So I’m level 75 on my blade dancer. Only played about a week but I’m pretty happy with my damage. Doing Syncronized Strike, Shadow Cascade, Decoy, Smokebomb, and Shift. Up to level 90 echoes. But I feel super squishy. I have 60% dodge and about 20% glancing blow chance, 6% lifesteal, but almost no resistances and only 800 health.
Is this about normal or is my gear all messed up or how should this be working? I feel like I have to use a potion the moment I take any damage at all to stay topped up. An unlikely stun or ranged chain can obliterate me, and I’ve been one shot by boss attacks.
Is there a better way to build for defense without sacrificing damage?
You can very easily reach 31% glancing blow chance just with passive points (5 Points in Rogue Base Class “Dodge And Parry” + 8 Points in Bladedancer’s “Cloak Of Shadows”)
Whatever you miss there you should definitely try and take, to make GB a littel bit more reliable.
Also do you use any source for Dusk Shroud? Which gives you 5% glancing blow chance + flat dodge. You can get it from several different sources, but you should definitely try to get it at least a littelbit.
The Health seems a bit low, depending on how your resistances are.
How high are your resistances? You definitely don’t need to cap resistances, but depending on how much resistances you have, you definitely want to have a larger health pool protecing you from larger incoming hits, since both dodge and glancing blow are not 100% reliable.
One other very important defensive stat is Critical Strike Avoidance, this is especially important on low health builds, since recieving a crit fro many powerful lattack might 1-shot you.
You can easily reach 100% CSA with 3 affixes or MoF 100 Timeline Blessing + 2 Affixes
Yeah I have dusk shroud chance on me hitting an enemy maxed from passives, with just 1 for pre requisites to get there on being hit myself.
My resistances are all 0 except for 13% cold. I know that’s likely the problem but having a hard time finding or crafting the right gear without nuking my damage. I also have 0 CSA.
So going without any resistances primarily is totally fine,
my suggestion would be: Try to get a bigger health pool(Aim for ~1,5 HP] and get 100% CSA.
Powerful attacks that do not get dodged or glancing blow, can easily 1-shot you at this point.
For the passive i would probably redistribute some points, you can fill them out later.
I would redistribute some points from “Pursuit” or “Lethal Cadence” into Cloak Of Shadows.
It will be a very slightly dmg loss, but not that much, since dex will scale your damage a bit and you get more GB.
Argent Veil is a very strong Node i agree. Silver Shroud does give you alot of survivability, but since your health pool is quiet low at this point it might proc pretty often and sicne it has a 15sec cooldown it might not be super reliable.
While focusing on Ward can be viable i would not use a valuble Belt Slot for a Unique that only gives you some Ward. (The unqiue is definitely very strong, but a well crafted rare will be better).
Especially since Belt Slot has the most Powerful Health Affixes (Hybrid Health AND % Health)
Honestly my advice is that you are being too damage greedy with setup and are being punished for it. If you switch some points around and get at least max resists you will significantly increase your survivability. You probably have more than enough damage to clear content you could drop some and be perfectly fine. Focus on resists suffixes, 2 gold rings, get some vitality for some extra health boost; have at least 1k+ Hp.
