POE 2 - Ignite not working as intended

Hello there,

I believe there might be an issue with how Ignite is functioning in Path of Exile 2. It seems that both the application of Ignite and the scaling of its damage are not working as intended.

I am using the unique staff The Searing Touch Pyrophyte Staff, which grants 100% chance to Ignite. Additionally, I have allocated several nodes in the passive tree that increase my chance to Ignite. However, certain fire spells like Living Bomb and Firestorm very rarely apply Ignite.

Moreover, even though I have invested heavily into Ignite damage and magnitude nodes, the damage output from Ignite is extremely low and doesn’t feel proportional to the investment made. This seems inconsistent with how Ignite scaling should function.

Ignite chance and magnitude now scale with the damage of the hit. So if the damage of the individual hit is low, you are unlikely to ignite. The 100% chance to ignite is multiplicative in this case. You can check in the in game tooltip, it says 1% chance per 4% of the enemy ailment threshold. A 100% increase in this case takes it up to 2%. I have tried ignite myself and found it lackluster. It seems you want to be igniting with hard-hitting stuff like hammer of the gods now.

Hey, thanks for answering, but I already knew that. I still think there's an issue with ignite chance on spells though. Living Bomb is dealing quite a lot of damage (20-30% of life when it explodes), yet there's no Ignite. I feel like a hit that removes 20%+ of life should be enough to trigger it

Ignite is 100% not working as intended. I use explosions from gas grenade so it's hard to follow, but I often chunk packs for 60% of their health and then somehow... not ignite, and if I do ignite it damages them for maybe 5% of their hp total.

Surprisingly, I manage to ignite rares and their minions WAY more consistently AND more damagingly, but white mobs are very rarely ignited and don't care at all. Also, they OFTEN do get the ignite textures but then when hovering do not get the ignite status under their health bar.

Don't get me wrong, it makes sense that rare mobs seem to burn harder, since if they are ignited at all the hit must have been more brutal.

What I think is happening is that ignite is NOT overwriting for the largest ignite and the threshold is bugged. Let me explain:
* if I hit a normal mob, it gets ignites by anything, the smallest thing possible, since it has a low threshold. But somehow, it still decides "NOPE not ignite worthy" but it still ticks on the mob displaying the ignite texture AND preventing another bigger ignite from being applied.
This fully explains white mobs rarely igniting and for little damage even though they display the textures.
A small ignite is not applying and blocking other larger ignites.
* if I hit a rare mob, it has a higher threshold and my bigger hits count towards the first ignite being actually applied. That ignite does block other ignites, but since it's big to begin with the damage looks ok.

EDIT1: I went to act A1 and rushed the executioner. I have 4.8s ignite duration.
Average damage per use Explosive Shot (129+396)/2=262
Main Hand Estimated Ignite Damage Per Second 4.8*(26.63+76.8)/2=248 ~92% of 262
* hit for 380, burned to 700.
* hit for 210, burned to 411.
* hit for 360, burned to 679.
=> makes sense, roughly every damage hit did 180% my average damage
Average damage per use Gas Grenade (194+587)/2=390
Main Hand Estimated Ignite Damage Per Second 4.8*(44.87+128.87)/2=417 ~107% of 390; unclear what messes with the tooltip
* hit for 1000 when proccing gas, burns to 1943
* hit for 1200 when proccing gas, burns to 2984 (a crit?)
* hit for 900 when proccing gas, burns to 1575
* hit for 500 when proccing gas, burns to 958 (gas missed here? it still displayed a burning animation and doesn't fit only explosive shot dps?)
=> still roughly 192% of initial damage so the explosive shot and gass explosion must add base explosion damage together, but way less consistent maybe a delayed ignite into a gas explosion
* hit for 200, procced gas delayed up to 1000, burns to 1624
* hit for 200, procced gas delayed up to 800, burns to 1372
* hit for 400, procced gas delayed up to 1200, burns to 1861
=> way lower damage numbers from the burn, it seems proccing gas with an existing ignite just indeed applies the gas explosion ignite which DOES overwrite
* shot gas, setup flamewall to ignite it, burns to 2941 (crit?)
* shot gas, setup flamewall to ignite it, burns to 1205
* shot gas, setup flamewall to ignite it, burns to 908
* shot gas, setup flamewall to ignite it, burns to 1253
* shot gas, setup flamewall to ignite it, burns to 1374
* shot gas, setup flamewall to ignite it, burns to 1442
=> higher than pure gas grenade numbers should be (firewall has only 17 dps)

I'm not sure how to interpret this, but I do think it disproved my assumption that ignites cannot overwrite...

EDIT2: I now actually think it's due to accuracy and block or something. I'm currently in a zone where most "white mobs with the burning texture are not actually ignited" have shields and likely higher evasion than my accuracy. I think this is screwing with my perception of ignites working.

Firestorm can't ignite because it consumes ignite. As for living bomb, I am not sure but it doesn't explode for life according to the text. It just plants a seed for fire damage (the seed explodes).

I feel that the ignite chance doesn't even count at the moment. Since I can't 100% ignite white monsters even when fully charged flameblast in some cases does 95% of the monsters healthpool in one cast.

It feels stupid to then have to use another cast/spell to finish them off When I have invested in ignite nodes.

If I have ~100% increased ignite/ailment chance from the tree, so it would feel logical to me that hitting nearly all the HP away should at least trigger some size of ignite. I've tried using the support gem that gives 100% more ignite chance and that doesn't help either for flameblast.