Look at the leaderboards, in season or outside season and you will see its all firebirds.
Sadly this is so far above every other spec, it’s what you are forced into for pushing greater GRs.
The thing is, I get so lagged out and FPS drop, especially in higher tiers with higher concentrations of mobs. It really isn’t fun for me and typically I can’t do more than an hour before I want to delete the game.
It bugs me that they made a brand new set with typhoon, and yet the rework of the old set is so drastically better…like 15-20 tiers better.
I also don’t mind LoD twister, that’s a pretty fun spec, but it is still 5-10 tiers less dps than firebirds is, and so really not an option for pushing.
Anyone else hoping for some love so that at least one other spec is on a similar level?
Well, you are not alone with that feeling. The problem is that Firebird was redesigtned after the release of Typhon. Almost every time a set gets redesigned, it will be powerful enough to be worth playing. That’s natural.
The problem with Typhons is not caused by Firebird. The Firebird rework puts the problems of Typhons (and it’s supporting legendaries) in plain sight. Typhon is quite restrictive, and it is a set designed around a single skill, where Firebird can be played in different ways. For Typhon you need the set itself, and on top of that there are two weapons, an offhand and a hat. At least if you want to deal damage. This is a major flaw, the set has, in harsh contrast to Firebird, no built-in mobility at all, so it’s quite slow and very annoying to play with. Just think about all the loops to hop through (Fragment and Flurry feel so awkward to play, it’s a real shame).
Many players told them during PTR but they wouldn’t listen. Now this is what we have. From my point of view, the damage on sparker needs to be upped, they have to remove Blizzard from the picture (i.e. change WF to make the playstyle less frustrating) and ideally they would also add mobility to the set itself. Then we can talk.
I’m not a big fan of Firebird’s. The Mirror Images gameplay is monotonous, I actually much prefer manual Flame Blades. It’s a more engaging playstyle. I’m secretly hoping they remove the Mirror Images interaction with FB6 procs and focus on balancing Manual Flame Blades or EB spam w/ Obsidian Ring moving forwards.
This season I mostly just used Firebird’s as a vehicle for farming XP and gems, then I pushed the other 5 sets. After a while I even switched my farming runs to doing speed 110-115 with Manual Flame Blades instead of 120-130 with Mirror Images.
I didn’t put much effort into my Firebird’s push at all, you can tell when you look at my non-season vs. season clears. Every other set I’m up ~7 GR levels, Firebird’s I’m only up 2.
Firebird’s is clearly the odd one out here. You can see how much effort I put into the other sets vs. Firebird’s… I just find our other builds more enjoyable to play.
This is a huge issue with a lot of our builds. I think they realized it, and added mobility when they reworked Firebird’s, but that has the consequence of automatically making Firebird’s the best farming set. Even if it wasn’t the strongest set. But it’s both the strongest set AND the one with the most mobility!
Any other build gives up too much dps to slot in mobility (via Aether Walker) unless you want to stick to GR90-GR100. If you want to farm 110+ with Hydras or Twisters or Frozen Orb, you need all the dps items in the weapon/source slot, you have no room for Aether Walker.
It’s a looming problem with our other sets. Even if the other sets get buffs, Firebird’s will still have a farming advantage because of the mobility.
The problem is how they should fix it. I can imagine different ways here.
Replace the Illusionist passive with Aetherwalker’s legendary power and remove the wand from game.
add a 150-200% damage buff (x seconds after casting Teleport) to Aetherwalker
add mobility features to the sets (like +10% movement speed buff per Tal Rasha stack)
find other ways to make wizard skills a means of mobility (see example)
Force of the Waves [legendary amulet] Casting “Wave of Force” now teleports you to a target location within 50 yards before releasing the shock wave. Enemies hit by Wave of Force take 100% more damage from you for 5 seconds.
Would you like such an item?
I could also imagine something like a teleport attack for Spectral Blade, where attacking with the spell teleports you to the target.
That seems reasonable, same multiplier as Squirt’s so you could just swap Squirt’s for it and swap Teleport to WoF for some instant mobility. And it means you could get arcane/lightning/fire stacks (but not cold) for Tal’s and still “teleport” places. I guess the only thing is you might see people start to replace their ring cube slot with this and run Squirt’s AND Force of the Waves, might be some unintended power creep for certain builds that could leverage it. Could drop the multiplier down to 50% or something if that ends up being an issue.
I don’t think that would pose a huge issue… but then again, Squirt’s has a downside - for 100% damage bonus you also get 50% increased damage taken as a drawback. You might be right with 50% being better.
I still enjoy FB a lot. Wish they would remove the “flee” or “run away” part of the Images’ algorithm so that they would attack more readily instead of having the decoy effect. But that would likely make the build too strong.
Personally I have no issues with Mirrorbirds as a build/concept in general. As you said, they are pretty much unreliable, but when they attack, they deal crazy damage. That’s the issue right there and causing many people to be sick of it. To be honest, it shouldn’t be a problem of whether Mirror Images attack or not. It’s obvious that they were originally more of a decoy spell, but that’s no reason to stick to this dogma for all time.
