New to CwC manabond/Mjölner Hierophant, a few questions

About a week ago I stumbled across this youtube guide on how to make a cwc manabond/mjölner hiero that looked very interesting and powerful. In lake of Kalandra I made a CoC cospris/ice nova/frostbolt inquisitor, which was pretty powerful and fun, but unfortunately ended up feeling pretty subpar compared to my icetrap/sunblast elementalist.

After watching the video, i decided that there was indeed a chance that this character could match my elementalist, and there was no doubt in my mind that he would surpass my previous inquisitor in both damage and survivability. Plus, I had never actually made a hierophant before, despite playing since open beta.

'Hieronidas' is now level 87 and has so far been living up to my expectations. Even with less than a 5 divine investment (compared to over 30 on my inquisitor) he is has both more damage and survivability. Not quite beating my elementalist, but that is an unfair comparison, as she is level 94 with over 50 divines invested into her and quite easily the strongest character i've ever made.

But i like the playstyle, and I feel that with enough investment he could supplant her. I do have a few questions for some of you more seasoned hierophant players.

I've decided to invest another 10 divines in him, and i am wondering where best to spend them. Most of it is pretty selfevident, (like getting a conductivity curse-on-hit ring) but I could use some input from you guys on a few topics.
For example, I've been debating on a Forbidden Flame/flesh jewel, but most of the impactful ascendencies for this build seem to belong to the inquisitor. 'Righteous providence' and 'inevitable judgement' are like 25-35 divines for both jewels and thus out of my league financially, as is 'the squire' on a sidenote.

'Augury of penitence' is an interesting one, providing a straight up 16% damage multiplier and 8% less ele dmg taken for about 2 divines.

'Illuminated Devotion' just seems weak, which is exactly why i chose 'conviction of power' over it for my own ascendencies. The lifeleech does nothing even with Zealot's Oath, the 50% reduction to non-damaging ailments would allow me (in the future, i still need the resist) to use zealotry over purity of elements, thus indirectly giving a damage boost. Also these are dirt-cheap at around 30c each. But right now it's mostly just a 30% increased area of effect, which is very weak for 2 jewel slots.

'Time of need' from the Guardian is actually very interesting, and also very cheap at less than 75c for both. 80% permanent curse reduction is huge, especially with how punishing curses can be when you're struggling to keep yourself res-capped. Also there is the 30% life regenerated every 5 seconds, which should work with zealot's oath. That's 6% es regenerated pr. second, which is a massive boon for just 2 jewel slots.

'Sanctuary' from the inquisitor makes enemies on consecrated ground take 15% more damage. We have consecrated ground while stationary, which we rarely are though. If this works with Bottled Faith, which I could steal from my elementalist, (are flask effects considered 'yours'?) it might work, but zealotry seems mandatory. Compared to augury of penitence, sanctuary is situational and not with a 100% uptime, with some es regen and curse reduction attached to it, but missing the reduction of elemental damage taken. I think augury of penitence is stronger.

'Instruments of virtue' seems weak. The added spell damage from a mjölner, even 29% corrupted one with added physical damage implicits is neglible, as most of our damage comes from manabonds interaction with an emptied large manapool, not cyclone. Pretty sure that mathematically it loses to augury of penitence 100% of the time.

'Arcane Blessing' could be interesting. Obviously i have chosen this one as my own ascendency, but in theory i could respec to 'pursuit of faith' and have arcane blessing from jewels (since pursuit of faith is like 5 divs but arcane blesing is like 50c), and make some sort of spelltotem shenanigans as a secondary source of damage. Seems sketchy to me and would probably require a much more experienced hierophant/totem player than I am in order to fully abuse.

So the TLDR of this is that i think that Augury of Penitence gives me the best that (my) money can buy for offence, and Time of Need is a very close second and probably the best defensive option.

What are your thoughts on that?
---

Another and unrelated question that i've been pondering has been the incorporation of chill/freeze effects into the build. Having played icetrap saboteurs and elementalists for several leagues in a row, one lesson that i've learned is that reliably and consistently chilling enemies (especially freezing them) rank amongst some of the most incredible defensive layers a character can have. Therefore i am seriously considering going this route, but i am looking for some input before I jump into that.

In order to make manabond chill on this build your options are very limited. Three Dragons is out of the questions since Indigon is mandatory. Expeditions end is theorytically possible, but it's like 10 divs this league and The Ivory Tower provides so much energyshield that whatever added defensive layers gained from freezing/chilling might not even cancel out. 'Hrimsorrow' is straight up terrible, Shaper's Touch are amazing for this build and the physical damage portion of cyclone is probably too low to freeze a white mob on a crit.

'Call of The Void' is a very interesting option. It doesn't allow us to freeze, just chill, but is probably the lowest possible investment. On top of that, the downside of being chilled yourself is avoided thanks to purity of elements, and since manabond does a ton of damage and i've already invested in a bit of non-damaging ailment effect, many enemies are chilled by 30% and thus deal 15% less damage. Call of the void has neither strength, intelligence, life, mana, mana regen or energyshield, so using COTV obviously means sacrificing a sizeable portion of your mana, damage and energyshield, but my hypothesis is that the reduced damage taken from chilled enemies cancels out the lower ES, and the added chill effect is the tradeoff for having less mana and doing less damage. Also, because COTV allows you to shatter chilled enemies, it also makes it possible, atleast in theory, to use Herald of Ice for increased clear-speed, if you can someone fit it into the build. Very interested to hear opinions from someone who has tested this, since i am currently unable to yield Mjölnir without 2 rings with strength for atleast another 3-4 levels.

Another option would be to convert 96% of lightning damage to cold, using 2 fully catalyzed Call of the Brotherhood rings. Now this is obviously more extreme than a single Call of the Void, but because lightning damage is converted, this allows both manabond and Shocknova/Arc to freeze. Obviously this calls for a complete restructuring of support gems and that a noticable portion of your passive skills be invested into freeze chance and non-damaging ailment effect, since 'overcharge' would be useless and the 'lightning mastery' effect that synergizes a large manapool with shock effect wouldn't work either. Also manabond might need to be supported with something like unbound ailments and bonechill. Those are some severe downsides to the point where they might not even be outweighed by a consistent freeze effect on unique mobs. Perhaps the best option is to use just one call of the brotherhood for 48% conversion. Lightning mastery and overcharge would still work, even at half capacity. Could be partially alleviate by changing manaleech i.e to unbound ailments and sacrifice a utility flask for a mana potion. Conductivity obviously changed to Ele weakness.

I haven't done the math, but if you can somehow consistently freeze and shock rare mobs without voiding the entire class identity (i.e your manapool) this could potentially be very powerful.

This post got a lot longer than originally intended. Oh well. Penny for your thoughts, templars?

You need to TL;DR more. You slipped it in the middle without cliffs.