Infernalist Ascendancy Overview

The Infernalist Ascendancy can be a powerful spellcaster with a demonic transformation or a Minion summoner with access to an increased Spirit pool, which allows it to summon more Minions compared to the other ascendancies. The Infernalist Ascendancy allows you to summon an Infernal Hound companion that ignites enemies. It also allows you to transform into a Demon that grants increased cast speed, damage and mobility. However, the Demon Form comes with a drawback of Life lost per second. To mitigate this, players must invest in Life recovery.

Infernalist Ascendancy notables

Altered Flesh

When you take Cold or Lightning damage, 20% of that damage is instead converted to Fire damage. This makes it worth focusing on stacking maximum Fire resistance instead of all three elements at the same time. By socketing Soul Core of Puhuarte in your items, you can reach a very high maximum Fire resistance.

You also convert 20% of all physical damage taken into Chaos damage with this notable.
There are not many sources of physical damage mitigation in the game except for armour, but this notable allows you to take less physical damage if you have a good amount of Chaos resistance. Another option is to take the Chaos Inoculation keystone, which would mean you permanently take 20% less physical damage.

Beidat's Gaze

Reserves 25% of your Life to gain +1 maximum Mana for every 6 maximum Life that you have. This is very useful if you are stacking Mana as a defensive mechanic when combined with the keystone Mind Over Matter.

Beidat's Will

Reserves 25% of your Life to gain +1 to maximum Spirit for every 25 Maximum Life that you have. This allows you to summon more permanent Minions or use more auras since Spirit is a very limited resource.

Beidat's Hand

Reserves 25% of your Life to gain +1 maximum Energy Shield for every 8 Maximum Life that you have. This is very useful if you are stacking Energy Shield as your primary defensive layer, since your Energy shield needs to be depleted before you start losing Life. However, there are damage sources that bypass your Energy shield such as Poison and bleeding.

Demonic Possession

Grants Skill: Demon Form
Shapeshift into a demon, vastly boosting the power of your Spells. You gain Demonflame every second you remain in demon form, causing your life to be lost at an ever-increasing rate. Maximum 10 Demonflame. Revert to human form if you reach 1 Life, use a Skill that isn't a Spell, or reactivate this Skill. Two useful support gems for this skill are Ingenuity and Vitality to reduce the cooldown for changing forms and regenerate Life that is lost to the Demonflame stacks.

Mastered Darkness

Demonflame has no maximum. This allows you to have unlimited Demonflame stacks for even more increased Spell damage at the cost of losing more Life per second for each extra stack.

Bringer of Flame

All Damage from you and Allies in your Presence (within a distance of 4m base) contributes to Ignite Chance and Magnitude.

Pyromantic Pact

Maximum Mana is replaced by Infernal Flame.
Gain Infernal Flame instead of spending Mana for Skill costs.
Take maximum Life and Energy Shield as Fire Damage when Infernal Flame reaches maximum.
Lose all Infernal Flame on reaching maximum Infernal Flame.
50% of Infernal Flame lost per second if none was gained in the past 2 seconds.

With this notable, you need to manage a new resource called Infernal Flame that replaces your Mana. If you cast too many spells in a short amount of time, you end up damaging yourself and your Infernal Flame drops back to 0. But cast too few spells and you no longer gain the benefit from Seething Body, which requires you to have High (65%+) Infernal Flame.

Seething Body

While on High (65%+) Infernal Flame, you and Allies in your Presence (within a distance of 4m base) gain 50% of Damage as Fire Damage. A very powerful ascendancy for Fire-based builds as long as you can manage the downside of using Infernal Flame as a resource.

Loyal Hellhound

Grants Skill: Summon Infernal Hound
Summons a Reviving Infernal Hound which Ignites enemies near it. This summoned companion can be supported by Loyalty to reduce the damage you take by 10%. However, this also makes it so that the Hound can die quite easily if you do not support it with defensive gems such as Meat Shield. Another very useful support is Fire Exposure since the Infernal Hound always ignites nearby enemies.

Grinning Immolation

You become Ignited when you deal a Critical Hit, taking 15% of your Life and Energy Shield as Fire Damage per second, but Gain 50% more Critical Damage Bonus. This is a very powerful bonus if you are playing a crit stacking build, as the 50% more multiplier increases your current critical damage bonus multiplicatively instead of additively. Stacking maximum Fire resistance is a good option to reduce the damage taken from the self ignite. You can also use a Dousing Charm to become immune temporarily.

The Infernalist Ascendancy in Path of Exile 2 enables you to become a powerful spellcaster or a Minion summoner. When transforming into a powerful Demon, Infernalists can gain a massive damage boost. However, this power comes with a drawback, as players must carefully manage their Life recovery. The Infernalist Ascendancy can also summon an Infernal Hound to ignite enemies and mitigate damage taken when supported by Loyalty. With Beidat's Will, Infernalists gain access to more Spirit to enable the use of more auras or to summon more Minions. Pyromantic Pact can be taken in combination with Seething Body to gain access to a massive boost in Fire damage for yourself and your Minions. However, this comes at the cost of needing to manage the resource known as Infernal Flame from Pyromantic Pact.

Credits

Written by: Helm Breaker
Reviewed by: IBoilerUp