@Vayra86
When I started this char I wanted a mace + shield physical build, so I took soldier first. Unfortunately I'm not really happy with with the Demo pick, as I only use 2 skills from it (Temper and Vindictive Flame).
As for sustain, I just finished Malmouth Elite, and haven't had much trouble. If the going gets really tough I have second life (Menhir's will), lots of armor, and I think I could use a bit more health, but so far I've been fine. No lifesteal on gear at all.
I'm using Cadence without WPS (have a point or two in them just for a minor dps boost). Might give a chance to Troll Rage, to see how it pans out.
@Frick
A twohander would probably work nice with Demo (I'm guessing Fire Strike), but for a shield + melee the mastery is mostly useless. At least it looks like that to me.
WPS with Cadence is quite important - especially Zolhan's Technique to shred Defensive Ability
Do you know the concept of Offensive Ability vs Def Ability and resistance / DA shredding? This ties into how often you can crit, and how high you can crit. If you want to progress into endgame and still do decent damage on Ultimate, you will need:
- -% Physical Resistance and -X Phys Resist Reduction skills, either from Devotions, items or skills. Both the hard (-X) and the % resistance reductions stack. But you cannot stack several -% resist or -X resist skills, the highest one counts. Resistance shredding is permanent once applied to an enemy. In late game, enemies can have over 100% resistance to a damage type, so without shredding that, you won't deal damage, or very little.
- -Defensive Ability and -X Reduced Defensive Ability are the two suffixes you can find to shred DA. This is even more vital than shredding resistance. OA - DA is your crit chance and the bigger the gap, the higher the chance but also: greater crit multiplier. So you want enemies to have DA as low as possible, and your OA as high as possible, to get the best damage numbers.
In your search for a second class to pair with Soldier for a future build, look for skills that do the above and you will find yourself far more effective. Occultist has a great DA/resist shred all in one skill for Soldier (offers massive -% Phys resist and hard -DA -
Curse of Frailty). Inquisitor has great shredding abilities too, even a permanent, aura type one. Also, keep an eye out for the active attack skills that are available through items and components, they are really cheap ways to get effective skills, and you can always get your primary damage from Devotions that cost 0 skill points and only use your active attacks to trigger them. The points saved can go into lots stacking support and damage skills instead.
Just some food for thought
This game offers so much in terms of character building, I figured it might help you make the right choices.
As for Demo: the best demo builds are based on Fire Strike + some assortment of grenades like Thermite Mine or Grenado, either with melee or ranged. That also kinda locks you into Fire as a main damage type, perhaps some Chaos and Lightning, or indeed Physical. Demo and Cadence are not a really useful combination, there isn't much synergy between that. Demo also lacks the WPS skills to really capitalize on using Cadence (66% of your Cadence strikes are regular ones without WPS) - while Fire Strike is a damage boost to each default attack (and can also stack with WPS).
Can heartily recommend Occult+Soldier and then get some Chaos damage conversion in there along with Physical. It opens up super cool weapon choices too - Chaos damage is often very high, spiky damage.
Weapons such as... this (and look... two skills on a single weapon, with 0 skill points invested