Theorycrafting a scorching ray cwc cremation necro for 3.8 - questions

So I took a look at the new necromancer ascendancy, and it looked pretty interesting, and somebody in the thread mentioned some interesting synergies with Aukuna's Will. I decided I wanted to try and make a build out of it (assuming Aukuna's Will will be available in 3.8). I thought about going the volatile dead route, but blowing up all the zombies I wanted to keep around for Essence Glutton and Plaguebringer bonuses seemed counter productive, so I decided to blow up one at a time. Then I thought about what else I could do with a rapid hitting spell like cremation, and got a little bit inappropriately excited.

The theory I'm working with is using scorching ray, cremation, herald of agony, and constant generation of zombies through CwDT and Scold's Bridle, possibly using at least one Fevered Mind jewel to amplify that


One thing:
1) I haven't played since Delve, and I haven't played a Witch since...2.4, maybe? A lot of the newer mechanics are unfamiliar to me, so please tell me if I've overlooked something build ruining.

Anyway, what I eventually settled on was this:

Scorching Ray-CWC-Cremation-Elemental Focus-GMP/Infused Channelling-Poison

Scorching ray as a base channelling skill and providing the fire debuff, which helps both the projectiles and the corpse explosion from cremation. Infused channelling for late game with a good CwC crafted staff because controlled destruction etc don't scale secondary damage. If someone has a better support gem that will scale it, let me know. Poison is iffy- I messed around in standard with just HoA and GMP on cremation, and had no trouble sustaining ¬30 stacks against a single target, so see if it's needed I guess. Additionally, using scorching ray provides a consistent mana use/damage feedback loop for Scold's. Though that will scale up given the cast speed increases from consuming corpses.

Herald of Agony-Damage On Full Life-Minion Damage-Vicious Projectiles-Pierce-Added Fire Damage

Mostly standard HoA, with added fire damage given that we have scorching ray debuff, flammability, and resistance penetration.

CwDT-Raise Zombie-Minion Life

This is the part that's going to be a headache. CwDT has a .25 second cooldown, while CwC is every .35 seconds, so that part is fine, but balancing the mana use vs increasing cast speed, damage mitigation from the chaos golem, etc, working out how much damage that actually inflicts every .25 seconds to work out what level CwDT and thus Raise Zombie it can support, and then factoring in Fevered Mind(s)... without in game data I imagine it won't be possible to accurately model.

Bane-Flammability-Desecrate-Arcane Surge

Desecrate for manual corpse generation when required. It uses more mana than Bane, so arcane surge gets pegged to that use.

Flame Dash-Faster Casting

Movement

Discipline, Summon Chaos Golem, Convocation
Discipline for defence and Watcher's Eye ES on hit mod, chaos golem is sort of optional, but it's the only one that does anything that is sort of useful for this build, convocation as a panic button.

Here's the tentative PoB: https://pastebin.com/245FWaGH

For the new ascendancies, I figured on Plaguebringer, Corpse Pact, Essence Glutton, Commander of Darkness (this last one is flexible, but since I can't reach Unnatural Strength or Bone Barrier more cast speed for Scold's Bridle and free resistances sounds good). Lots of regen, damage, increased cast speed, enemies are chilled and shocked. Fun times.

Tree-wise, CI based, Zealot's Oath for extra regen, some ES leech, later to be supplemented with a ES on hit Watcher's Eye. Scaling the corpse explosion part of cremation is done by flat damage increases, fire damage increase, elemental damage increase, and minion damage increase via Spiritual Aid. Notably, spell damage doesn't scale it.

Gear-wise, Aukuna's Will and Scold's Bridle are the build enabling items. It should have enough mana to run HoA and discipline without Coming Calamity, but any 3.8 changes could upset that. For weapons, I imagine a good crafted staff would be BiS. Maybe Queen's Decree for an extra zombie?

Jewels: Watcher's Eye with ES on hit, Unnatural Talent, some Fevered Minds as required.

Bandits: Kill all

Pantheon: Probably Lunaris/Tukohama.


So, that's where I've gotten so far. Given that builds I make myself tend to go badly, I figured I'd open it up to improvement.

Questions:

1) Will it work, or have I overlooked something fundamental and idiotic?

2) Will it be too squishy? I don't know what the standard is at the moment for survivability, but this will have plenty of sustain even if it doesn't have the largest EHP pool.

3) Any uniques/master crafts/other new mechanic stuff that would really help this build that I'm not aware of?

4) Any optimisations I could make on the tree?

5) Anyone want to hedge a guess if the 'corpses you spawn have 50% more life' on Corpse Pact will interact with Aukuna's 'zombies count as corpses' to give them more life? Because that would be nice.