VP HP melee? A conversation log.

Here's a log of a conversation I had with someone else, regarding VP HP melee building. This is way before 1.0.0, my PM logs say it was in mid-August. My questions in italics, his answers in plaintext. I feel it's still valid.

I noticed a comment in one of your posts from a few days back, and I am wondering, how do you do it?

How to play a vp hp melee? It's good when the damage you receive exceeds 20% of your health per second, or rather 30% per second counting regen nodes+pot and quality life leach gem. It's viable, but you have to avoid small objects on the ground - they make you desync. You always keep a granite flask up in fights, so desync does not kill you that fast. When you desync you jump into the monsters with leap slam - use little hp bars on them, so you know when you hit. Vaal pact is necessary for maps 74+ if you facetank without a shield like lionseye or aegis aurora - I go 2h. It works, but you need a strong physical weapon. It's easier to go facebreaker and shield. Also vp goes better with evasion - it's easy to get 40-50% evasion - much easier than armor - just use dex and grace + evasion chest. Reach like 8-10k armor with rest of your gear - that protects well against normal monsters, when you get close to 30k armor with granite up its really good. Also use blind and enfeeble + 3,5-4k hp - i use bringer of rain for that and all physical hits don't harm me at all. If you fight some serious hitting monsters use 6 endurance charges and immortal call with increased duration. You can get like 7 seconds immunity to physical damage.

I kinda figured about the evasion thing, yeah, didn't know if it would work well enough to take VP as evasion character. I assume you don't use Blood Rage?

Always been just telling people, don't do VP HP it's not worth it. Mostly speaking from experience, as I play a pseudo-VP HP with Bloodseeker. Usually as primary facetank.

What would you say is the absolute minimum required to get away with using VP HP? What is your main attack skill, does that affect your answer and how?

You need a solid aoe for VP, since it minimizes the downside of desync. You need to leach. I use cyclone 2h. Facebreaker is obviously better. I have 4k hp, but I guess a bit over 3 k would be fine with vaal pact too. You need to go with physical damage. Elemental does not leach enough, perhaps if you have crazy with life leach gem it might work.