Firebird Flame Blades Wizard Mirror Images Pushing Variant Variation
Mirror Image Firebird Wizard Variation
In Patch 2.7.2, the Firebird set Ignition can no longer be procced by pets, effectively deleting this Mirror Image-centric variant from the game. This page is left for documentation purposes.
For high end Greater Rift solo pushing, the Firebird Flame Blades Wizard can be altered to a more advanced, but harder to pilot variation that uniquely transfers its damage dealing capabilities to the Mirror Image summons. This variation has an arguably higher pushing potential to the standard Flame Blades setup, where you deal the damage on your own, and raises playstyle and fishing requirements accordingly.
Active Skills |
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Spectral Blade Flame Blades Disintegrate Chaos Nexus 1 Explosive Blast Chain Reaction 2 Magic Weapon Deflection 3 Teleport Safe Passage 4 Mirror Image Duplicates |
Passive Skills |
Adapting Rotation
The Mirror Image Firebird Wizard still uses Spectral Blade Flame Blades on his bar, but never really casts it — opting to channel Disintegrate full time instead, thus enabling the damage buff of the worn Deathwish. The Spectral Blade casting is left entirely to your Mirror Image summons, which you need to cast right in the middle of a pull prior to the Fire rotation of Convention of Elements, and then Teleport a safe distance from the fight (ideally into an Oculus Ring proc) and channel straight into the fight from your new location, leaving the Mirror Images to mop up with their own fire skill casts that mimic what you have on your bar. The remainder of the rotation follows the base build closely, with Explosive Blast being used for additional damage and Orb of Infinite Depth utility, and Magic Weapon Deflection for additional defense.
Adapting Skills
Most of the skill and passive selection will overlap with the base Greater Rift progression build, with minor adaptations to accommodate the purposes of a Mirror Image-centric build.
- Obviously, the biggest change is the inclusion of Mirror Image in the build, in the spot usually reserved for Black Hole. These fragile and oftentimes uncoordinated summons will nevertheless deliver utter destruction due to the Firebird set damage mechanics not caring about the source of the fire spell inflicted — so do not mind the innately reduced damage of the clones' attacks. Take the rune Duplicates for the extra tankiness and ability to stick enemies to them through Taunts.
- You will be spending significantly more time channeling Disintegrate in order to take advantage of the worn Deathwish, but you will still gain the most utility with the ray spread of Chaos Nexus.
- As previously noted, your main damage dealer remains Spectral Blade Flame Blades, but its use will be entirely relegated to the somewhat capable hands of your Mirror Images.
- Your remaining active skillset will mirror the base build. Explosive Blast Chain Reaction splits damage dealing with damage reduction duties, of course coming from the cubed Orb of Infinite Depth). Magic Weapon Deflection still brings valuable protection — albeit smaller compared to the base build (as we drop Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer here in favor of 2-piece Aughild's set), it is also less necessary if you opt out of wearing Squirt's Necklace. Of course, Teleport Safe Passage is too utility-laden to be dropped.
- The multiplicative damage increase of Audacity is still an excellent baseline passive across variations.
- Evocation is quite a bit more valuable here than in the base build, as you will be striving for permanent uptime of the Mirror Image summons, and you need to cut their 15 second cooldown at least in half to match the 7-second duration.
- As this build stands rooted in place and channels a lot more than the base version, the additive damage increasing and damage reducing bonuses of the stationary-dependent Unwavering Will become more attractive.
- Lastly, you can pick between Elemental Exposure for the additional damage in an Endless Walk set setup (our base recommendation), or revert to Galvanizing Ward if you decide to go all-out on damage with a Squirt's Necklace.
Adapting Gear
You will still be aiming for the full 6-piece bonuses of the Firebird set, but you will shift pieces around to accommodate the inclusion of two more sets in the mix: the craftable Aughild's Authority and Captain Crimson's Trimmings sets. Naturally, you will have to complete this triumvirate of bonuses with a Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube. Note that the item split in the table below is just a sample, as both craftable sets offer pieces in several other slots which can be shifted around according to your best rolled pieces of gear.
