Hi, the ideal would be for you to use full protection gear, but it all depends if you're able to hunt using utamo only for emergencies and healing yourself and the EK easily, if you're using utamo all the time, you might wanna go for an all fire protection gear, while if you're combining HP and relying on utamo for emergencies then you want life leech aswell, as well, in both ways these are the items you wanna go for:
-Falcon Circlet with Mana leech and ML boost imbuements.
-Firemind Raiment
-Magma legs or if you're comfortable enough any legs with ML, and if you're rich Soulstrider xD
-Rainbow necklace, blister ring and sun catcher
-Umbral Master spellbook or spirit guide/lion spellbook with fire protection imbue
-Cobra Rod with crit/mana leech imbues (For the lifeleech on it)
For the runes, you wanna use Freeze on the stronger creature (or the one that spawns the most) and divine wrath and zap on the lesser creatures. And about the preys just use anything but defense prey, you might wanna use exp prey for the sake of your hr/exp. If you have anything else that I might add in this answer let me know and I will update it with more info.