So far I have no luck with all my melee builds. Either they do too little damage, or too squishy. I have tried Blademaster, Warder, Witchblade, Spellbreaker, Battlemage, all to no avail. I either a) can’t do enough damage and/or b) have the survivability of a glass cannon while being a melee class.
Adding to the difficulty are all the mobs that do splash damage when you kill them now (like those fire ball throwing aetherials). Having high fire resist doesn’t seem to help. Then in Act 2, Cronley’s thugs with their pistols and cocktails does insane amount of damage and requires kiting.
I am also clueless at how much DA and Armor I should have at different point in the game.
Try using components asap, these thugs also deal high piercing/aether dmg. New players always stuck at spending lots of points into passive skills which have minor impact early game, for soldier build you would be fine by using blade arc, others option is Dreeg’ eyes/OFF/Calidor.
Act 2 as a melee isn’t the easiest time for one. Your damage is often too low to make ADCTH work well, but as you level, ADCTH (attack damage converted to health) becomes more and more a part of your survival strategy. You may also find that you can improve your survival with the Bat constellation. Don’t try to focus on a shield yet. If you choose to use a shield just don’t spend a lot of points in making it useful until later.
I’d recommend picking a primary attack, and use blitz too. At that level, Blitz is overpowered. You can destroy hordes of mobs quickly with it pumped up a bit. Heck, you can get to act 5 doing nothing but Blitz and running around between cooldowns if you really wanted.
Gear wise i would focus on the weapon(s) for attack damage, and armor i would go for gear with a high armor value and some resists. Rings and amulets i would use to complement attack damage, or help with other things such as energy or helth regen.
I used to focus all my equipment on buffing my main damage source. Until i realized i was just creating a melee glass cannon. And dont forget to invest in the mastery bar to buff your main stats/attributes.