[2.4] How to smash Heads. Extremely detailed guide about the Facebreaker gloves and builds!

35-50% inc damage is nothing really ... in my case thats around 3k DPS and the attack speed can push it up to 3.5k dps or around 7% total damage increase while providing literally no defenses ... and of course an evasion chest ... good luck getting 4 off-colors.
Overall pretty useless chest in this case.

Well based on your profile and your character passive tree you don't have the 2x 10% inc damage while holding a shield + 3% attack speed while holding a shield. I also have 2 damage boosting jewels and the 6% attack speed node in the duelist start.

For the skill tree i am using and the jewels in it you should look in the "My Facebreaker build" section ... i must further remind you that i'm level 96 and i have more than 110 passive skill points to assign.

But really of all that i've listed the tree differences are not even in the top 5 of the reasons for the difference in our dps.

@renroval
Tabula rasa or 5L daresso ? Daresso all day every day!

With the suggested tree yo can't really get more block not for any reasonable amount of passive spent of course. As for armour ... most of your armoour comes from your shield + shield defense nodes + determination. You'll end up with enough armour i'd suggest that you check the screenshots in the "My facebreaker build" section to see for yourself what you can end up with without grabbing any extra armour nodes for the sake of having more armour

Well it's funny that you ask me whether or not you should go for more offenses or more defenses because i'm known as a guy who values defense much much more and that sparked many debates :P

So let me explain how i see all that offense vs. defense when it comes to this build ( and in general actually ). Again i must remind you all that this comes from the perspective of a strictly solo player, i can't stand parties and i don't do party play.

I'll start with an example.
If a monster has 10 life would it make a difference if you deal 20 damage or 200 damage or 20000000000 damage ? Will you kill the monster faster ?
Of course not !
So what i'm trying to say with this is that at certain point you start killing 99% of everything you meet extremely fast ( at around 40k cyclone dps without flasks from my observations ) and even if you deal 10 times more damage you won't kill them any faster ( again see the example above the principle is the same ). Now you might ask what about that remaining 1%? Well that 1% is the map boss. At 40k cyclone depending on the boss of course and the map mods and whatnot on average you'll kill him for about 5 seconds if you deal let's say 100k without flasks you'll kill him for 3 or even 2 seconds. The question is : "Is it worth it to sacrifice defenses for doing a map 3 seconds faster?". Some might argue that the answer is not obvious, but for me it is so obvious that can gouge your eyes out.

Ok but why more defenses? Why do you need more defenses ? What do you gain by having more defenses?
Now unlike the damage you deal you can't reach that point of tankiness when you become immortal and you no longer care about anything. Path of Exile is a deadly game and you'll face many dangers and no matter how much you spend on defenses the chance that something will kill you .. one-shot you even .. always remains! Look at my defenses in the "My Facebreaker build" section .. they are exceptionally high ... one of the highest around actually .. yet i died yesterday ... ground effects + shrine + the monsters around the shrine ... everything was fine ... but then when all cleared out i had around 0.2 sec to realize that i'm standing on top of a couple of frost bearer "bombs" and 0.2 seconds later i was dead. And that's just one of so many ways to die and the lower your defenses are the more wide the variety of things that can kill you becomes and it is more and more likely to die.
Some might say "Pffff Unless you play in HC what does it matter?" but i can tell you that those people never solo leveled up a character beyond level 90. At this point ( level 96 ) based on my exp per hour while doing 78-80 maps it will take me around 30 hours non-stop farming to reach level 97 so 1h = 3,3% exp. And one death = 10% exp = 3 hours of gameplay. OH an we don't even factor in the fact that it is absolutely possible that you'll run out of 78-80 maps .. then you level up even slower and a death costs you even more hours of gameplay. And what about the wasted currency for chiseling your maps then making them rare and then using chaos orbs until you get a high amounts of extra IIQ just so you could have a better chance to get more map drops ...
So without good defenses you hit a wall at some point just because you die faster than you gain exp and at this point you could as well retire your character because e is not going anywhere anymore.
So if you have lower offenses you level up slower, if you don't have good defenses at some point you just stop leveling.

So yeah .. that's my opinion on the matter it always has been and it always will be. I know that many won't agree, i know that many like to smile with pride when they see their 500k dps ... but i'm more practical.

So my advice is focus both on defense and offense but when you reach high enough damage focus only on your defenses

For me it definitely does.
400 life is the difference between being one-shot and staying alive with just 400 life, bigger life pool also means more life regen per second.
3k dps sure is nice but nowhere near 400 life.
Though 9% increased life is nowhere near 400 life too ^^ it's more like 200 life.

So 200 life vs 3k dps ... that's hard to say ... none is much better than the other.