I respecced my Purifier when I went onto Elite difficulty to give up the Demolitionist attack skill (Fire strike tree) and invest points into the Inquisitor passive attack skills (Ranged Expertise and the other skills on the top line). It meant a massive drop in my DPS but I believe I am still killing enemies just as fast without having to down spirit pots all the time and fire resist enemies aren’t a problem any longer. In fact, I believe I have over 200 mana pots now because I don’t use them! Bursting round, chilling round and storm spread each have a devotion skill attached to them, so if any of those rounds go off, it’ll have a chance to proc meteor strike, tsunami and falcon swoop respectively.
Survivability is still tough. Grim Dawn is the first game though where I’m using the bags to hold resist gear that may not be optimal most of the time, but needed for certain areas. Obviously, the swamps mean I have a set of poison resist, and for the occult which is mostly chaos/bleeding damage I believe, it’ll be resist gear for that. I seem to do ok just getting elemental resist quite easily.