PoE Lightning builds without Ruthless

Hello everyone! I am currently playing a self-cast Archmage Ball Lightning Hierophant. The damage is okay and sufficient for general T16 alch & go mapping. However, when I turn up the notch a little (more juice) or try pinnacle bosses the lack of physical mitigation really shows itself. I can complete most tasks that I set my sights on, it's just that I'll get randomly one-shotted and die along the way, losing a few portals. I'd like to add a little more tankiness to eventually make progress towards level 96 while also being able to moderately juice my maps. With that many unique items

Saw somebody post their Poison Winter Orb build earlier today and thought I'd share the Poison Ball Lightning I made. It's more or less identical to Poison Spark, both in tree and gameplay feel, except for bossing when I swap gems and rings. You (probably) shouldn't play this? It does feel a tiny bit worse than Poison Spark in doing most things. But it was a nice change of pace for a bit, and I have a strong suspicion that as long as you have an Original Sin, you could get Ball Lightning going farther on a smaller budget than Spark. (i.e. if I had no Mageblood or Nimis or Grand Spectrums e

PoB: This build uses Kinetic Blast to Cast on Crit Dark Pact + Chain. I threw this together since I got a minion life relic and always collect CoC poison gear for fun to try stuff. The idea is that KB might sometimes look like a real CoC skill if you chain it off a Tornado. We create Tornadoes and skeletons using Poet's Pen. This build slapped way harder than I expected when I equipped it, so I thought I'd share. I'm wearing literal random gear. The core of the build can be considered poet's pen + watcher's eye + rings.

Hi, I've been trying to build around a Herald Thunder autobomber (HoT), using a mana-stacker approach, by combining the "Essence Glutton" necro node via forbbiden jewels (2% base mana/s) and Elementalists (1% base mana/s) from "Mastermind of discord" and Agnostic\ to sustain both life and mana. \Agnostic is provided via Sanctified relic, so it's added under custom modifiers. HoT is in the Crest of Desire to minimize the mana reservation. Build is so far decent for clearing t16 maps - the sustain is GREAT compared