How can I properly reinforce the bail for a heavy three spike piece?

The way you're distributing the load is likely causing bending moments right at the weld joints, which is why the bail is struggling. When you have three chunky elements pulling down from a central loop, the force isn't just compression; it's shear stress being focused on a very small area of metal, expecially if the loop itself is thin. You need to broaden the contact patch for the weight transfer. Instead of welding the spikes directly to the ring, try fabricating a solid backing plate or a gusset structure behind the bail. This spreads the weight across a larger surface area of the loop, giving it the necessery rigidity to handle the downward pull.

If you insist on keeping the design as is, don't just try to weld the spikes on. You need to contour the metal where the spike meets the loop, almost like a thick collar, to act as a bearing surface. This tapers the stress from a sharp point into the bulk of the metal. This distributes the load along the length of the ring instead of concentrating it in a single weld point. For the gauge, increasing the thickness of the loop itself is often more effective than thickening the spikes, since the loop is the component designed to take the total tensile load of the piece. Look at how much cross section your current loop has, then aim for a minimum of double that in the connection points. Since you are dealing with substantial mass, the structural integrity relies less on the aesthetic shape and more on the internal volume of the steel in the connecting hardware. Using a continuous piece of stock for the bail, rather than trying to build it up piece by piece, will also result in much more predictable strength and less potential for future sagging.

I agree that moving away from a thin loop design is critical when you have that much mass attached. You really need that extra surface area to handle the pull from all three points. Last time I made a heavy piece like this, I skipped the gusset idea and just welded a solid plate behind the bail first. It meant I could keep the spike alignment precise while I hammered it, because the plate held all the tension and I just finished the outer ring onto the backing piece later.

I found that when I did somethig like this, putting the spikes onto a seperate square bar first helped a ton. Instead of trying to weld them right onto the ring, I welded them to a small sturdy bracket that was then welded to the main ring piece. This way, the weight of the spikes was held by the bracket, which is a much more stable shape for distributing the load across the entire piece. It stopped the stress from concentrating right where the spike hit the loop.

So I ended up doing what one person suggested about the separate bar. Instead of welding the spikes directly to the main ring, I built a small square bracket and welded that onto the frame. It made a huge difference in how the weight is handled. The stress is gone and the piece is hanging perfectly level now.