Theorycrafting a marauder build....got some questions

Not ready to post my passive choices as I'm still highly tweaking them, plus I have a few questions that will affect my choices.


1. Converted damage, the way I understand it is physical damage will increase both physical damage and elemental damage done.....elemental damage increases would only increase the converted damage, correct?

As an example, you have 100 physical DPS and use a skill that converts 50% of physical damage to fire which works out to 50 physical and 50 fire damage. You take a 12% physical damage node and you now do 112 Physical DPS, and now do 56 physical and 56 fire damage. Comparing this to a 10% elemental damage node, which would make you do 50 physical and 55 fire damage for a total of 105.

Or at least that's how the math works out.......so if you were basing a build off converted damage, would it be better to stack physical damage or are there more elemental damage nodes that make it better in the long run?


2. How large is the damage difference between 2-handed and 1-handed weapons? What about 2-handed vs dual wielding? I know 2-handers can get 6 sockets while 1-handers can't, and I know skills alternate the weapon used.....but which weapon type works out better (if any) for converted damage skills?

3. What's a good amount of survivability for a melee based character - is 273% life with 3.4% regen enough (along with life leech support gem) for a character using blood magic support on their main skill?

4. What about damage nodes, what sort of % damage increases do people normally go for in a melee build with converted damage? I've played Lightning Arrow and have always read to use % elemental damage because you don't do a lot of physical damage because LA has a 70% efficiency.

5. When auras add damage, do they add based on your base damage or the specific skills damage? Hatred for example, if you do 1000 physical damage, does it add 250 cold damage to all your attacks, or if you use a skill like infernal blow, your physical damage is cut in half (50% physical 50% fire) making the damage of that skill 500 physical, 500 fire and 125 cold?