Fire Spells, a Cry for Help

Warning!
I am very bad at the game, I've played only really played settlers and even then I didn't play too much. I don't know much about PoE 1 or PoE 2 really much or at all. I know how bad I am, and my ISP knows how hard I've tried to make this work..

PoE from what I've come to understand is a game about picking something you like and find your avenue to make it work, so after running through the campaign on 0.1 in, what I found out to be, easy mode with Archmage-Spark Stormweaver. This had me disillusioned in thinking oh if I double and triple down in one spell type, it will just work together seamlessly.
In that time I've found a lot of uniques and had some lucky rare drops specializing in fire themes and I've had a crackpot idea to burn the world down.

So, off I went made a new character going from firebolt to ember fusillade, using more and more of the left side of the elementalist's jewels and falling deeper into despair as I've continued levelling. I've had one character reach maps using flameblast, it was able to reach T13 maps but had many issues with defensive layers. That was where I ended my 0.1 Journey as I had spent a majority of my time pouring over information on the internet trying to catch up on the knowledge gap others have had on me. Big thanks to Woolie, Miso, and especially SilentSill

One part that I've come to enjoy more and more was the unique dot from ignite in the game which was eventually the class fantasy I landed on. Dear god ignite is a large burning pile of garbage even the queen of filth would look away blushing.
Ignite primarily scaling off initial hit has made me want to pull my hair out in frustration more often than not, Ignite proliferation is non existant. Getting any fire damage numbers high enough to reach Ailment Thresholds to get ignites to proc on even a decent frequency has me using mulitple div worth of rolls on Gain %as fire, %increased fire damage, level of fire spells and mana stacking to make use of Arcane Intensity notable, using curses, solar orb with fire exposure, level of spells foci (getting me killed in the mean time because no blocking layer) just to have it do less damage than my stormweaver on ACT 3 cruel. Mirrors are NOT worth spending on memebuilds (not that I would drop any, I'm too busy mulling over the next idea since the last didn't work)

Fire spells have me hating the use case of every single one of them the more I try to make them work.(besides ember fusillade, ember fusillade is good)There are about 3 different fire spells types, ignite(fire wall, solar orb and, ignition) Projectile (firebolt, fireball, ember fusilade) and payoff (firestorm/Detonate Dead/Volitile Corpse/Living Bomb/Flameblast) of them all Fireball is the biggest bait in the lineup.
I am the #1 fireball hater, I am almost certain that they had no idea what to do with fireball since a bigger aoe on Firebolt would just be "scaling up firebolt" so GGG in their infinite wisdom decided to make it explode more projectiles. So what we got was a Firebolt that makes more Firebolts, neat. Why do I hate fireball then? It's because the power of the firebolts from the explosion is taking from the overall fireball's power, so if there's a pack that is facing you, you could be more effecient using fireball in a larger AoE in a pack without doing more AoE, problem is that the firebolts go in a circle meaning half of the power budget us wasted going back to hit a wall off screen. Pierce and use mid pack? great now the fireball is 20% weaker and that weakness is compounded on every hit and explosion from the firebolts. Fork? half of them go to the void unless it's a dense pack and then 30% falloff. Considered casting? Now wolves in Act 4 are swarming your exact location and if you are even a smidge off (which happens very frequently with skills often going beside your cursor when turning quickly). What's worse is that you can only get this skill at level 9 uncut.

Why am I writing now about this?
Well you see I've been scouring forums about anyone making use of these F- tier spells and haven't seen too much about it and since they're doing a buffing patch about underperforming skills I've got a lot of frustration stemming from me gaslighting myself into believing it was myself that was the problem which it can still be but the complete lack of use (besides from infinite scaling from going afk in demon form in 0.1) has me believing otherwise.

[SIDE RANT ABOUT THE PASSIVE TREE HIGHLY TANGENTIAL I DIDN'T KNOW WHERE TO PUT THIS]


For the sake of my mental health I walked away. Here I am like the addict I am and find myself unable to leave this project unfinished even in the new season. I'm currently in ACT 2 Cruel. I've tried fiddling around with a couple of the new support gems but I find myself unable to continue to even try and get my third ascendancy. Flameblast which carried me previously as soon as I was able to cut it has been put on a CD and fireball is still the worst spell in terms of feeling/utility/damage. I have a huntress that I put on the backburner while I was waiting for new builds to come out. I've been watching multiple streamers trying to glean even a little bit of information that can help me have a breakthrough and find the prospect for trying hard to make something of my own while I have readily available blasting build. I'm gonna log off for now, I'll see you tomorrow.

After the change to ignite proliferate to only 1 second, ignite builds feel A LOT better imo.

If you're determined to make an ignite build, here is my poeninja if you want some inspiration.

https://poe2.ninja/account/character/123887/IgniteProbablyStillBad

I would go for projectiles > fire nodes > curse nodes for defense > cast speed

And ignite builds ramp up a lot slower than other builds. Since you need to get fire damage and then start stacking chance to ignite and ignite magnitude before your build starts feeling good.

I'm still only in t4 maps but packs are dying a lot quicker now due to the faster ignite spread. And make sure you flamewall > solar orb > fireball.
Flameblast on rares/bosses.

edit: Just saw your post that you're in a2 cruel. I struggled through campaign as fire and it didn't start feeling good until level 55-60. Also put arcane tempo on ember fusilade before you get wildshards. If you find yourself dying a lot, definitely get blasphemy tempchains and the node that hinders enemies when cursed.