PoB: https://pobb.in/kc5pFI73edqg

T16 map video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9ujnedli74

This was sort of an ad lib build I put together because I didn't want to keep recasting my Frostbolts manually. The playstyle of casting Frostbolt and then casting Ice Nova is too clunky, and it makes you very vulnerable to melee monsters with haste mods who get too close to hit with all of your overlapping novas.

I decided to automate the Frostbolts with Kitava's Thirst instead of the usual CoC route because there are charms which give a 10% chance to recover 10% of mana, and self-casting Ice Nova gives me the option of using Pledge of Hands for massive DPS. However, a bit of playtesting revealed that I still needed a "helper" skill because Kitava's Thirst doesn't activate on the echoed casts with Spell Echo. I needed a skill that I could cast to get my first set of Frostbolts out, and Ice Nova of Deep Freeze (which does not expand from Frostbolt) seemed like the logical choice.

Since I'm using both Ice Nova trans gems, it is still a two button playstyle, but the damage and more importantly the freeze are applied to monsters when pressing the first button, so I'm not getting killed by monsters in the time it takes to cast a two spell combo. Ice Nova of Deep Freeze offers a ton of defensive utility, especially when combined with the glove implicit that makes freezes spread to nearby enemies. It is also perfect for activating damage amplifying effects like Arcane Surge and Bonechill.

I am also using Tawhanuku's Timing because I am spending a huge amount of mana (nearly 1000 per second) activating Kitava's Thirst. I am not investing in ES, but I have a decent buffer of 700 ES that is constantly being refilled by this ring. I am not entirely sure if this combo is worth the ring slot considering how starved I am for simple stats like life, mana, and resistances, but the defensive benefit is very noticeable when counteracting DoTs and small hits. It also allows me to survive without complete stun immunity by leaning on the Occultist ascendancy node that prevents stuns while I have ES. This part feels a bit janky because I only have partial stun avoidance when my ES is down, but I haven't found any other good way to deal with stuns. The only other realistic option I can think of is to roll stun avoidance on my flasks, but that would mean getting rid of my Taste of Hate which is my only source of physical damage mitigation or sacrificing the 23% cast speed I get from the Horsefly suffix on my Silver Flask.

I can't fit spell suppression in the build either. I have to path towards the Templar area to get the staff nodes and Arcane Capacitor. I'm susceptible to getting one shot by certain boss attacks because I don't have suppression, but I have 72% spell block that makes me extremely tanky against smaller spell hits that I receive while mapping. This build probably isn't suitable for ubers because there's no way for me to get suppress capped.

Things I would really like to squeeze into the build are culling strike and another source of physical damage taken as elemental damage, but I'm not sure where to get them. I'm considering changing the chest to a defensive rare to get more life and physical damage mitigation, but I don't know exactly what kind of item I would be looking to craft, and it's possible that such a rare item wouldn't even be better because I would drastically reduce my ability to freeze enemies. The primary benefit of such a rare chest would be against monsters that I can't freeze.

But anyway, I've been looking at a lot of these issues for the past week and this is the best I could put together. I would appreciate some fresh insights if you guys have ideas of things I missed, especially if it would help me get in some of the more basic things like culling strike and physical damage mitigation that I haven't been able to fit in. I think one or two of the uniques in my build have to go, but they are all helping me out quite a lot, so it's hard to get rid of them.