Hi guys, this soldier is dying really quick in act 4. Can anyone spot something obvious that I’m missing or make some suggestions for me?
Which difficulty?
Get your resistances up! You’re minus on everything. Use components and augments to boost them and gear also.
^as medea fleecestealer said,
Act 4 is pretty heavy Chaos/vit/bleed/elemental/pierce…basically everything. So improving those resists to near~80% (cap) will help a lot; that will reduce this damage by 4/5.
Most everything has a physical component, and the three ways to mitigate that are more armor, improving armor absorption, and physical resist. Physical resist is the hardest to find.
A bit at the start of Act 4 has aether damage, so you could temporarily boost that at the start (swap items or whatnot) to near 80% and move out of it later, if you have to juggle.
For levelling you want gear that has resistances. As a general rule a piece of gear without resistances is not worth using (Exception is relic, weapons or if res are already high).
Definitely use components! Antivenom salve, runestone, wardstone, sanctified bone. Those are some nice res ones.
Lastly, whilst it’s possible to level sword and board at low levels I believe the consensus is that it is much harder+slower than say, going 2 handed and using transmuted forcewave.
Thanks guys, I didnt think resistances were importnant in normal but Ill just augment to cover the gaps.
Will also consider switching to forcewave too.
They certainly don’t need to be maxed out or overcapped in Normal, but running them as minus is asking for trouble as you’ve found.
Kind of impressive to have negative resists in Normal difficulty at level 38, don’t you think? 
Grimtools defaults to Ultimate difficulty, you can click on the word Ultimate to set it to Normal, where you can see his actual resists:
Having said that, I think your issue might still be resists, particularly Acid, Bleeding, and Chaos for Act 4. Start using those components!
You’re also potentially somewhat underleveled. I usually enter Act 4 around your level nowadays, but I do so now with plenty of experience in the game going-in. The first time I played Act 4, I was in the mid 40s, and only slowly began to ease my level down as I got more used to stuff.
You need to start using components: some Silk Swatches and Anti-venom Salves will work wonders.
On normal you should focus on getting resists, flat damage and attack speed for a build like that.
Your gloves for example should really be something with “Alacrity.”
A better weapon can be shopped from vendors within a few minutes, something like Superior <weapon> of Alacrity.
You rushed to get Oleron’s Rage pretty early, after this you should put some points in Squad Tactics, a value point in Fighting Spirit, and get some points in War Cry and its link.
Overguard and Shield Training are much more useful than Veterancy as well.
The Kraken you started in devotions won’t work with a 1h weapon so there’s no point in that unless you switch to a 2h weapon.
Getting some leech (attack damage converted to health) will be very useful too. You can craft a Hollowed Fang at the blacksmith if you have the recipe for it, or get the Toad or Ghoul devotion.
A few optimizations like that will give you more damage and better resists so you won’t feel as squishy.
Increase the armor absorb: 70% is way too low.
Not for normal. No real reason to. Magical damage far exceeds Physical damage output at low levels on everything that isn’t an act boss.
I stand corrected.