Incinerate best support gems

There doesn't appear to be any real solid information about the mechanics of this spell yet. I realize there are a lot of bugs and a general lack of information and even testing stuff does not appear able to clearly indicate what we're supposed to be doing with different skills. I can swap things around, test them on mobs, and I'm still not entirely sure what's happening, especially with DOTS. To me, focusing on ignite with this skill looks best as you ramp it to maximum stacks, inflict ignite, roll around a boss mechanic and then fire it back up again.

Incinerate does not appear to crit on the tooltip, making Controlled Destruction the only no-brainer support to take as it will magnify the "hit" as well as the ignite portion. What are the other best supports for this in order to inflict maximum pain on rares and bosses? I am putting points on the skill tree into ignite and more damage on hit by enemies impacted by ailments and ignoring crit on everything.

I am guessing Searing Flame is a good choice as it increases the ignite magnitude by 75% at a cost of 25% less hit damage. Obviously if you were focusing on the hit and not on the ignite this would be a bad choice.

Fire Mastery looks like another decent choice to increase the level of incinerate to a 21 base. That said, I am using demon form which is already providing 3-6 additional levels to this gem.

Concentrated Effect appears to work on this, making me think this skill does indeed hit enemies. It says it provides 40% more area damage however, and impacts both the hit and the ignite. One reason to not take this skill gem is that with incinerate you want as much reach as possible to keep at maximum safe distance from mobs.

Eternal Flame looks useful as incinerate by default halves the duration of ignite put onto enemies. That said, I have found it easy enough to start reapplying to hard mobs as soon as the ignite goes away already so I don't believe this is going to increase my damage unless I were to kite the enemy and fire off a fuselage or some such, giving it maximum time to burn the enemy.

Hourglass is an interesting support gem but it comes with the obvious downside of adding a 10 second timer to my primary damage dealer with makes it better for some background damage like solar orb or firestorm.

Ignition, this one appears worthless as you are nonstop applying an ignite when you just stand there holding it down. This appears more useful for skills that don't just instantly ignite things.

Fire Penetration looks like it's going to act just like POE1 and only apply to the hit portion and do nothing for the ignite. If a crit incinerate were possible I suppose this may have more use but as the skill already applies -50% fire resists this seems pointless.

Strip Away I can't tell if this does much of anything despite the game suggesting to take this support. It lowers the enemies resistances faster and has incinerate ending with -65% as opposed to -50% but ultimately doesn't appear to do much of anything else. I would figure casting Flammability will far outdo this support for the most part. Interestingly, even with flammability and incinerate max stacks (over -100 resists) it does not appear to burn down mobs any faster than just the usual -50% from the spell itself. I wonder if incinerate with -50 to -65 resists is just overriding the curse, making it useless and I should probably go something like Temp
Chains in Blasphemy.

Elemental Focus is a no go as it doesn't allow for ignites. Again, this is a crit support gem or a spell where you don't care about the ignite because the raw damage is so high, like fuselage for example.

Arcane Tempo is another one that looks to be mostly focused on just ramping to maximum stacks as fast as possible so you can roll or something. Once you're at maximum stacks and the enemy is ignited, I fail to see the usefulness of this unless you were allowed to focus on the hit with crit. Yes you will hit faster with this support but if focusing on the ignite I think there's better supports plus would rather use this in another skill like detonate dead.

So I've come to the conclusion that best supports for the time being are Concentrated Effect, Controlled Destruction, Fire Mastery, Searing Flame, and the last slot would be up to individual preference (longer ignites, faster casting, increased area of effect, mobility maybe, etc). Any thoughts on this or has anyone else experimented and come to different conclusions?

After more testing and editing the above, it appears Concentrated Effect does increase the damage of DOTS and Strip Away lowers enemy resists further/faster. That said, Strip Away does not really appear to boost damage in any noticeable way 99% of the time. The Mobility support also makes you move so quickly it trivializes the danger of most enemies as you can backpedal super fast while channeling.

Thanks for your thoughts. How is the damage feeling? An idea I had was using the minion sacrifice gem to boost a channel.

I messed around with incinerate while levelling in the campaign and found the damage pretty lackluster. Barring skill levels, ignite magnitude and flat fire damage increases in the tree - I can't see anyway to turbo scale the spell the way some of the other caster builds are.

