In Path of Exile you have two different resources that keep you from dying
One is Life (the red stuff) the other is energy shield (the white covering the red). When you go throughout the passive tree you will see that there are +life / +life percentage nodes and on the other hand there are +energy shield nodes.
One very important node is called Chaos Inoculation. This node makes it so your life is reduced to 1 and you become immune to chaos damage (chaos damage bypasses energy shield).Choosing energy shield for your build usually means that you are using this passive skill.
Thus, you want to choose one or the other in order to maximize your survivability by only using life gear and life passive nodes or high Energy shield gear and Energy shield passive nodes.
Just some stats for people trying out sword raider BF build, with only a Dreamfeather and a Scaeva i'm doing 1155 damage per uses of BF, attacking for 7.38 time a sec, 30% crt chance, 340% crt multiplier. This is with max frenzy on a 2x ascended raider.
Feels free to compare to other classes if you're not feeling raider is up to par, or if swords isnt your thing.
Cant go wrong with this, you can also respec to BF later, it uses pretty much identical tree nodes and similar skill gems > https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1738625/
I will hopefully decide which of WarChieftain totems or Gladiator Block Blade Flurry that I will play sometime around the league starting >_> . I may end up defaulting to the "safe" build of warchieftain totems to make poe currency, but it would be nice to play (and fail) with a build I've done some work on myself.

Jan
A lot of people will try to defend Path of Exile as not beeing P2W
As for me, I feel Grinding Gear Games is one of the few companies out there who deserve the extra money they get with their free to play model. They do a really good job of providing updates and new content on a regular basis

Mar
poe4orbs:PoE 3.10 Delirium Shadow Popular Starter Build
PoE 3.10 has arrived! Are you ready to take on new challenges? Take a look at the PoE 3.10 Delirium Shadow Builds (Assassin, Saboteur, Trickster) prepared by R4pg for you!

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poe4orbs:PoE 3.10 Delirium Mauarder Popular Starter Build
Take a look at the PoE 3.10 Delirium Mauarder Builds(Berserker, Chieftain, Juggernaut) prepared by R4pg for you! You can choose a cheap poe starter build to get through the early content quickly, then some high-damage endgame builds also wait you view!

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poe4orbs:PoE 3.19 Top League Starter Builds Guide
Here is latest and best PoE 3.19 Lake Of Kalandra League Starter Builds for beginner, each video guide is attached with a pob link for players' reference.

Dec
The way armor works is too RNG in Path of Exile
The problem isn't really map mods. The problem is that armor and evasion are not even close to as good as having a giant 'life' pool.

Nov
trade you can find a lot of cheap path of exile items
When you actually take your time and search stuff over some time/PM a lot of offline traders you probably could get them cheaper