While Firebird’s Finery received a massive upgrade in the current patch 2.7.0, I will be one of the first to admit that I did not care for this build in particular. Compared to the Tal Rasha + Firebird’s Finery build on PTR prior to the damage swap, this build feels a bit awkward to get used to and on paper does not seem to make that much sense. Yet it pretty much has been one of the show stealers, if not THE show stealer for Season 23 and will be still strong in Season 24, especially with the available of Ethereals.
Legendary Items
- Firebird’s Finery (5 pieces – helmet, gloves, legs, off hand, boots)
- (2) Disintegrate Ignites enemies, causing them to take 3000% weapon damage per second until they die. When you die, a meteor falls from the sky and revives you. This effect has a 60 second cooldown. – You will be using Disintegrate to apply Combustion but it will eventually fall off as your main damaging ability with the 6 set bonus.
- (4) Casting Disintegrate adds Combustion stacks that reduce the cooldown of Teleport by 2% per stack. Stacks up to 50 times. You gain 80% damage reduction while maintaining Combustion stacks. – You just need to make sure you maintain Combustion stacks. At least one is good enough to keep very high damage mitigation up while more helps with allowing you to Teleport around frequently.
- (6) You gain 2000% increased damage while Ignite is applied to a target. Hitting an Ignited enemy with a non-channeling fire spell deals Ignite damage multiplied by Combustion stacks. – After applying Ignite on enemies, you will want to use your fire skill to nuke them down.
- (2) Disintegrate Ignites enemies, causing them to take 3000% weapon damage per second until they die. When you die, a meteor falls from the sky and revives you. This effect has a 60 second cooldown. – You will be using Disintegrate to apply Combustion but it will eventually fall off as your main damaging ability with the 6 set bonus.
- Aughild’s Search (2 pieces shoulders, bracers) – The bracers are a must have for this to work since you’ll run out of room on gear.
- (2) Reduces damage taken by 15%.
Increases damage dealt by 30%. - (3) Reduces damage from elites by 30.0%
Increases damage against elites by 30.0% – These items are mostly for more damage reduction and increases
- (2) Reduces damage taken by 15%.
- Captain’s Crimson’s Trimmings (2 pieces belt, legs or boots)
- (2) Regenerates 6000 Life per Second
Reduces cooldown of all skills by 20.0%.
Reduces all resource costs by 20.0%. - (3) Damage dealt is increased by your percentage of cooldown reduction.
Damage taken is reduced by your percentage of cost reduction.– Massive resource and cooldown reduction plus the bonus of damage reduction and increasing. Because you are channeling Disintegrate frequently and not using a belt to reduce its cost, you will want resource reduction as well.
- (2) Regenerates 6000 Life per Second
- Endless Walk (ring/amulet) 2 pieces
- While moving, damage taken is reduced by up to 50%.
- While standing still, damage dealt is increased by up to 100%. – You will be moving around frequently and standing while channeling during applying stacks of Combustion during Disintegrate. So this will help mitigate damage and increase it too.
- Deathwish (Sword/main hand) – While channeling Arcane Torrent, Disintegrate, or Ray of Frost for at least 1 second, all damage is increased by 294%. (Wizard Only) [250 – 325]% – You’re going to boost the fire damage of the skill that will inflict the Combustion stacks on enemies and this will boost it a great deal.
- Halo of Karini (ring) – You take 74% less damage for 5 seconds after your Storm Armor electrocutes an enemy more than 15 yards away. (Wizard Only) [60 – 80]%. – You may not necessarily need this and can swap to a Convention of Elements. That will also give you back an Active Skill slot.
- Orb of Infinite Depth (offhand/cube) Each time you hit an enemy with Explosive Blast your damage is increased by 10% and your damage reduction is increased by 20% for 6 seconds. This effect can stack up to 4 times. (Wizard Only) [8 – 10]%. – There really is nowhere else to put this orb so it must be cubed. You’re looking to get your Explosive Blast to 4 stacks for the increase in damage and damage reduction.
