Firebird Wizard

[Deadset 108]

Is Fire Damage type required for the Deathwish weapon?  Or is the weapon damage type irrelevant as long as the numbers are high?

 

Irrelevant! Don't worry about it.

[Guest Briala]

In the stat priorities section, is it an intentional choice to skip the 3 sockets (+840 int) in favor of say the armor (+595 max)?

 

I can't wrap my head around this being a positive trade, is it maybe something that happens at very high paragon levels? At what point would you make this trade?

[ilovetifa 0]

Dear Deadset,

I followed your build, since I have all the equipment necessary to complete that. But I noticed that my Li Ming is still very fragile, dying in two or three hits in TX group run, and her shots doesn't do very much damage. Granted I don't have a very high level gems, but even with familiar (10% damage), magic weapon (20% damage), her damage is still very lacking.

 

Anything I can do to increase my damage?

[Deadset 108]

In the stat priorities section, is it an intentional choice to skip the 3 sockets (+840 int) in favor of say the armor (+595 max)?

 

I can't wrap my head around this being a positive trade, is it maybe something that happens at very high paragon levels? At what point would you make this trade?

 

Heya, you're likely looking at the chestpiece stat recommendations; as a class-specific set piece, the Firebird chest naturally rolls with 3 sockets, so I omitted it from the list. Apologies for any confusion and no, the sockets are not to be rerolled for armor :)

 

 

Anything I can do to increase my damage?

 

Hello! May I inspect your hero? You can link me to your battle.net character, it would make it a lot easier to make recommendations based on that :)

[Guest Crovaxus]

Hey, I just wanted to comment on the Etched Sigil idea. I have been running Etched Sigil in my cube and Twisted Sword instead of Deathwish (mostly because I have a good Twisted Sword and I don't have a good Deathwish). Thus, I use the fire-runed Energy Twister on my Toolbar (I replaced Frost Nova), and it does pretty stellar damage in tight quarters (noticeably lower in wide-open spaces). My gear is still not optimized--and I am a bit of a scaredy-cat since I play hardcore--so I haven't tested it above T10, but it seems pretty strong. (I also run the Unity/follower combo instead of Convergence of Elements for even more tankiness.) Any thoughts?

[Deadset 108]

Hey, I just wanted to comment on the Etched Sigil idea. I have been running Etched Sigil in my cube and Twisted Sword instead of Deathwish (mostly because I have a good Twisted Sword and I don't have a good Deathwish). Thus, I use the fire-runed Energy Twister on my Toolbar (I replaced Frost Nova), and it does pretty stellar damage in tight quarters (noticeably lower in wide-open spaces). My gear is still not optimized--and I am a bit of a scaredy-cat since I play hardcore--so I haven't tested it above T10, but it seems pretty strong. (I also run the Unity/follower combo instead of Convergence of Elements for even more tankiness.) Any thoughts?

 

Energy Twister should be a viable option as an ability to be spammed from Etched Sigil, though I'd likely stick to Deathwish and cast ET from Disintegrate (after all, that's the point of Etched, right). I would probably run Twisted Sword in a Delsere's Magnum Opus set build instead, I highly recommend trying it if you haven't.

[Guest Szk]

hey i got a question if i may?

 

I got Thanatos (ancient) with great stats but only maxed out base 2'820 dps, recently, I dropped a nice wand:

 

Slorak with 30% desintegrate, 6% AS, and a nice 3'210 base dps.

 

So my max ingame cap goes from 2m5 dmg with Thanatos (with all sorc buffs and gems) and a nice 3m dmg+ with Slorak,

 

Is thanatos' passive worth in comparaison of general dmg gain of Slorak?

 

Thanks for taking time to read this

 

Szk (Spam Rift)

[Guest Rupio]

 

Slorak with 30% desintegrate, 6% AS, and a nice 3'210 base dps.

 

So my max ingame cap goes from 2m5 dmg with Thanatos (with all sorc buffs and gems) and a nice 3m dmg+ with Slorak,

 

Is thanatos' passive worth in comparaison of general dmg gain of Slorak?

 

 

 

3.3M would be your dmg while channeling disintegrate with deathwish (thanatos).

Is 300k dmg gain (10%) worth it (including dots, but only when standing still channeling disintegrate) over 30% disintegrate dmg?

 

Only if disintegrate will do less then 50% of your total damage.

So if disintegrate does more then 50% of your dmg go for Slorak.

