What’s the point of Concoction builds anymore?

I was genuinely excited to try out Bleeding Concoction again, especially with the new Herald of Blood in the mix. Thought I could finally put together a fun, flavor-packed bleed build that actually performed decently. Instead, I got slapped by one of the weirdest design changes in recent memory.

So here’s the deal:
Bleeding Concoction used to let you equip a bow and quiver, even though it didn’t directly use them for the skill itself. That was fine — in fact, it was great. You could scale the skill through passives, gear mods, and support mechanics like Heralds and Wind Dancer. It wasn’t perfect, but at least it had options.

Now? They changed it so you have to be unarmed.

This one change completely nuked the build. All that indirect scaling through weapons and gear? Gone.

No Herald of Blood.

No synergy from your quiver or weapon passives.

No Wind Dancer.

No meaningful way to scale the damage outside of flask abuse and the limited supports you can still use.

You’re stuck running around like an idiot in boss fights, waiting for your mana flask to recharge — because even flask sustain is a mess without charge generation. Passive tree investments don’t do enough, and “gain charges per second” feels like duct tape on a leaking pipe.

So what are we left with? A skill that:

Requires you to be unarmed.

Locks you out of gear-based scaling.

Breaks synergy with key support mechanics like Heralds.

Has terrible sustain without massive passive/flask investment.

Still suffers from level scaling restrictions limiting support gem flexibility.

Honestly... who is this skill for now? It's like they took a niche but creative playstyle and just hard-nerfed every reason to pick it. If you can’t use any of the tools the game gives you to support a skill, what’s the point of building around it?

If anyone’s figured out a way to make this work post-change, I’d love to hear it — because right now, Bleeding Concoction feels completely abandoned by the current design.

In version 0.1, I played builds based on Poisonous and Shattering Concoction. They were a lot of fun, even though they didn't deal massive damage. Now, the Concoction skills make no sense unless you can build around them. They're no longer functional skills. If Pathfinders used to be one of the least played ascendancies, now I don't think even 0.1% of players will touch it.

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agonyxd#4095 wrote:

Honestly... who is this skill for now? It's like they took a niche but creative playstyle and just hard-nerfed every reason to pick it. If you can’t use any of the tools the game gives you to support a skill, what’s the point of building around it?

If anyone’s figured out a way to make this work post-change, I’d love to hear it — because right now, Bleeding Concoction feels completely abandoned by the current design.

They've stated in interviews that they don't have the time or resources to QA things enough to discover all the broken stuff. To me, this coupled with them continuing to pursue a "oh, that's strong? Nerf it" style of reactionary balancing speaks to a broader inability to actually nail down a direction they want to go.

Everyone memes on the vision, but I honestly think they don't know what kind of baseline they want for anything. Publicly, they talk about wanting people to experiment and try things, but now more than ever, what is the honest-to-God point of experimentation? They didn't just nerf the top end stuff, they nerfed builds that were just OK as well.

Every opportunity they have to put more fun into something, they drain it out. I don't trust their reasoning for nerfing things, anymore. It just seems like they're throwing darts at random stuff at this point. I don't know that anything was so much "abandoned by the current design" as it is that they're still trying to figure out the design and flying by the seat of their pants.

I've yet to rebuild my Pconc Pf from 0.1 since that char was really strong and I think damage wise it will still be ok in 0.2. After reading that Wind Dancer doesn't work unarmed tho I really have no motivation to do so. I'm sure there are workarounds, but it's just not worth my time.

I'll cherish my good memories and forget that concoctions exist in this game.