Uhh… Arcane Sanctuary? It’s awesome! 
Enjoying the (re)boost to nova.
For level 80, this is the build I use:
- 20 Blizzard
- 15 Ice Blast
- 7 Cold Mastery
- 20 Hydra
- 4 Fire Bolt
- 5 Fire Ball
- 13 Fire Mastery
- 1 point teleport
You can use memory staff for buffs if you so choose. After this point, I like to bring Cold mastery to -125% with + skills and then rest of the points into Blizzard synergies. After maxing Ice Blast, go with Ice Bolt to maximize Ice Blast damage for Fire Immunes. The 4 points in Fire Bolt are also to max Fire Ball damage for Cold Immune mobs.
Edit: on the note of Memory staff, any + Energy Shield base has to be found but you can shop for a +3 Frozen/Shiver Armor white base Gnarled or Battle Staff and have a 50% chance of 4 sockets using cube recipe or 100% chance of 4 sockets using Larzuk. I prefer the cube.
Arcane Sanctuary is a great farming location for lightning builds. Chain Lightning is still more effective than Nova though and there really is no need for Hydra at all in AS.
Took me a while to get through A2 Hell with my FoH, had (and still have bit will likely respec) a conviction variant and that (and about 1 millions mana pots and some help of my merc) helped my through A2 (Maggot felt like real Hell :P)
Teleport staff can help a lot, if you have a char at 23 in act 3 normal you should be able to shop one very fast.
Once you reach A3 it will become a lot better (I’ve done countless of Flayer Jungle runs because it was fun as hell to those little buggers die in waves).
Mostly use Redemption as aura and charge for movement.
I’m running a nova/hydra sorc as well. Griff with lite jewel, eschutas with fire jewel, coh and phoenix. Hella fun. Energy shield works well with phoenix too especially with the blood to mana curse. Hydras melt bosses too especially d.
The curse is only relevant in Act 5, use an Act 2 Prayer merc with Insight to counteract most of the curse effects.
The decrep curse is also very useful for diablo
Try equipping a merc with Kelpie Snare 
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Yea, Kelpie rocks esp. when fighting the Ancients and Baal. Works on Duriel as well.
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