 

But that is with really quick and dodgy math, it may help to compare the 2 weapons in www.d3planner.com/ (it requires some setup but if the difference is big it should provide a valid answer)

[Guest Robdog1104]

I love the build, but personally I run mantle of channeling, ring of royal grandeur, and offhand etched sigil with meteor:meteor shower, damage boost is amazing and you don't give up any of the wizard's needed defense. You still get the halo's stuns, just not the boost from the frost nova rune.

[Guest Snake]

Hello, I really like disintegrate as a skill and was glad to have found your guide which unlike many others out there, actually lists how to play and the reasons which I commend you for.

 

After months of casual play with one friend, the past ~2 weeks or so I've been doing 3-4 person t10 rifts (because my friend has a strong barb that can handle t10, my wizard, with pretty much everything you said to have in the guide, minus the apparently very rare Furnace in the cube, Bane of the Trapped legendary gem(I have the toxic gem in place till I get it) and without all the uber high level gems, and....my damage is roughly 10million to 30million I'd guess. Which is nothing on t10. I understand the Deathwish sword got a MAJOR nerf from the ptr to actual 2.4....it used to do 100% bonus and now it's only 35%. I got the Deathwish FINALLY earlier and was saddened my damage was still bad.

 

I must admit, I've had the game for years but only "seriously" started to play probably when this season came out a couple years ago, I'd just casually play since that's what all the people I played with did, but now I have at least one friend who's into "proper" playing of the game with strong builds, and ....I was saddened I spent all this time trying to complete the build using your guide and my damage is still bad

 

link to char....nothing in the cube weapon slot because I don't have the furnace yet...what would be a good alternative? https://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/ZombieZerg-1856/hero/71622546

 

I'd have to look again, but I believe I upped the critical chance on all the gear I could. I changed deathwish to fire damage and used that item to give it a free socket with a 130% Emerald in it as well.

 

my toughness has always been decent, I've procced the "cheat death" effects before but have never actually died while playing with friends while they commonly die. My damage is just HORRIBLE and I don't understand why......would leveling up the couple INT gems in my pants and chest and Bane of the Trapped help my damage THAT much?

 

A guy I was playing with earlier was doing 200 million damage on t10 rifts and he was acting like that was really weak, I felt really depressed only doing 10-30million you can imagine.

 

thx for any help, RNGeezus was not kind to me for many many weeks of playing, couldn't even get deathwish till today.

 

one thing I can critique off hand from even friend's advice earlier is, the whole frost nova cube effect and spell, don't seem to help very much. The monsters may be taking more damage while stunned, but honestly, it doesn't help.......due to the deathwish nerf is this build vaible for t10? My friends did a GR50 earlier and that was even worse than t10 in terms of me doing no damage to stuff.

 

tl;dr I just honestly don't understand why my damage sucks so bad when my build is like 90% similar to yours in this guide.

[WhiteSnake 0]

I tried posting a reply as a guest but have made an account now. To summarize my pretty long previous post, like a person above said as well, my character is about 90% similar to this build and my damage sucks to be quite honest for t10....is this just not viable? On t5 or t6 me and my casual playing new friend Witch Dr were rolling through stuff very quickly on a 4 person rift since 2 people were just standing in town doing nothing. But when we tried t10 our damage sucks. A person I was playing with was doing 200 million damage and was acting like that was very weak...imagine how sad I felt when my damage is only like 10-30million...

 

link to my character....https://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/ZombieZerg-1856/hero/71622546 

 

I don't have the furnace...what could be used instead in the cube weapon effect slot? Apparently the furnace is very rare. I don't have the high level INT gems in my chest and pants nor the bane of the trapped legendary gem yet. I somehow doubt that would up my damage from 10 million (on a crit) to 200million where that apparently still sucks for t10, nonetheless what my damage "should" be for t10. 

 

I was finally able to get the deathwish sword earlier today after many weeks of no luck...and was saddened my damage was still bad. IIRC I put crit chance on every armor piece that I could. I've had the game for years but only started to play "proper" when season 5 started since everybody I played with before only played very casually doing the story or maybe t1 at the most, at those levels, any gear thrown together can get stuff done, it's been pretty overwhelming to say the least with all I've read on playing properly.

 

 

From what I understand, the Deathwish sword got a MAJOR nerf by blizzard from ptr to the actual 2.4 release, used to have 100% effect but now it's only 35%. From reading the comments when that happened, they claimed channeling builds were pretty much rendered useless for high level stuff...is this true? I don't follow every little stat change and patch note meticulously, I'm an average joe casual player at heart, but having very low damage at t10 despite having a very similar character to yours has me confused.

