Fire Spells are Not Fun
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I've been playing RPGs my entire life, and have always gravitated towards fire magic. My friends get annoyed at me when I insist that anyone who uses non-fire spells have a weak bloodline. I love the fantasy of fire magic, which is why I've been so disappointed in POE2's implementation of it, and I haven't played a fire caster since 0.1.
There are a few big fundamental gameplay balance issues, which are the main things that make fire casters unfun to play. Ignite sucks. It's too slow, and is not fun to have as an "upside" to fire spells when you know the other elements just do better damage in general. and then fire damage in general is not great, evidenced by the fact that basically every public fire-based build uses Blackflame. Purple fire is not fire. But it's the only way to make fire damage feel like it's doing anything. But being underpowered would be forgivable if the fantasy of fire wizard was intact. I have major issues with the design of fire spells. In most games/tabletop systems, fire is high damage, explosive, and dangerous. Very few spells meet that criteria. Flame Wall - Low damage, really only used to combo with other things. Very low impact. D&D wall of fire does almost as much damage as a fireball, persistently. Fireball - Wimpy, small, and more flare-like than fireball-like. Fire infusion makes it so you shoot even smaller fireballs on impact. Description calls it a "large" fireball but it is hilariously small. Fireball is an iconic spell, should be huge explosion for high damage. Living Bomb - One of the few spells I'm kind of ok with from a design perspective, but base damage still feels very low. In WoW, exploding living bombs would spread to nearby mobs. Ember Fusillade - An interesting spell from a fire design perspective, haven't seen something like this before, but channeling and aiming is awkward. Very silly that channeling more than the default 9 embers is a waste, why are the extras not fired? Incinerate - Cool from a fantasy perspective, horrible to use from a gameplay perspective. Standing still is not fun in a game where a billion things are happening on screen, and again does not do enough damage for the requirements. Firestorm - Feels like a joke. Hits like wet noodles more than anything. Fireballs raining down small and wimpy. Yawn. Comet - Is an ice spell. What? Why? Bizarre decision. There's no meteor spell. Flameblast - Another cool spell. Does a lot of damage and is literally explosive. But again has a long channel. I think a lot of these issues could be fixed, but I feel like fire spells just need to be entirely reworked. I'm obviously not a game designer but I'm not having fun. Last bumped on Jan 19, 2026, 3:00:39 AM
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" you need to learn how to stack flammability mag and ignite speed. |
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" Channeling has always been very bad in all arpgs since D3. However, I think they really made a big progress here with new Wyvern Electro-Oil skill. It doesn't last long, it needs "fuel" to work, you need to aim with it, but it does huge damage and destroys everything you have problem with. |
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" Let's assume for a moment that I know how to do that, because that is clearly not the point of my post. Furthermore, if you have some secret build that uses ignite on fire elemental spells, I'm sure the community would love to hear it. In 0.4, 9% of builds using living bomb, which is the highest of the elemental fire spells. None of the top 25 builds using it are using it in an ignite context. (Source: POE Ninja). The next highest is flamewall at 4%. Of the top 10 builds using it, none are stacking flam mag and ignite. None of them are using any other fire elemental spells. The next most common is firestorm at a whopping 2%, and the top 10 builds using it are using full three-element investment kits. Most use living bomb in conjunction with it. So basically, do you have a single fact to back up your comment? |
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Imagine if fire spells worked entirely differently. You cast fireball. It flies forward and detonates. Same as it does now. But instead of disappearing it erupts in a large field of fire centered on the detonation point. Burning surrounding enemies for a good bit of damage, this fire intensifies further fireballs cast into the same area, adding the burn damage to the explosion ( and subsequent burns ) of future fireballs. Sustain hitting the same target over and over? It’s going to take increased damage until it’s dead.
Fireball becomes an aoe and a single target killer, with multiple ways to scale its damage. Longer burn time? Bigger aoe? More direct explosion damage? All would scale the escalation of damage in differant ways AND ALL WOULD FEEL GOOD. He’ll make all fire spells work in similar ways, escalating damage. Fire consumes, it fuels itself with its own heat. Make it interact with oil based abilities, make wind skills act like a blast furnace. Burning enemies into a tornado? Yup that’s a damage modifier. Fireball into an oil grenade or oil barrage? Yup that’s big damage. Make fire BURN THINGS. |
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https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3768099
my flameblast ignite build. it does use blackflame covenant though. it's not fully fleshed out but it uses almost all fire spells. currently ignites feel underpowered though. imo. (nerfed from 0.3 because of the rune limits) |
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one of the TWO GUYS they have on balance clearly had his pants lit on fire in high school or something and he's taking it out on all of us
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I've had similar sentiment when playing Fire spells and offered feedback and targeted boosts to them via improving some spells mechanically or value wise, changing / buffing Ignite and giving Fire element its own optional crowd control effect. In this thread - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3905543
Last edited by Volsal#8024 on Jan 19, 2026, 12:21:51 AM
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It's not just fire spells. Almost all of the spells are really boring. There are hardly any physical spells or chaos spells at all. like 70% of spells are undertuned and do next to no damage. Every single league is just Spark, Lightning Warp, and Comet. Like many, many other things in the game, the balance is just pathetically bad.
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GGG cares only about "Lightning" related skills
Fire skills are just to make up the numbers. |
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