Infernalist Pyromantic pact and Seething Body feedback

Love the idea of Infernalist and the theme of "Deal a lot of damage but also take a lot of damage and burn yourself in the process".

Pyromantic pact: Currently removing all your mana and starting to take fire damage instead feels a bit like the blood mage Sanguimancy node where you get a downside in order to access powerful nodes. In this case you just get a downside and that is pretty much it. (Since it is easier to solve mana regen/cost effectiveness instead of taking a ton of damage due to health regen being so scarce). If you wanted to keep the same class archetype and identity as blood mage has, this could become a free first node as well. It would require a lot stronger nodes afterwards tho. Alternatively this could also grant "10% more (cast speed or crit chance) for every time you have reached maximum infernal flame recently / last 8 seconds").

Seething body: Does not really go with the class at all. It requires you stop casting and start balancing your casts in order to keep the flame high and not reach maximum. The theme of the class seems to be "go hard and fast and take damage for doing so". And this conditional buff for not following the archetype feels bad. Would be a lot better if it would help you ramp up damage for every time reaching maximum infernal flame. Or have less maximum infernal flame to help you reach it faster and more damage?? Maybe grant maximum fire infusions when you reach maximum flame?

If you went with pyromantic pact as a first free node, the ascendancy probably needs some solutions like recoup fire damage taken or regen or recover life on fire remnant use or something to keep it going.

Overall I love this type of archetype and I'd love for it to become more thematic and allow us to glass cannon with it.

Loyal hellhound: after using the mod where it takes damage for you, it is pretty much just a random useless minion with infernal legion support. Remove it and give us something useful. (recovery options?)

Spells
Also fire spells seem to be in a bad spot as well. There aren't any go-to spells that you can just cast and it works. Everything has a gimmick to it. For example lightning has arc and spark which just work. Arc is insane when empowered as well. Fireball seems to be the main go-to you "should" use, however non-empowered fireball feels horrible and just sucks. If you can proc your living bomb with each cast and always shoot empowered versions it is fine but still boring and super cumbersome with little payoff.

I just wish there was a firebolt-like spell that costs mana (has cast speed of 0.7-0.8) and has more aoe. Empowering it would just make it deal 200% more damage and more AoE for example. I want to run around throwing fast fireballs at enemies, with sometimes bigger ones if possible.