Nothing seems to lean into buffing ignites the same way you can lean into crit/archmage/mana tempest for hit-based elemental caster builds.

Could be wrong tho!

Edit: also, I think fiery death is a very good addon to incinerate for clear.

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quaker20001#0209 wrote:

Thanks for your thoughts. How is the damage feeling? An idea I had was using the minion sacrifice gem to boost a channel.

I messed around with incinerate while levelling in the campaign and found the damage pretty lackluster. Barring skill levels, ignite magnitude and flat fire damage increases in the tree - I can't see anyway to turbo scale the spell the way some of the other caster builds are.

Nothing seems to lean into buffing ignites the same way you can lean into crit/archmage/mana tempest for hit-based elemental caster builds.

Could be wrong tho!

Edit: also, I think fiery death is a very good addon to incinerate for clear.

I'm twice ascended infernalist using uncapped demon form using energy shield and low life with regen. While in human form the damage is slow unless there are bodies for me to explode via detonate dead. After 50-75 demonflame stacks though the power ramp is substantial but I can only hold it until about 120, so about 2 minutes right now. The real problem is fire is just massively outclassed by bone, cold, chaos, and lightning right now. Almost any other combo of spells in another category would probably grant me more killing speed and survivability. Incinerate in particular you have to be right up on top of a boss. I think fusellage is probably the go to bosser and initial body dropper for detonate dead but I have seen people using an awkward solar orb and flameblast combo to some success.

I did a bunch of testing with the skill last night and today. I don't believe the skill actually "hits". Instead of thinking about the skill like poe 1 incin, think of it as scorching ray that drops burning ground.

that said, I feel like were missing supports for the skill which I assume will be coming with chieften.

So for now the best way to play it IMO is to focus on ignites with cast on ignite meta gem.

I run Incinerate with Firestorm, and i use Considered Casting (which seems to work despite it being labeled as hit), Controlled Destrution, Mobility + Momentum and would either go for Strip Away or Arcane Tempo for final slot (Arcane Tempo is somewhat wasted since it only fastens the ramp-up but not dps on Incinerate).

On Firestorm i use Concentrated Effect, Overabundance, Spell Echo and Persistence - so with some passives i have it raining for 7 seconds. This combo is decent enough. I mix in Solar Orbs and Flameblast depending on the situation.

Cast on Ignite sucks imo.

FYI: https://maxroll.gg/poe2/planner/mi6vf0vf

To bring this up again and go in a bit more on the details:

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Alphavegeta#3655 wrote:

I am guessing Searing Flame is a good choice as it increases the ignite magnitude by 75% at a cost of 25% less hit damage. Obviously if you were focusing on the hit and not on the ignite this would be a bad choice.

This dosent appear to do anything at all. You dont need magnitude since you always insta apply iginite while channeling (there is no ignite buildup, so no use for magnitude).

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Alphavegeta#3655 wrote:

Fire Mastery looks like another decent choice to increase the level of incinerate to a 21 base. That said, I am using demon form which is already providing 3-6 additional levels to this gem.

Good choice, altough i prefer other gems with multiplicative effects (+1 lvl has diminishing returns if you stack it on gear anyway).

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Alphavegeta#3655 wrote:

Concentrated Effect appears to work on this, making me think this skill does indeed hit enemies. It says it provides 40% more area damage however, and impacts both the hit and the ignite. One reason to not take this skill gem is that with incinerate you want as much reach as possible to keep at maximum safe distance from mobs.

As you say, you need the range - there are better ways to use that support gem. (Firestorm !!!)

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Alphavegeta#3655 wrote:

Eternal Flame looks useful as incinerate by default halves the duration of ignite put onto enemies. That said, I have found it easy enough to start reapplying to hard mobs as soon as the ignite goes away already so I don't believe this is going to increase my damage unless I were to kite the enemy and fire off a fuselage or some such, giving it maximum time to burn the enemy.

Imo anything related to ignite is wasted on Incinerate. It isnt a real ignite, it just is kinda like ignite.

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Alphavegeta#3655 wrote:

Fire Penetration looks like it's going to act just like POE1 and only apply to the hit portion and do nothing for the ignite. If a crit incinerate were possible I suppose this may have more use but as the skill already applies -50% fire resists this seems pointless.


