but does get damage multiplied by Shock for some reason, for what I can only assume is a universal damage modifiers regardless of source).

C) If increased PhysDamage% and Armor Break do basically nothing for Merc, why is a section of his Passive Tree and Crossbow skills waste time trying to utilize them if nothing about the two seem to synergies with anything else the Merc is attempting to do?

D) If I have the Herlad of Thundrr persistent buff on that converts 100% of Physical Damage to Lightning Damage (since the Shock Ailment seems to be the only way to increase Bleed damage outside of Passive Skills that directly reference Bleed/Ailment damage), how does THAT play into the damage calculations for Bleeding? Does it completely cut Bleed Damage, or does ot see the base PhysDamage of the Hit BEFORE converting it all to LightDamage?

i guess you break armor faster then put a big high velocity round into a target for massiv bleed?

Since bleed use the base damage of the attack better use a strong physical attack, that get boosted before throught consuming debuff?

It worked for me but once gain with mercenary everything take too much preparation mana and running/rolling around instead of just spamming grenades with max coilldown reduction...

Also every other class can easily out dps a crossbow merc except maybe a Warrior...