Items
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Head
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Shoulders
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Amulet
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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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Rings
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Weapon
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Offhand
The items in this build are designed to maximize the amount of fire and hydra damage output. I'll go through each piece of equipment and when substitutions can be made.
Head
Firebird's Plume - Pretty much the best option here. You could potentially sub out for a Leoric's Crown and replace Magefists or Cindercoat to keep the Firebird bonus but the increased CDR doesn't really benefit the build as much as the Fire Damage % from the other items.
Shoulders
Firebird's Pinions - Really the only option for this build. The fourth stats you should roll is Hydra Damage %.
Amulet
Countess Julia's Cameo - I've found this amulet to be my favourite at higher level grifts once jailer starts to insta-kill you. Also it can come in handy for healing if you run through a section of arcane sentries.
Xephirian Amulet - Another great choice as thunderstorm can strike without warning and really make a mess of things.
Haunt of Vaxo - This amulet gets proc'd by Zei's Stone of Vengeance once it's at rank 25 and the clones can help take some of the aggro away from you while you're kiting.
Torso
Cindercoat - I like using the Cindercoat because of the reduced resource cost which makes it easier to cast blizzard more frequently. Aside from the stats listed above, you again want to stack Hydra Damage % on this item as well.
Firebird's Breast - A good choice if you want to sub out a different piece of your Firebird's (like the helmet for a Leoric's Crown) or if you don't have a Ring of Royal Grandeur it's a good sixth piece for the set.
Wrists
Strongarm Bracers - Really the only option here. Your black hole counts as a knockback which just gives you a bonus damage buff. Before you find these, any bracers with the listed stats will suffice, but this should be your end game goal.
Hands
Magefists - These gloves stack more Fire Damage % and offer more stats than any other gloves.
Tasker and Theo - Also recommended if you have the Serpent's Sparker. Having two hydras attack faster ramps up the Firebird's DoT quicker. Firebird's Talons - Just as I said with the chest piece, this is another piece of the Firebird's set that you could switch out if you need a sixth piece. You can also use these instead of the Firebird's chest if using the Cindercoat makes you more comfortable due to the resource cost reduction.
Waist
The Witching Hour - This belt offers the best offensive stats due to the critical hit damage.
String of Ears - This belt should be used over The Witching Hour if you're finding surviving to be a problem. It offers a lot of toughness over power. Jang's Envelopement - The ability of this belt helps a lot for CC if you are playing solo or with a team that doesn't have a lot of CC.
Legs
Firebird's Down - Pretty clear cut and dry. Just find these with the stats listed. Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan are an interesting option for this slot for bonus damage and resource management but can be a little unreliable if your Firebird's infinite DoT snapshot captures when you are standing still.
Feet
Firebird's Tarsi - Same as the legs; the only real option.
Rings
Ring of Royal Grandeur - Using this ring allows you to use both a Cindercoat and Magefists to stack as much Fire Damage % as possible.
Stone of Jordan - Again stacks more Fire Damage %.
Unity - You only need this ring for solo play. Make sure you have one on your follower as well, and they should also have a relic that prevents them from dying.
Weapon
Serpent's Sparker - As hydra is one of your main sources of damage, this weapon effectively doubles your damage output.
The Furnace - As with pretty much every other build, The Furnace is an excellent choice, but if used, you will have to replace another piece of your equipment to make up for losing the Firebird's Offhand.
Offhand
Firebird's Eye - This is the third piece of armor you want to roll Hydra Damage % on.
Legendary Gems
Zei's Stone of Vengeance - Since this is a kiting build, you always want to keep your distance. This gems damage buff is applied to the Firebird's DoT dynamically so the further away you get the higher your damage is.
Bane of the Powerful - Makes dropping elite packs faster and usually provides you with a constant 20% damage buff if you're clearing fast enough. Gem of Efficacious Toxin - Adds more DoT to the build, and at rank 25 provides the entire party with a 10% damage buff.
Enforcer (Substitution Gem): Once you have a Serpent Sparker, you can potentially switch out the Zei's Stone of Vengeance for an Enforcer gem. This is because Zei's does affect pet damage, but it is calculated based on the pet's distance from the target, not your character's, so because Mammoth Hydras can only shoot so far, the Enforcer gem can become more powerful. Props to StiffNipple for bringing this to my attention. I haven't does this personally yet, but in theory should work out to more damage.
Paragon Priorities
Core
Movement Speed
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Primary Stat
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Maximum Resource
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Vitality
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Offense
Critical Hit Damage
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Critical Hit Chance
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Cooldown Reduction
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Attack Speed
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Defense
Armor
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Resist All
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Life
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Life Regeneration
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Utility
Resource Cost Reduction
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Life on Hit
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Area Damage
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Gold Find
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Core
Movement Speed - Only put enough points into this category to have 25% movement speed between paragon points and equipment.
