Now that Fire Spell on Hit costs no mana, the problem with it is even clearer.

To start, I think that removing mana costs from the triggered spells on Blacksmith's Fire Spell on Hit was a very good step in the right direction, but the real problem behind all of it still remains: Fire spells, specially those that can be used reliably with Blacksmith, are kind of really weak and limited.

Starting from the weakest, we have Flame Wall, which realistically doesn't do much for a build that relies on melee hits. Volcano, newly introduced, is not useable due to it being a channelling skill.

DD and VD are good clearing options, but become kinda dead for bosses, where you'd probably want it the most in the first place.
Flameblast and incinerate, like volcano, are not useable.

Firestorm and solar orb both refresh their duration any time you cast them, which is almost way too quick for any of them to actually deal any substantial damage, on top of that, for firestorm you will be eating up any remnants you create (if any at all) way quicker than the skill even gets to start up.

Living bomb has a similar problem as the previous two; you'd have to literally stop attacking for enough time for it to trigger or it will constantly be refreshing before it goes off.


Snap is a decent option again, but the 4 second cooldown kind of makes it very weak, and the fire damage it deals isn't that high anyway to start with.

Curses I suppose are a decent support option, but curses are already very easy to self cast, so it's not doing that much as a whole.

Which leaves us with two skills that are reliable at all times: fireball and ember fusillade. Firebolt on its own is kind of weak without remnants, and ember fusillade, which can end up dealing good amounts of damage, doesn't seem to target enemies properly when cast with this, so more than half the projectiles will end up missing the target(s).


As a whole, it seems that every skill that would be good with it requires another that generates remnants, and/or is limited by the fact that its own trigger rate makes it refresh before it deals any substantial damage, unless I decide to counter-intuitively go with low ignite buildup, but at that point I'd rather just selfcast and go another ascendancy as a whole.

yeah i was interested in making a volcano build with it since we are slamming anyways and it has a nice duration... but its got channeled tag. I dont know why they dont just let us use channeled spells at stage zero, when you use it yourself ur just instacasting it anyways... bad design.

the entire infusion system is bad, needs to be removed or changed drastically.. they cant tie the damage to the infusions. if they want the infusion mechanic they need to tie something else to it like utility or mechanics not the damage of the spell.. this type of design continues to destroy build variety.

but i can't say i agree with the post, the reason fire spell on hit is trash is because of the energy system being tied to monster ailment threshold. you basically have to kill the mob already for it to even trigger a spell so it will always be a useless damage supplement, especially with how there is 0 utility in fire spells.

"

TheLenymo#5063 wrote:

but i can't say i agree with the post, the reason fire spell on hit is trash is because of the energy system being tied to monster ailment threshold. you basically have to kill the mob already for it to even trigger a spell so it will always be a useless damage supplement, especially with how there is 0 utility in fire spells.

With good enough AOE and some ignite buildup/flammability on tree I find rolling slam or EQ to both fill the energy requirement for fireball and firestorm very consistently with one hit. Normal mace strike is also able to trigger it every two hits to unique enemies which is pretty good really, only offset by the fact that each mace strike deals like 10x more damage than each spell cast.

Right after posting I went to look for some more options, and it's definitely possible to sustain infusions with elemental siphon aura and elemental discharge on the fire spell trigger; deals nice enough damage and is consistent enough, but it still takes a whole support link and aura away from the build.