How To Fix Chieftain Ascendancy In Path Of Exile 3.22? – Nodes & Fire Damage Support

Now is the time to discuss Path of Exile 3.22. Today I want to look at Chieftain Ascendancy, one of the less popular Ascendancy in POE. If you’ve ever tried a Hard Mode in POE, such as Ruthless, Hardcore or Solo Self-Found, you’ll know why.

In these scenarios, Chieftain Ascendancy is currently underperforming. Not that it’s bad actually, I think it’s missing a key mechanic. So here I’d like to take a quick look at the various nodes of Chieftain Ascendancy and tweak and fix it to increase its damage buff.

Recap Of Chieftain Nodes

I’ll start by looking at the three most commonly used nodes in Ngamahu. The first is Ramako, Sun’s Light. It conflicts with itself in several ways. Its Damage Penetrates 15% Fire Resistance only applies to hit damage. So it will not expand the damage because of POE Currency you invest. It’s a bit of a waste node.

But enough damage at this node will make you think of it differently. Whether you want fire damage over a period or instant hit fire damage, it’s really helpful for you to buy POE Currency for Path of Exile 3.22 expansion.

Hinekora, Death’s Fury is probably the strongest node in Chieftain Ascendancy and is used by many players. Because it can 1% of Fire Damage Leeched as Life. This is a meaningful ability. It also can Cover enemies in Ash for 10 seconds.

Plus, it increases damage by 20. But instead of adding 20 damage and POE Orbs, it’s 20 damage on the same layer than Stacks. This is the reason people consider Chieftain for various strength stacking builds.

Your last option is Tasalio, Cleansing Water. This is a very strong defensive node. It will provide a large amount of Fire Resistance, and can convert part of the physical damage hit into fire damage. This means you can also completely ignore all physical Damage Mitigation. Because Ignite does not affect Tasalio, it makes you completely immune to damage from Ignite.

Ngamahu, Flame’s Advance

What I really want to talk about is Ngamahu, Flame’s Advance. It gains 100 physical damage as bonus Fire damage every 10 seconds for 4 seconds. It also has multiple ways to add physical damage as extra elemental damage to characters in Path of Exile.

I think one of Chieftain’s biggest weaknesses is that this way of scaling damage is limited. Currently, it’s not in a suitable position. While Ngamahu is unreliable, it still gives you at least 40% more fire damage.

Still, it can be frustrating when you’re fighting a boss. Because after the boss enters the invulnerability phase, if you need this powerful damage buff again, you will first take the base damage for 6 seconds.

Why Few People Use Added Fire Damage Support?

Nowadays, people tend to use Impale for scaling. Because in addition to other Brutality Support, the skills of Support Gems cannot deal elemental damage. You simply cannot add it as an additional element to various sources of physical damage in combination. I think fixing that might actually make Chieftain better.

Whether it’s adding lightning damage support, adding cold damage support, adding chaos damage support. These are just adding a certain number of related elements. They end up being very simple gems that you can apply to any skill.

They tend not to be the best choice for Support Gems for most skills. But adding fire damage support is much more complicated. I don’t think this is something that should have been given in the first act. It causes some of the physical damage dealt by skills to be added as additional fire damage.

But this is where we run into scaling issues. The extra fire doesn’t stack well with sources like Flame’s Advance and it will give you more stats if you add fire damage support. That’s actually more damage than the extra fire damage support does. Now, POE has partially solved this problem. What they have done is add fire damage support on top of the Awakened Support Skill Gems.

Once you level up Gems to level five, they offer amazing perks. But the added fire damage support doesn’t work very well between the two. So I think that’s a real problem for Chieftain.

Because thematically, a lot of Chieftains are instructing you to deal with physical damage. Then add a bunch of fire magic behind it to make it even more powerful. But the game mechanics don’t really support that unless you get to the point of Awakened.

Awakened isn’t some amazing Support Gem in fire damage support. For most people, it’s probably only slightly better than the other options. It is often better to accept Brutality Support.

Chieftain Buff Proposal

In response, I propose a series of changes here. I think this will help make Chieftain better than it is without really pushing anything else far beyond it. This is a complete overhaul of the additional fire damage support.

I think the fire damage done at Gem level 1 can go up to 7%, scaling up to about 11-12% at Gem level 21. And Awakened Support Skill Gems may further expand to 14%. Because that’s about as much fire damage as you can get from a gem.

So the intent here is to keep the topmost damage volume from changing too much. You do this and you lose one Gem level of supported physics skills. 

But in exchange for the loss, you gain an additional 14 points of fire damage from Gem. Even in this overhaul, the increased fire damage support should be breaking even. So you can rest assured to invest in POE Currency in this Support Gem.

Gem grade is not necessarily the best choice. But it will at least do something really meaningful. And it scales as your character gets more powerful. You’ll get more rewards as you start accumulating more physical damage sources as additional fire. Because fire damage will be a multiplier Support Gem. This means that it will have higher competitiveness in POE.

Final Thoughts

So I think a rework of the added fire damage support to make it better would be a targeted buff. This can really improve Chieftain without making drastic changes to the rest of the issues.

I think this method will be very useful for Gladiator and Assassin as well. But they may need more radical changes. Because they are far behind Chieftain in actual strength. So Chieftain is currently in a reasonable position. But in most cases, players still use the best Ascendancy classes. This is one reason Chieftain usage drops so low.

So, that’s all the interesting results I got with this Chieftain Ascendancy, and some of my tips for tweaking it. Hope this guide helps you understand the mechanics of Chieftain to create a great build that better fits your play style.