Duelists with experience, please help me NOT waste my time

As the title implies, I'm trying to not to make erroneous ventures in the passive tree. I'm currently pursuing a sword and board build and have come up with something I believe offers pretty nice DPS and survivability. Plenty of armor, evasion, plenty of elemental resist and even some crit. The only thing that is frustrating is how long it takes to start getting to the damage tree for my build.

This is the endgame look.



And this is the 1-43 look.


Please, comment and discuss. Thanks.

The first thing i noticed is, that you use Steel Skin and Leather and Steel. Thats too much Armour. You will have a great benefit early but with every Point in Armour the effectiveness is sinking due the dimishing return. If you want to choose Sword and Shield, you should get Unweavering Stances, since no stun animation means no block animation too.

Armour Master is in my opinion a waste of points, if you dont go to pure Armour Items. You will only compensate -4% thats not much.

I assume you want a Sword and Shield Duelist with high physical damage and crit chance.

Link

Its not perfect but with the same stats you try to reach this build would be better.

Ok, I appreciate the feedback. I wasn't sure about the diminishing returns in this game, so I don't know how much is enough for armor. Also, doesn't unwavering stance mean I can no longer dodge though? I like your build idea too, I just tinkered with it. What do you think of this? I replaced some dualwielding points you had (not sure if you noticed them).

Yes, you will not be "evading" attacks. But the only source for evading attack is via Evasion. Since you moved your Evasion Points to Armour, you only have 5% Evasionrate left. Thats pretty low, but with Unv. you trade 5% Evasionrate for no Stun and Block Animation. Think about how huge this is. You saved some passive Points and never need this stat on your armour too.

Edit: Oh yes sry for the dual wield. I play only Dual Wield so it dont reckognized it. It seems good, but you will adjust it with more expirience with Shield and Sword, that i dont have. You should make a version with 60 and 80 points, that would be a realistic number. After that its more adjustment.

first i'm 90% sure you cannot do this build, assuming your not stupid(-1 first oak)

second you have only 135% increased life so basically anything (good) that hit's you will kill you, even with your 254%*armor + (400%*eva converted to armor).

personalty if i were u i would start using 2 hand and switch mid game, get more hp and endurance charges. start http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgQAmSunn5-jAdwb-qQZJd-E2Ud-q8UUUmVN4uphIYTvdO1672BLBS3EWCfV
and then go http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgQAmSunn5-jAdwb-qQZJd-E2Ud-q8UUUmVN4uphIYTvdO1672BLBS3EWCfVEuGi6hpVZKM26AHnpzAUIFBHns3SIVcNkc677b6KeA2pbk3jrFn-j7XyrpOmVzrhiPHZYRku1I-53e8O8i_nUlRJXz_2SIzPUFBYY8bYJ-3E9j0PJIt8uzrYLdKfPsWK8B-iABRNBLMCcTwtxq7-CvJF52M= probably rushing BM after the start and droping it when u 5/6 link depending on your build.

then i'd decide if you want block or armor and move accordingly (high block needs Unwavering Stance) endgame would look like:
http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgQAmSunn5-jAdwb-qQZJd-E2Ud-WNurxWVNU98UUpuDrK--p4Tv55FhIXTtw4YaVRLheu9kowY5oupgSzboecDvTgUtWK8B5-7ZKLVdAMRYeA1wu6cwYIgn1alu9tqezRQgValhUtE2TeO18tIhUEeXtJ_LCTOsWa6TVw2suv6Pplds9vuq2WGRzjrhguSgtPMGGS5qHrvtiPGKryftqBjaYsT2893yL5SgE1s8LbndaHRk58auDPfvDthNVdb-CunV51LyRa9sVEnnY8WKXz98u_Af9kg62ASzogCMzy3SFE0CcVBQnz5YY8bYhyk= depending on what skills/gems u will use (this build has no int)

just my thoughs

I'm new so bear with me, but I have to ask...what is all this talk about having life 200%? Is that the automatic no if and's or but's standard? You NEED 200% hp to be successful?

Edit: Also, if you do need to go into 200% life, you basically sacrifice so many damage output nodes for Life node, which would be a retarded dynamic and mandate of the game. In other words, why would the developers make a massive skill tree, just to obligate you to move all your points to life and none of the other nodes with damage output?

OP, the people talking about diminishing returns on armour don't have a clue what they're talking about. There's no such thing. Each point of armour makes the next MORE effective, not less. Even more so for each endurance charge you get (And you should absolutely in no uncertain terms be stacking endurance charges).

Stack armour all you want, but you should know that your main concern if you're going armour is whether you can deal with chaos and elemental damage, since armour does nothing to protect you from that.

From a brief lookover of your build, I can say that Bloodless is worthless, and Mana Flows is great as long as you get enough mana leech on your gear. Block chance nodes are great, but block recovery is terrible. If you're going iron reflexes there's no reason not to get Unwavering Stance.

A big problem with your build, however, is that you have way too many weak physical damage nodes and way too few life nodes. For example, you have +134% Life. +150% is the absolute minimum, and +200% to +250% are fairly standard.

Physical damage nodes in general are very weak since it's much easier to stack high elemental damage from gear, auras, and support gems. In other words, stuff that hardly requires any passive points. Usually people don't focus on physical unless they're using a 2-handed weapon. If I were going for physical damage, I wouldn't go for a physical notable unless it came with a lot of attack speed as well, or was only two points out of my way.

Edit: I plotted it again and its gets less effective, as i mentioned it before.

Here is the Diminishing returns-formula

Damage Reduction = Armour / ( Armour + (12 * Damage) )

The fact that damage reduction diminishes against more damaging hits means it is difficult to know exactly how much damage is reduced. As a rule of thumb, to achieve 50% damage reduction you will need an armour rating equal to twelve times that of the damage taken in a single hit. For example, 50% damage reduction against a 100 damage hit requires 1200 armour rating.
For example, if you have 1200 armour rating this chart indicates how much damage will be reduced by:

Yes this chart shows with a constant Armour value. If you use Armour as the variable and Damage as a constant you see that with higher constant Damage you need higher Armour values.