Is Sword and Board viable?

Just ran my first run-through of the storyline (went hardcore, died around act 5, so) and I was told that my build would be nowhere near what is required for map content.

I'm looking for straight up physical damage / tank with a lot of life leech for sustain. I went with a Juggernaut with blade vortex, but apparently that's not how tanks/juggernaughts work. I don't want anything to do with two handers or dual wielding -- straight up sword and shield.

Is that even viable for this league? Or would I have to respec to something completely different?

Someone told me my build is too expensive to respec (and that even if I did I'd be low damage and tankiness) and I should just roll anew. I'm looking for other opinions rather than just my one friend, or is my friend right?

Steam is being stupid about letting me change my password so I can log in under my steam account, so I made this one in order to ask this -- you can look me up as I only have the one character. https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/HyenaedonMan/characters

They were right, actually that build won't go anywhere.


some random thoughts:

- you are using Blade Vortex that is a SPELL, trying to scale it with physical attack passives doesn't work; to check if a skill is a spell or an attack hover the cursor on the skill gem and just below the skill name there are the tags that specify what increase the damage of that skill.

- with your knowledge of the game it's not really advisable to respec that char, i know it's bothersome but it's better to reroll a new character.

- levelling with a 2hander is usually better and faster than weapon+shield, respeccing later few skill points.

- follow some guides here on the forum, i remember that as a new player i was overwhelmed about the knowledge needed to get things going.

- a really strong J U G G sword and board build is the one with Molten Strike as main skill with the Grelwood Shank sword (that build allowed me to beat some of the endgame bosses).

- i have a sword and board jugg ( but the skilltree is outdated https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/Zuggtmoy?characterName=<name>" where <MeffeIncJugg> ).



I'll edit later if something more comes to my mind...