- Mantle of Channeling (shoulders/cube) – While channeling Siphon Blood, Whirlwind, Rapid Fire, Strafe, Tempest Rush, Firebats, Arcane Torrent, Disintegrate, or Ray of Frost, you deal 24% increased damage and take 25% reduced damage. [20 – 25]%. – More damage increase and damage reduction from channeling Disintegrate.
- Ring of Royal Grandeur (ring/cube) – Non-negotiable item. Without this, you will have to find substitute pieces of gear and will not be able to use Aughilds nor Captain Crimson’s Trimmings.
There’s not a lot of flexibility in this build for gear outside of the Halo of Karini. The only flexibility is switching set gear pieces if you manage to find one better than the other.
For Ethereals, again you will have very little flexibility here. The only legendary powers that you will be able to swap are Deathwish and Orb of Infinite Depth. So if you get the affix from one on the Ethereal, you can just use the cubed version of the other. The only two Ethereals you will be able to employ here are The Occulus, Swirling Crystal and Wizardspike, Bone Knife. I think The Occulus will provide the edge because of how it gives bonus damage against elites as well as having Critical Hits giving Arcane Power, which you will need from channeling Disintegrate.
Legendary Gems
- Bane of the Trapped – Just more damage. It can be proc’d from Frost Nova.
- Taeguk – Improves your armor and damage while channeling Disintegrate.
- Enforcer – Helps keep your illusions alive. Older builds only leveled this gem to 25.
- Bane of the Stricken – Can substitute this for Enforcer for single target damage improvement.
Active Skills
- Spectral Blade: Flame Blades – This is your main damage ability to trigger the Combustion Stack damage from Firebird’s. But you must time it so your Mirror Images are the ones that do the damage.
- Disintegrate: Chaos Nexus – This is not a fire skill but you’re using this rune to split the ray up to hit more foes to quickly apply Ignite.
- Teleport: Safe Passage – Damage reduction. With high combustion you can zoom around efficiently.
- Explosive Blast: Chain Reaction – Try to keep up 4 stacks for the bonus damage and damage reduction.
- Storm Armor: Power of the Storm – For some damage reduction as well as maintaining channeling your Disintegrate.
- Mirror Images: Duplicates – The main ability for doing most of your damage. You want to activate these illusions when encountering large groups and elites, rares, uniques and bosses. If you’re not too trigger happy, you should first apply your Disintegrate, Explosive Blast, do a single hit of Flame Blades and finally trigger your illusions so that the AI does not make these people run away. Otherwise, you will find them frequently distracted.
Passive Skills
- Audacity – Great skill for more damage since you need to get in range with your Flame Blades, Explosive Blast and Mirror Images.
- Illusionist – Use this to try to keep your Mirror Images up.
- Unwavering Will – Since you’ll be channeling, this will boost your damage and defenses
- Evocation – Cooldown reduction
Followers
I feel that either an Enchantress or Templar are good fits for this build. The Enchantress will help some of the cooldown for Explosive Blast and Mirror Images, provide some armor and a second cheat death (since Firebird’s 2 piece bonus already gives one). A Templar can help with CC, life regeneration or resource replenishment for helping you channel longer.
Final Thoughts
As I mentioned before, I’m not a huge fan of this build. I prefer Typhoon Hydra but that build lacks the speed of Firebird’s. That said, you do have very high defenses as long as you can maintain your Combustion stacks. The biggest issue is that this build can be very spotty with wonky AI from your Mirror Images getting distracted. So there’s a lot of straggler monsters in maps, especially open maps where your Mirror Images can wonder off.
But the main gist of this build is to find elites fast through keeping up your Combustion stacks and zooming around a map to burst them down. However, this build is not very versatile because it cannot farm that well compared to say Typhoon Hydra, which is slower and has more flexible pieces like the belt that can be swapped for a Goldwrap. Mainly, I would say this build is good for pushing and doing bounties as you can speed through areas and kill elites and bosses fairly quickly.
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