I love torturing myself at league start, so I'm planning a melee starter.

The goal is to utilize Strength of Blood, Bloodseeker claw and Vaal Pact to leech 15k life per hit instantly. Is it great? Probably not. I don't expect to kill Maven with this. Just something different an an interesting interaction that I haven't tried before.

There's two separate loadouts in the pob, one with cheap gear (has some 1c uniques) and one with better gear (paradoxica and ashes of the stars). The only remotely expensive thing in there is the Lethal Pride, which shouldn't be more than 50c within first week. Before I acquire all the pieces, I will likely level as a slam build with facebreakers, or just use generic rares for dual strike or splitting steel.

I went for champion instead of slayer for the fortify and impale nodes. I think the extra fortify will make a big difference in survivability. Slayer offers slightly more dps but I think I may respec into it once the gearing is set up for late game.

I have some concerns, namely:

• dps is ok, nothing too amazing.
• it's melee. However I loved EQ bleed glad in the past.
• no ailment immunity in the build as is. Not sure how to overcome this without sacrificing a lot of dps
• seems there's bit of a ceiling for dps around 4-5m, but I'm happy to be corrected. Use of bloodseeker is limiting weapon choices
• without slayer's overleech node, I have to use Soul Tether belt

POB: https://pastebin.com/40Vr6Ktn

Feedback and suggestions welcome!