Armour/ES or Life - what is more important for high difficulties?

Heya all,

I am building a Frost Nova Templar at the moment and this is my current aim but I am thinking about switching from armor/ES, shieldblock/defense from shields to the all those life nodes right to the +10 armor nodes. I would exchange 8



Since I have no experience with any difficulty past the second I don't know what passives I should get and I don't want to gimp my character again. Since Defense only helps against melee I have the feeling that life would be more important, especially against chaos damage mobs.

greetz!

Life is very important because of all the chaos damage that gets thrown around at higher difficulties.

Since you're already so far over that way, it may be worth it for you to grab Chaos Inoculation. You could drop all the points invested in life and probably even your shield nodes too. Instead grab some more energy shield with nodes like Arcane Focus and Unnatural Calm.

Frost Nova is a relatively weak attack as you get higher in difficulty. I'd suggest switching over to Freezing Pulse or Ice Spear. Cold spells benefit hugely from critical strike so I would suggest boosting that where available. Something a little more like THIS.

But dont you think I need more +ES nodes to really benefit from ci and increased regen speed for ES because I cant heal myself up with it?

Actually I wanted to create a tanky frost nova templar who runs into the enemies and slows/freezes as many as possible to make it easier for my group to kill them. Until now I have no damage problems but that might change at higher difficulties if you are right. If I switch to ice spear or freezing pulse I dont really benefit from being a templar because I dont have to get up close anymore then. A witch would have been the better choice then I assume.
How is lightning nova for dmg? I might reroll a lightning nova templar then. Once tried out the lightning nova on a witch but found it quite hard to hit enemies when they got up close but that can be countered by a knockback support gem.

Another two questions: 1.do ice spear or freezing pulse benefit from aoe radius/dmg? If not I will have to respec a lot ;)
2. If I go CI should I use pure ES armor or still hybrid armor/es equip?