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+19

2.3 Season 4 Firebirds

by last updated Sep 4, 2015 ( Patch 2.3 )
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Skills

  • Blizzard Apocalypse
  • Teleport Safe Passage
  • Black Hole Blazar
  • Meteor Meteor Shower
  • Energy Armor Force Armor
  • Magic Weapon Force Weapon
  • Evocation
  • Unstable Anomaly
  • Illusionist
  • Blur

Items

More Details

  • Legendary Gems

    • Zei's Stone of Vengeance
    • Bane of the Stricken
    • Gem of Efficacious Toxin

Kanai's Cube

  • The Grand Vizier
  • Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan
  • Ring of Royal Grandeur

Skills

Blazar/Apocalypse - these are standard in any Firebirds build. Blazar does great damage, stacks the Firebird's DoT quickly, provides cc, and procs Strongarm bracers. Apocalypse is good for building the Firebirds DoT over a large area. Both of these are mandatory.


Meteor Shower - this goes very well with Grand Vizier, but you can replace this with Mammoth Hydra if you want. If you do this, then cube Serpent's Sparker instead of Grand Vizier. Meteor Shower is the best rune because it's fire damage and it's spammable, unlike Molten Impact.


Safe Passage - teleport is your "get out of jail free" ability, use it whenever you are in trouble or get within melee range of enemies. Safe Passage rune gives you a huge %-damage reduction, so it's the best defensive rune to use.


Force Armor - The best rune for high-level G. Rifts, this prevents you from getting 1-shot by trash mobs. If you are farming or running mid-level GRs, then you can use the Prismatic Armor rune instead.

Passives

Evocation - doesn't seem necessary at first because most skills have no cooldown, however the 2 most important abilities, Black Hole and Teleport, do have a cooldown, so this is needed.


Blur - best defensive passive.


Illusionist - huge buff to Teleport. If you get surround by melee mobs, getting hit will instantly reset your teleport cooldown so you can get away. On higher-level GRs this will save you more than anything else.


Unstable Anomaly - the cheat death passives are all mandatory for GR progression. If you are speedfarming or in a group, this usually isn't needed, and you can replace with a more offensive passive like Glass Cannon.

Gear


Firebird Slots:

6-piece firebirds bonus is required for this, and there are 7 pieces of firebirds, so you have some flexibility in your slots. Cubing Ring of Royal Grandeur also gives you an extra slot to work with. Lastly the cube slot for the armor itself gives you an additional slot.


The best firebird slots to swap are the chest for Cindercoat, the gloves for Magefist, and the pants for Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan.


Cindercoat adds damage and lets you spam Meteor more frequently.


Magefist are the only gloves with fire damage, so the choice is obvious.


Hexing Pants are permanently up with the Firebirds build, as the build revolves purely around applying the 6set DoT and then kiting around until the enemies die.


Only hexing pants get the full value by cubing. Cubing either cindercoat or magefist means you don't get the extra %-fire damage.

Amulet:

Hellfire with a useful passive is best here. Useful passives include:

-any of the 4 listed

-Glass Cannon

-Conflagration (although it does NOT increase the firebirds DoT, so it's not as useful as it could be)

-Astral Presence


Marginally useful passives:

-Elemental Exposure (basically a permanent 5% buff)

-Power Hungry (let's you spam abilities slightly more)


Every other passive is pretty much worthless.


Until you get a hellfire, Eye of Etlich is a great alternative due to ranged enemies being the biggest threat to a firebirds wizard. After that, one of the immunity amulets is adequate.

Wrists:

Strongarms are by far the BiS here. Using a diamond in your helm, and with Evocation, you can have significant uptime on your strongarm buff using Black Hole.


Until you get strongarms, both Reaper Wraps and Krelm's Buff Bracers are decent intermediate bracers.

Waist:

-Witching Hour is the best offensive belt, because it's the only belt that can roll Crit Damage.

-String of Ears offers the best defensive ability for belts

-if you want more cc/utility, get Jang's Envelopement to help you kite enemies better

Rings:

Unity is best for GR progression. For the 2nd slot, either Stone of Jordan and Convention of Elements are great. If you don't need Unity, use SoJ + CoE together.


If you are playing in a group, you can use Focus & Restraint. If you do this, sub out one of your abilities (not Apocalypse or Blazar) for Electrocute. Use either the surge of power or forked lightning rune.


