Avatar of fire(AoF) guide

This is a short guide to Avatar of fire, how it works and why it's useful.

Avata of Fire(AoF) is a keystone near the Templar area. It gives:
50% Physical damage converted to Fire
50% Cold damage converted to Fire
50% Lightning damage converted to Fire
Cannot deal non-fire damage

Why?
Seems kinda dumb to lose 50% damage right? But it can be used for specialised builds that use either items or skills to reach 100% conversion to fire. Infernal Blow has 50% physical damage conversion to fire, combining it with AoF will convert 100% physical damage to fire. Due to how damage conversions(wiki) work the fire damage will benefit from bonuses to physical damage as well as elemental/fire bonuses.

This makes AoF build deal very high amount of fire damage which in turn will cause a lot of burn damage, especially if combined with high crit or increased ignite chance.

The downside of course is that you are limiting yourself to only doing fire damage which can cause problems with resists and elemental reflect. However it won't be reduced at all by armor and elemental weakness and flammability curses will be much more efficient. Most of the builds also require specific unique items.

See Builds section further down for more example builds.

Mechanics/FAQ
It works just as other damage conversions the wiki has a good explanation and examples.

The two biggest advantages is the burn damage and that you can stack various damage bonuses by converting the damage in as many steps as possible. The burn damage synergies well with the increased burn damage between the Templar and Witch area. The damage conversions means that you want to have added damage as early in the chain as possible while % increases should be as late as possible.

Another advantage is that Arctic Armor can be very useful since it reduces fire damage taken which in turn is useful for elemental reflect mobs, especially if the build uses a skill with lots of small hits like Incinerate.

Shock/Freeze/Chill
These effects can still be applied but since you don't deal any non-fire damage the duration will be zero.

Notable Items

Arctic armor
Skill gem
-X reduce damage per fire hit

Cold to fire
Support Gem
40-75% cold to fire

Blackgleam
Quiver
40-50% physical to fire

Hrimsorrow
Gloves
25% physical to cold

The Goddess Scorned
Sword
100% physical to fire
Since it 100% AoF isn't actually needed
Can only deal damage with this weapon

Chernobog's Pillar
Shield
25% physical to fire

Builds
Most builds with AoF have a high potential for burn damage and should probably pick up the extra burn damage nodes. Unless you take Resolute Technique they also work well with crit as the crits will ignite the targets.

It's also recommended to use Elemental weakness or Flammability to reduce problems with resists and increase damage.

Physical to Fire

Any of these bow attack skills: split shot, frenzy, rain of arrows, explosive arrow or burning arrow with Blackgleam. AoF+Blackgleam will give 90-100% physical to fire

Infernal Blow, 100% physical to fire

100% phys sword attack skill+Godness Scorned, doesn't need AoF, 100% physical to fire. Can only deal damage with that Sword.

Physical spell, for instance etheral knives
With Blackgleam+bow 90-100% physical to fire


Physical to ice to fire
These can take advantage of cold bonuses and Hatred aura so have a higher damage potential than physical to fire.

Ice Shot+Cold to Fire+ Blackgleam/Hrimsorrow
50% physical to fire, 60% with Blackgleam, 40% with Hrimsorrow
40% physical to cold, 60% with Hrimsorrow
100% cold to fire

Glacial Hammer+Cold to Fire
50% physical to fire
50% physical to cold
100% cold to fire

100% phys skill+Hrmsorrow+Chernobog+Cold to Fire
75% physical to fire
25% physical to cold
100% cold to fire

Ice to fire
There is less advantage here than the others since it can't take advantage of all the physical bonuses but can still take advantage of both ice and fire items/nodes. It can be used to make fire spells with effects that normally aren't available to fire, for instance fire ice spear or fire ice nova.

It is also possible to use Arctic Armor to reduce the problem with elemental reflect in a way an ice build cannot.

Ice spell+Cold to Fire, 100% cold to fire

Thank you.

Good guide +1

"

Berjiz wrote:

Physical spell, for instance etheral knives
With either:
Blackgleam 90-100% physical to fire
The Godness scorned, 100% physical to fire, doesn't need AoF

The Goddess Scorned: "...You can only deal Damage with this Weapon"

IE you must make an attack with TGS to deal damage; spells won't do damage with TGS equipped.

"

KG31459 wrote:

"

Berjiz wrote:

Physical spell, for instance etheral knives
With either:
Blackgleam 90-100% physical to fire
The Godness scorned, 100% physical to fire, doesn't need AoF

The Goddess Scorned: "...You can only deal Damage with this Weapon"

IE you must make an attack with TGS to deal damage; spells won't do damage with TGS equipped.

Thanks, fixed it.

Bump, added Arctic Armor to the guide.

Im trying AoF with my power charge discharge build.
Lets see if I understand what would be the benefit on this:
Im not using Searing Touch. Using Voll's Protector 5L with Discharge - Ele Prolif - Leech - Inc Burning Dmg - Fire Pen. I guess if I had a 6L I would add Chance to Ignite.

So with AoF my power charges now deal fire dmg as well as my frenzy charges. The fire dmg itself altogether would be lower than without AoF. But making all fire turns the burning dmg now in the most important thing, right ?

Without AoF, if I dont crit with some map bosses I had no chance of one shotting them. I tried some bosses now with AoF (btw Im not even using cold to fire cause my frenzy charges are only 3, -5 end and 6 power) and the burning dmg is insane.

I guess the biggest downside is that im losing 50% lightning dmg but my question is that if the burning converted dmg is compensating for this ?


Thanks

"

Berjiz wrote:

.... For instance Infernal Blow gives 50% physical damage to fire, combining it with AoF will convert 100% physical damage to fire.....

So infernal converts 50% physical to fire. And then AoF converts the remaining 50%?!
Are you sure its not 50% of the remaining 50% physical damage? Would make more sense. So you get 75% fire damage, but lose 25% physical.

I like how this primer is getting all sorts of praise from the community. . .and it completely ignores the most potent part of AoF. (That, or OP just didn't figure out.)

The reason to use AoF is for critical strikes. If all of your damage is fire, then fire critical strikes get burning damage based on all of the damage used for the attack.

All this talk of damage conversion is small potatoes compared to the advantage this gives for critical strike builds.

I feel like in relation to where AoF is on the skill tree, and nearby fire damage nodes vs weapon damage nodes, that going for it is inefficient. Like your best start will be a Templar and then you'll want to head into the witch area to get more fire damage nodes. As opossed to just grabbing normal damage increases for physical melee and whatever kind of weapon you have.

Unless the potential for getting fire damage increase is more than physical damage increase, given the same amount of efficiency, I don't see the point of taking this as a melee build.