Wish I knew more about melee survival, but my own attempts have topped out about where you are now. I played both a Sunder Gladiator and Ngamahu Cyclone Chieftain into the 80s, and neither can consistently survive in red maps. Even avoiding the worst map mods, they’ll still die for no obvious reason to random rares or blue packs. Presumably there’s some bad luck on crits or dodge rolls happening, but I have no way to tell. I suspect the really high-priced gear options would negate some of that, but that kind of gear grind isn’t my kind of fun, even in a grind-centric game like this one.
(Slight tangent - All of that is why I keep going back to summoners and totem builds. With those it’s possible to get by with sub-optimal gear most of the time, without significant risk. I’ve been taking advantage of that with my item qty loadout. Sure helps with the map drops, although of course you still never get enough of the top tiers. And then when it’s time to face the big bosses, you can switch into the high-life/high-DPS gear.)
You mentioned Belly of the Beast, do you have one? I have two, and you’re welcome to one, but it’s not linked or anything. Still, if you want to try to 6-link something, it could be that which you can use, rather than one of the others to sell.
For auras, one thing I’ve done occasionally is use Purity of [whatever] to cap out resists in order to use better gear. Maybe you find a ring or gloves or whatever that has a ton of life but leaves you short on cold resist, then you pop in Purity of Ice to make up the difference. Or even Purity of Elements for multiple resists. Depending on what gear you can find/buy, you might be able to pick up a lot of life, and as a general rule more life is going to be better than the Determination armor bonus. Or there’s always the option to go Blood Magic and ditch the auras entirely, unlocking those big life nodes behind the keystone, but of course for that you need to move points around.
Looking at your passive tree, it looks like you haven’t done the 4th lab yet. I’d be happy to run it with you, if you like. On days when PoELab says it’s not too crazy, I’ll sometimes roll through it for the drops and chance at enchants, particularly if I get that double-enchant prophecy. I still dislike the Lab in general, but it’s much less annoying once your build is solid than it is trying to do it during leveling.
On the tree itself, you do need the mana leech from Spirit Void and the node next to it? If you’re not having mana issues, you could move those two points over to more life, maybe Path of the Warrior. There’s also several points invested in bleeding around the Bloodletting node, which I’m not sure is doing a lot for your DPS since you’re not using the Gladiator ascendancy with all its bleeding bonuses. Those points could possibly buy you some more defense, or another jewel slot, without losing a whole lot of damage. And if you do move some points around, you could consider taking the other starting nodes (left side instead of right on the Duelist start). Means less attack speed, but some additional damage and life.
