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.

May
POE Incursion: A Primer on Vaalish History
Incursion league is very close to us now, so I'd like to share some Vaalish history, and I think you guys would be interested in it. It's no doubt that Vaalish History is important in Path of Exile 3.3 update, it's the core part of next league.

Dec
Real 10% OFF for POE Chaos and Exalted Orbs in Xmas and New Year
How time flies! Christmas is coming again. Guess you guys cannot even wait to celebrate and enjoy this wonderful festival! And we have also prepare gift for all of you!

Jun
The Latest Builds for Path of Exile 3.3
In Path of Exile Incursion league, most of the players are looking for PoE 3.3 builds for Marauder, Duelist, Ranger, Shadow, Witch, Templar, Scion, these are the main class in this game. So Poe4orbs will share some newest Path of Exile builds to you, hope these could be helpful.

Aug
poe4orbs:[Lake of Kalandra] PoE 3.19 Elementalist Explosive Arrow Ballista League Starter Build
This is PoE 3.19 Elementalist Explosive Arrow Ballista league starter guide. This build will probably be the best all-round build in Lake Of Kalandra League.

Jun
Top 5 Starter Builds for PoE 3.3 Incursion
In this article, I will share you Top 5 Starter Builds for Incursion league, which is the main content of Path of Exile 3.3 patch, and you can have a really good beginning with these builds. Last but not least, you can buy PoE Currency from our website - it's the preparatory work to get into Incursion league.

Oct
Frost wall spell was set to 100% chance to block your projectiles again in POE
Most cold projectiles shatter on impact ( arctic breath, cold shot), this would be the cold version of poe Orb of storm for lightning.