Looking at the fire spells and comparing them to other games fire spells seem extremely lackluster in terms of design and ability. IMO it’s missing things like a meteor type spell, or hydra, or anything with real flavor. I’ve noticed that while fire did get a slight buff this go around, the spells themselves are odd in the interaction, like having such prohibitively long charge up times and only a chance to do what should be basic interactions like ignite, and explode mobs. Lightning and cold have atleast fundamentally thematic skills, but lightning is really the only one that has the fundamentals, flavor, and throughput a majority of the time.

I think to fix this they need to introduce some different, classic magic skills or come up with new ones. I think in order to make fire more viable it should be baseline that enemies explode when killed and that ignite naturally spreads. These are available, but are only available through gems or a talent on the tree - but they should be baseline interactions.

Just my opinion I know the devs said that lightning was so good because it chained, but it seems like that same ability and strength is locked behind wasting tree points and support gems and the spells themselves aren’t thematically good and are way too slow to be viable. Even fireball which is a class skill seems just done wrong with how weak it is in poe2.

Koolenn

10 | 15 hours ago

I don’t play spells a lot so can’t compare but imo ignite as a whole requires a redesign. Compared to poison and bleed it’s by far the least powerful and the most difficult to scale. I don’t like the fact that it needs heavy damage to do good DoT, it just forces another “crit build is king” situation. But usually when you do enough damage to apply huge ignite you don’t need ignite

LancingLash

4 | 15 hours ago

I would not say no to ignite just being removed and replacing it with scorch. Ignite can still exist for the dot specific skills like flamewall.

crearios

4 | 12 hours ago

I actually don’t mind ignite too much, I just feel there aren’t enough nodes on the tree that buff it enough to favour it over freeze or electrocute.

I’ve recently been running an Ice Strike Chonk where all ele damage converts to chaos and all chaos counts towards flammability and ignite. Maxxing out flammability was easy af; one hit and everything catches fire. So far I’ve managed to get to ~50% ignite magnitude (~150% increase from base) and I can’t see how to get more. Even being able to get to 75% in a straightforward manner I would say could make it more worthwhile.

Mass_Defect

1 | 3 hours ago

How are you making all of your chaos damage count towards flammability?

I’ve taken my Invoker about as far as one can be taken and now I’m leveling a Chayula. I’m turning all elemental damage to chaos via Original Sin but otherwise have been embracing the chaotic nature of Unraveling and scaling via straight attack damage, crit, and power charges.

It’s going well so far.

MyLittleBacon

6 | 16 hours ago

Moving solar orb to a staff only skill, and putting flame blast on a long cd seems like nerfs to me. Im surprised they didnt do a little more with fire spells this season since they added black flame to the tree and have all the cool purple recolors. Was also a bit disappointed raging spirits weren’t purple(unsure if it was just visual, or if they also didnt do chaos damage) and things like fire infused spells seemingly didnt also get the purple/chaos boost.

I agree that fire spells could use some work, not sure if guaranteed ignite/explosions, and auto spreading ignite is the way, though. Possibly just reworking some of the spells and adding some new ones so that they function slightly better, and feel better? Idk.

ryo3000

9 | 16 hours ago

Raging spirits isn’t a spell

Fire infused spells also aren’t fire spells

It needs bothe the Fire and Spell tags to be converted to purple and do chaos damage

Sathrenor

4 | 13 hours ago

Don’t forget Incinerate.
That spell was clunky even before on it’s own with whole ramping up process, constant channeling that can get easily interrupted even with ST and stacks that get lost when You drop it for 0.1sec. Giving it a “fuel” mechanic made it only more annoying to use.

Yeah, let me interrupt the channeling mid-fight and lose all gathered momentum to mass spam curses in order to get some fuel so I can go back to painful process of building up instead of just using a mana flask. :s

MyLittleBacon

2 | 12 hours ago

Yeah, I was gonna put it in my original comment, but I’ve never used it, or looked into it. So, I knew it got changed, but couldn’t really comment on if it was a nerf.

