Am not sure if you got upgrades since your post.. but your profile is running with 59% added fire damage. Which is sort of the point where I draw it's limit unless I get a perfect neck.
Overall though elemental damage is better on rings/bracers/other non-neck pieces as it almost always rolls 20% max regardless on item as Crit and Crit damage rolls higher only on Necks and offhand also for crit. So for neck, always go Crit and Crit damage if possibe. If you want a neck with a socket, the perfect would be Ele damage, Crit, Crit damage and a Socket.. Followed by Int, Crit, Crit damage and a socket.
Other things when glancing at your profile is that you run Astral presence and Dominance, 2 talens that really don't help too much past rank 36 rifts. So Conflagration might be something to maybe you'd want to look at if you fear your crit is too low.(let's you get more CHD)
the one thing you really need to proceed further is a furnace from my point of view.
Thanks for the input. Furnace does seem like a great option, but I didn't even know it existed until recently. Currently I don't have another piece of firebirds, so it wouldn't be all that useful yet. It's like Woh hunting all over again.
Tbh Maximus is the middle ground option(till 38-39ish rank).. Or even Sunkeeper if you get a beasty roll on it. Maximus is fairly likely to drop even, much much more likely than Furnace at least.
Other stuff just glancing your gear, just a bit more base defence and damage and don't see double unity trick on followers.. So dunno if you got a 2nd unity, but it really is needed past rank 36 in my mind.
Isn't better use a Cindercoat instead of Magefist? the Cost reduction could help a lot.
Also, what do you guys think about a Sun keeper + Off hand?
Mostly people prefer Magefist as you get an extra main stat from it. And 30% less cost aint make or break for firebirds.
I don't value sun keeper high tbh. You really need to get lucky with high amount of elites to make it work and even then depending on your overall + elite damage on gear it still might be worse than your average 2 hander for firebirds build. Though the same applies for Devastator, given you can make a perfect Devastator which makes it somewhat higher on stuff.
In any case 1 hander combos are behind mostly cause not only inferior weapon dps, but faster attack speed which even compared to a maximus is noticable difference on the amount Firebirds ticks. And yes you do gain 10% crit(and 20% fire is you ain't running Maximus) from offhand to boost Firebirds up again, but from my tests it just ain't enough.
I wouldn't use ramalandi's gift on any of those. Just wait till you get some weapon with decent damage range roll or nearly perfect other rolls so that you could enchant the damage range.
The Maximus is actually decent to use a gift on if you don't have a good wep and have more than 1 gift.
My fastest is FB wiz.. Although it's pretty much the only char I have near BiS, but all in all T6 clears pretty fast depending on rift type and mob density. Fastest I have done has been around 3 mins, but it was only 1 level rift with crazy density so I chain pulled everything. The average for me atm is between 5 and 6 minutes though, as I seen to get low density tunnel like rifts most of the time.
Ward is situational though, which Blur is not. Blur is always 17% less damage taken, sure it can mean with higher migitation levels Ward does soak more damage, but you till have to not get hit for 5 second was it to refresh the shield, which I just find too annoying atm.
It has 3 downsides to it. Standing still to cast, which apart from Explosive blast is pretty much the case for every Wizard spell. And the second being it has a smaller area of damage, which doesn't really matter that much unless you run to big groups of mobs that spread. 3rd being travel time for bolts.. don't think it's really a downside in anything but low difficulty and group play.
Now to the plusses. You don't have to use a signature spell. It does far more damage than even double exploded Frozen Orb. It can be perma channeled without APoC with slower attack speeds and high regen. You can use it over walls, only limit being LoS and it's maximum range. You can direct the bolts while they are on the move.
Overall people do underestimate Arcane Torrent by quite a bit.. It has it's drawbacks, which does make it the sort of you have to be tanky caster to use it come RoS. But it's damage for the most part does win over the drawbacks. In the end it depends on your gear, preferences and mob type/density. Some legendaries do tip the scale towards Frost builds on higher difficulties though.
I'll take 95% damage reduction and 1 million toughness over 80% damage reduction and 2 million toughness any day.
I disagree. Toughness is a fine stat for a ranged class who is supposed to be avoiding damage anyway. Having more toughness will keep you alive longer than not having it. The only case where this isn't true is if you are stacking a lot of +healing. If that is the case you are right, pure mitigation will probably suit you better. But with my character I find the +healing stats to be rather weak. A larger health pool means larger heals from potions and health globes are more than enough to keep me alive even in the higher torment levels (torment 5 is where I like to play). I tend to go for the higher toughness, and only favor +healing if I'm getting a lot more than the value that I would get from the toughness.
@deleo
Toughness is going to give you a higher chance to survive a hit from one of those guys over pure mitigation.
You only need enough toughness to survive bursts of damage, after that having more hp just makes every healing resource less potent. For example 80% migitation gives a 10k shield the absorb of 50k.. Now 95% migitation gives that same 10k shield the value of 200k. 4 times more potent. Every healing/shield resource that does not scale from HP acts the same way. Sure health potions do still give you 60% hp, but you need to survive the next 30 seconds without and on high torment, that will probably mean waiting a bit till going at it again, unless you are kiting a lot. It just makes way more sense to use high migitation atm, The story is a lot different if we would have reliable healing resource outside of Health Globes and Potions, but sadly we don't.
