I think one issue with my build may be that I tried to have my cake and eat it too, with some melee and some ranged. I'm accustomed to making RPG characters that are well-rounded. But I'm thinking on my next try, I'll aim for loading up on one or the other and see how that goes. I also haven't tried Totems at all, and it's a playstyle I don't think I've seen in other, similar games, so I'm curious to give those a whirl.
Totems are a great way to learn the game - they're safe and require pretty much no investment to perform well (although there are some nice upgrades you can trade for if you're so inclined). I find them a little boring these days, there's not
that much actual interacting with the game, just drop your totems and watch them kill stuff, but the first totem character I played a few leagues back was enjoyable, and being able to not have to focus on casting/attacking while fighting bosses is very nice. Prior to 3.5 I'd have suggested going for a Heirophant (Templar ascendancy) for a totem build, but the changes to support gems might've opened up more options, haven't really looked at it - though Heirophant is still definitely not a bad option.
One very important thing to note regarding totems is that outside of Ancestral Warchief, the actual totem skills aren't very good for a dedicated totem build - you want to use a spell linked to the totem support gem. Arc (as usual) is a very good option. Glacial Cascade works well, as do Frost Bolt and Freezing Pulse. Flameblast used to be pretty popular, not sure how it is these days, but I can't see any reason for it to be bad.
Another similar style of play is with the new Brand skills - personally I find them more fun than totems, in that you want to be a bit more active in the use of the skills, but they still allow you plenty of chance to let the skills do their damage while focusing on avoiding death. You probably don't want to mix totems and brands, as the best totem keystone stops you dealing damage (and brands count as you), while the best brand keystone reduces the number of totems you can have - you can still get away with a Decoy Totem on a Brand build to help your survivability, or maybe some Scorching Ray Totem stuff to help lower Fire Resistance, but you're not going to be getting big damage out of them the way a dedicated totem build can (again, this comes back to the core principle of PoE builds that the majority of the time you should be focused on one skill).
Alternatively, traps also make for a good experience for someone who wants to push towards the higher levels and into mapping for the first time, being safer than either melee or self cast spells, having very good damage, and requiring little to no investment. They're not as "fire and forget" as totems, but they can make many boss fights significantly easier because you can basically pre-load a lot of damage by dropping traps while the boss is going through its pre-fight animations. For such a build, you'd want to play as a Shadow, going Saboteur for your ascendancy. Unlike totems, some of the trap skills - particularly Fire and Lightning - are very solid, or you could use the trap support on a wide range of spells (and if you'd guessed that Arc would be a good choice, you would be completely right. In fact, Arc Traps is probably
the best low budget start build in the game. With a decent skill tree layout, you can crush pretty much anything the game throws at you, even with self found gear. This would be my personal recommendation for a build that can do, well, pretty much whatever you want - map clearing, delving, bossing...).
(Basically, if you're actually casting a spell yourself, you're probably doing it wrong....)
Whatever you chose to do in the end, I would
definitely suggest looking at some build guides (the official forms are pretty good for this). Even if you don't follow them religiously, having an idea of what your skill tree should look like will help a lot. Doing a build from scratch is an advanced player thing in this game.
They were going to release it in February I think. Oh well, better if they make it right in the first place. As if it would happen in game development 
