I'm planning on rolling a Corrupting Fever Glad because those sweet sweet bleed explosions are perfect for what I want to do. The challenge is in how to level it. If you feel like taking my word for it and don't care about the details there's a TLDR towards the end.

I've been playing around with a few leveling options and slams feel the best by a fairly wide margin and will only be better in 3.16 with the tree changes.

What I've tried

I've tried both steel skills and slams and I've tried transitioning right at 28, waiting until 38 and even later at Act 6 after leveling exsanguinate/reap in weapon swap a bit but it still felt pretty bad as soon as a boss shows up as well as putting more presssure on finding the right 4-links early.

Which felt better?

What has felt best, by far, has been transitioning in BA or immediately after finishing act 10. BA affords you a few quick chaos to buy a couple of +1 wands and the skills have had more time to gain natural levels as well as having more points to pick up whatever int nodes you may need to.

Waiting until finishing act 10 is even easier still and you don't really need the clear speed that comes with bloodslinging before then anyways.

But whenever you transition, if you're not highly confident that steel skills are the right choice for you then I strongly recommend slams. Earthshatter, EQ, Groundslam... whatever you like (earth shatter with arena challenger from normal lab feels particularly smooth).

Anyways if you're planning on bloodslinging as a duelist I hope this was informative and if you have leveling questions or recommendations of your own just let me know. I'm happy to answer questions or discuss better options that I haven't considered.

TL;DR

Slams > Steel,

Transition later > sooner,

POB: https://pastebin.com/rqBMW7zd

edit: Oh and if you can get a friend to buy you a reap/exsanguinate and you transition later you can skip the library (personally a big benefit).

Edit2: Threw together a PoB. I'll be doing something like this https://pastebin.com/rqBMW7zd

Two trees included. one is the KB tree the other is a Level 65-ish slammer. Only 13 respec points needed and no need to change any travel nodes. Can just unspec as quests/found regrets allow.