1st time to play new; Firebird 6pc question

Hi all

I am coming over after playing LoD-WOL Monk. So please be gentle, I have not played FB for more than 5 years. and Obviously, the mechanics are completely different:

So I am seeing:

(2) Set:
 Disintegrate Ignites enemies, causing them to take 3000% weapon damage per second until they die. When you die, a meteor falls from the sky and revives you. This effect has a 60 second cooldown.

OK A Ignite Debuff to be used for 6pc.
And a good Cheat Death. Sweet!

(4) Set:
 Casting Disintegrate adds Combustion stacks that reduce the cooldown of Teleport by 2% per stack. Stacks up to 50 times. You gain 80% damage reduction while maintaining Combustion stacks.

I understand, this Combustion stacks offer me:

  1. Reduce Teleport cooldown
  2. Damage Reduction (even with just 1 Stack)
  3. And this Combustion Stack (50 max) that can be used for 6pc.
(6) Set:
 You gain 5000% increased damage while Ignite is applied to a target. **Hitting an Ignited enemy with a non-channeling fire spell deals Ignite damage multiplied by Combustion stacks.**

OK, Assume a target is Ignited, any non-channeling skill will do 50 (combustion stacks) x 5000% weapon damage or 250,000% weapon damage per pop:
a. Explosive Blast will do 250,000% damage per explosion
b. Flameblades, Meteor, Hydra … will do 250,000% damage per attack…

Seems powerful. So I go near monster packs, Disinit them to debuff. then hack with Flameblades till they melt. Not really fun as there is no AOE.

So we go to Mirror Images now. Should I just dinsint everything, not touching flameblades and hoping these mirror images can take advantage of popping 250,000% damages? Or do they mimic my attacks like those Rabid Strike Clones do?

I asked the same and got answer.

You could also watch some guides on youtube. You can see high clears where the player never activates Flame Blades but leave it all to the Images. The playstyle can be annoying at times and certain elite and champion types can be difficult to fight.

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From my understanding, Firebird Finery is very similar to WD’s Jade Harvester game play:

WD Jade applies haunt on target
WD Jade Detonates Haunt damage using Soul Harvest

WZ Firebird applies Ignite on target
WZ Firebird Detonates Ignite using Flameblades (or any non-channeling fire skills)

The advantage of Firebird are:

  1. Disintigrate can hit more targets than Haunt.
  2. There is no cooldown to Flameblades and we can spam it at will.
  3. Combustion stacks also reduce Teleport Cooldown. Jade Harvester does not have this mechanic.

Now, I noticed that High Level FB-Mirror Image players do not even have Disint, nor Mirror Image rolled on their gears. I assume therefore that these skills does not boost 6pc at all which is strictly 5000% Weapon Damage x Combustion Stacks.

Having said that, I assume that the only way to increase this damage are: Legendary Gems, Aughilds, Captain Crimsons, COE …

True, and Fire damage… and lots of augments (but you know that of course).
There is lots of info on Maxroll.gg
https://maxroll.gg/guides/firebird-mirror-image-wizard-guide
Some of the choices can be tweaked like T&T or Mantle of Channeling in cube. I also like the Templar with lots of CDR (put Capt. Crimson on him) and 25,000 strength because he can really keep you alive.

Mirror Image needs a rework. They are slow in the offense!

The only times I see them very competitive is when faced against RG - nothing to distruct them?

The Images are intended to work as decoys so it’s a wonder that the build works as well as it does (if it worked better it would most likely be nerfed). All this was discussed months ago when the reworked FB was introduced. You can probably find the old discussions. Don’t give up too early, when the Images hit they do massive damage especially in the fire cycle.

Can follower proc 6pc x combustion if they do fire damage?
(ie, weapon has +fire damage)

No, followers shouldn’t be of help here. Look closer at the 6p wording:

Hitting an Ignited enemy with a non-channeling fire spell deals Ignite damage multiplied by Combustion stacks.

(Emphasis mine)

It can’t be a weapon / item bonus; it has to be a skill dealing fire damage. AFAIR followers don’t have fire skills (?).

Just a clarification; when possible cast the images in the cold cycle because as they last 7 seconds there is a good chance that they have found their targets and started the attacks when the fire cycle is up. Of course they also do damage in the other cycles so with enough cdr they can be active several times during a full CoE rotation.

I was actually curious about this when I was pushing a bit over the weekend, so I checked it out to see what would be optimal.

