Why use Avatar of Fire

I was super excited when I took Avatar of Fire because (for some reason) I thought my ice spells would do half fire/ice damage and slow/burn but it turns out I only do half damage and mobs that reduce fire damage I can not swap elements to handle.

So wtf is the point of Avatar of Fire? I tried googling it and all that came up was stacking gems/passives/items of conversion to fire but all their maths always add up to less % than the original. Also, people tell me that Avatar of Fire works if you take all the improved fire nodes. No, I do the same damage with or with out Avatar of Fire. Avatar of Fire does not improve on Fire damage, all it does it make any other dps you have do half damage. I just dont see the point.

If you have full conversion (which can be done a few ways fairly easily), you can use powerful gems like "more weapon elemental damage" to their full effect.

As for spells, using something like avatar of fire + cold to fire support gem would give full fire damage cold spells (thats really all you'd need). You can then use something like ice spear to cause insanely powerful burn damage crits to enemies, simply melting them away instead of just freezing them. Burn damage does more damage than the hit itself, so it can be very powerful.

"the original damage is replaced with the converted damage. The amount of any given damage type that can be converted in this way cannot exceed 100%. If the combined value of all Converted to modifiers for a given damage type is greater than 100%, the values are scaled so that the total is 100% (ref)"

All im seeing your argument is for Avatar of Fire is that the fire spells are kinda lackluster and using a passive + gems to make an ice spell to do 'on par' for fire damage (whats the difference if i used fireball with +crit passives/gems? Even though fireball isnt that great and prob cant get to +600% crit at level 19 with gems/passives). Sorry if I come off as rude but this had got me frustrated. What I thought was going to be a fun character path turned out to be a wholly gimmicky one (I mean, I feel that Avatar of Fire should make you immune to fire or you shouldnt lose half your off-fire dps. That is lots of value lost for no gain. Sorry to hark, it still blows my mind).

But anyway, I think I can still do what I was originally going for without scrapping this char. I can use the Ice to Fire conversion gems for my ice spells to slow and burn right? I can also refund Avatar of Fire and go for the Body and Soul that is right above it.

Yeah, basically Avatar of Fire is a VERY build oriented passive. You need to structure your passives, gear, and gems around the single Keystone to have it work in a beneficial, intended way.

As you said, you can simply refund it if it doesn't work with your plans :)

Honestly, I think 100% fire ice spears sounds epic. I'm actually fully planning on making a build around it since I wrote my first response lol. It should be interesting (and hilarious)