Wizard Firebird's Finery Fresh 70 Starter Build (Patch 2.7.6 / Season 29)

The Firebird starting build is a natural continuation of the leveling and fresh level 70 build. The fresh level 70 build is specifically created not to require any specific legendary items, and the Firebird set from Haedrig's Gifts alone is quite possibly the best augmentation to a basic Disintegrate build.

The following build assumes you will assemble the build in 2-piece increments, similarly to how Haedrig's Gift would dole the set out. Haderig's Gift is a seasonal participation reward that gives you a full class-specific set as you complete Chapters II, III and IV of the Seasonal Journey (accessible via the leaf-shaped icon in the top right corner). The cadence of early natural character progression is also not too far off the listed strategy, so even if the set is not part of Haedrig's Gift, you can put the advice below to good use.

Active Skills
Disintegrate Chaos Nexus Teleport Safe Passage 1 Explosive Blast Chain Reaction 2 Magic Weapon Deflection 3 Black Hole Spellsteal 4 Storm Armor Power of the Storm
Passive Skills
Power Hungry Astral Presence Illusionist Unwavering Will

At the 2-piece Firebird bonus, your only offense-oriented benefit is the ignition effect when you strike enemies with Disintegrate. You also get a secondary defensive benefit that provides you with a "cheat death" effect, so you can consider dropping Unstable Anomaly even in Hardcore. Note that despite its fiery theme, the Ignition effect of the Firebird set does not care about the elemental nature of your Disintegrate rune; thus, we will be using the superior spread of Chaos Nexus.

We will be making some additional changes from the leveling 1-70 build to accommodate our ambition to progress through Torment levels while still rocking humble gear. Some offense-oriented buffs like Force Weapon will give way to Deflection, and you can consider swapping out Wormhole to Safe Passage. You will also get your first taste of endgame crowd control with Black Hole Spellsteal instead of Familiar.

At this point, no additional helpful legendary items are assumed. You might have lucked out during the leveling journey (especially if you followed the gambling and crafting advice in our Seasonal Guide), or in your first couple of farming sessions with items such as:

• Winter Flurry — use Blizzard Snowbound instead of Black Hole, and Hydra Mammoth Hydra instead of Explosive Blast to get a powerful, if temporary ally. ( Hydras will be unusable with the 6-piece Firebird's bonus.)
• Serpent's Sparker — Use Hydra Mammoth Hydra instead of Explosive Blast.
• Fragment of Destiny — Use Spectral Blade Flame Blades instead of Storm Armor and Hydra Mammoth Hydra instead of Explosive Blast.
• Etched Sigil and/or Ranslor's Folly — Use Energy Twister Raging Storm instead of Black Hole.
• Halo of Karini — Stick with Storm Armor; consider using Shocking Aspect for the superior proc chance.
• Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer — Consider using Galvanizing Ward over Illusionist.

Active Skills
Disintegrate Chaos Nexus Black Hole Spellsteal 1 Explosive Blast Chain Reaction 2 Magic Weapon Deflection 3 Teleport Wormhole 4 Storm Armor Scramble
Passive Skills
Audacity Astral Presence Galvanizing Ward Unwavering Will

At the 4-piece Firebird bonus, you get the second half of the Ignition-Combustion combo, but lack their interaction which comes with the 6-piece. What the 4-piece adds is a massive source of defense and utility, as you get a whopping 80% damage reduction bonus while you maintain any Combustion stacks (by using Disintegrate), and cut down your Teleport cooldown with 2% each stack, nullifying it at the 50th. This all but removes Illusionist and Wormhole as candidates for your skills and passives, allowing you to keep the additional defense with Safe Passage and Galvanizing Ward.

It is not unreasonable to assume that at the 4-piece bonus, you have attained at least one key item for Firebird Wizards. If you follow the advice in our "Get the build started" section below, this item will likely be Orb of Infinite Depth. This is a utility-laden item that further scales your damage reduction while also adding to your damage, all for the mere cost of using Explosive Blast. Of course, you will be using the multiple detonations of Chain Reaction, as it maxes out the orb bonuses faster than the other runes.

At that point it is a good idea to transition from a long range to a point-blank fighting playstyle, as you have to stack your Orb of Infinite Depth, and future changes will force you in that range anyway. Swap from Power Hungry to Audacity for the multiplicative damage increase against enemies within 15 yards (roughly the detonation range of Explosive Blast).

Active Skills
Spectral Blade Flame Blades Disintegrate Chaos Nexus 1 Explosive Blast Chain Reaction 2 Black Hole Spellsteal 3 Teleport Safe Passage 4 Magic Weapon Deflection
Passive Skills
Audacity Galvanizing Ward Dominance Unwavering Will

At the 6-piece Firebird bonus, you finally get to the meeting point of the set's dual mechanics. You will now Ignite enemies with Disintegrate and obliterate them by multiplying the damage of your non-channeled Fire spells by the Combustion stacks. While certainly not the only option, it is suggested that you go with Spectral Blade Flame Blades and Explosive Blast Chain Reaction as your combustion skills.