Primary Stat - Pump everything else into Intelligence for maximum damage output.
Maximum Resource - Only necessary if you are finding that you are having problems with running out of Arcane Power - which shouldn't happen if you're using a Cindercoat.
Vitality - Only required if you are in need of more life.
Offense
All of these points just go towards maxing out damage. Attack speed is nice, but should be leveled last as the crit stats and cooldown is more helpful in the long run.
Defense
Armor - Helpful for damage reduction as your resistances should be high enough with being an Intelligence hero.
Resist All - Provides more damage reduction once armor is maxed out.
Life % - Increases your health pool.
Life Regeneration - Not needed. It's the last thing you should put points into.
Utility
Resource Cost Reduction - Helps out with managing casting blizzard all the time.
Life on Hit - Adds some healing to the build.
Area Damage - More helpful than Gold Find but not crucial.
Gold Find - Last thing to put point into.
Build Guide
I will be short and sweet with the description of the build. It operates in the same way as pretty much every other Firebird's build in the sense that you're kiting and lighting everything on fire until it dies. One of the differences is that there is a crucial casting order to maximize your DPS. Make sure that you are dropping your black hole first to get the damage buff from Spell Steal. Right after that you should dropped both of your hydras and then a blizzard. The two mammoth hydras drop rivers of flame all over the ground which burn everything that's been pulled in by the black hole. As you play you'll learn the best placements for your hydras. In a hallway, dropping both hydras near you let's them attack everything down the hallway. When in the open (like fighting a Rift Guardian), dropping a hydra on either side of the enemy makes it harder for the enemies to get out of the flames.
If you have any questions or want some more extensive tips on playing this build, feel free to add me in game. Clockwork#1132 Also this is my set up: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/clockwork-1132/hero/16567497
I also check this thread daily so feel free to ask any questions here as well!
Hydra and Blizzard and actually both crit. The reason you don't see the yellow critical numbers when you're playing is the same for all DoT attacks. It's the fact that the damage numbers that pop up over small intervals of time, it's taking the sums of all the damage through that interval. In other words, in a 1 second interval, the white number that pops up is a sum of the crits and non-crits that take place through that interval.
It's the same reason that you'll see some Firebird's infinite ticks begin higher than usual - it's when you get a couple of crits in the same interval that make that DoT tick higher. This is also evident in the fact then as you add more crit chance and crit damage, you'll find that your DoT ticks increase as well.
Hope this answers you're question, let me know if I need to explain it further.
Cheers!
Also, is spellsteal better then blazar, and if so, why? I was under the impression that the firebird dot is most of our damage, and blazar with evocation puts the dot on super quickly.
It definitely makes sense that going with an ancient weapon over a regular one would yield more damage, even with the fact that the SS gives you 2 hydras. What is your total % fire damage buff from all of your equipment? I ask because something you want to take into account is the effect of diminishing returns on % fire damage from equipment. The easiest way to explain this is by watching Quin C's video on maximizing DPS as he does an excellent job explaining how it all works (I'll include a link to the video for you).
As for the blazar vs. spellsteal issue, it's debatable which one is better as you can make an argument for both. In the case of blazar, the fire damage hit's hard and it a great combo with the hydras to reach the Firebird's DoT much quicker. Especially when you're just clearing trash mobs on an easy difficulty, the blazar can shred a mob on it's own once your dps is there. As for spellsteal, the recent modification of mob density in rifts and greater rifts with the 2.1.2 patch has made this rune a contender for the best rune. Encountering massive groups allows you to hit a lot more enemies with a blackhole, effectively boosting the damage of your hydras and blizzard which is why it's such a good rune now - 3% per enemy can add up to a lot of damage (hitting a mob of 10 enemies boosts your overall damage by 30%). Spellsteal can become less effective against rift guardians since it's only hitting one enemy so you just have to consider the tradeoff:
Spellsteal boosts your damage to higher points throughout the rift, allowing you to clear enemies faster, while blazar hits harder when dealing with the rift guardian. I tend to switch the runes up once in a while myself, but usually go for spellsteal when pushing higher greater rifts as I believe it is more effective.
Hope this helps, and here is the link to the diminishing returns video by Quin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPknAzeLZ-k
Hey Tamere, thanks for the question.
The reality is that buffs to attack speed on equipment only affect your character itself. So when you look under "details" and you see your attacks per second, that's how many attacks your wizard can do - so fast they cast spells. This attribute doesn't affect hydras because the hydra is classified as a pet. That's why I suggested Camermike's idea of using Tasker and Theo, because these gloves increase the attack speed of your hydras, letting them reach the Firebird's infinite DoT faster.
