So let's talk about ignite.

That's how ignite works. Poe 1 had 90% of the hit as dmg per second so you could just build ignite and have decent damage.

Poe 2 ignite is 20% dmg AFTER mitigation of the hit unlike bleed which is PRE-mitigation.
It is 4 seconds base.
It cannot stack but they can reset the timer.
Always the biggest Ignite that works.

So with that info you realize that any fire resistance on an enemy (a lot of them has) is applied to the hit and then to the ignite.
BUT not all spells actually work that way.
Some spells have ignite AS IF the hit did a certain amount of damage like Solar orb (which is the only relevant fire spell in my eyes. Incinerate is another topic.) that basically act the same way as bleed because the mitigation is only dealt on the bleed or the ignite in this situation. Not on the hit.

ALL the other spells except Flameblast are small hits so it would never scale well with ignite. Flameblast can only really be relevant in the late game as a ''main spell'' and so all the other fire spells too because to have a big hit you need crit. (again unlike Poe 1)

BUT EVEN WITH ALL THAT, Solar orb's pulse cannot change and the ONLY support gem that adds ignite magnitude is Searing flame which is a very interesting and inconvenient gem when even the ignite from Solar orb (not the pulse hit ignite) is scaled with HIT damage.
Searing Flame I : 25% less damage with hits for 75% more magnitude ignite
Searing Flame II : 30% LESS DAMAGE WITH HITS for 100% more magnitude ignite.
In that instance if you want to play Solar orb Ignite crit is actually worthless because the ''as if'' hit is always the numbers you see unless you want the pulse to crit,

The only real way to do damage with ignite is to reduce the enemy fire resistance way below 0. Which is also a late game thing. Remember, A LOT of enemies and bosses have a lot of fire resistance.

The way I see it is that ignite is never really good up until you can crit AND reduce the resistance and even then fire spells have the worst crit chance.
You can't focus on only that all game there are many things you need to do to figure out a character and Ignite is a pain during campaign if you don't have the perfect ascendancy with the best supports possible. It's even a pain when you reach late game before you get currency or high level items.

So Ignite is by far the worst ailment in the game right now and the worst thing is, I think Jonathan said Ignite was in a good place.
I think I know why, they probably want to keep Blackflame covenant keystone in the game. They probably think it's too complicated to make it good too.

I think it's crazy that Fire damage isn't seen as the big damage ailment at all when Chaos does more damage. Chaos should only be reliable damage, not big damage.



I don't really have a solution because I think the main problem that counter most solutions is the fact that late game the single target damage just snowballs like hell compared to poe 1 where it snowballs, well, the entire time. So buffing ignite would be out of control late game but let's be real, they are not amongst the meta ones right now.

Now imagine a new player with no attachment to GGG trying to figure that out.

Thinking about it and heard streamers say that maybe proliferation would fix the problem or just more aoe spells.

The best way I've found to scale ignite is to get ignite from non-fire damage and scale that damage. I really wanted to run an Infernalist, but I haven't because the character would be using physical or lightning or chaos spells, which wasn't the archetype I wanted.

I agree with your post, but I think the root cause of the problem is that fire spells are weak.

A possible exception would be an ignite minion build with Vaal Guards. But there are better minion classes (like Oracle or Varashta).

It definitely is a balance between getting more damage to boost ignite vs getting more ignite magnitude to boost ignite.

As you said, incinerate is probably the only spell that doesn't care about that. I also think ignite is now in a weird spot because I think it's good for single target, but the ignite prolif isn't that great for mapping.

I think that they added blackflame covenant specifically for ignite since there was no other way to scale ignite after you got all the ignite magnitude attributes. Chaos allows you to scale with wither.

I do think the optimal way to play ignite right now is by using blackflame. I guess unless you try to scale with crit.

Shameless plug for my build again. It's an ignite chronomancer. I think it's in a pretty good spot.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3768099

I'm pretty sure Ignite is ghastly overpowered right now with infinite scaling.

That oil/incinerate just melts everything right.

There's also the fact we can still be ignited even with IGNITE IMMUNITY.