Oh, I meant giving FoI drain essence range. For some reason I feel like I have to be almost in melee range to make sure I hit the mobs. When the mobs aren’t dying I’m not sure if it is because I’m out of range or it is because FoI is so weak. 
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More dmg with or without more range is badly needed on FoI! Also the weapons supporting elemental FoI need better conversion, like full fire to lightning and full lightning to fire respectively. E.g. flamestrife should have at least ~50% lightning to fire conversion or one could increase the amount of global conversion that eternal pyre rings give.
Feel free to check out mine: [1.1.4.2] [HC] The Weeb Hunter - fire FoI Mage Slayer [vids]
Dot damage is not compatible with such channeling skills. Although it is better on the notation, it is actually weak.
So my request is to reduce Dot damage and increase Flat damage.
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Yeah, I usually associate dots with kiting but with FoI you have to stand there within short range of mobs. I don’t get it.
Crate seems to occassinally have this weird predilection for giving spammable skills massive DoT. This is especially true for acid.
After seeing this thread I took a look at FoI gear in GT and found it also has very few non-set items that support it. Ignaffar Armor, pants, gauntlets, chains of the hungering void, myth. combustion band, and weapons (weapons actually seem fairly diverse). Lack of +skills to various nodes makes building around the skill’s shortcomings difficult.
About the DoT damage: To confirm, channelling the skill refreshes duration for each tick of the skill, thus not allowing DoTs to tick before getting refreshed.
Is investing in just the DoT nodes useful for short pulses in order to stack DoTs with other skills? Has anyone tried? I attempted to use 1-pointer FoI with maxed endless flame, purely for fumble, a while back but the energy cost was unmanagable even with short pulses and reduced energy cost.
^This is a very real, and sad truth, I’m afraid.
Bro. I’ve tried. Believe me, I’ve tried.
Scratch that. I’m still trying.
I want nothing more than to purge my pagan enemies with self-righteous fire.
The only 2 masteries I know of which won’t struggle with energy is the magehunter, the other is the voidsoul deceiver because of the crazy energy reduction from the set.
Regardless, FoI suffers from 4 flaws which work in unison to make its skill point investment unjustifiable:
- Massive DoT on a channeled skill (this gimps its DPS)
- Incredibly short attack range (this renders you very vulnerable to CC’s which enemies are now packing more than ever, further decreasing DPS)
- Insane energy cost (further decreasing DPS).
- Inability to concentrate damage type (further decreasing DPS, though this is will be a less significant problem if the above 3 can be addressed)
There are also things like…
- Slow start-up animation (i.e. you don’t deal damage immediately upon casting FoI. There is a slight delay).
- The reverse, however, isn’t true. Damage ends the moment you stop casting FoI even though there’s a little bit of leftover fire still trickling out from where you hand was. (This is based on my observation, I may be wrong here).
- What I call attack range/attack animation mismatch. See the video I posted above.
EDIT:
^can confirm the above. Just watched dummy test at 0.25x playback speed.
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I also want to add that it’s entirely possible (and not too uncommon) to get CC-locked over and over again during FoI’s slow start up phase.
Your spec will essentially do this weird dance where it raises his/her arm up and down repeatedly, but deal 0 damage.
Even if your cast animation gets interrupted by 0.00000001s, because FoI has an innate “cooldown” of 0.3s, you are unable to deal damage for those 0.3s.
Longer if you include that 0.1s damage delay UPON casting FoI.
So basically, you are a sitting duck for ~0.4 - 0.5s every single time you get CC’d.
This is my biggest problem with FoI.
EDIT: Before the increase in monster difficulty, this problem wasn’t very noticeable. But man. It’s crippling now. I’ve been killed in wave 152 in 5 seconds in (4 + 0) Crucible because of this problem.
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That sounds like real deal breaker! I noticed something like this, but couldn’t explain it this good. As whole you’re being interrupted and CD+animation speed is preventing you from making damage, thus surviving.
I would actually find it fucking hilarious if Z said, ‘working as intended. This is why you get DoT.’
highly presume he will say like that. 
nah, Z’s a reasonable dude. And at the end of the day, if FoI doesn’t get buffed, it’s not like we’ve lost anything.
You can’t lose what you’ve never had 
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reasonable!
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This concept just popped into mind - It might be worth trying this on an octavious tactician, or paladin with beronath reforged, just as a support skill.
But it would still defeat what I view to be the core design of FoI - i.e. FoI is meant to hog the limelight, not be used in such a weird manner.
It would also be moreso indicative of IT prowess as the most powerful damage type, than it would be of FoI’s strengths.
Sorry if I sounded confrontational; just wanted to know if anyone tried anything gimmicky to make the DoT useful in an exorbitantly expensive support-skill sort of way.
Answered my question while I was composing. Ty dude.
Won’t quote everything here, but I agree with every point. This is more or less why I immediately respec out of FoI whenever tempted to try it, gear on hand or no.
I’ve noticed with AAR too that it’s not quite instant even though it’s a laser. Do these channeled skills have projectile speed?
Not at all. I was just being dramatic
Nothing to apologize for!
I haven’t tested AAR much, so I can’t comment.
But it is similar on acid purge, and if you tap the hotkey quick enough, you can actually achieve the same effect with EoR.
It sounds like you’re saying that if I hold FoI on a target they will not take any DOT damage from FoI. Is that true, or am I misunderstanding?
Enemies will still take DoT damage, but the DoT flat damage is divided evenly for each second of duration, so 900 over 3s will result in 300 damage ticks. Basically in that case you get 300 damage, and the rest of the DoT duration is QoL for trash I guess.
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What plague mirth said.
FoI hits ~6 times a second @ 200% CS.
But the DoT will only be applied once a second.
Since most of FoI’s damage is actually found in its DoT, it seems almost paradoxical to make it a channelling skill.
It is for this very same reason why you don’t ever see DEE spam builds.
I’ve always found the DoTs on channeled skills puzzling. Are they for trash clear only? If so, why is Scion of Crimson Wakes a thing? It would be cool if DoTs from channeled skills would stack like BWC for bigger ticks (up to 1s worth of ticks maybe?). 6 ticks a second might even equal out to max cast speed BWC spam. That would necessitate the DoT damage get toned down though…