Weapon:

Important note about Firebirds: attack speed does NOT matter at all! DoTs in Diablo 3 are based purely on weapon damage, attack speed does nothing. So the best weapon for firebirds is a high-damage weapon. Higher-damage weapons in Diablo 3 are the slower ones.


There are 2 main routes to go with regards to firebird weapon setups:


2-handed weapon


If you use a 2-handed weapon, you want either Furnace or Grand Vizier, whichever one you have that's better. Cube the other one. Because of this, you will have to swap out your chest or gloves for firebirds. I recommend the gloves since they only have +%fire damage.


1-handed weapon


1-handed weapon setups will use the Firebird's Eye, which gives you both +%fire damage and up to 10% crit chance. The highest-damage weapons for wizard are maces. There are 2 options for 1-hand weapons:


1. Sun Keeper - the only mace that rolls more than +10% elite damage.

2. Devastator - a craftable weapon, this is the only mace that rolls +%fire damage.


Which one you use will ultimately depend on what your total +%elite and total +%fire is. Use the one that improves the lower stat. So if your +%fire is lower than +%elite, use devastator.


In either case, you will want to cube the furnace. Make sure to factor in the +50% elite from the furnace in your weapon decision.


Being able to cube the Furnace for a guranteed max roll on +%elite damage means that 1-handed setups are superior. While the 2-handed maces offer superior base damage, a Devastator + Firebird's Eye will offer about 75-80% of the base damage, but then you also get +40% fire damge + 10% crit chance + an extra stat that a 2-handed mace won't get. A Sun Keeper is even better, instead of 40% fire damage you get 30% elite damage + 20% fire.


Kanai's Cube equipment:

-The weapon you choose will depend on if you go the 1-hand or 2-hand route.

-For the armor, hexing pants are the best because you get the full value of the item from cubing it

-For the ring, Ring of Royal Grandeur is best as it gives you an extra firebirds slot to swap for other gear


Legendary Gems:

Zei's Stone of Vengeance - the firebirds DoT will update as you move away from your enemy, and Zei's is a separate multiplier, so it gives the biggest damage increase for a build like firebirds, which is all about kiting and staying away from enemies.


Bane of the Stricken - firebirds traditionally has a problem with Rift Guardians due to most of the damage being from a DoT. The Bane of the Stricken really ramps up the damage for guardians for firebirds. This gem was introduced in Season 4 and is only found on seasonal characters. It helps with firebirds biggest weakness (single target damage) and so it's mandatory for the build.


Gem of Efficacious Toxin - The 3rd choice used to be Bane of the Trapped, because between your follower, Black Hole, and Zei's, you could pretty much have 100% uptime. Patch 2.3 nerfed CC pretty significantly, so it's much harder to proc Bane of the Trapped. As such, the toxin gem is the next best choice. If you are in a group, Bane of the Trapped is a better choice, as it's much easier to proc with 4 people.


Regular Gems:

-5 Topaz in chest/legs

-Emerald in weapon

-Diamond in helmet


It should go without saying, but these should all be Flawless Royal quality.

Paragon Priorities

Core

Movement Speed
Primary Stat
Maximum Resource
Vitality

Offense

Critical Hit Chance
Critical Hit Damage
Cooldown Reduction
Attack Speed

Defense

Resist All
Life
Armor
Life Regeneration

Utility

Area Damage
Resource Cost Reduction
Life on Hit
Gold Find

The paragon points are basically the same since the builds introduction in Season 1.


The only difference is that Area Damage has been buffed so that it is actually useful, so that should be the priority on the Utility Tree.

Build Guide

Basic playstyle of the build is to stay as far away from enemies as possible. Use Apocalypse -> Blazar to group enemies up and apply the DoT, then hit them with Meteor until you run out of Arcane Power.


Always have your Force Armor and Magic Weapon up.


If you get surrounded by melee enemies or projectiles, teleport as far away as possible and wait for your Blazar/Arcane Power to get back up.


As you get into the higher GR levels, it will become more and more important to kite enemies into the next group of enemies. You won't have time to wait for the firebirds' DoT to finish them off, you will have to keep moving and keep kiting.


Enjoy, and GL.


Follower Gear:

**[Follower used to be used for stacking cc, but as of Patch 2.3 cc has been significantly nerfed. The best follower build has yet to be figured out, so stay tuned for updates]**


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