My survivability is starting to lag behind monster damage output

Your build looks fine. For starters I would say do whatever you can to boost your resists to max and definitely take the elemental adaptation passive.

Raising your resists from 60% to 80% halves the damage you take from any elemental attack, which is very useful.


Another thing I would suggest is to have at least 1 granite flask. Being able to temporarily boost your armour is extremely useful for tough situations.


Are you using life leech or life on hit? Part of sustaining your life is about using these to your advantage.


Consider taking endurance charges. It isnt hard to maintain max charges and it really gives you a big boost to damage reduction.



And finally, I think you might want to consider letting blood magic go. The main advantage of blood magic is not having to worry about mana management, but it comes at the price of not being able to make use of auras. At higher levels, you can equip both purity and determination for less than half of your total mana pool, which will serve as a huge boost to your survivability.

Other things to consider are enfeeble, temp chains, and warlords mark.

I refunded some points and switched to this build:



It really sucks spamming Enduring Cry, but it's definitely effective. Obviously, on the right I'm reaching toward Iron Reflexes. I think I'll work on Leather and Steel after that, and after those I'll be grabbing the percentage armor increases. I've picked up Grace.

I've been using Warlord's Mark for quite a while. Great curse. I may try dropping Blood Magic at some point to see if I can keep up mana without it, but my only mana leech is from Warlord's Mark.

Also, is there any way to specifically acquire a Granite Flask? I haven't seen one drop before. I suppose I could trade for one, but I have no idea what they usually go for.

Granites are drops, normally you can get someone in chat to give you one or buy it for an alch or something. As to armor, don't do it, not worth it. Between granites (Which give 10k armor on demand) and grace+IR, you're already overkill on armor. Sink those nodes into more life/life regen. Ultimately, if you want to survive more, HP is hands down, the singularly most effective way to achieve this. Armor is bloody terrible, as an alternative.

Another thing to bring up though: Why do you have versatility? You have RT, which means you don't miss anyways. Gem or item equip requirements?

Also, make sure you are aiming for the highest life and resists on gear. The armor number really has absolutely no affect on your survivability. Mouze, the top of the ladder, had less then 5k armor, iirc, and easily tanked any and everything. Even before he got his kaoms.

I tried dropping Blood Magic today and found 2% mana leech was most of the time plenty to keep up with sweep/heavy strike/enduring cry, but my mana pool is so small I can still only run anger+grace, same as before, so all I've gained is ~175 hp (nice, but still). I could invest in a mana node, but it's going to take more than the 2 points I saved from dropping Blood Magic, and I probably still wouldn't have enough to add Hatred or Purity. I'm not sure it's worth it.

Are the Reduced Mana Reserved nodes additive or multiplicative? e.g. is Purity at 40% + a 5% reduced node 38% or 35%?

I took versatility to deal with equip requirements early on, though I don't really specifically need it anymore. I might drop it.

Just get few granite flasks, roll them and ure good to go. I had no problems completing ruthless with low resistances and hp since u can basically tank all physical dmg with flasks since magic dmg isn't that big of a deal in ruthless. Like all i basically did on normal->ruthlss was stack dmg and almost one hit everything but bosses/rares/champs and tank with flasks