Hope this helps! Cheers!
if most of the dmg comes from hydra why not use enforcer, instead of toxin?
Tamere it seems as though that is something I missed in the patch notes. Some attack speed on your equipment could be helpful, I wouldn't make it the main focus as stats such as CHC and CHD still have huge benefits for the hydra compared to faster attack speed.
That being said, it could be something worth looking into.
Mono, the reason I've chosen Toxin over Enforcer is mainly because of efficiency. The secondary effect on enforcer is useless for Hydra because they can't be killed, so the damage reduction doesn't do anything. The toxin provides extra DoT as well as the 10% damage increase from all sources. I think that blanketing enemies with Apocolypse spreads Toxin which overall becomes more efficient than Enforcer.
That being said, in a group setting, if another player is using Toxin, than it might be worth it to swap out Toxin for Enforcer.
Kallendo, I think your issue is a Unity. Once you get to 30+ grifts you should have a Unity ring in the left slot, with your follower also having a Unity and a relic that makes it so they can't die. Gives you instant 50% damage reduction. Should help you out a lot. I think it also might be worth it to roll the fire damage off your amulet and upgrade a Zei's Stone of Vengeance.
Other than that you're looking real good
Hey Siralexx!
To be honest I haven't tried the Hexing Pants since that update, but I do remember reading something about them getting rid of snapshotting as well, but I thought that it might have just been with regards to the power pylons - if could snapshot the 400% DoT when you had a power pylon active, I'm not sure if it affects all changes to DPS.
That's all I can really say about it right now, but I do agree that Wizard needs some love compared to other classes. Looking forward to the new set coming out Will probably make a new build then.
Hi ThisClockwork,
If you have furnace and you really need to choose between magefist and cindercoat what would be the best? I was thinking magefist as it can give you another stat (5stats) but i was wondering if the cindercoat's resource reduction is much better. Hope you can give details as to whats better.
Also on another note, if you have wand of woh, would this be better to incorporate wand of woh to this firebird build?
Any suggestions to what can the skill build be? Or will you suggest a different build and gear with wand of woh.
Thanks
Hey woreyour! Good questions, and I think I have some answers for you.
For the Magefist/Cindercoat dilemma, it's really up to you comfortable you are with the amount of arcane power you have. I really like running the cindercoat because of the reduced resource cost. I usually run that because I can cast my skills for often as I'm usually moving through rifts at a pretty fast pace. It kind of depends on your items though - if you have godly Magefist, and just an okay cindercoat, I would run the Magefist and maybe allocate some paragon points to increasing arcane power if you find yourself running out frequently.
TL:DR - Magefist offer a bonus stat but you might run into resource problems and cindercoat is awesome for casting skills a lot.
As for the Wand of Woh, it doesn't really have a place in this build unfortunately. For Woh you want a build where you're up close and personal to get the full effects of the explosive blast, and Firebird's focuses on staying at a distance and kiting the enemies. I haven't been fortunate enough to ever get a Wand of Woh, but if I ever do, I'll definitely be playing around with build and might come out with one if I find something I like.
Hope this helped! Feel free to add my bnet if you have any more questions!
Thanks for the reply!
Yes after a day of running magefist over cinder i had the resource problems really bad. I was thinking since the blizzard is not stacking (or is it in the same area with the set bonus?) i can get away with just one combo of blackhole-hydra and wait a sec for 1 blizzard but it is not feeling right - did slow me down a lot. I also did the resource allocation but still not enough.
On another note, if you are not running serpent sparker would it be better to stack %blizzard damage? since you only have one serpent?
Again thanks for replying, it really help me confirm the problems I faced with the switch.
% Blizzard damage would work but isn't ideal. You want % hydra damage, or if you're running the Blazar rune on your black hole, you could use % black hole damage as that's a great source of burst DPS. I usually go with the hydra damage though.
Stiff you raise a good point. I did some research into it and Zei's does in fact calculate pet DPS based on how far away the pet is. I haven't done testing with each of the gems yet to look at the differences in damage output, but I'm going to add Enforcer to my guide as a suggestion for the gem set up.
Thanks for pointing this out!
Why exactly is it %Hydra over %Blizzard?
And is it worth it over the other stats (Vit/%Life, etc.)?
Blizzard is more of a utility compared to hydra. It covers a huge area to aggro in monsters that you can drop a black hole on to power up your hydras. Using Serpent Sparker doubles to effectiveness of hydra because you get a second one, so stacking the % hydra damage makes them even more powerful. And yes, on the few pieces you can get % hydra damage on are the best option compared to vitality or % life.
Cool, thank you.
I see a lot of top Wizards using a Devastator weapon, and switching Magefist to Firebird's gloves. Do you know why that is?