There’s two options: you can either activate Mirror Images once every 7 seconds (that’s their duration) regardless of where you are in the CoE cycle. Most of the time they should be active during fire cycle, sometimes they won’t be. It will average out over time.

The other option is to stagger it with your CoE rotation. You can do that by activating them every 8 seconds instead of every 7 seconds so you are always activating them at the same spot in the CoE cycle. Just make sure it’s long enough before fire that you have Deathwish active by the time fire hits, but not so far before fire that they expire before fire ends. So basically about halfway through cold (and again halfway through lightning) should work.

The downside of the latter approach is you have a bit of downtime with your images. So now the question is whether it’s worth taking a bit of downtime to guarantee they are active for all of fire. Or if you’re better off just having them active all the time (note: this requires at least 53.33% CDR, but that’s pretty trivial to hit with standard setups) knowing that sometimes you’ll have to recast during fire and waste part of your fire cycle.

If you activate Mirror Images every 7 seconds right when they expire, it takes 7 full CoE cycles to repeat the rotation.

We’ll start with a baseline of 1 DPS, multiplied by 4.25 when Deathwish activates, and multiplied by 3 when CoE activates.

Rotation when activating every 7 seconds

Time Cycle Mirror Images Damage
1 arcane activate 1
2 arcane 4.25
3 arcane 4.25
4 arcane 4.25
5 cold 4.25
6 cold 4.25
7 cold 4.25
8 cold activate 1
9 fire 12.75
10 fire 12.75
11 fire 12.75
12 fire 12.75
13 lightning 4.25
14 lightning 4.25
15 lightning activate 1
16 lightning 4.25
17 arcane 4.25
18 arcane 4.25
19 arcane 4.25
20 arcane 4.25
21 cold 4.25
22 cold activate 1
23 cold 4.25
24 cold 4.25
25 fire 12.75
26 fire 12.75
27 fire 12.75
28 fire 12.75
29 lightning activate 1
30 lightning 4.25
31 lightning 4.25
32 lightning 4.25
33 arcane 4.25
34 arcane 4.25
35 arcane 4.25
36 arcane activate 1
37 cold 4.25
38 cold 4.25
39 cold 4.25
40 cold 4.25
41 fire 12.75
42 fire 12.75
43 fire activate 3
44 fire 12.75
45 lightning 4.25
46 lightning 4.25
47 lightning 4.25
48 lightning 4.25
49 arcane 4.25
50 arcane activate 1
51 arcane 4.25
52 arcane 4.25
53 cold 4.25
54 cold 4.25
55 cold 4.25
56 cold 4.25
57 fire activate 3
58 fire 12.75
59 fire 12.75
60 fire 12.75
61 lightning 4.25
62 lightning 4.25
63 lightning 4.25
64 lightning activate 1
65 arcane 4.25
66 arcane 4.25
67 arcane 4.25
68 arcane 4.25
69 cold 4.25
70 cold 4.25
71 cold activate 1
72 cold 4.25
73 fire 12.75
74 fire 12.75
75 fire 12.75
76 fire 12.75
77 lightning 4.25
78 lightning activate 1
79 lightning 4.25
80 lightning 4.25
81 arcane 4.25
82 arcane 4.25
83 arcane 4.25
84 arcane 4.25
85 cold activate 1
86 cold 4.25
87 cold 4.25
88 cold 4.25
89 fire 12.75
90 fire 12.75
91 fire 12.75
92 fire activate 3
93 lightning 4.25
94 lightning 4.25
95 lightning 4.25
96 lightning 4.25
97 arcane 4.25
98 arcane 4.25
99 arcane activate 1
100 arcane 4.25
101 cold 4.25
102 cold 4.25
103 cold 4.25
104 cold 4.25
105 fire 12.75
106 fire activate 3
107 fire 12.75
108 fire 12.75
109 lightning 4.25
110 lightning 4.25
111 lightning 4.25
112 lightning 4.25

Total damage over 7 full CoE cycles: 636

Okay, now consider only activating mirror images twice per CoE rotation, once halfway through cold and once halfway through lightning.

