Wow, I just walked through the last boss of Act 3 cruel by slapping him repeatedly with my mace. Invigorating gameplay. Probably went down in about a minute. Didn't use a potion.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, I finally decided to cap my block and simultaneously found an advanced mace with +150% physical and some life leech, and now I can just stand in front of things holding down my mouse button. I don't know if I have great DPS for 67, it was about 12k with full rage stacks. My resistances aren't capped and frankly kind of suck.
Cruel really was vastly easier than the first playthrough, and I don't think a single boss presented a challenge other than the forgemaster, and that's just because I'm melee, frankly.
Titan +50% to minor passives, I think, is a bit overpowered for late game and only increases in value the more passives you pick up. +7% block nodes, +18% armor nodes, +15% damage nodes everywhere.
Dreading endgame, I've heard it sucks. Might take a break.
Which mitigates like 20% of big hits even with full armour stacking
This is clearly a deliberate design choice, similar to Dark Souls, they want you to dodge big hits, which is why they are unblockable, unavoidable, and basically ignore armor. You're not supposed to be able to build your way through it, at least not for a while. Stacking defenses is only really supposed to prevent you from getting oneshot so you can make a mistake and pop a consumable potion.
He makes a good point here about the relative value of energy shield since it's literally just there to eat big hits and give a big EHP pool.