Some say that the interaction between FB6 and Mirror Image / Flame Blades is weird and it should be removed. I’d disagree on that. It’s okay. It should stay and the AI of the images should be improved. They could do that through adding an new item/power, if necessary, or make that effect part of the set powers. Either way, once the AI is improved and the images are more reliable, they would be completely out of whack. To counter that, I would apply a modifier for hits caused by Mirror Image attacks, so that only a portion of the full damage is dealt. That way they would still perform, are less annyoing to use and still don’t overshadow everything else.
One thing that needs to be taken care of is the issue that Firebirds doesn’t relly work too well with most skills, because of how the damage is dealt. For example they could add a multiplier based on Arcane Power spent on an attack.
I don’t mind the mirror images part. It turned what was probably our least used skill into one of the most used skills in the game. So far so good.
The problem to me is the Deathwish interaction - as always. That automatically makes Mirror Images the best build, and manual Flame Blades can’t compete as long as Deathwish is in the picture.
They deliberately designed the set to not work with Deathwish (remember it used to work with AT: Flame Ward on PTR and they changed it so it didn’t work with channeling skills). But then some players found the interaction with Mirror Images and Deathwish was back on the table.
I don’t necessarily have a problem with the Mirror Images playstyle existing. I just want a viable alternative option. And as long as Deathwish works, that just won’t be the case unless they nerf Deathwish or find a way to buff manual FB6 procs that doesn’t also buff procs from Mirror Images.
That seems like a pretty reasonable solution. I wouldn’t mind this at all.
Is it LoD Hydra or LoD twister that you have at that range?
LoD Twister is probably my favorite overall spec to play and the 4th cube season was my second favorite after this current one.
Non-Season I can go firebirds #1, LoD Twister #2 and then Typhoon set is #3. I don’t do Vyr so don’t really know how high I could get that. There is a 10 GR difference between FB adn Typhoon with LoD twister in the middle.
I like FB for the laser and teleports but the pets are so annoying and useless 50% of the time. I’d rather 50% damage reduction and useful 100% of the time. That way I don’t blow a CD on pets on the end boss only to have them all run away and do zero damage. That’s absolutely the most fun thing for a player to experience in a GAME.
LoD FO actually! LoD Twisters has higher potential, but I just prefer FO. LoD FO should be between LoD Twisters and Lod Hydra.
I did 4 of the 6 sets with FO: Tal’s FO, DMO FO, Vyr’s FO, and LoD FO.
If it’s seasonal, regular Vyr’s is quite a bit behind because it doesn’t use an ethereal (Chantodo’s wand instead). Vyr’s FO is normally weaker, but it’s stronger than Chantodo Vyr’s this season because Vyr’s FO gets the ethereal bonuses and that bumps it up enough that it comes out a bit ahead.
Vyr’s FO is a challenging build to play (it’s fun, but some might find the playstyle frustrating). And it has an extreme gear requirement, max CDR rolls in every possible slot and then some AD on top of that.
Chantodo Vyr’s is quite a bit easier to gear for and to play, but has lower potential this season. In non-season Chantodo Vyr’s will win easily though.
I agree but would go further to say that FB MI is an abomination of a build, the sorry product of the devs missing an unintended interaction and which has no place in the solo push meta whatsoever. Flame Blades, which I’ve also tried, is a million times more fun (it seems similar to Frenzy Barb).
Yep, even if they improved the mirror images AI (which they shouldn’t even bother doing), the channeling playstyle forced by Deathwish makes the build totally unfun. Combined with the lack of CC immunity, any knockback or other CC effect disrupts channeling and frustrates attempts to DPS.
Here’s to hoping that the soon-to-be patch notes renders FB MI a relic of the past.
Did you read the next sentence where I talk about CC effects? This is a non-issue for GoD DH who has perma vengeance.
EDIT: To elaborate there are essentially 3 factors which contribute to FB MI’s horrible playstyle: 1) Pet AI, 2) Stand-still channeling, 3) No CC immunity. The only other build I’ve played which shares even 2 of these is WD Firebats, which at least doesn’t have pets.
Of course I’ve read everything. I see your points, in fact I see right through you. Basically you want everything handed to you on a silver platter and extra icing on the cake.
Surely there are annoying things about the build that we have to deal with if we want to play. That’s part of the game.
And of course it would be ideal if there were other wizard builds equally strong as FB but with a different playstyle
You endure it, work around it, fight through it, avoid it… Getting “reduced duration of CC effects” also helps. I know we’re used to builds that are immune to these things with perma Vengeance, perma Wrath of the Berserker and so on so it’s hard suddenly playing a build that isn’t.
If I look at the overall season solo EU leaderboard the entry level is 110 for necro, 116 for cruz, 120 for WD, 127 for barb, 138 for DH, 140 for monk and 143 for Wiz. And that’s the Firebird Wiz.
