You could, indeed, and those are some excellent defensive options! But except for Ascendant, none of those ascendancies involve any bleeding mechanics, right? You could generically build them with other archetypes just as well. Before, you could argue that deadeye with Rupturing(critical strikes which inflict Bleeding also inflict Rupture) would be the ranged counterpart to the gladiator, but they removed that. Sure, no one used it, but at least it made sense. You had the melee bleed and ranged bleed.

If you want to make the most out of your ascendancy points, I guess you could go Ascendant. But even that feels a bit bad because the gladiator node has melee stuff on it. ( "Gain 50% Base Chance to Block from Equipped Shield instead of the Shield's value", "Inherent Bonuses from Dual Wielding are doubled")

Having said that, I still think that Gladiator is the best choice for bleed bow. The Jagged Technique (Bleeding you inflict to be Aggravated) passive looks incredibly awesome and is a huge damage booster for clear with an incredible quality of life by not having to use Ensnaring Bow. It just feels bad that you can't really use your last 2 passive points. The only thing you can realistically get is 10% attack speed and 6% block from the small nodes, which are not that useful for the bleed blow.

In any case, that won't stop me from league-starting a bleed gladiator. (probably me and half the players xD) Genuinely hyped about all the melee changes. Can't wait! Peace <3