rive the bleeding claw build (Work in Progress -- Theory Craft)

So after playing an essence drain/contingent trickster this league, I decided to mix things up.

Normally when I theory craft a build, I look at a bunch of skills, potential Uniques as well as keystones and then build my passive tree around these. In this case, I found a unique item which doesn't seem to get much use, the Rive Claw. The Rive Claw has a pretty decently high physical DPS but what makes it extremely strong is that it applies bleed on hit and the bleed damage scales with your dexterity. With all of that in mind, I decided that the best way to approach such a build would be to stack as much dex as possible and of course dual wield the Rives to maximize the amount of bleed damage.

This build is still just a theory crafted build, and my character is just level 30 but I have no doubt that at the very least I should be able to destroy red maps with this character. Dirty Techniques makes this build much stronger as well because it allows the build to stack poison on top of the bleed damage not to mention that using claws allows you to make use of a huge amount of life leech. You gain 4% alone from the two Rive claws and another 3.6 from my current tree.


Tree


I took ranger and I took Raider mostly because I haven't played a raider yet since ascendency came out and in keeping with the hipster theme, I wanted to choose a class that was less played than the others. (Also, while pathfinder, Trickster, and gladiator would certainly work for this build I simply didn't want to play the classes I'd already played.) Trickster is particular is a good choice because of the extra poison on hit you get from the ascendancy tree and the more damage you can get form toxic delivery but my essence drain toon was already a trickster.

With 312 dex from the skill tree, I am able to get 124% increased physical damage over time from the two rives alone. Uniques to consider: Starkonja's Head, Shaper's Touch (scales off of int and Dex), Briskwrap (might be too low a level but the % dex seems too good to pass up), Headhunter (BiS for most builds), Voidheart (gives a higher poison chance on hit and a higher % flee), Witchfire Brew, taste of hate, Rumi's, Lion's roar etc. Basically, any item that gives a large amount of dex, bleed or physical damage would be perfect for this build.

I plan to use Reave to run this character, though Lacerate is a potential skill as well (the lack of AoE nodes sort of shoots Lacerate out the window.). Shield charge and Spectral throw are also considered skills because they would allow the character to get a decent amount of range or mobility without having to invest in area damage. A slower larger hit might be worth considering because bleed doesn't stack like poison does, though because I get a high amount of chance to poison on bleed, Smaller faster attacks are also good to consider (with voidheart this makes things much easier because you almost have 100% poison chance per hit).

I will update the build as I level up more as well as provide a full build guide if things work out the way I think they will, including leveling and videos.