Need little guidance on passives.

Basically first timer and hoping to survive at least first two difficulties. Played year ago only act 1.

original goal

lvl30 phase

1h/shield
Not really sure what i'm going to use later but for now cyclone, molten strike and and heavy strike seem to my best ones.
problems: base stats at 80 would be 80 dex and 170 str, does that mean i can't use late level weaponry or armor that are str/dex, so in other words i start using only str items?

in short: Is 37% all resist from skillpoints enough and do i need more than 90% max hp?

Taking resists on passive tree is usually reserved for builds with many gear slots reserved for uniques and for farming builds, an average build can cover for resists easily enough using only rare gear. Of course, you may allocate a few nodes for levelling if you want and respec out of them later.

Base stats are typically covered with gear too, high level gear can have fairly high stat rolls and you can also craft it via masters. Hybrid items also have low requirements, if it isn't a bow or a wand user built in an opposite part of the tree it's usually fine.

As a melee you will need more than 90% life, around 150% is fine these days.

Thanks for honest answer. Closest life nodes would bring it to 138% for reasonable 12 points. Time will tell if i even get to 80+.

A 90-point tree, following similar routes.

You can probably cut that down further by getting Dex on gear. You can definitely take less resistance nodes by getting resistances on gear. Having high resistances early on from the tree is super useful, but pretty unnecessary by end-game.

Having Unwavering Stance is incredibly helpful. Stun will be your biggest cause of death during end-game.

Lastly, pretty much any non-crit attack-based build who is close to Resolute Technique should take it. The extra DPS it provides is phenomenal when you know you won't be building around crit.

I like that 90-point tree. Seems more upgraded and skips few small nodes. Most likely I will follow that build 90%, specially that stun free node and non-crit node. Would maces be better non-crit weapons?

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Foukka wrote:

Would maces be better non-crit weapons?

Almost definitely. Maces seem to get a lot of damage nodes from the tree, and have built-in stun. Plus, you won't be wasting all the extra accuracy that swords/sword passives provide.

Just remember to check what weapons your skills require. Cyclone, Molten Strike, and Heavy Strike are all fine with maces (Heavy Strike being perfect), but if you wanted to use Cleave, for example, you wouldn't be able to.

But you didn't mention Cleave, so maces or even axes will be your friend :)

Edit: here's an updated passive tree for maces.

Note that you can still slim down this tree a LOT by having decent gear. By getting enough Dex, Life Leech, and Resistances on gear, you could free up 5+ points, and use them to get to Iron Reflexes. Then you could include the Grace aura to further pump your physical damage reduction.

At the moment 42 level and 2 points away from "Born to fight". After that i could take iron reflexes.
2200+ armor and and determination increasing 30% to 2700+, but only adding 6% physical reduction.
Resistance for now are 75% and chaos -12.

I only have 300 evasion, so not sure if Iron reflexes worth it, but i can see it would give me more viable armors to use if good sockets or stats. Does iron reflexes have 1:1 ratio so 300 evasion would give 300 armor?
That would make 150 armor and 150 evasion items viable for me, compared to 300 armor items.(chest piece)

Biggest struggle so far seems to my damage out put and not having specialized to any weapon from passives yet.
Heavy strike around 500 dps with life gain on hit and melee splash.
some gear:

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Foukka wrote:

I only have 300 evasion, so not sure if Iron reflexes worth it, but i can see it would give me more viable armors to use if good sockets or stats. Does iron reflexes have 1:1 ratio so 300 evasion would give 300 armor?
That would make 150 armor and 150 evasion items viable for me, compared to 300 armor items.(chest piece)

Iron reflexes have two main uses
- it broadens the range of compatible gear to evasion and hybrid pieces
- it enables you to use grace to get a nice chunk of base armor

Yeah, 300 base evasion will get converted to 300 base armor, but the converted part of your armor will still get increased by evasion passives, which you probably won't have anyway with your build.

That said, you shouldn't have any trouble with stacking high amount of base armor as a shield user so determination aura will be as good as grace, if not better, depending on your gear. Also, most of your gems will be red so straight armor gear will be the best choice regarding socket color. Gear flexibility is all well and good, but unless you're adamant on playing self-found you won't have any trouble getting good gear in any flavor.

So, iron reflexes aren't that significant for your build, however I'd urge you to go full ham on endurance charges and not to miss that Soul of Steel cluster on the outer path, armor kinda sucks without charges but is pretty damn good if you have them.

Id add:

Iron reflexes allows melee builds with bad access to endurance charges to get decent phys mitigation (characters on the right side of the tree). (using Grace)

It also allows players to get solid armour even though they dont have much on gear (because using certain uniques etc) via Grace aura

Iron reflex is handy but I wouldn't reach for it unless you are building around that idea. Having some evasion, even a small amount, still adds to defense. If you are blocking, a little evasion goes a long way. Personally, I like to play hybrid armor/eva on melee rather than just armor. I don't use cwdt-ec-ic on melee so I have 6-7 full time endurance charges helping on the armor mitigation end.