Why Does Fire Damage Get so Much Preferential Treatment in PoE

Fire damage gets its own keystone, its own ascendancy, the most skills and uniques, seems to get the most balance attention and options. What's with the fire favoritism in this game? And I've played since the first open beta and yes it's always seemed to get preferential treatment.

1) To clarify - this post was NEVER about which elements were the most powerful/dominant, but simply which ones have had the most mechanical support and hence build diversity and options.

2) I mentioned the open beta thing not to blow my own horn but rather to make it clearer that this post was not about just recent changes. PoE has mechanically always revolved more around fire than any other damage type, regardless of whether fire was the 'hot' meta.

3) I've also heard some good arguments about the conversion issue, so I've removed that from the post.

4) For other examples, consider that cold damage still doesn't even have its own channeling skill yet, while fire has multiple. Minion instability causes minions to explode into fire damage. Fire also now has its own dedicated proliferation gem for some reason. There's also two fire totem skills and none for any other element. Or consider what one of the the most popular chestpieces for lightning users has been recently - Inpulsa's. Then consider that fire has had by far the most ways to do the same pretty much since its inception. Do you want to poe buy items? If you do, you can visit U4GM to have more guides and methods about this.