2h ground slammer (1 month HardCore race 4/4)

Armour isn't working as you probably think it does ^^

Armour mitigates different amount of damage based on how big the hit you take is. That means that big hits ( which are actually the only ones you care about ) are hardly reduced at all if you don't have huge amounts of armour ( which without a high armour shield + shield nodes is impossible )and if you do have lots of armour it still doesn't do as much as you want it.
On top of that armour doesn't do a thing vs elemental attacks and spells.

Now acrobatics and phase acrobatics have hard 40% chance to avoid ANY melee or ranged attacks ( physical + elemental damage ) from hitting you and 30% to avoid ANY spells from dealing any damage to you. It's funny ... but this chance based mechanic is actually more reliable than armour ( and way more versatile ) because it doesn't care about how big the hit is ( opposed to armour ) how how high chance to hit the monsters have ( opposed to evasion )

Personally i'm one of the few people who actually play full armour builds .. but in my opinion in order to make it work you need 15k + armour + block chance( for that hard % chance to mitigate 100% of the incoming attacks ) + some endurance charges ... but since this build uses a 2h mace ... block is not an option and stacking armour without a shield is extremely hard ( if not impossible ).

So the only option for a good reliable defensive remains the acrobatics + phase acrobatics + evasion + endurance charges. That of course might not be needed outside of hardcore ( tho i like tanky characters and i'll grab it even in non-HC leagues ) but in HC you want to grab as much defenses as possible!

So yea .. that's all ... i hope i was able to help :)

Because why static strike ?
Sure static strike has 360 AoE and you don't need melee splash ... but for me that's it.

Because it's not necessary to play static strike or cyclone if you play a melee build. Just like it's not necessary to play a ranged build. :)

Sure static strike will work with a few skill tree and gem setup changes but i'm sick of static strike... everyone is playing static strike ... you know that i'm making the marauder/duelist/templer build lists ( or may not know ) and 80% of all new builds that i add are static strikers ... i'm sick of it! One of the things that i really enjoy in PoE is the build diversity which has greatly declined lately not because it is not possible to make a melee build using something different than static strike or cyclone but because people don't even want to try to do it.

And of course the thing is that i don't really like the static strikes' delay when it comes to the damage delivery but i do like ground slam.

So basically static strike will work if you want to use it - it's up to you :)

I'm glad i could help guys ^^