And they almost always come with cold damage. If you get slowed/frozen = even more cold damage. Cold is pretty unique in this respect, in that if you don’t have a lot resists in the first place then the CC will guarantee that you take massive damage. With most other damage types you can simply move away from the attack.
The only other damage type that likes to come with a CC is lightning (with stun) and sources of those are nowhere near as common as cold and freeze/slow.
Slow often comes with other damage types too. For example, fire-using guys from Cronley’s Hideout can slow you.
Yes, I would be in normal still. Kinda pathetic , but I can’t advance anymore. low 40’s, wendigo totem i have at 4. Every time i can cast it, I do. very little difference. enemies hit far harder than what it replaces. And there are 10 different resistance to have, I might be able to get 3-4 close to max, but not 5+ of them. crappy items in 20’s, 30’s, 40’s.
I’ve seen a few post on soldier being fairly op. I’m using almost pure soldier and seems to be working better than most. level 30, but the resistance is crap. Like 4 around 10%, 1 at 20%, 1 at 30% 1 at 60%, aether at 0%. I am picking up almost every single item yellow and above and scanning for resistance.
And life leach, I’m now using 2 4% damage health leech items AND the bat Devotion, but I’m still losing more life than what I gain in the boss fights. 1-2 I had to run away a few times, kinda pathetic. I’m using the most damaging weapon I can find so far.
Resistances in Normal are overrated, they are pretty much not needed at all before you reach the middle of act 3 end even then you can ignore half of them and the rest is fine in the 20s to 30s.
More obviously helps, but they are far from required.
There really are only two options here, you try facetanking everything and fail, or you need to improve your build, Soldier + Shaman in Normal is pretty much unkillable even with self-found gear with a decent build.
In low 40s, Wendigo should be maxed.
Not saying this is a perfect build, just whipped it up, but as a baseline it is ok
Sorry to ask this, but are you putting all your stat points into cunning? That’s the only way I can see shaman/soldier dying below level 40 on normal. I’m at level 70 and my wendigo totem still heal plenty with just 3 levels.
Putting most points into physical.
Well then maybe it’s bad luck :undecided:
If you could post a grimcalc of your current char it would help a lot in terms of maybe improving your build.
I’ve only encountered such a roadblock with my very first char who was a 100% offensive dual wield Blademaster, not the sturdiest class. Shelved him for a while until I learned more of GD.
Are you using components in every available slot? Which are you using?
Most components i have are fairly useless. 15 armor, 90 health, etc. seems very little to zero for resistance. I have lvl 27 Blue boots with ground stomp does 2k damage, extreme op compared to everything else. Only 2 items with a combined 10% damage to health, but that seems more like a joke compared to weapon damage.
Using the soldier only build, I came across a OP level 21 blue sword. 41-50 damage but 10% chance of 700 poison on it. Talk about impossible to replace. I’m up to lvl 36 still haven’t came across anything even close to that type of damage for a one handed. That poison does melt most monsters.
You can craft many resistance components. There are components for 20 fire/cold/lightning/poison resistance, Silk Swatch for 18 pierce+bleed, Snctified Bone for 12 chaos and 18 vitality, etc.
Having Bat is good for ADCTH, but not enough. Try Ghoul+Revenant. Or get Wendigo early, its proc will give a blast of lifesteal. Or Scales of Ulcama. Or both.
Getting to Leoric means you killed the Butcher before as he was the real newcomer raper. So don’t act like a “veteran” when you don’t know your basics 
And most rpg players were playing on Baldur’s gate by the time. You know… Turn based…
Well a veteran would know that out of (and I will agree I might make a mistake on number since I ain’t doing research just going from top of my head) 12 potential Diablo 1 map (as they weren’t random there was just a couple option) map 3 of them didn’t have the Butcher in them (2 of those 3 had Leoric). Also Butcher was behind closed door (super easy to not mess with) while Leoric was kinda more a problematic encounter (and why it present in less map around 50% of them).
I played diablo 1. I don’t remember any way to go around the butcher, except to get him to chase you around. And he is/was a newbie killer.
Here is a quick video of The Butcher in Diablo 1.
It is a closed room with a single door which is perfectly square. The way around him is to simply not open that door and he is a newbie killer that force you to actually go further into the dungeon before actually coming back and killing him to complete what was the very first quest of the game instead of facing him at the level you are on Level 2.
So yeah you are clearly missing memory or not played enough D1 to actually make it a memorable enough experience for you…which in all way make actual RPG difficulty a real shame.
The very first time you play the game, whether it is curiosity, exploration or whatever : guess what ? You open the door ! Followed by a tragic “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shiiiiiit !” moment.
After that you get the trick with a bow and barred windows room… Eventually
But it sure made good memories. Only game that came up later and was as good as diablo to me was Nox from Westwood studios. Man do i miss those devs…
OP might also consider rolling a Sab, via jajajaja’s Mid/Long ranged Commando setup.
That build pretty much at-arms-length tanks all of Veteran.
It’s pretty much the only fun to be had with Canister Bombs. 
But my god… 'twas so much fun to Nuke Cthulhu gone in 10 seconds, with zero stat points invested. 