A sample bit of cheese for those having trouble:


Stat-wise, focus on Vitality. You want enough INT to reliably have enough to riposte away a 'wound' debuff before a missile locks on, or to cast an emergency heal, but you don't need a lot of mana.

When crafting, focus on VIT boosters. You won't really need much strength (your damage comes from mantra and bloodthrust, not attack); you don't need much wisdom (low reliance on int, with high VIT wisdom-based HP regen is irrelevant), you don't need much dex (damage mostly isn't from criticals, dex-based evasion won't help you against what can really hurt you).

(Craft, craft, craft. Every key that you don't need for the main quest -> goes to the arena, since every rank every other there means a Soul Shard; every dungeon boss gives you another. Remember that to increase crafting skill, you need to fill the completion bar with less than 50 durability remaining, and without ever overheating. Stat bonuses from crafting aren't exactly the same as stat bonuses from leveling up, from what I've read, but VIT bonuses from crafting do boost your max HP.)

For passives, dump just about everything in HP Mastery. What you're looking for is to maximize the chance of random healing that scales with max HP, that cannot be sapped.

For mantra, choose Reckoning. Activating it drains your health, but appears to do damage roughly on par your health or more, from some scaling (*total* health, not the amount lost!) -- every turn for five turns. Unlike Bloodthrust, which transfers bleed but more importantly does damage equal to your max HP, it doesn't need you to be bleeding, nor does it require two actions per damaging use (where with BT, you need to swap skills, then activate BT; and skills are swapped when you do this, so you need to swap before the next BT use). You can, in fact, do Reckoning -> Freezing Swap -> Bloodthrust (if you're bleeding, and if Reckoning hasn't killed your victim during the second round). None of this requires mana, either.

Weapon types: preferably something with high VIT. If you're feeling aggressive, you can go with an Unstable weapon; this will mean that you'll almost certainly be able to Bloodthrust just about all the time. Bloodthrust is handy if you're up against an opponent that's blinding you, because Reckoning is drastically less effective but Bloodthrust appears to be fully effective in the same situation. Umbral is also always neat, because it turns bleeding into a buff. You're not really dependent on any other affix, although I'd actively avoid anything that drains your vitality to inflict bleed or lifesteal based on your unimpressive attack stat; that vitality drain is better off powering your mantra and bloodthrust.

For classes: Barbarians (esp Marauder for heal-on-block), Paladins (keep your MP up for free scales-with-max-hp regen) are pretty obvious fits for having regenerative abiltiies that scale with max HP. You probably would be better off not choosing Wizard with the automatic hp penalty as you level up...

For races: some races have regenerative abilites, some resist debuffs - the Sestarne Barbarian I've got in Inferno Act 4 is unaffected by curses, for instance. Curses affects Slavas characters, but it makes them regenerate.

Affix notes: Both Reckoning and Bloodthrust are broadly effective. Neither is substantially affected by nimble, thorning, immunity, resistant (bloodthrust won't cause bleeding -- but you're not relying on the DPS of the status effect). Blinding does drastically weaken your mantra's effectiveness, and silencing can end it early but not prevent it.

Mercenary notes: If you're focusing on VIT above all else, and choosing something mundane like a barbarian... well, the attack stat of the mercenary becomes irrelevant (what's a couple of hundred damage when you can do a few hundred thousand damage or more with your mantra?). I'm liking wizards for the Confuse debuff.

Adornment notes: I'm favoring Lizard Garb. The 5% regeneration obviously scales well with VIT, and helps balance the hp loss from mantras or the bleeding from an unstable weapon. The -30% attack penalty is not terribly relevant when your damage comes mostly from mantra and bloodthrust, not direct attacks.

Heal buff: Innervate seems the most useful to me here. If you have a source of Marking (the Guardian can do this...), then Innervate essentially provides one full heal a battle -- you could use the Guardian for the first emergency, then Innervate the next time to consume the mark.

Note that later on, you will likely rather rarely need to use your ultimate, so you can maintain a filled ultimate meter and enjoy any associated buffs.



Things to worry about --

- Early game, especially the turncoat bosses and random bosses; when you're just getting started, you don't have piles of VIT. Play conservatively and conventionally, setting up combos but repositioning or fleeing when appropriate.

- Blindness. Effectively negates your mantra. If you're bleeding as well, use Bloodthrust; if you're not, this becomes a slugfest and you'll probably be building up a large combo count. Since you're tanky, this should be reasonably survivable; you're just going to do less damage per combo than something built on a more traditional offense (like, say, a barbarian that went 50-50 vit/str and uses an axe).

- Missiles. Missiles seem to do 50% of your *max HP* plus wounding; the wound means that you won't be able to reposition to reduce the lock meter until you heal it. You need to reposition frequently enough to prevent a lock; AFAICT, once the missile fires, repositioning only delays when it hits you. If you're in a really bad way (wounded, below 50% health, and a missile locked -- !!! -- it might be good time to invoke the guardian). Most dangerous attack in the game when you have an obscenely high VIT. Let your mantra do some murdering while you reposition.

- Dooming. Wipes half your current HP. The Matron is particularly dangerous if she's DOOMing while the missile meter is nearly full; if you've just been DOOMed your hit points will be at most half max, and the missile will kill you if it hits in such a state. Guardian makes a decent "oh heck" button.

- Poison also scales with your HP, but is slow enough that you can riposte it away.

- Bleeding hurts you (unless you have an Umbral weapon), but it powers your Bloodthrust; it's an issue mostly if you're too busy repositioning to reduce the lock meter and riposting away wounds so you can do that repositioning.

- Dullness lulling you into forgetting when you actually need to pay attention; most things will soon start dying like flies, so if you actually run into a difficulty spike that'll be some readjustment. It' s certainly not the most dynamic way to play. (Consider a Ranger Duelist, w/ Sword/Dagger speciality, and VIT/DEX, for something more interesting but riskier -- you can get a ridiculously long chain of criticals hits that way, which will boost attack, apply marks, gain extra benefits when you mark, make enemies bleed when you crit with a full rage meter if you have the Fiery Cross augmentation...).

When you have a pile of HP, everything else -- normal attacks, megapummels, charges -- matters a lot less. That might lead to carelessness, and forgetting stuff such as the fact that you have a Guardian (well, fairly early into the game you do) and that once you've used it, you should start using your ultimate again to recharge it.


My Sestarne (*) Barbarian built this way fairly early took on a ~2M-hp random boss when he had ~160K hp, and killed it without ever swinging a weapon or healing -- reasonably effective. More recently, he obliterated the Inferno matron in two rounds -- with 800K hit points, Mantra + Freezing Swap was enough. After a crafting fest from accumulated shards and having wiped the first legionary warrior, he's now up to 1M hp (base VIT 602, +4023 from gear; no affixes other than 'legendary' or 'blessed', but it doesn't really matter for the most part. ~30% chance per turn of healing 25% of max hp. Yeesh.). I probably could have flattened the Inferno matron on a high monster power level or with less grinding before reaching this point, but it demonstrates the insane potential firepower/health.

(*) No particular reason for this choice, other than I hadn't used it before and felt like giving it a go.