Rotation when syncing image activation to CoE cycle

Time Cycle Mirror Images Damage
1 cold activate 1
2 cold 4.25
3 fire 12.75
4 fire 12.75
5 fire 12.75
6 fire 12.75
7 lightning 4.25
8 lightning (expired) 0
9 lightning activate 1
10 lightning 4.25
11 arcane 4.25
12 arcane 4.25
13 arcane 4.25
14 arcane 4.25
15 cold 4.25
16 cold (expired) 0

Total damage per cycle: 87
Total damage over 7 cycles: 87*7 = 609

So as it turns out, the extra downtime added from syncing your cycles can actually be a damage loss compared to just activating mirror images every 7 seconds and letting it average out over your CoE cycles.

Of course, this example I sketched out is assuming you never reposition or get knocked back or CC’d or otherwise break channel. In reality, you’ll break channel more frequently than just to activate mirror images. In a real rift situation, this probably shifts the balance a bit towards syncing to your CoE cycle, because in reality you don’t do DPS 100% of the time, and in that type of situation you want to try and make sure your DPS windows line up with your CoE windows. I’m pretty sure that will end up favouring a situation where you have a bit of downtime on your images to make sure you have them up with Deathwish active during your fire cycle.

But I guess the point of this is that the difference between the two options is going to be fairly small. So it shouldn’t matter too much if you just activate your images when they expire vs. if you try and sync up to your CoE cycle. There may be some optimization to be had for high level gameplay, but for casual and mid-level play I really don’t think it’s going to make much of a difference either way. Just do what works for you.

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Great info, as always. In reality I usually activate the Images as soon as they are available… and if there are worthwhile monsters nearby (which often is far from the case!). It’s only when figthing the rift guardian or particularly hard Champions I find it best to keep an eye on the rotation because getting a full fire cycle can make a big difference.

Anyone tried using Myken to bounce electrocute back to the same target for more 6pc x combustion damage?

Or Mirror Image the only way to go with FB? (ie, Deathwish + Taeguk are huge DPS buffs for this set).

Yes, someone has mentioned this variant here, not so long ago. However, there are reasons why it didn’t become a mainstream build. Just to name a few:

  1. Every time you stop channelling, you lose the Deathwish bonus, which is a big deal.
  2. Mirror Images don’t cast Electrocute, or at least its Fire variant.
  3. Fire version of Electrocute has a very low bounce count. Even doubling it with the Velvet Camaral doesn’t help much.
  4. Spectral Blade has a decent hitbox size, it’s not a single target skill. It also adds a short-time Fire damage bonus, up to 30%.
  5. Wiki states that Myken’s Ball Of Hate “Will have no effect if there is only one enemy in range.”. This makes it useless every time you encounter a non-summoning Rift Guardian.

In case you are wondering if you can employ the Fire version of the Magic Missile, i.e. the Conflagrate rune, I played with it for quite some time. Despite looking seemingly promising - penetrating missiles that do make wonders in corridor rifts, no need for MIs to come close to enemies, etc. - somehow it just doesn’t cut it.

A clunky build won’t become the mainstream without good reasons. You can trust the community in this, although you are of course free to explore alternative options. They might not be quite as high-performing, but they often bring in a lot of fun.

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It also hits 3 times per cast, and each hit can proc Firebird’s 6p. That’s maybe the most significant part.

If you really want to try something different, Manual Flame Blades (without Mirror Images, add in Fragment of Destiny and Shame of Delsere for faster manual flame blading) is probably the next best option. It’s only 5-10 GRs behind Deathwish Mirror Images.

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Blimey, I didn’t know that! Yeah, that explains everything, I guess.

If only MIs would benefit from the Mirrorball, then MM:Conflagrate might have been pretty close, if not better. Alas.

I kept switching between Mirror Image and manual Flameblades (and other skills) and Mirror Image is the king by a huge margin.

I am really piqued by this querky interaction… But i honestly hope blizz dont kill it as it is FUN!

There were worries that it would be nerfed in a following patch -after the introduction. But instead it was upgraded with a counter on the images icon. Each image has a second life, just like the FB set. So every time you see a meteor impact it’s one of the images that has died but keeps fighting with its second life… untill it expires or dies again of course (the way I understand it).

How does Fire tornado compared with mirror image?

You mean, Energy Twister? Not good. It’s a damage-over-time skill, and they perform rather poorly with the Firebird.

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yes, energy twisters… so they are no good to proc the detonation? mirror image still king?

OK… how about while using deathwish, I disint for 1 seconds then do a flameblade then back to disint… rinse repeat… will that work?

just frustrated I have a skill (flameblade) and not using it… :frowning: