Proposal
The Bleeding status effect should remain stacking as it does currently.
Details/background on your proposal
Currently, bleed stacking is planned to be removed due to it being an unintentional feature.
There’s 3 things you could do with the Bleeding status effect to balance it without removing its stacking:
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Reduce the damage per tick of Bleeding by 40% of current damage. A good number to reduce to is by 15%. This would make the damage from Bleeding more of a bonus and for synergy rather than a main source of damage.
- [OPTIONAL] Make the Bleeding per tick go down as the instance of the status effect draws closer to an end to match the progressively smaller blood drops (5%, 4%, 3%, 2%, 1%, end).
-
Spread the damage from the Bleeding status across 15 seconds. This would result in more overall damage compared to the first option, but it would be spread over a much longer duration.
-
Reduce the impact damage of damage sources that apply Bleed by 5%, and limit Bleed stacking by 3. The least preferable option in my opinion, but it would prevent several attacks in a short duration from doing too much damage.
With all three of these options, these two changes should be applied as well:
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Weapon attacks should be able to stack Bleeding as well
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The +5% self-synergy with bleed-inflicting magics should be removed, as they would not need it due to every attack applying Bleeding
Reason to add/change
The Bleeding status would retain its identity as a stacking DoT, and any of these options would keep it unique from other damage overtime status effects without being too strong.
And this.
Potential Concerns
If any of these changes still end up in bleed stacking remaining unbalanced, numbers can always be adjusted as necessary.