We have gone over the massive value of Explosive Blast that you get from Orb of Infinite Depth, and now it also gets to trigger the set mechanic. Flame Blades is a very convenient choice as it synergizes with multiple items: The Shame of Delsere and Fragment of Destiny (at least one of which you likely have at this point), as well as stacking up the generator portion of Focus and Restraint and the shields of Magic Weapon Deflection incredibly fast.

You will now transition in an endgame-approximate rotation of Teleporting around, grouping enemies with Black Hole and igniting them via Disintegrate to gain Combustion stacks (keeping your stacks at or near the 50 maximum is very important!), and then spending stacks with Explosive Blast and Flame Blades spam for utter destruction of anyone in the way. Keep up the Magic Weapon buff and do not neglect Galvanizing Ward, as they — likely in conjunction with Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer — will keep you alive and safeguard a potential Squirt's Necklace bonus.

Please refer to our endgame Firebird Flame Blades guide to get an in-depth explanation of the necessary rotation, skills, passives, gear and gems, as well as details like stat priorities and breakpoints that will get this beginner Firebird build into endgame Greater Rift pushing.

In this section, we'll briefly go over how to kickstart this build into reality; which items you should aim for with priority when farming and gambling, and what is their relative priority for the functioning of this spec. Note that these suggestions are exclusively aimed at getting you up and running into endgame farming, and might not reflect the gear you need to wear for high-end Greater Rift solo or group pushing. This section also assumes a fresh Season's start, which usually is the point where most players work on assembling their first build with a particular set.

If the Firebird set is part of the Haedrig's Gift for the Season, your simplest and most straightforward path to assembling the build is to complete the Seasonal Journey chapters up to Chapter IV. The Seasonal Journey chapters will gradually give you a complete class-specific set, giving 2-3 pieces for Chapters II, III and IV.

From the pre-game menu, choose and do this week's Challenge Rift. When successfully completed, this weekly event will grant you 5,1 million Gold, 475 Blood Shards, 370 Reusable Parts, 350 Arcane Dust, 125 Veiled Crystals, 35 Death's Breaths, and 15 of each Bounty cache material: Khanduran Rune, Caldeum Nightshade, Arreat War Tapestry, Corrupted Angel Flesh, and Westmarch Holy Water. This will allow you some early Seasonal leeway to extract and reforge items in Kanai's Cube, speeding up the assembly of this build with the items recommended below.

Having some materials at your disposal, either from farming or the Challenge Rift, is particularly important when you get duplicate pieces of your desired set. When you do, you can use Kanai's Cube Skill of Nilfur recipe (10x Forgotten Souls, 10x Death's Breaths, 1x Set item) to convert into another item from the same set. You should never salvage duplicate pieces of a desired set before you have it assembled.

In order to assemble a Firebird's Flame Blades Wizard, you should to the following.

• Gather the full 6-piece Firebird's Finery set using the advice above, or by spending Blood Shards at Kadala. In order of gamble chance, you should spend for: Shoulders, Boots, Pants, Gloves, Off-hand, Chest, and Helm. A trick you can also use is to gamble for duplicate pieces with an easier gamble chance (i.e., Shoulders) and convert them into another piece from the same set using the Skill of Nilfur recipe in Kanai's Cube.
• Gamble Off-hands or upgrade rare (Hope of Cain recipe in Kanai's Cube) Wizard Sources for Orb of Infinite Depth. This will be a massive damage reduction boost to the build, while simultaneously adding to DPS.
• Gamble or upgrade rare Belts for The Shame of Delsere; attack speed is a major source of damage in the build, while resource stability will help you maintain skill spam and possible buffs like Aquila Cuirass.
• Gamble or upgrade rare Bracers for Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer, a solid protective piece for the build. Gambling/upgrading rares in the Bracer slot can also net you other valuable pieces like Nemesis Bracers or Ranslor's Folly.
• Craft lvl 70 Wands at the Blacksmith and use the 'upgrade rare' recipe to obtain Fragment of Destiny, one of the biggest damage pieces in the Flame Blades build. Gambling is also possible, but undesirable due to the high Blood Shard costs of weapons.
• Do Act I bounties to attain the act-specific Ring of Royal Grandeur from Bounty caches. This will be helpful either in completing the basic set bonus, or mixing other helpful sets in (Cpt. Crimson, Aughild...) as described in the Firebird Flame Blades Wizard Gear page. Bounties will net you the craftable set recipes to begin with, so you will be killing two birds with one stone. Bounties will also net you Avarice Band (Act III), another farming-oriented staple for most builds and classes, this one included.
• While largely undesirable due to high costs, gambling or upgrading rare Jewelry is also possible; Convention of Elements, Focus and Restraint, and Squirt's Necklace will all bring massive damage bumps to the build, with other standout pieces that can also substitute or be temporarily helpful in the face of Unity, or Oculus Ring and The Flavor of Time for your Follower.