 

I see alot of people commenting mentioning the etched sigil offhand, I happen to have one of them in my chest, if that would help any. People were claiming the firebird set was very nerfed too, they claimed Tal Rasha at this point was honestly better. But again, I'm just looking from an outsider's perspective. I don't really question "why" something is good if that makes sense, I just googled wizard disintegrate build and yours came up and seems really good, my damage is just VERY lacking for t10 and above in GR's. Since the Deathwish and Firebird set nerfs is Disintegrate just not viable for high level stuff now?

 

You mentioned changing the build to etched sigil earlier....what exactly would you change and why? Would that up the damage more? Because my only problem is the damage sucks currently, my toughness is pretty good, I proc the cheat death effect every once in awhile but never outright die like my friends do, I outlive my very strong friend's t10 barb infact.

 

 

EDIT: I put those high level INT gems in my pants and chest earlier and I can slowly work my way through a solo t10 rift, damage still seems very low compared to my friends I've played with though. I put etched sigil in the weapon cube slot as well. I guess this build is only for solo rifting? Because it's pretty bleh in group play t10 and above, I don't help the group at all.

Edited April 11, 2016 by WhiteSnake

[Rupio 0]

I tried posting a reply as a guest but have made an account now. To summarize my pretty long previous post, like a person above said as well, my character is about 90% similar to this build and my damage sucks to be quite honest for t10....is this just not viable? On t5 or t6 me and my casual playing new friend Witch Dr were rolling through stuff very quickly on a 4 person rift since 2 people were just standing in town doing nothing. But when we tried t10 our damage sucks. A person I was playing with was doing 200 million damage and was acting like that was very weak...imagine how said I felt when my damage is only like 10-30million...

 

link to my character....https://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/ZombieZerg-1856/hero/71622546 

 

 

EDIT: I put those high level INT gems in my pants and chest earlier and I can slowly work my way through a solo t10 rift, damage still seems very low compared to my friends I've played with though. I put etched sigil in the weapon cube slot as well. I guess this build is only for solo rifting? Because it's pretty bleh in group play t10 and above, I don't help the group at all.

 

I recently almost got the same things as mentioned here and in the guide (also missing furnace  and wondering for a decent replacement Scourge, thunderfury, Sky Splitter ?)

The most important part of this build is that it doesnt really works against solo high HP normal enemies.

You can stand there for a long time only doing little dmg. 

The key for this build (and high numbers) is to get to an elite pack to get the 600% dmg buff. Just hit it enough to get the dot rolling, ignore it for the most part and hunt down groups of smaller enemies. 

Teleport with the reset passive is a very helpful tool in this progress; you dont really have to walk and can just teleport around towards new groups of enemies. 

 

When there is no elite pack around you should do the same, just hit groups enough to make them burn and go find new groups as each burning mob alive will add 25% dmg.

This has as downside that you will do low damage to the first few mobs.

The other tricky part is to have the burning enemies follow you, meaning you cant get to fast to new packs.

When playing in a group (and even with just your follower) this is also the tricky part, other will agro the enemies making it harder to be in range as much burning enemies as possible.

 

Damage will also suffer in maps with low enemy density and some of the power pillars? are not that useful for this build.

The biggest problem i faced so far (GR 55) is that certain bosses can 1 shot me, making them near impossible to kill in time (was that fire bird thing) although other bosses are much easier to survive.

 

Another problem you facing is that you want to do more damage = attack more enemies, but as you said you can survive them but your group members maybe not. Which is also limiting your damage.

 

tl;dr

Teleport towards elite packs while burning all the enemies on the way, only then you will see higher numbers

[alfdam 0]

Hi! 

 

I tried and built hits build from scratch and I have to say it will be not enough to T10 and GR40+. I sacrficed everything for the damage output, force weapon, sparkflint, I even have the ring which creating the killing area for 100% mor dagame, and still stucked in 30-70million. The Elite's not the problem at all, it never will be with the 600% damage plus, but everything else is. :D While I hit over 900mil on en Elite, I stucked with  40mil crit on a random mob. So I have questions:

 

1.) Is it a multiplayer build to kill elite's extremely fast with your friends (and they kill the rest for you)? 

2.) The Deathwish nerf eliminated this build? 

