Help for a templar in trouble?

I've been attempting to build an elemental staff templar and it seemed to be going fine, but I feel like I've run into a wall now that I'm in the second act of cruel. Mobs of normal archers and blues just destroy me.

Here is a link to my intended build:



And here is where I'm currently at:



I'm currently using clarity for mana regeneration, infernal blow with melee physical and elemental weapon damage, sweep with life gain on hit, added lightning damage and weapon elemental damage. I use molten shell and regeneration totem, but I find that re-casting in the middle of the fight tends to be the point where things go south, if I don't just get obliterated in the first few moments.

I've been considering using enduring cry, but honestly, I'm at a loss.

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

(I'll work out how to link items if it's relevant, I think my gear is average at best. Energy shield and armour with a mix of resistances.)

Right, got the whole linking thing figured out. Gear is below, what there is of it.

Just my guess, currently you virtually have 0 elemental resistance on Cruel difficulty. You should have enough life and armor to take more than a few physical hits, especially if you have morten shell and Enduring Cry. I see some people use Determination too but it's not a must. So I think it's the elemental damage part, plus the number of archers shooting at once that takes you out.

One more important part is the choice of skill. Infernal Blow is a slow casting, single target skill (until the explosion). So basically you have to charge in, smash 1 mob with Infernal Blow while taking all incoming hits. Usually people use something else to support Infernal Blow. For example, 1h mace for faster casting, or Shock totem, or Ice Nova to keep enemies from dealing damage to you.

Also because of the choice of skill, your Infernal Blow doesn't really do much damage I think. There's nothing multiplicative that boosts its damage like Critical multiplier, Critical Chance, Fire Resistance debuff, Shock, etc. I'm not sure if the Melee Physical Damage gem increases the fire damage of Elemental Blow or just some extra physical damage. The AOE of Infernal Blow is also very very small. You would be much better off using Lightning Strike + Weapon Elemental Damage + Faster Attack, and a spell totem + Detonate death, to replicate the effect of Infernal Blow, which much better result because with these you would do AOE damage all the time, with faster attack, and chance to do extra damage thanks to shock state.

For single target damage I recommend Heavy Strike for the stun effect. You should also use Leap Smash to get around. Decoy Totem definitely helps to bait enemies too, especially against bosses.

Cheers for the input. Between the elemental resists from diamond skin, elementalist and the energy shield / armour nodes and my equipment, I think I'm at something like 65% across the board on cruel at the moment.

As far as I understood, infernal blow converts X amount of my melee physical into elemental damage, so I stuck melee physical and elemental weapon supports on it. Currently infernal one shots all the none-blue mobs, but yeah, it is hella-slow. Hadn't considered leap attack, don't know why... I can't critical due to resolute technique, not sure what else to stick on. The boosts from elemental weapon and melee physical were something like 65% and 32% respectively, while my fire penetration would only be like 16%.

I'll try lightning strike and leap slam. Currently I can't cast both clarity and determination, which is a bit annoying as they're both very nice.

(I haven't used faster attack yet simply because I haven't found one.)

Any more comments or advice would be greatly appreciated.