Can you help me fix this build?

Hi,

with the patch 3.18 i started to play POE again. before 3.18 i only played at the release of the game. Well, not really. i never played further than act 3.
With patch 3.18 i played a trickster, but had no idea what i was doing. i managed to die me through the game and finally finished all acts.
after that i got interested in how you get such insane builds and have an really strong character. so i watched some beginner guids on youtube. That time i played a juggernaut. i managed to get at least to T10 maps, but found my limit there.
in 3.19 i started with a witch. i decided to build a lightning elementalist. thats by far the most fun character for me for now, until i got to the endgame. now im constantly dying. can't level up anymore because im always loosing my xp. tried every different aspect of the game, but im dying everywhere.
so, can you give me a hint or some advice on how to make this character any stronger, so i can enjoy playing again? but keep in mind, you are talking to a noob in this game. thanks!

so, here is my build:
https://pastebin.com/pB0CKypu

https://pobb.in/fN9X3QTJi-0P

@schumi170388

Hiyas! The first thing I notice is that you're spread rather thin with your skills. I can't tell which skill you're using to deal your damage; you've got 3 main different active skills. You should pick one damage-dealing skill, set up as many support gems as you can on it, and the rest of your gem slots should be filled with supporting skills. For example, a Rain of Arrows build would have a 6-linked bow or body armor with the Rain of Arrows skill gem, and most of a fight would be spent casting Rain of Arrows. The rest of the skill gems could be filled by some auras, golems, and cast-when-damage-taken defensive skills.

The next thing is your life/energy shield situation. Usually, you should focus on only one. Life builds should spec fully into life on the passive tree, then find armor or EV on their gear. Note that chaos damage bypasses ES, so any time you get hit by chaos damage, you're currently defending with half the hitpoints. ES builds spec fully into ES, get ES on gear, and use CI (chaos inoculation). Hybrid builds focus mainly on either life or ES. A popular hybrid defense involves using Shavronne's Wrappings and several Arrogance-supported auras. Another hybrid option is speccing mainly into life and getting the Eldritch Battery keystone, which basically adds ES to your mana pool. I don't recommend going hybrid with your first build, since Shav's can be expensive and it's trickier to deal with both hp and ES. Whatever you choose, you will need two other things: damage mitigation and recovery. You can get mitigation through armor, resists, block, flat damage reduction, endurance charges, and more. You can get recovery from ES recharge (ES only), life flasks (life only), leech, regen, and more.

Finally, I'll go over the damage part of your tree. Remove anything that's irrelevant to either your survival or the one skill you want. This means all ES nodes if you want to go full life, and all life nodes if you want to go full ES. Next, remove the weird nodes that don't affect you at all. This is a mistake I made in the beginning of the game as well, and it's caused by the highly specific grammar that PoE's modifiers use. For example, Mastermind of Discord doesn't help you unless you can apply Lightning Exposure. I don't see any sources of Lightning Exposure in your build, which is a different status effect from simply reducing lightning resistance (through a curse) or penetrating lightning resistance. Unless AoE drastically improves your damage output, sacrifice that for some more damage nodes/support gems.

I'll leave you with some further reading. Look around in this forum at elemental/lightning caster builds and figure out their main mechanics. Why do they work? Go to the game's wiki (the .net wiki, not the fandom one, which is outdated) and read about each mechanic and skill gem you want to use. There will be a list of related items and skills in each page, along with some mechanics that synergize well with whatever you've looked up. When you're finished with that, start asking Global Chat ingame specific questions about your build. For example, what are some sources of leech/block for a lightning witch caster using life/ES?

I'm working on a troublesome build myself, so I'm still learning, but I hope that this information helps. Good luck!