How are bloodtinge builds
Exceedingly strong and have unique gimmicks (bosses and foes cannot deal with bowblade's range, there are several bullshit cursed chalice bosses that become pathetically easy because of it, madaras whistle is a solid aoe attack that murders swarms of rats and lesser foes and deals ARC damage), but take a while to get rolling because of the shit accessibility issues. If you're playing on emulator, and it's not your first run, just use bloodborne enhanced to give yourself one out of 3 bloodtinge weapons from the start. If it's your first run, i wouldn't advise it, not pure bloodtinge at least. Otherwise yeah, grab saw spear and rush to Cainhurst.
Yes, normal mode for chikage and bowblade scales exclusively with SKL, but normal Chikage moveset is honestly solid, especially the far reaching R2 poke. Bowblade's curved sword moveset is not bad either, and the weapon has a cheeky bow mode l2 into trick attack combo that stuns most smaller enemies and then delivers solid damage. So i advise going for 25SKL once you reach 50 50 in vitality and bloodtinge, or start off with 25SKL and 50VIT and treat bloodtinge portion of your build as a late bloomer i guess.
Bloodletter is interesting. Yes, the tricked mode is great, but i think the untricked mace moveset is underrated. It purely scales with STR and has absolutely crushing damage modifiers and by far the best mace moveset they ever did. The charged R2 reaches silly damage with high STR. Together with the fact miniguns and cannons need like 28-30STR to be usable, it just begs for a STR/BLT hybrid who can still use chikage and bowblade mode effectively. I did 50VIT/STR/BLT run at one point and found it hilariously overpowered. Minigun on a BLT build is fantastic for dealing with smaller enemies since it permastuns them.
Then there are guns. Bone marrow ash gives you 10 shots with retarded burst damage. Evelyn is the best all-rounder pistol. Repeating Pistol has the best synergy with boner marrow ash but it murders your bullet supply (still the strongest firearm option in terms of pure DPS). Piercing Rifle is almost as strong as Evelyn but it also pierces foes so a single bone marrow ash shot can potentially kill a crowd, but in return it's a bit slower in terms of shot recovery.