Playing Fire Mage (SSF) in PoE2 : my journey and thoughts

Hi guys,

During my day on PoE1 (1000h+), I really loved to play as a fire mage.
I was pretty excited to play fire mage aswell in PoE2. Here is my journey.

I started to play as witch for infernalist. Because we didnt know the ascendancy classes before the start of EA, I choosed this ascendancy cause I was pretty sure it was the best to play fire dmg. I was wrong. That was my first mistake.

During my leveling, I really had some difficulties against almost all bosses, and all my fights on acts 1,2,3 normal were pretty long. Like really long : 10 minutes for every fight. I even cant beat the boss of molten vault before the lava killed me ; just to have an idea. Im sure a lot of players dont know the arena has an end and you cant fly away so you die cause of lava if you dont kill the boss fast enough...

So yeah, boss fights were pretty long but for me it was okay. It was the same for every players, playing different classes. I was wrong. Terribly wrong. Every other classes took 2, or 3, maybe 4 times less time than me to kill bosses.

So maybe it was a skill issue. Maybe I didnt play well my class as fire mage. I had a really good wand to start with some spell dmg, fire dmg and +2 all fire spell. Yeah i realize late (acte 3 normal) than ember with unleash and scattershot can instant cast, but dmg were... bad. I mean really bad.
Just to have an idea, against the boss of molten vault acte 3 normal, I couldnt kill him before the lava killed me. So I decided to respec. I took off my 8 nodes of fire dmg and took 8 nodes of lightning dmg. But I still played with my wand (+2 all fire spell). I took spark, put 3 supp gems and... I destroyed the boss. In 1 min it was done. Yeah I know he is fire resistant but i played with flammability and I couldnt kill him in 10min with a wand +2 all fire spell !!!

So at the end of acte 3 normal, I decided to use everything I got to have a better experience in cruel. I found a really good wand (spell/fire dmg, +3 fire spell, +20% extra fire dmg) and I crafted some really good gear. And start of acte 1 cruel was... okay. But fights were still really long.

Then I got my 1rst supp gem T3 and I took wildshards for my fireball. And... it was night and day. I destroyed every packs of mob and I killed every boss in 30sec max 1 min.

I have something to say about fireball. Its strangely design, cause the 8 fireballs spreading are going all around the target of the initial fireball. And so, almost no ennemies are hit by one of this 8 fireballs. So right now, fireball is unplayable without wildshards, when wildshards could be played with other projectiles. So fireball without wildshards is unplayable, and with it its amazing.
In general Im kind of disappointed about the design of fire spells. You have 3 channelings spells (that most of time are pretty bad and dont fun to play with), flame wall that is pretty consistent and strong (specially in early game), an AoE spell unplayable (yeah its firestorm and its really inconsistent as a spell dmg), fireball and... detonade dead (yeah its doing fire dmg, almost as much as a fireball but in a bigger AoE). We need a spell with bigger range of dmg (as comet is and as firestorm should be). Specially to play around ignite. And yeah I really prefered the simple fireball of PoE1.

The 2nd thing that made my build really strong was... archmage.
Right now, Im playing in T9 map and archmage gives me... 70% more dmg. Im not kidding, i could barely kill ennemies and almost all my dmg is coming from a lighting gem. Without archmage, I have no dmg at all.

So yeah, as I said, infernalist is a horrible choice to play fire mage : Stormweaver is BY FAR, a better choice. Cause you have to play archmage, arcane surge is so strong and its in the stormweaver ascendancy. But at least Im tanky...


My advices if you want to play as fire mage :

- play with ember + unleash + scattershot during early game. Add firewall ofc and you could play summon raging spirit aswell.
- at mid game, play with detonate dead.
- when you have a T3 supp gem, play fireball + wildshards. Then pick up archmage.
- for end game, play around your mana max (for archmage) and use ember to kill a unit and detonate dead to destroy a pack of mob. But boss would be an issue. Or just play around fireball + wildshards with or whitout the ring to make cold dmg instead.


To conclude :
For early game, fire dmg seem really bad. I even saw a streamer playing it and gave up at acte 2 normal seeing he did no dmg against boss.

For end game I was looking for a way to play fire mage but... I cant found it. Right now, there are 2 viable builds for end game : fireball with ring that make it cold dmg, and detonate dead + avatar of fire with physical dmg. One build seems playable aswell, with demon form + flameblast but for that you would need 3 unique items. And its not cause flameblast is strong, its just cause you are playing demon form and almost every spell is strong.
So except the really expensive build with flameblast, the 2 other builds are doing cold and physical dmg (converted with avatar of fire). And its for a simple reason : there is no ascendancy to play fire dmg. Pyromantic pact is unplayable right now and you can just gain +20% extra fire dmg but when in high flare so during few sec at best. Demon form is playable (with 1 expensive unique and amazing stuff) but you can play almost everything with it, not just fire dmg. And the node grinning Immolation gives you 30% more crit dmg but then you are burned. 30% more crit dmg is okay but you wont play it with fire spells cause dmg are too low to have an utility playing crit.
So infernalist is a pretty good ascendancy to play... minions. Its true. But to play fire dmg ? Not at all !!!

So yeah we need a good fire mage ascendancy right now to play as fire mage. And for me, fire dmg need to be buff, specially at the beginning of the game.