Strip Away I can't tell if this does much of anything despite the game suggesting to take this support. It lowers the enemies resistances faster and has incinerate ending with -65% as opposed to -50% but ultimately doesn't appear to do much of anything else. I wouThere doesn't appear to be any real solid information about the mechanics of this spell yet. I realize there are a lot of bugs and a general lack of information and even testing stuff does not appear able to clearly indicate what we're supposed to be doing with different skills. I can swap things around, test them on mobs, and I'm still not entirely sure what's happening, especially with DOTS. To me, focusing on ignite with this skill looks best as you ramp it to maximum stacks, inflict ignite, roll around a boss mechanic and then fire it back up again.

Exposure is Incinerates best feature! Penetration cant go below 0, exposure can. You can get the exposure with Incinerate to more than -100, wich is a colossal damage increase (and the best reason to combine Incinerate with Firestorm and or Solar Orb). And i think it is calculated penetration first, then exposure.

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Alopex81#5818 wrote:

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Alphavegeta#3655 wrote:

I am guessing Searing Flame is a good choice as it increases the ignite magnitude by 75% at a cost of 25% less hit damage. Obviously if you were focusing on the hit and not on the ignite this would be a bad choice.

This dosent appear to do anything at all. You dont need magnitude since you always insta apply iginite while channeling (there is no ignite buildup, so no use for magnitude).

ignite magnitude is scaling the damage of the ignite surely?

thats my presumption. the entire damage of the skill is its ignite damage so magnitude is everything unless im mistaken?



thats without searing flame gem, its showing 1382 top end ignite damage



thats with searing flame, 1811.

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Snorkle_uk#0761 wrote:

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Alopex81#5818 wrote:

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Alphavegeta#3655 wrote:

I am guessing Searing Flame is a good choice as it increases the ignite magnitude by 75% at a cost of 25% less hit damage. Obviously if you were focusing on the hit and not on the ignite this would be a bad choice.

This dosent appear to do anything at all. You dont need magnitude since you always insta apply iginite while channeling (there is no ignite buildup, so no use for magnitude).

ignite magnitude is scaling the damage of the ignite surely?

thats my presumption. the entire damage of the skill is its ignite damage so magnitude is everything unless im mistaken?



thats without searing flame gem, its showing 1382 top end ignite damage



thats with searing flame, 1811.

It says on the POE2 WIKI under Ignite mechanics that "Ignite deals 20% of a hit's fire damage dealt (before mitigation and damage taken modifiers) as fire damage over time for 4 seconds. This percentage is affected multiplicatively by ailment effect/magnitude." I would imagine the magnitude increases the ignite damage but can't be totally sure.

I gave up on trying to make incinerate work, there's no combination of gems/supports that makes using it feel good outside of 100+ stacks of demonform and even then there are probably a dozen other spells that do more damage or are safer to use. There's also no ascendency that looks like a good fit either without investing a few dozen divines in gear.

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Alphavegeta#3655 wrote:

It says on the POE2 WIKI under Ignite mechanics that "Ignite deals 20% of a hit's fire damage dealt (before mitigation and damage taken modifiers) as fire damage over time for 4 seconds. This percentage is affected multiplicatively by ailment effect/magnitude." I would imagine the magnitude increases the ignite damage but can't be totally sure.

I gave up on trying to make incinerate work, there's no combination of gems/supports that makes using it feel good outside of 100+ stacks of demonform and even then there are probably a dozen other spells that do more damage or are safer to use. There's also no ascendency that looks like a good fit either without investing a few dozen divines in gear.

Hmm, ok. I guess i was wrong on that one. Although Searing Flame is still outperformed by the other gems like Considered Casting.

On making it work: i am determined to make it work. And so far it does (i've linked it above). But it wont be really strong in the end (compared to top builds).

Incinerate is a odd skill, and a lot of the inner workings are not clear to me. On its own it is to weak. But with the crazy exposure and stacked with the other fire skills simultainously i have a build that works ok-ish (with +6 spell skills on gear, so nothing fancy).

And as it is: with this i have my 3rd char in endgame and i actually prefer the playstyle over the others so far. I probably "should" focus on more efficient builds (insane clear like Spark-Archwizard or something like that), but "one-button-screen-clearing builds" get rather boring quickly. Incinerate as debuff and burst skill in concert with either Firestorm and/or Solar Orb+Flameblast in either mid or long range, always adapting to the situation, is actually quite engaging gameplay ... at least in my opinion.