3.) I realized that the Firebird often bugged, I don't get the 25% stacked damage at all. I see that something will changed about that in the upcoming season. Maybe this is the reason for the damage fall? 

4.) Should we forget about disintegrate at all? 

[Rupio 0]

 

Hi! 

 

I tried and built hits build from scratch and I have to say it will be not enough to T10 and GR40+. While I hit over 900mil on en Elite, I stucked with  40mil crit on a random mob. So I have questions:

 

1.) Is it a multiplayer build to kill elite's extremely fast with your friends (and they kill the rest for you)? 

2.) The Deathwish nerf eliminated this build? 

3.) I realized that the Firebird often bugged, I don't get the 25% stacked damage at all. I see that something will changed about that in the upcoming season. Maybe this is the reason for the damage fall? 

4.) Should we forget about disintegrate at all? 

 

 

So far i reached solo GR 55 or something and i dont have a lot of ancient gear and also missing the furnace buff (altough you said elites are not the problem).

That said 600/25= 24 mobs that you need to burn to do the same damage numbers if you where to fight a (single) boss.

Problem is that at the time you have enough dots rolling stuff will die and your damage will lower again. 

Teleporting quickly to new groups is the solution but also tricky as you can get out of range of the burning mobs meaning losing the dmg buff.

 

And for the questions:

1. To a certain point, have not played with more then 2, but it makes things a lot easier (but also kind of hard to see who does how much damage, so is it you or him/her that makes the run easier??)

2. Did not have Deathwish for some time and was able to do GR45+ (iirc) before I 'found' one. Guess they also nerfed it for some reason but as i never used the old version i cant really tell

3. As the stacking damage has no indicator of some sorts its kinda hard to tell. But it does sometimes feels like a lot of damage is missing but this also could be to other factors like passive or item procs. Some indicator would be nice though, also for noticing if you go to far away from burning mobs.

4. GR 60 should be doable, although the level setup, power buffs and rift gaurdian play a big role (I had 1 boss that 1shotted me at GR 54, making it impossible to complete in time)

[WhiteSnake 0]

I started playing again and noticed that just now in a dungeon doing a solo rift on t10, in a group of alot of enemies, the damage is respectable (although still slower than I'd like to kill stuff), the damage against single or a few mobs suuuucks and takes awhile to kill.

 

I honestly feel like the deathwish nerf really killed this build, and also I was reading when 2.4 first came out, that they nerfed firebird set bad apparently? I don't know personally, I didn't start to "seriously" play d3 until this season with some friends off and on again, but from what I was reading, they claimed Tal Rasha's set is much better than the Firebird set now. But again, from an outsider's perspective, I'm not sure exactly WHY Tal Rasha's would suddenly be better.

 

I know one thing for sure though, nerfing the deathwish from 100% to 35% really sucks. Maybe the Furnace would really help, getting the legendary gems to lvl 25 is going to take forever with it's puny 2% chance. I love how all the levels up to 24 were 100% chance to upgrade, and now suddenly at 24-25 now it's wayyy down to 2% lollll.

 

I also FOR SURE feel they nerfed something with this build in the past few months with some of their "little" patches, because, when this season started and I first started following this build, I could stand FOREVER holding the disintegrate beam, and now, the mana actually drains. They had to had nerfed some piece or effect on this armor the build uses.

 

 

The thing is, I'm not sure what they nerfed, I don't think they release patch notes for small little "hot fix" patches do they? At least I didn't see anything listed....last thing I remember seeing was the big 2.4 patch notes.

 

would this build be better? http://www.diablofans.com/builds/78312-diablo-3-t6-wizard-build-tals-vacuum-beam

 

my friend who is really into d3 and always ranks up pretty high on the leaderboards told me that tal rasha+slow time was what he used on t10 and I used to watch him play and he would wreck stuff lol.

 

here's also another build that wipes t10 out quickly o.O http://www.diablofans.com/builds/70681-flash-fire-wizard-t10-speed

 

I actually have the Wand of Woh sitting in my item box right now, everybody I've talked to said it's rare as hell to find lol.

 

I really like disintegrate as a spell, the first build I linked above uses tal rasha's armor set and still incorporates disintegrate...but maybe disintegrate just isn't viable for t10 maybe.

 

 

hell, yesterday, I found a MUCH better compass rose than the one I had, even rerolled the VIT to 38% more critical hit damage...and....the damage is still bleh on t10 lol.

