Pliff - dw-melee/as/acrobatics Shredder. Thoughts and what can I improve?

Hey,

I'd like to have some input on my toon which is a ton of fun and with my limited time and budget I think I'm doing quite well. But if there are any points I missed or improvements to the build I can make I would be very appreciative.

Before we go anywhere else, be aware that
THIS IS NOT A HARDCORE BUILD!
It happens very rarely but I do die and it's difficult to avoid this due to my defense setup.

Current stats (with standard auras):
Health ~ 2.6k
APS on Cleave ~5.4
DPS on Cleave 4-10k (depending on choice of support gems)
DPS on Cyclone 1.5-4k (gem still being leveled)
Resists 78 elemental, -60 chaos.
Evasion ~25%, DW Block ~40% + 30% Acrobatics for a total of ~70% melee avoidance, 50% projectile avoidance and 20% spell avoidance before resists.

Benefits:
- Good defensive stats independent of equipment stats (~60% melee avoidance are achieved completely independent of equipment)
- With cyclone against regular mobs more or less invincible due to huge leech and being very unlikely to be hit.
- Good at keeping crowds busy so your heavy guns can mow them down.
- O.k. damage (very feasible in 1-2 player games, in 6es killing things takes a while.

Issues:
- Cycloning through a room full of physical reflect mobs will give you a deja vu of the Chaos Sanctuary where DeSeis and his buddies would curse you midwhirl with iron maiden.
- Anything that shield charges is hugely dangerous as they will hit regardless of blind or evasion. I do think acrobatics and/or block work but don't quote me on that. Be prepared when there are chickens and elite guards in the area!
- Unlucky chains of VERY HIGH DAMAGE hits will kill me due to life currently being at only 2.6k.
- Grabbing loot does not work during Cyclone.


So the original thought was this:
Acrobatics sounds nice, 30% completely equipment independent avoidance paired with another ~40% avoidance from dw block + some 25% evasion would yield me ~70% total melee damage avoidance. The way armor is calculated it is not all that powerful especially against the really painful hits so the offset might not be so bad. Later I found out about blind which is imho a hugely undervalued and hugely powerful defensive support gem.

This paired with high attack speed, decent damage and leech should work fairly well, shouldn't it?

This is my first PoE toon and it's working fairly well despite a lot of people disregarding acrobatics I found it working nicely so far. I am now lvl75 and running maps with it and unless I run into physical damage reflect mobs I rarely die despite being the "tank". More on that later.

The passive tree:


Notes on playing.
With increased attack speed support gem the base attack speed on this toon is ~5 aps. This fast attack speed is key. It allows for the highe returns on any on hit effects. In this build these are: Life on hit, Blind support gem, any direkt damage mods (I prefer physical as they benefit of all my physical damage passives).
I used to run Dual Strike but have since removed it and just use Cleave which with concentrated effect achieves better dps values and generally more versatility due to the aoe-aspect. I also prefer the attack speed on quality cleave to the critical strike on quality dual strike.
I chose to not use blood magic as it is a) a large point investment and b) removes the option of running auras. I currently stack Hatred, Haste, and Purity on reduced mana support and am doing well with that despite only having 90 or so mana to work with. The dps and survivability increases are quite significant and having 2-3% mana leech keeps me running quite well. When things go really badly manawise I just pop hybrid flask.

Current play style:
1. Cast bloodrage.
2. Cast enfeeble on monster group.
3. Cyclone through mob group, spreading blind. Once everything is blinded proceed to
4. Cleave things to death (or go back to 2. with next mob group because your LA ranger has killed everything already).
5. Drink health pot to alleviate blood rage drain.
6. If at any stage things go bad, dash out with whirling blades and drop skeletons to buy time to recover.

Tanking bosses is easy provided my health exceeds their single hit damage. I can keep blind and enfeeble up at which point they very rarely hit. When they do I will leech back up very quickly. That said there is a nonvanishing probability of ~ .5% that I will get hit with consecutive strikes that will instagib me.


The current equipment:


Gems and items are changing frequently. In particular I am still uncertain on whether don't make better boots as I am otherwise more or less resist capped and being able to leech without interruption when at low life has been a life saver more than once.

What I need from you
- Suggestions on improving the passive build. In particular the life pool is low but other than going to the two ranger life blocks I see very few options to improve this. I'm confident I can take this to lvl85 but beyond that the occasional death will make things rather painful.
- Suggestions on gear improvements. Currently the only things I can see as being decent improvements are: better swords and a high evasion 6l armor. (Oh if I had a 6l, I would use cleave+blind+increasedphysicaldamage+increasedattackspeed+concentratedeffect+addedfiredamage/lifeonhit ). I could possibly try to use a meginords but I'm not sure if that helps any. I only need resists from either boots or belt.

http://www.exilepro.com/build-summary?build=AAAAAgIAAdEFLQW1Bu4ILhHVFHUY2yFgI_YwcTB8Mgk0kzWGNZI4ljpCOrM67T7PQKBHfkp9S3hOyFFHVvpaSGBLYxdjcGVNZ6BuaXRBdO108XfXeu9_K4TZhxmHdo2_l3CZK5uNnrmqf6q4q8Wv67cXuc29gb3mvqfEuMaiypDTftQj1FLV-NaK3Q3dqN3n7g7vTu_j7_D8xZ2qKLUo29_vHcpbr4Tvm4NT31jbaodhIRLhkL4Zju2D21UC0But
I changed
•Got more evasion rating instead of stun avoid; cyclone makes you immune to stun.
•More point effective a bit more stats overall.
•An extra endurance charge instead of a frenzy.
Good build overall!

When you get more skill points or dump some damage I'd make my way from dodge to the might node near it and to go for that big cluster of HP nodes. The nodes towards the center are also good if you want to pick up reflexes and some more mana regen/skill duration.

Use endurance charges, they're godly for evasion characters. Endurance charges are flat mitigation and works with dodge(I think). You probably use warlords mark already, get a high quality one if you can people don't know good they are yet you could also use immortal call especially against rhoas even without charges up if you have quick fingers.

Dual strike is very very good one of the best single target abilities in the game, try out a quality one with twin terrors if you have the cash.
Physical damage doesn't scale as well with attack speed as well as elemental damage, criticals are the way to go for dual wield physical since they'll punch through more armor also since you're using cyclone(crits on cast!).

On your gear I'd recommend more life and some chaos res since it also protects you from blood rage degeneration.

//For funnies buy a quill rain for quick frenzies and blind/flee/LMP/Peirce then flicker in. A very nice side arm. Quill rains are pretty cheap too!