PhoenixPolaris

2 | 9 hours ago

Elemental Invocation can trigger spells to generate fuel without breaking the channel of Incinerate

Donny_Dont_18

2 | 13 hours ago

I don’t care way the other guy said, I also wanted purple srs

CorruptedOrdnance

1 | 15 hours ago

Flame blast could be so enjoyable as a spammable skill that just radiates from your character as an instant or instant with cooldown. The reason I think explode and ignite is viable is because baseline fire spells are so weak in and of themselves that’s really the only thing I think could get them to be comparable to lightning otherwise the opposite is to nerf lightning which seems to never happen and I don’t think it’s the way to go either because making everyone worse isn’t the solution.

MyLittleBacon

1 | 14 hours ago

Directly buffing fire spells is another way to go, thats what I was getting at. That would also buff ignite, since it scales with direct damage in poe2. Im just saying giving fire spells explosions, or auto spreading ignites doesn’t seem like the best option to me. Other ailments also require investment to spread.

I do think they need more than just a damage buff, though, im not sure what that looks like.

hottestpancake

4 | 9 hours ago

I just want a fireball spell. And not the shitty Poe1/2 fireball we have right now but a true, explosion fireball

CorruptedOrdnance

1 | 4 hours ago

Are you talking like huge explosion splash damage type fireball? I agree, something needs to be done with fireball it is a terrible spell to cast and then to watch it not even set anything on fire until you get a couple hits feels defeating lol.

kristzorg

2 | 16 hours ago

I dont play caster but im suprised there isnt more spell bases for staffs and wands. Like comet is juicy and people put it on CoC for obvious reasons but like why not make a strong meteor spell attached to staff so it can be a big hit spell but also not be put into cast on effect type shit.

perfectpencil

5 | 15 hours ago

Comet used to be pretty fun as a spell you’d cast yourself, but after all the nerfs it’s effectively only usable with cast on critical. That feels like a big wiff for me. CoC is why it earned a nerf so why make it only usable with CoC?

You can do a 20min song and dance to self cast it or just pop it on CoC and cast a million of them in 2 seconds.

Spawnofelfdude

3 | 15 hours ago

I really don’t appreciate gems being arbitrarily bound to weapon types and if they’re gonna add more variety I’d rather it not be as limiting.

religioussphanatic

1 | 16 hours ago

chaos also, terrible or nonexistant scaling options.

janas19

1 | 15 hours ago

The theme of fire is supposed to be bigger slower base damage, compared to higher damage range of lightning, and lower damage but freeze/chill for cold.

Fire spells are great for bosses, but they don’t have good clear. I don’t know if there’s a simple fix for that, but it is disappointing that casting classes can’t specialize solely in fire spells this patch.

CorruptedOrdnance

1 | 15 hours ago

That last part is big to me, it seems like fire isn’t terrible if you’re a melee class but when it gets into spells it’s just not there at all. If it is there it’s because of bugged interactions like the always crit on omen sceptre big for the infernal legion pet builds.

PhoenixPolaris

1 | 8 hours ago

Incinerate is godlike for clear.

janas19

1 | 6 hours ago

On what budget though?

ScienceFictionGuy

1 | 14 hours ago

The low-level fire spell lineup of Fireball, Living Bomb and Ember Fusillade are very good. Ember Fusillade + Living Bomb deal lots of single-target damage and Fireball has great clear. If you can’t make those spells work you’re having a skill issue.

But I agree the rest are pretty lackluster. Wall of Fire is in a weird spot where it’s only worth using as a combo spell with non-fire spells that deal a lot of small hits, its added damage barely registers for Fireball and Ember Fusillade. Incinerate is just barely viable but it doesn’t really deal enough damage to justify the slow channeling gameplay. Firestorm and Flameblast likewise have significantly worse damage than Ember Fusillade despite requiring a 3-infusion input or long channeling time and cooldown. I like the concepts behind Flameblast, Incinerate and Fire Storm but if they’re going to have such a slow setup they need to have a much larger payoff to justify it, like the numbers need to be at least ~2x higher than what they currently have.

Ignite is also in a really poor state as a mechanic, it’s mostly non-viable outside of a few very specialized builds.

Wolfhyrr

2 | 9 hours ago

Comet+living bomb in a coc setup is fun as hell

Fire meteor at home

TeachMeHowToInvoke

1 | 11 hours ago

I’d like to have the fiery black hole from the fire priest in the Vaal temple.