 

edit: 4-18-2016..... they're nerfed this wizards mana even more in another one of their hotfix patches I'm assuming behind the scenes, I can hold the disintegrate even LESS now since the mana drains pretty quickly now....wtf? When the season began I could hold it foreverrrrr pretty much, then a little bit in it got less and less...and now it's pretty bad with how short I can hold it

Edited April 18, 2016 by WhiteSnake

[Guest Mighty_Pooh]

How come this spec is not updated? The firebird solo spec is the most used spec on season 6?

[Guest Soulfeeder]

Are there any 2.4.1 changes?

[Guest JUB]

Hey, really enjoy this build. I got on the PTR to test out how this works with 2.4.2. Doesn't seem to work at all.

I didn't quite understand the set details of firebird's in the new patch at first. Apparently, it's somewhat like Tal's now -- you have to hit enemies with 3 different fire skills to cause them to ignite, and then you get the 6 piece bonus, which is now 120% and 2400% at max/with elites.

How can that even be done with this build as it is now? Seems impossible. Would have to be changed around significantly.

[Deadset 108]

On 6/22/2016 at 11:20 PM, Guest JUB said:

Hey, really enjoy this build. I got on the PTR to test out how this works with 2.4.2. Doesn't seem to work at all.

Yup, aware of the 2.4.2 revisions on the PTR. I'm waiting a bit to see the finalized version of the set before revising the guide though. Will be ready before the live patch, as always! :)

[Guest DaftWullie]

Hey Deadset,

Thank you for this Awesome build! It helped me a lot. I was just wondering about one thing: You use Unstable Anomaly as a pasive skill but the Firebird set already gives a similar bonus, so can you really expect to die twice in one minute? I've only played up to T8 so far but I'm not entirely sure.

If not wouldn't it be better to change to another passive like Elemental Exposure? Disintegrate takes care of the Fire element and Frost Nova the Ice element so if you have another element on your weapon that is already a 15% damage increase for any mob that comes close. If you feel like you have enough Thoughness you might even change the Magic Weapon rune from Deflection to Electrify and you can have all four elements for a total of 20% additional damage.

Thanks again for the awesome build!

[Warden 8]

On 7/8/2016 at 1:29 PM, Guest DaftWullie said:

...can you really expect to die twice in one minute? I've only played up to T8 so far but I'm not entirely sure.

If not wouldn't it be better to change to another passive like Elemental Exposure? Disintegrate takes care of the Fire element and Frost Nova the Ice element so if you have another element on your weapon that is already a 15% damage increase for any mob that comes close. If you feel like you have enough Thoughness you might even change the Magic Weapon rune from Deflection to Electrify and you can have all four elements for a total of 20% additional damage.

I haven't played this exact build, so I don't know how fragile it is.  But when you start pushing higher Greater Rifts, it's not uncommon for elites to kill you in a single shot.  This was happening to me yesterday on a Crusader, which is probably tougher than a Wizard with similar gear.  If it wasn't for the timer that makes you wait to resurrect in a GR, I would have died about 6 times in one minute.  And this was fighting the Rift Guardian, so I couldn't just skip the fight and move on to something else.

As for your second question, the damage type you do comes from the skill/rune you have chosen and ignores what's listed on your weapon.  (Weapon elemental damage is a leftover from earlier in the game when things worked differently.)  So it would not count toward your damage bonus from Elemental Exposure.

[Vexinus 0]

Is is somehow possible I can view the previous build to this one, the one with Deathwish and Disintegrate? If not then that's fine.

[Damien 1,514]

3 hours ago, Vexinus said:

Is is somehow possible I can view the previous build to this one, the one with Deathwish and Disintegrate? If not then that's fine.

Not really, the new patch comes tomorrow so no point keeping the old stuff :p

[LasseVK 0]

The spec lists both a source and a off-hand, since a source is an off-hand, you can't use both Firebird's Eye and Chantodo's Force at the same time.

The firebird item is unnecessary as the other 6 firebird armor pieces gives the 6 pc set bonus, and Chantodo's Force is needed, so the initial list in the guide should remove the "source" item.

[Guest Mighty mitch]

Tryed a different variation of the build which i think worked better for me , as the problem i found running this build is the loss of furnace in cube hurts bad with rg , switching explosive blast for familiar sparkflint mixed with magic missile ignite allows archon to be run on teleport rune and still ignite elites arcane torrent static discharge for faster chantoodo stacks and archin reset plus leaving furnace cubed :) let me know what you think