Steel Blitz, 2H sword build help required.

Build

The idea here is to use Frenzy as the primary single target damage skill and stack crazy levels of attack speed while using a hard hitting 2handed weapon to bypass enemy armor. The core of the build is pure physical damage, but we'll be running Hatred and Increased Fire damage because they scale beautifully because of that Phys dmg. Grabbing 7 Frenzy charges (with bandit reward) equals INSANE amounts of attack speed on our main single target attack (35 alone from frenzy charges, about 80-90 more from the Frenzy skill. AoE should be covered by Cyclone. Other skills work too depending on preference.

Now I need help with the following points:

Mana cost - I hear Frenzy is very expensive. We'll be doing a ton of phys dmg so standard leech works great for us unlike those lousy elemental builds. We also got Arane efficiency and the 2 more nodes around it for 20% less cost. But will it be enough?

Survivability - 5 endurance charges and some armor/evasion multipliers and no block. Squeezed as much hp nods as possible but still i feel it wont be enough. Your thoughts?

Also I need to shave points because currently 96 points spend, which is improbable. Can you help me shave them down without losing too much potency?

Bandit rewards should be: 40hp, Skill, Frenzy or Endurance charge.

My level 69 duelist.
Pretty similar idea to yours, I didn't spec into sword because I'm currently using a 2H mace, but it's the same idea.

gears:


I'm using Blood Rage to sustain my frenzy charges, but I also use Frenzy as single target attack because sometimes I can't use Blood Rage because of the degen and the damage I take. I took frenzy as quest reward, but I should have taken Endurance, it's really mandatory to have those charges up all the time, you don't mitigate damage with 2H weapons. I leveled up my character with Blood Magic since it's easier, and I respec'd later to add auras, since I had some mana leech on my gears. But while leveling, it's just easier to take BM.

Things to think about my tree:
- I'm not sure if the endurance charge in the templar area is worth the investment, better spend those points elsewhere. I still grab some life on my way but...
- Armor vs hybrid: I went hybrid and took arrow dodging, but I'm not sure about that now, maybe Iron Reflexes would be better since I don't have a shield to mitigate some damage...

What works great/must have:
- Resolute Technique: always hit, quite useful to leech life, and you don't need to get high accuracy (which you may need to find on gears with your tree)
- Elemental Adaptation: +5% max resists...

Well you've spent almost no points in upping armor/evasion bar the Leather and Steel close to the start so that could be it.

The templar endurance charge seems like an overkill to me :) Resolute technique ain't that good IMHO and I wanna use swords with have built-in accuracy bonuses.

I had a long-winded post ready when my browser decided to close...not going to rewrite it all but I put down some comments and revised build for your review.
1. Not enough survival, you need more HP.
2. Take Iron Reflexes, armor is better than evasion even if armor is weak in PoE
3. Leather and Steel applies only once, either to armor or evasion, so it is not that great.
4. Mana Flows notable is excellent investment for mana users
5. RT is the best choice for non-crit based builds, more so if 2H.




I would question use of Frenzy since Heavy Strike can do pretty much the same without need to heavily invest into passive tree. You can still maintain 3 Frenzy charges with Blood Rage.

You will be heavily pressed to build up enough HP and resistances to cap with this build. It will be very gear dependent compared to full blown survival/HP build with lots of all resistance nodes picked up.

You can still have fun with it but sooner or later you will hit a wall, be it Kole/Brutus in Merciless, Piety or lvl68+ maps.

I am not so sure about some of these things (beside the survivability issue)

For starters I got the mechanics from the wiki over here

It looks like leather and steel is added twice.

Also why is armor strictly better then dodge? Again reading from mechanics it seems that armor falters against hard hitters and is good against low damage hits, while evasion works better against the big crits (by avoiding them altogether). The arrow dodging passive especially is a godsend in my opinion - if u have base chance 40% to dodge arrows it jumps to 80%, which should counter them efficiently. Mind that i'm not calling you a liar or anything - I just want to know why stacking armor is the better option.

Also why you rate Frenzy so low? By looking it provides much less Phys dmg increase, but compensates by increasing attack speed tremendously. 10% quality Frenzy is not very expensive and i can get it easily - at 15 level the Skill nets me 12% IAS * Charges and 10% Phys DMG * charges. On top 5% Atk speed inherent to frenzy charges. So if I have 6 frenzy charges that is 92% atk speed and 60% phys dmg. Isnt that better then the 150% + 75% phys dmg increase from HS?

Leather and Steel is only adding once, it was confirmed by developer in several threads. Here is the quote I have used in one of my older replies:


Armor, despite its shortcomings, is providing stable and reliable mitigation. Evasion is random even with the mechanics that GGG introduced to prevent bad streaks. Evasion can work but you will have to invest heavily into HP to be able to soak those hits, small or big ones, that get through evasion rolls. Armor will mitigate each and every hit, obviously it will be a lot less effective against big hits but can completely negate small hits.

Heavy Strike has 150% damage effectiveness, which makes it very powerful skill. You can also get quality gem that provides additional attack speed for modest price as well. Most importantly, Heavy Strike works just fine without any investment into passive nodes. I would assume that in order to make Frenzy competitive, you would have to invest a lot into obtaining 2 or 3 additional charges--which is putting further strain on your passive nodes that should go into survival.

Clarifications regarding leather and steel:

No Iron Reflexes:
24% is applied to Armour AND Evasion

Iron Reflexes:
24% is applied once to Armour and once to Evasion as you can see in the formula from the wiki

It is not applied twice on the same stat. The fact that evasion is eventually converted to Armour, well that's another thing :)


Let's take an example:
100 armour
100 evasion

Take L&S, no Iron Reflexes(i am not considering dex component for simplification):
Armour=100 armour * (1 + 24%) = 124
Evasion=100 evasion * (1 + 24%) = 124

Take L&S and Iron Reflexes:
Evasion=100 evasion * (1 + 24%) = 124
IR: 124 evasion -> 124 armour
Armour=100 armour * (1 + 24%) = 124
Total Armour = 124 + 124 = 248 Armour

L&S does the same thing regardless if you take IR or not. It increases Armour AND Evasion.
The bonus from IR is that it adds Armour and Evasion together.