My title for this blog is more of a rhetorical question rather than a real question because the answer is clearly: YES! I overheard someone talking about the previous season’s Firebird set and how getting through T2 Zoltun Kulle was a little problematic. And when you have problems killing one of the easier bosses in the game, you clearly know you have issues with a set.
So first off, I get that Firebirds without the resurrection makes the fantasy aspect of the set meaningless. After all, what’s a set called Firebirds without bringing back a character to life as if he were Jon Snow? But let’s be honest here and call a spade a spade. This ability fucking sucks. The master dungeon with this ability sucks and it’s just too risky for say HC to go around dying. It’s a nice differentiation in terms of providing a unique spin on an idea, but as it stands it’s pretty useless.
But if the developers insist on keeping this ability, then they really need to shuffle around the other abilities in this set. First, keeping the resurrection at the two piece level means the wizard still is gimped when he/she first acquires the set, especially if the season cycles back to this set down the road as the seasonal armor. If they want to keep it at the two set bonus fine, but they really need to add a new defensive mechanism along and possibly move the current 4 set bonus down to the 2 piece bonus level. That way the whole 2 piece offense/4 piece defense/6 piece super offense theme is retained.
One thing I found while trying a few builds around with this set is that the wizard still is very squishy. Also, that 60 second cooldown renders the resurrection pretty useless. Let’s say you die and get insta-gibbed immediately thereafter. You pretty much are going to stay dead unless you exit the game and re-create. That’s just not fun at all. Instead, the easiest solution is to give the wizard a defense aura once they apply a fire damaging spell on enemies. You could simply move this into the 4 piece slot and rework the current 4 piece down into the 2 piece slot. Keep the 60 second resurrection cooldown for dramatic effect as an auto holy shit moment for the wizard. But don’t make it into the main feature of the set as it currently stands.
Another whacko idea is to bake the resurrection aspect into the 3 piece set bonus. Yes, I said it first. Don’t forget that Firebirds has 7 parts. If they’re keen on keeping the 7 pieces and firebirds theme, then put resurrection at an odd set number. Otherwise, what’s the point of having 7 pieces? I don’t think making resurrection such a huge defensive mechanism is a good stratagem for any game play. You’re essentially saying too the player “go ahead and die once in a while” rather than forcing the player to pay attention to the mechanics of the set.
Right now, Firebirds, despite being buffed and showing promise on the leaderboards, still is just too funky for my taste. I like the burning theme but not the true lack of a solid defense mechanism. Dying and resurrecting just isn’t my cup of tea and I hope that the set does something to provide a better overall defense mechanism.
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