Why is blackflame covenant limited to Fire Spells

Hey, I've been enjoying playing with Blackflame Covenant, but I'm really not sure why it's limited to fire spells only, especially when infusions exist.

It feels like it could convert "fire damage from spells" rather than "fire damage from fire spells" to give more synergy with spells that consume fire infusion like comet.

The same reason we have no passive skill synergies or support gems which allow builds like cold fire witch.

Also probably the same reason we have skills being limited to weapon categories and specific weapons.

Whoever is making these decisions is a short sighted and silly person.

There's no way anyone looked at these features, compared them to PoE1 and seriously said, "yeah players will like this."

I'm inclined to think it was less about choosing only fire, and more about specifically not letting you convert lightning to chaos, so you couldn't have shock on your chaos build, unless you actually built for it with a lightning + chaos build.

This is particularly interesting because its basically.....the opposite of everything PoE 1 was designed to stand for.

Namely, being able to take any one skill and completely change it in nearly every way down to its very element, while being able to support it through both the original and converted element.

BUT

It's possible this design is a (misguided) attempt to pre-emptively clamp down on "double dipping" that is rampant in conversion builds in PoE 1. By being more restrictive on the outset, they can maintain control over power for a longer period of time. Even if the downside is LESS customization.

There's no other passives that convert all damage, usually it's on an item and you sacrifice a rare in a slot.

It's for balance, and theme. They could balance fire damage and ignite around chaos but when you start introducing things like meteor, spark, etc. It's just a node that basically says "ignore monster elemental resistances". Very few mobs actually have chaos res.

They could also do the animations, make them purple. It's cool. It's a neat and powerful archetype, I do not see a reason to complain about it's restrictiveness. Fireball and Ember Fusillade are pretty damn good.

Probably the only problem for me is Ember Fusillade + Wildshards just feels bad now, when it overrides the targeting it just makes the skill useless. It was targeting enemies with wildshards since 0.1, then they randomly changed it because BM was clearing like the game is a joke.

It is really bad because unless you cast again and specifically get unlucky enough to not get a wildshard proc, all of your fire embers shoot in random directions. Not just the ones generated. With the way this skill works, casting a lot then waiting for it to expire, it feels super clunky and just punishes you for using wildshards at all.

Obviously it should not proc on every cast when you start with it, but it should target enemies still, and maybe wildshards just has 50% less effect on skills like this that override it's targeting. Or maybe even wildshard procs on specifically ember fusillade just operate separately, only the projectiles generated by wildshards, separate from the embers you cast yourself, go off in a circle when they proc (or x.x seconds after).

I agree that ember fusillade and fireball are perfectly fine skills but it feels kinda lame that if you want to use this very cool and interesting keystone you essentially have to play EF. Flameblast, firestorm, honestly even fireball are all mediocre and EF + living bomb is the only way to play.

On one hand you could argue "prevents too strong of synergies" like shock but its essentially a node that says "you play EF now". I'm enjoying it well enough but I do wish there were options.

"

Jayfrin#2999 a écrit :

I agree that ember fusillade and fireball are perfectly fine skills but it feels kinda lame that if you want to use this very cool and interesting keystone you essentially have to play EF. Flameblast, firestorm, honestly even fireball are all mediocre and EF + living bomb is the only way to play.

On one hand you could argue "prevents too strong of synergies" like shock but its essentially a node that says "you play EF now". I'm enjoying it well enough but I do wish there were options.

Yeah true but you can say that for all skills right now pretty much. Most melee and spell archetypes struggle to find any real success with off-meta skills, even xbow is dominated by just galvanic shards/ shockburst and explosive rounds/ explosive grenade.

Maybe they just need to add more fire skills or make some of the existing ones more usable (flameblast)

The pre-emptive nerf to flameblast when it was at 0.1% played in 0.2 still hurts my soul to this day

"

The_Song#4903 a écrit :

I'm inclined to think it was less about choosing only fire, and more about specifically not letting you convert lightning to chaos, so you couldn't have shock on your chaos build, unless you actually built for it with a lightning + chaos build.

Esh's Radiance

"

Jayfrin#2999 a écrit :

I agree that ember fusillade and fireball are perfectly fine skills but it feels kinda lame that if you want to use this very cool and interesting keystone you essentially have to play EF. Flameblast, firestorm, honestly even fireball are all mediocre and EF + living bomb is the only way to play.

On one hand you could argue "prevents too strong of synergies" like shock but its essentially a node that says "you play EF now". I'm enjoying it well enough but I do wish there were options.

Plugging my Blackflame Flameblast Ignite build.

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


Agree with the other commenter. It's for balance. Fire had no way to scale ignite, there wasn't enough ignite magnitude available. So converting it to chaos and scaling with Wither was added.

You scale cold with crits, lightning with archmage, fire was the worst element.

Ignite Flameblast is actually really good. I am just not an ailments guy, I like scaling hits. Immediate damage just feels more meaty.

Can't really do that focused around Flamblast because of the insane CD, maybe a Temporalis build could but I did that with an autobomber in 0.1 when it was 124d, that was hard enough no way am I grinding for it now

I kind of know this skill would be broken if they added more stuff and I am upset we didn't get to play with it at all because they nerfed it before anyone was even really using it