Feedback on mechanics of explosive spear & storm lance combo

Playing a Ritualist Huntress for my first build and I've settled on an elemental projectile build using explosive spear to pop storm lance. I'm not using frenzy charges for either. I'm in cruel act 2, at level 52.

The combo damage is great, it clears bosses and packs well after speccing into the available aoe nodes, using herald of thunder, etc. I have no issues with the damage output, only the skill mechanics and 'feel'.

My rotation is to throw an explosive spear in front of a pack and throw 2 storm lances on it before it explodes. There's different breakpoints of attack speed that affect the optimal rotation (ie if attack speed is to slow to get 2 storm lances out before the explosive spear explodes, you should probably throw one storm lance before the explosive spear and one after).

The issue is that there are a lot of situations where you will be overwhelmed at melee range before the explosive spear triggers your storm lance rod explosion, even with Expedite support (40% reduced detonation time) and there's no other means of scaling down the detonation time. You can't really use storm lance by itself to stave off monsters while you wait for your combo as the damage is too low (takes 5 hits to kill small white mobs).

I've tried using thunderous leap to explode them instead, and the damage is good, but its attack speed is so slow the time to trigger the combo is roughly the same except now you've put your character into the middle of the monsters.

In my opinion we just need some cluster on the tree for detonation time on spear skills, similar to what we have with crossbow grenades. Even making those nodes work for all detonation skills instead of specific to grenades could be a solution.

try using a wider variety of skills based on your situation - you are given 10 skill slots.