[Top 5] Path of Exile Best Fire Builds (3.20.2)

Updated:

24 Apr 2023

5 – Explosive Arrow Ballista Ignite Elementalist

Obviously one of the best builds in the game, both for league starting and uber bossing farming, EA Ballista ignite has dominated the meta with the sheer ease to deal millions of damage while running around and dodging skillshots.

What Explosive Arrow Ballista Ignite Excels in:

Tankyness.
Can reach the DoT Cap (~37 million damage) easily.
Very cheap to get started with, and can do all content
Perfect for league start.

EA Ballista Ignite full details:

Because of how Elementalist works, any source of flat damage becomes fodder for your ignite damage. As such, you’ll want as much Flat damage, physical, chaos, elemental, doesn’t matter, as possible. In fact, you don’t want Flat Added Fire damage to attacks because that would brick Elemental Equilibrium and cost you millions of damage.
The name of the game for EA is attack speed, combined with Faster Ignite. You must reach 20 stacks on the enemy, explode, and then do it repeatedly. The more ballistae you have, the quicker you get there, increasing your overall damage per second.
Since the ballistae can cost a lot of mana, as EA has one of the highest base cost skills in the game, you can either use Lifetap or go with a Devouring Diadem. This helps increase the amount of damage you deal, allowing you to fit in an extra aura and providing you with a lot of damage with a Focus button.

For more information, check here: https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/gladkopls/Pain_Sanctum?time-machine=week-3&i=3&search=time-machine%3Dweek-3%26skill%3DExplosive-Arrow%26sort%3Ddps

4 – Strength Stacking Volcanic Fissure Chieftain/Juggernaut

It comes as no surprise in a league where it’s possible to get Sanctified Relics that give you flat damage per 10 attributes, (fire, cold and lightning-based, respectively, per 10 strength, dexterity, and intelligence) that Strength stacking would resurge like it did, and one of the best Strength stacking classes in the game, Chieftain is all the happier to stack further damage.

What Strength Stacking Volcanic Fissure Excels in:

Great for Sanctum
Can clear rather quickly
Tanky
Reaches millions of DPS
Sanctified Relic can almost double your damage.

Pick Volcanic Fissure if you Like:

Letting your totems do your work for you
Enjoy carnage as it unfolds in front of you
Play Attribute Stacking Builds.

Volcanic Fissure full details:

As a strength-stacking attack build, we obviously use Iron Fortress, the best Strength-Stacking chest piece, which enables the combo with Crown of Eyes and Battlemage’s Cry, giving us over 900% increased Attack damage, since we have over 1900 strength.
Brutus’ Lead Sprinkler is a no-brainer and what the build revolves around. You want one with Attack Speed corruption to go as fast as possible.
Another way of getting a lot of damage, with a high price tag would be to get 2 Forbidden Jewels for Undeniable, which makes it so you essentially have 100% chance to hit and a lot of attack speed for free, due to your high Strength count.

For more information, check here: https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/boxcutter245/Zheka_TOTEM?time-machine=week-3&i=3&search=time-machine%3Dweek-3%26class%3DChieftain%26skill%3DVolcanic-Fissure%26sort%3Ddps

3 – Vortex Ignite Elementalist

You might realize a theme, but Ignite has become even stronger in 3.20 due to the changes to Curses and how they affect bosses. As such, we have a resurgence of ignite builds, including different takes on old ones. And this is one such build.

What Vortex Ignite Excels in:

Fairly Tanky.
A lot of single target damage for a DoT build
Fantastic clearing
Buttery Smooth playstyle.