Stat-wise, this variant is more demanding on Resource Cost- and Cooldown Reduction stats, and you will be striving to reach around 40% RCR and 60% CDR to maintain both consistent Disintegrate channeling and uptime on Mirror Image casts.
The Aughild 3-piece set bonus will bring considerable damage increase and damage reduction, especially against Elite enemies — very valuable in a setup that drops Bane of the Stricken. The Cpt. Crimson 3-piece set bonus scales damage dealt and reduces damage taken via CDR and RCR respectively, and brings hefty 20% bonuses to both, making it an excellent inclusion.
When it comes to jewelry, our base recommendation is to take the Endless Walk set — The Compass Rose ring and The Traveler's Pledge amulet — as its stationary bonuses to damage dealt match the playstyle of a Mirror Images Firebird Wiz. You should complete the setup with a Convention of Elements for its massive elemental damage bonuses during the relevant cycle, which in the case of this build is Fire. If you dislike playing around the CoE bonus, you can drop its use (at the cost of a considerable damage loss) and take Halo of Karini in this slot, which also necessitates a swap to Storm Armor Shocking Aspect in Magic Weapon's place.
Since you will not be casting Spectral Blade on your own, you are able to focus completely on channeling and gain the massive Deathwish bonuses as a consequence.
In Season 24, your ideal weapon during Greater Rift solo pushing will be Wizardspike, whose unique damage stacking mechanic and unrivaled skill and pure stat bonuses will outperform any other alternatives. It needs to be rolled with the weapon power of either Deathwish or Orb of Infinite Depth, and will ideally have the Conflagration passive. Learn more about Ethereal weapons in our Ethereal mechanics guide, and read up on how to farm them in the Ethereal farming guide.
Slot | Pieces | Stat Priority |
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Head |
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Shoulders |
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Torso |
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Wrists |
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Hands |
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Waist |
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Legs |
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Feet |
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Amulet |
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Ring #1 |
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Ring #2 |
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Weapon |
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Off-hand |
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To help you with farming the gear you need for your builds, we have two very useful guides that you can access by clicking the links below: a Salvage Guide to help you quickly check whether or not you can safely salvage a piece of gear and a Legendary Farming Guide to help you efficiently farm legendaries and set items.
Adapting Gems
Taeguk is almost an automatic inclusion in channeling-centric builds, as it offers a rare balance between increasing damage and survivability as long as you continually use your means of stacking Firebird — Disintegrate. Adding to it, Bane of the Trapped still bring indispensable damage multiplication value to the build.
To match the summoning theme of the build, you will do well to include Enforcer as your third and final legendary gem — purely for pet survivability reasons. Without it, Mirror Images will be far too frail to withstand the incoming damage in high end Greater Rifts, and you want them up and attacking for as long as possible.
Slot | Gems |
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Jewelry | |
Helm |
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Torso and Pants |
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Weapon |
For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.
Adapting Kanai's Cube
Orb of Infinite Depth still brings tremendous value to the build, especially when it comes to damage reduction. It is simply moved to the Cube due to the 3-set puzzle you need to fit in your equipment slots.
You have two viable options for the Armor slot of the Cube. Our base recommendation is to accentuate the Mirror Images' destructive capabilities by enhancing their attack speed via Tasker and Theo. Alternatively, you can go for a balance of offense and defense with Mantle of Channeling, which gives you a solid twofold buff as long as you keep up Disintegrate.
As previously mentioned, you will need to use Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube in order to maintain the full bonuses of the amalgam of sets that you have equipped.
The Kanai's Cube can be used for much more than simply extracting Legendary powers from items. Please refer to our Kanai's Cube guide for more information.
Changelog
- 06 Dec. 2021: Variation retired due to patch changes.
- 22 Jul. 2021: Added S24 Ethereal recommendation.
- 23 Mar. 2021: Guide added.
More Wizard Guides
Builds from Other Classes
Farming Guides
This build is presented to you by Deadset, one of the very few professional Diablo 3 players. Deadset regularly publishes video guides on Youtube and streams on Twitch, where you can see how this and other builds play out in practice.
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