I find the situation often comes up in things like the Weald encounter with a giant and other even worse stuff such that the giant is the last guy, and using Exsanguinate is the difference between taking one more Treebranch and having the fight over that round. Reclaim is great when multiple people are suffering, but if it's just the Flag who needs attention (which will typically happen after you've done a round of punish DoTs), sky-rocketting that DoT with a massive extra stack while self-healing is very handy - the fact it hits harder than punish is just an added bonus, and if he's low enough to use it, he'll also gain +stats due to being low-health, which can make for some pretty whopping impact damage by itself at times, especially if it crits.

Originally posted by RopeDrink:People seem to forget that Exanguinate is less about raw impact damage and more about healing yourself while lashing out a tremendous DoT.

The only time he died was thanks to me making a hasty decision on the 400+ wave vs Swine God who combo'd him twice, but by then I was on auto-pilot ready to quit anyway as I only wanted to bust 300 kills. Naturally a lot of people won't appreciate -MaxHP trinkets on a Flag but it worked for me - the lower his max HP, the easier he reaches danger threshold and self-buffs himself/gets to use his other abilities.

People seem to forget that Exanguinate is less about raw impact damage and more about healing yourself while lashing out a tremendous DoT. Endure replaced with Reclaim for boss-fights. My very last endless run before I quit the game (440) involved a front-line Flag with GShard (CC) and his CoM trinket along with Punish, RoS (for non-boss waves), Exang and Endure (seeing as he was an off stress-healer).

Darkest dungeon flagellant suffer