Pick Vortex Ignite if you Like:

Dealing damage as you walk
Walking simulator
Effortless screen-wide clearing

Vortex Ignite Full details:

Because of how Vortex works, where increases to Spell damage also increase the DoT portion of the skill, the ignites originated by this skill will also get increased by spell damage, which is not normal since they removed double dipping.
To make this build excel, you’ll want to get as high a gem level as possible, reaching at least level 28 on your Vortex (Can scale to over 30 with some investment). And because of how much Exposure Elementalists get, you can get insane amounts of negative Enemy Resistance by using Eye of Malice, which increases Enemies' Resistances by 50%, but also increases the negative portion of it. So if the enemy has -50% Res, it suddenly becomes -75%. And this works with bosses much better now!
Most of your survivability comes from being fully Spell Suppressed and the crazy amount of slows and freezes from your Vortex, chilling and reducing action speed to up to 40%, as well as a respectable amount of Armor and Evasion.

For more information, check here: https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/Melt1337/SadSadSadEnjoyer?time-machine=week-3&i=3&search=time-machine%3Dweek-3%26class%3DElementalist%26skill%3DVortex%26sort%3Ddps

2 – Righteous Fire/Fire Trap Juggernaut

After the nerfs to Inquisitor, though still a strong choice for RF, Juggernaut gained massive popularity thanks to Pohx, especially if you enjoy being immortal and still killing enemies by attrition, this build is for you!

What the RF/Fire Trap Jugg Excels in:

Safe Bossing
Insanely Tanky
Can clear quite quickly with Maven Boots
League Starter, HC, SSF Viable

Pick Righteous Fire/Fire Trap if you Like:

Cruise through maps without a care in the world and nothing hurt you
Ignore all downsides and survivability issues most people suffer with degens and ground dots
Clear as quickly as you Shield Charge, with everything exploding around you.

RF/Fire Trap full details:

RF works by dealing damage based on our ES and Life pool. We scale as much HP as possible to increase the base value, which in turn gets increased by our supports. We aim to use a Pseudo 6/7-Link helmet with Concentrated AoE, Burning Damage, and 30% more elemental multiplier from Essence of Horror. Which is absurdly expensive to craft, but it’s BiS.
Our defences come from Brass Dome, which grants us a whopping 5% max all res, scaling max res in the passive tree as well as using a Saffel’s for another +4%, to reach 88% max fire res and 87% cold and lightning resistance.
As a secondary source of damage, we use Fire Trap. You can either slot it in the 6L Brass Dome (look for good corruptions, like +2 Duration or +1 all), or in the helmet, with the Pseudo 6~7 Link.

For more information, check here: https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/OG_IMMORTAL/OG_RF?time-machine=week-3&i=0&search=time-machine%3Dweek-3%26class%3DJuggernaut%26skill%3DRighteous-Fire%26sort%3Ddps

1 – Fire Reap Chieftain

A unique take on this one, doing its best to be as immortal as possible but still retaining a substantial amount of damage. This Reap Chieftains uses Tempered by War and Damage Taken Conversion to ignore all Physical damage while also transferring as much Cold and Lightning Damage to Fire, to be even tankier !

What Fire Reap Excels in:

Quick and strong bursts of damage
Extremely tanky
Makes use of several niche and interesting mechanics
Can do all content with ease (over 100 million DPS)

Pick Fire Reap if you like:

Destroying your enemies in a burst of fiery explosions
Instantly deleting bosses
Having almost all damage taken be fire, and reaching practically immortality

Fire Reap full details:

Whereas previously people used Omniscience to insanely scale the damage, with Leadership Price, combined with Dawnbreaker, Sublime Vision for Purity of Fire and Tempered by War, means you get all Alt Ailments working for you, at the simple cost of balancing your Strength and Int to be the highest, and identical, amount.
As for damage, with all 3 Confluxes, Awakened Spell Echo and Spell Cascade, Reap can hit 4 times quickly, reaching over 100 million DPS.
It also uses a fantastically unique and niche item, which can only be activated when you have both Strength and Int being the highest attribute, granting Profane and Consecrated Ground for free.

For more information, check here: https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/xMrLeitoS3/ImSorryShaperKEKW?time-machine=week-3&i=4&search=time-machine%3Dweek-3%26class%3DChieftain%26skill%3DReap%26sort%3Ddps