Firebird and Disintegrate

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Hi…

first of all, let me say the obvious… I’m really happy to see Firebird getting a do-over. It was long since overdue and I enjoy the new iteration. It’s much better compared to the current state on live while still keeping parts of the current set’s flavor intact. One thing bothers me, though…

Disintegrate

With the new Firebird this channeling skill is only used as a means to trigger some set bonus. That’s frustrating, honestly. I miss the times where I could play Disintegrate and mow down stuff with it. Today the damage is so puny, it won’t even tickle mobs beyond some point, and I’m not even talking about mid tier GR here, the damage of Disintegrate itself is so abysmal that it hurts me. Every since you started introducing legendaries with big figures (high damage buffs to single skills) all our channeling skills began to loose way too much ground since they have nothing similar to support them, apart from some really outdated items like Slorak’s Madness… If we exclude general stuff like set bonusses, legendary gems and whatever - there are only two items now that channeling skills really benefit from, being Deathwish and Mantle of Channeling. You even took Etched Sigil away, which gimps their damage even further. Now compare that to spenders like Twister, Arcane Orb or Meteor. Is this really your goal? Making three out of four secondary skills on wizards useless for killing stuff because the damage is simply beyond hope.

Now, you reworked Firebird, which is great - let me say it again! And you decided have the set bonus tied to Disintegrate. Like with Etched Sigil, be it legacy or the Twister version… once again, you only use Disintegrate as a means to trigger the set, not as a viable damage source. I don’t want to discuss the mechanics of the set in its entirety here, there are already better topics around.

This one is only to adress the one thing that bugs me about this rebirth. Please consider adding a significant damage buff to Disintegrate on the set as well. For example:

Firebird’s Finery - 2 piece buff:
Disintegrate deals [X]% more damage and Ignites enemies, causing them to take 7500% 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

I leave the exact % figure to you, but it should be a meaningful one… you could also split it, have a smaller buff to Disintegrate on the (2) piece and then let the stacks (or a portion of them) multiply it.

Honestly, I don’t think this is asking for too much and I don’t think I’m the only one to appreciate Disintegrate itself getting buffed.

Thanks for reading.

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I do agree with a lot of what you’re saying, but having only a limited number of viable damage dealing skills is pretty universal at this stage in the game. At first I thought Firebird’s was broken because none of the skill modifiers seemed to work, but once I understood how the damage was being dealt through a proc in the set bonus and not the actual skills, it made me realize there’s quite a few viable options for Firebird’s now. It’s sort of unique among all other sets in this way and it’s a welcome change. It’s unfortunate that you can’t use Disintegrate to deal the damage, but it’s basically the only fire skill that doesn’t proc the damage. Not to mention they fixed the combustion stacks so they stay on longer and teleport is almost flawless with full stacks which makes for really fun speed running.
I don’t mean to devalue your suggestions, but the bitter WD player in me wants to convince you that the new changes to Wiz are pretty positive.
Just my two cents!

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Well, WD and DH definitely got the short side of the stick this patch especially compared to Wizards. That said there’s merit to Lexa’s request as we literally don’t have any channeling builds where the channeling skill itself is the primary damage dealer (outside of LoD/LoN builds, which are still incredibly weak). Hilariously enough, the last patch literally destroyed most of our channeling builds.

However, I don’t think we’ll see any changes regarding that.

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I mostly wanted to share my experience because initially with Firebird’s I was frustrated by the lack of interaction with +skill items. I thought it was broken but after realizing that you can use virtually any fire skill to do damage I was pretty intrigued. I can’t think of any other set bonus that gives you this much variety and to me that’s a pretty positive change in a game full of cookie cutter builds.

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Don’t misunderstand… it’s not that I dislike the changes to Firebird. Far from it, but Oblivion already stated why I made this suggestion.

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No arguments from me on that. I’m just hoping firebird doesn’t get any weird/negative changes. But anything’s possible.

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That there are options is not the point here.

The point is that desintegrate shouldn’t be used just a placeholder and that it should be able to do damage on it’s own.

And you’re bitter? I still have a really bad taste in my mouth from the last dedicated Wizard patch.

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You’re clueless if you think the wizard has ever had it worse than the WD. Wiz was in the 4 man meta as trash killer for one of the longest running periods. Wiz has been near the top tier every season since and is easily looking to be top 4 this season. WD had one season when Mund’s first came out before it was nerfed and now it’s been nerfed again.
But that was never my point. It was that Disintegrate is one of only a handful of skills you can’t use with Firebird’s to deal ignite damage. Virtually every set has a placeholder skill that’s locked into your build, that’s not unique. It just happened to be Disintegrate this time.
I already stated that I wasn’t trying to knock the OP’s suggestions.

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When I play(ed) I usually did my pushing solo so I don’t care really that much being meta. For others however this is different so my bad.

Let’s agree what, respective to both our favorite classes, we have a lot of issues we’re not happy about.

There a lot of skills that don’t work with Firebird, but my problem with Disintegrate is that the skill soly is for igniting enemies and buffing another skill that does the actual damage.

As a comparison, it would be similar if for a Mundunugu build you would need to cast Haunt and only on haunted monsters your spirit barrage would do 20000% damage (or whatever it is). So Haunt would just be an extra hoop to jump through just like disintegrate is FireBird.

Wishing you better tidings on your WD.

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Dude I’m sorry I was probably in a bad mood when I replied. Love the name btw (Fear is the mind killer!) But yeah that’s exactly what WD has to do. :grin:

Really I should’ve just kept quiet I just was bitter about the WD getting the shaft and wanted to point out what I learned about Firebird’s. I was really disappointed at first with it because nothing seemed to work right, then I realized the strategy was to just Disintegrate everything in sight and use pretty much whatever skill I wanted to blow up the ignite damage. It turned out to be really fun! And with the changes to Combustion stacks it’s much easier to maintain your damage buff and teleport cooldown. As a long time wizard player (probably equal to my WD time) I was pretty stoked about the set. I realize the OP was talking about something completely different which is to say channeling and disintegrate are dead, and I sort of detoured.
Thanks for clarifying your response!

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