CorruptedOrdnance

1 | 4 hours ago

I’d love to see Hydra, meteor, an instant aoe blast wave type ability or the like. I think with GGG’s art design they could do a sick version of hydra.

PhoenixPolaris

1 | 8 hours ago

I’d definitely like to have Scorching Ray back from Poe 1. Fire infused comet is pretty much meteor but it does seem weird to have that gated behind cold. It’s also weird that fire is completely ignored by Stormweaver with its heavy focus on chill and shock; having Sorceress supposedly be element focused but if you wanna specialize in fire you need to have actually started on witch to roll infernalist is just fucking weird.

CorruptedOrdnance

1 | 4 hours ago

There’s a lot weird in the sorc tree like that, Chrono has some interesting uses with mechanics that don’t really pertain to fire, and stormweaver seems to be like you said with a cold light focus. The last ascendancy has almost got to be fire related for them but I can’t figure out how they’d make a fire build viable with as bad as the skills feel.

smrtgmp716

1 | 4 hours ago

Idk. My ignite chronomancer is kind of a beast, even with my meh gear.

It’s my 4th toon this season, so I’m only 91, but I just face tanked t2 xesch and burned him down with incinerate. I use the unique ring to spread ignite, and it clears like crazy in high density maps.

That said, I agree that a lot of fire spells are lackluster. I’ll never understand why they made fireball what it is, rather than the classic “massive explosion.”

JinKazamaru

1 | 4 hours ago

They just got one?, I do think they need another take tho, Maybe Primal spells being Str/Int as they are will provide some more options, like totems

CorruptedOrdnance

1 | 3 hours ago

They almost need to be scrapped entirely in my opinion. Ember fusillade makes more sense as an auto generating spirit skill or support gem or than it does a stand alone casted skill, and really so does firestorm and living bomb could also be categorized similarly. I keep having a similar hope about another tree opening up new fire spells, but at the same time why even have these 6-7 lackluster skills with no real use that should be the heart of some elemental builds.

JinKazamaru

1 | 3 hours ago

Ember Fusilade just feels like they made Bonestorm or vice versa and Bonestorm came out on top

it can work in builds where you have a frontline of minions doing things for you as it gives you time to charge up… infernal witch minion build possibly

the change to how fire works did improve what we had at first, but it does still need work
I hate new fireball… aka (shitty lightning spear as a spell)

best fire spell on release was Fireblast, and it is the last one, given how ignite actually works

CorruptedOrdnance

1 | 3 hours ago

Atleast bone storm doesn’t look like ass though, and it makes enemies look impaled and cool, it’s not much better functionally… but it does look cool imo. I just don’t know that there’s any time that it’s worth it to use over anything else.

JinKazamaru

1 | 3 hours ago

It’s better in a boss fight when it comes to raw damage… unless the boss is huge (like most are) than Bone easily wins out, as it provides a debuff that improves damage of next hit

Fusilade isn’t designed well for a fire spell in mind, micro hits are not good… if they want to do micro hits…

it should

A) charge faster and provide flammability even if it can’t ignite so it builds up the chance to Ignite for another skill that can burst… like Fire seed or whatever it is called)
B) have higher damage, but only focus fire on burning enemies or something

Fire is designed with Burst into DoT tho, EVEN if the recent change improved rapid fire with the flammability mechanic

If it was designed with Ignite in mind, it would be like Goku charging a spirit bomb… it should channel into a large fireball over the character’s head, before it is thrown and blows up… on hit with the ground (because than it’s an AOE Spell not a Projectile and you don’t have to worry about Dex, as Fire spells should be Str/Int coded, which means Spells/AOE not Projectiles

Lbdolce

0 | 16 hours ago

First time playing poe2 ever i made a sorc and found a cool fire staff so ive been all in on fire. Its dope af. Hydras from d2 would be sick but i have no complaints. It would be cool if the fire orb moved around, my damage feels okay but i do die fast (lvl 42) still in campaign

CorruptedOrdnance

2 | 15 hours ago

Almost everything is viable in campaign, its maps and clear speed where stuff falls off.

Fire spells need a redesign