Witch; one or two elements?

I'm currently playing a lvl49 Witch with Arc and Ice Spear as my main attacks, but I've come to rely more and more on just Arc, leaving Ice Spear for unique monsters due to the chill/freeze effects.
I'm wondering if it's a good idea to respec my cold passive skill points into other, more helpful stuff.
Or maybe there's a good cold skill gem that might complement Ice Spear nicely?

My current skill tree:

Potential lightning skill tree:

Potential cold skill tree:


I'm also wondering if Chaos Inoculation is a good idea, and, if so, when it might be relevant to grab it. I'm using the Discipline aura.
Chaos hasn't given me any real trouble yet so I'll wait, but those Energy Shield nodes are tempting.

Quite a few questions hidden in small post. :P Ultimately only you can answer the questions so it's up to you but I can give you some piece of advice.

Eh, Arc is really good AoE spell and Ice Spear is good single target spell as you're doing right now. Normally I would suggest newcomer to just focus on single element but since you actually have a working skill setup... you could use just crit, cast speed, spell damage, general elemental damage nodes to scale both of those skills and then only pick the real strong specific elemental nodes if they happen to be available within few nodes.

The way how you took like 10+ cold only nodes and 10+ lightning only nodes is not efficient and will come and bite you in the ass later on.

For the CI question, yes, CI or lowlife is what you're ultimately going for when using ES as a main source of "life" pool. However, when you go into CI you need to find ways to deal with stun, status ailments and usually leech too. Answers to these could be Eye of Chayula (unique neck), Dream Fragments (unique ring) and Ghost Reaver keystone. Playing CI is a bit more complex than just life, so again, wouldn't suggest it for new players but it's totally doable however.

Here's a 60 point tree (you had 60 points in your linked tree) with only spell crit, cast speed, etc nodes (which scale both Arc and Ice Spear) which also took CI already and reached out for Ghost Reaver too. I wouldn't use pathing like that probably myself but it's in the frames of your current tree so I think you could spec into that with your 12-18 respec points from quests.

If you want more specific answer or just yes or no, tell me. :P

I like that skill tree, but I don't have enough respec points for that. I don't remember exactly (and I can't check right now because I'm at another computer) but I think I have around 13-15 points and I counted at least 25 points differing in your version.
If I were to continue using both elements I could remove some nodes from both but not all. Would you say that Breath of Lightning/Rime would be better to keep than Heart of Thunder/Ice?

About Chaos Inoculation, I think I'm gonna skip that train of thought for now. Since I don't trade I think it's going to be hard for me to get those items. I'm still curious about your mention of Ghost Reaver, though. Does it have some extra benefit I don't get or did you (unfortunately erroneously) assume I had any kind of life leech?

Thanks for your input.

You're right, it would require around 30 respecc points.

Priorize the element you use for clearing packs (lightning here), then add maybe Added Lightning to Ice Spear to give it a nice shock effect too and then the points aren't wasted for it either.

Both of those uniques I mentioned are fairly cheap and easy to get btw. What league do you play in?

Ghost Reaver basically just because you need some sort of leech when you're attacking mobs directly (without totems, trap, minons etc.), you really do, especially when playing with energy shield since you can't use potions to regen your hp. Once you get into higher level content, without leech your gameplay becomes slow and tedious without it.

You can't support two different elements as main spell. You just don't have enough passive points for that. Either go arc or go cold witch. Mixing both won't work in the long run.

CI is not an option but a necessity with your tree. You won't make it through chaos damage in merciless with that small life pool. This lvl 49 char being your highest char you don't have the ressources to make a viable low life build. That only leaves CI or starting over with a new char using a life build this time.
You should be aware that playing CI severly reduces the gear pool you can choose from (life can be a mod on any kind of gear while ES needs ES or ES-hybrid gear).
Usually people play up to lvl~60 (act 2 merciless) as a life build and then respec into an CI-es build. You usually also don't do this on your first char as you need some good ES gear ready when respeccing which you just don't have collected yet on your first play through.

Either play Grughal's tree and hope for some lucky gear drops along the way (and buy yourself an eye of chaylua) or start a new char (arc, life build). Lvl 49 can be reached over a weekend.

Yup, there aren't any elemental immunes here like in D2, so using two elements is no advantage, resistant enemies are dealt with using curse(s) and a penetration gem of choice.

Another branch in the spokes of that idea is wand+shield is the preferred setup and you just don't have the room for two properly supported skills there.

Staff users can afford two main spells but they usually aren't of different elements but differ in utility. For instance, a crit cold caster might use both freezing pulse and ice spear, with freezing pulse being used at close range and ice spear for sniping.

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Grughal wrote:

Priorize the element you use for clearing packs (lightning here), then add maybe Added Lightning to Ice Spear to give it a nice shock effect too and then the points aren't wasted for it either.

This seems like the best course of action. Thanks.

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Grughal wrote:

Both of those uniques I mentioned are fairly cheap and easy to get btw. What league do you play in?

Standard league.

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Grughal wrote:

Ghost Reaver basically just because you need some sort of leech when you're attacking mobs directly (without totems, trap, minons etc.), you really do, especially when playing with energy shield since you can't use potions to regen your hp. Once you get into higher level content, without leech your gameplay becomes slow and tedious without it.

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Bada_Bing wrote:

You can't support two different elements as main spell. You just don't have enough passive points for that. Either go arc or go cold witch. Mixing both won't work in the long run.

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Bada_Bing wrote:

Usually people play up to lvl~60 (act 2 merciless) as a life build and then respec into an CI-es build. You usually also don't do this on your first char as you need some good ES gear ready when respeccing which you just don't have collected yet on your first play through.

The thing is I probably won't play through Merciless anyway. I'm asking mainly to see how good I can get before I get bored of this particular character.

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raics wrote:

Yup, there aren't any elemental immunes here like in D2, so using two elements is no advantage, resistant enemies are dealt with using curse(s) and a penetration gem of choice.

Thanks for pointing that out. I think it was the immunities/extreme resistances in D2 that got me into two elements. But I can't say for sure because I created this character two years ago (on the day; just looked it up). I've had a hiatus.

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raics wrote:

Another branch in the spokes of that idea is wand+shield is the preferred setup and you just don't have the room for two properly supported skills there.

I'm not sold about switching to staff, but I'll check into it and start identifying dropped rare staves to see if I could switch.

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Bada_Bing wrote:

Lvl 49 can be reached over a weekend.

No. Not for me. I spent two evenings getting from 43 to 49 and those hours were more than I usually spend on a game for an evening. Besides I have social obligations almost all weekends.

Not completely true to the topic but it's still about my build. I leveled my witch to 50 earlier today.
What's good equipment for her? Am I doing it alright? Since it's my only character on this level I don't have any point of reference.

Here's all my current equipment:

I already know the belt, rings and amulet isn't great but I have a hard time finding anything better.

I also respec'd and used one or two Orbs of Regret to change things around. That and reorganizing my gems definitely made my DPS go up a bit.

Here's my tree if anyone's interested: