[2.0 1mo HC] critique my BALL LIGHTNING crit scion

Hi there, I've decided to give Ball Lightning a go in 2.0 for the 1mo challenge league, last time I played it was in 1.3 and I was a non-crit Templar, this go around I think I'm switching to Scion and crit. I was looking for input from anyone who has played mapping-level Ball Lightning in 2.0!

At the moment I'm looking at prioritizing AOE by grabbing the scion and witch AOE nodes, and then running a Life/ES hybrid for defense. The rest of it is pretty straightforward, stack crit chance, power charges, zap everything dead. Tree looks like:

http://tinyurl.com/py4uu87

How would you change this tree up to make it more efficient? I was thinking it might be a good idea to switch to an eva build, drop the ES wheels, and grab acro/phase acro and arrow dancing, since ball lightning is such a long range skill, but idk, not much experience with this sort of thing so not sure it would be viable

I'm also undecided re: staff vs. dagger vs. wand, and shield or dual wield. Leaning towards dagger + shield so i can use whirling blades but again, not much experience here so idk.

And finally, what are the best crit ball lightning links? When I played it last time I found that I didn't like spell echo because it rooted you in place slightly longer which is bad for HC, also slower projectiles seemed like a good idea at first but in reality it just slowed clearspeed. So I will probably just go Ball Lightning + Faster Casting + Added Lightning + Lightning pen + crit dmg (will have 5 or 6 power charges so I figure crit chance is less useful here). Also not sure about Increased AOE as a support gem, so any input appreciated

Other links would be HoT + Assassins Mark + COH for power charges (might HoI work better here? not even sure if it procs charges), whirling blades + faster attacks for mobility, Wrath, and Vaal Storm Call + Spell Echo + light pen for bosses/beefy foes.

Again, any input is appreciated, thanks for your time!

edit: last question! what would the optimal jewel looks like for this build? is increased AOE a thing on jewels, or just area damage?