Longer answer: Neither. The toughness rating in the long run is not the important thing for Wizards as @level 70 we are relying on shields rather than health regen.. So we probably will have to focus on damage reduction. It makes Life regen/LoH/LoK/shields more "potent" rather than making them "weaker" like getting more health does.. For example having 90% reduction and 100k health makes your toughness 1 mil and 95% reduction and 50k health makes it also 1 mil, but your shields are 2 times more "potent" with 95% reduction than with 90%. Ofc getting good amount of health is important, but just on a secondary status in my mind come RoS. Long story short: Shields/LoH/LoK/life regen do not scale from your HP, so you simply cannot stare at the toughness rating, as sometimes it will end up being worse for you if you don't have enough healing to keep your HP from not dropping too fast so shields and regen cannot keep you up anymore.
as it stands right now to farm t4-t6 requires a LS wep (some1 correct if im wrong)
with soo much diversity i doubt we gonna have cookiecutter builds at start blur will probably be strong but as gear progress im quite sure it wont be a no1 choice for defense
Kiting with Frozen Orb and being really careful somewhat works, then add azurewrath and the freeze on chill gloves and it's pretty ok build, but highly dependant on certain items.
yeah but this is really item dependable and in certain situations it will help you survive but if i want to go meteor shower build its not gonna work since fire doesnt have any crowd control at all and im pretty certain this wont keep you alive on torment 6
All fire builds atm are lackluster, unless you get Wand of Woh, but even then it's a bit meh on the defence side. You just can't get the defences or the damage down reliably compared to the other elements. A shame really with all the juicy + fire damage items in the game.
as it stands right now to farm t4-t6 requires a LS wep (some1 correct if im wrong)
with soo much diversity i doubt we gonna have cookiecutter builds at start blur will probably be strong but as gear progress im quite sure it wont be a no1 choice for defense
Kiting with Frozen Orb and being really careful somewhat works, then add azurewrath and the freeze on chill gloves and it's pretty ok build, but highly dependant on certain items.
LoH is pretty much useless for Wizards atm, you are much better off with Life regen and LoK. They really need to do something about the issue, but people are still running Lifesteal weps, so they don't realise how bad the healing situation is for Wizards atm. You are pretty much forced to kite now on T5-6, which sadly takes many gameplay options off the table.
In the end it seems, we are going to end up with cookiecutter builds, which is the sort of thing Blizzard didn't want. I mean how on earth can anyone not pick Blur for higher torments? It's just so obvious of a choice for anything unless you can dodge all the damage, but sadly that only happens on boss fights.
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Overall though elemental damage is better on rings/bracers/other non-neck pieces as it almost always rolls 20% max regardless on item as Crit and Crit damage rolls higher only on Necks and offhand also for crit. So for neck, always go Crit and Crit damage if possibe. If you want a neck with a socket, the perfect would be Ele damage, Crit, Crit damage and a Socket.. Followed by Int, Crit, Crit damage and a socket.
Other things when glancing at your profile is that you run Astral presence and Dominance, 2 talens that really don't help too much past rank 36 rifts. So Conflagration might be something to maybe you'd want to look at if you fear your crit is too low.(let's you get more CHD)
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Other stuff just glancing your gear, just a bit more base defence and damage and don't see double unity trick on followers.. So dunno if you got a 2nd unity, but it really is needed past rank 36 in my mind.
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I don't value sun keeper high tbh. You really need to get lucky with high amount of elites to make it work and even then depending on your overall + elite damage on gear it still might be worse than your average 2 hander for firebirds build. Though the same applies for Devastator, given you can make a perfect Devastator which makes it somewhat higher on stuff.
In any case 1 hander combos are behind mostly cause not only inferior weapon dps, but faster attack speed which even compared to a maximus is noticable difference on the amount Firebirds ticks. And yes you do gain 10% crit(and 20% fire is you ain't running Maximus) from offhand to boost Firebirds up again, but from my tests it just ain't enough.
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Now to the plusses. You don't have to use a signature spell. It does far more damage than even double exploded Frozen Orb. It can be perma channeled without APoC with slower attack speeds and high regen. You can use it over walls, only limit being LoS and it's maximum range. You can direct the bolts while they are on the move.
Overall people do underestimate Arcane Torrent by quite a bit.. It has it's drawbacks, which does make it the sort of you have to be tanky caster to use it come RoS. But it's damage for the most part does win over the drawbacks. In the end it depends on your gear, preferences and mob type/density. Some legendaries do tip the scale towards Frost builds on higher difficulties though.
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Longer answer: Neither. The toughness rating in the long run is not the important thing for Wizards as @level 70 we are relying on shields rather than health regen.. So we probably will have to focus on damage reduction. It makes Life regen/LoH/LoK/shields more "potent" rather than making them "weaker" like getting more health does.. For example having 90% reduction and 100k health makes your toughness 1 mil and 95% reduction and 50k health makes it also 1 mil, but your shields are 2 times more "potent" with 95% reduction than with 90%. Ofc getting good amount of health is important, but just on a secondary status in my mind come RoS. Long story short: Shields/LoH/LoK/life regen do not scale from your HP, so you simply cannot stare at the toughness rating, as sometimes it will end up being worse for you if you don't have enough healing to keep your HP from not dropping too fast so shields and regen cannot keep you up anymore.
That's my 2 cents at least.
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In the end it seems, we are going to end up with cookiecutter builds, which is the sort of thing Blizzard didn't want. I mean how on earth can anyone not pick Blur for higher torments? It's just so obvious of a choice for anything unless you can dodge all the damage, but sadly that only happens on boss fights.