Why is firebird still at 4000% damage when literally every set is sitting at 8000%+. It does so little damage it is impossible to even use it to climb to 100 grifts. Why is it still in the game in this state?
Season 22 is said to be the big balance season. Albeit, don’t know when it will be wiz’s turn, but hoping it means revamps to some of the useless sets.
But just fyi, there are other class sets that are 4000% multiplier also, and some even lower than that. Still, nothing is as dreadful to play as Firebird. With Trag’Oul, even though your high end is lower than Firebird, you can speed farm with it. Firebird is just plain mediocre.
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If anything gets a revamp in Season 22, It’ll be Firebirds, 100%. It’s probably like…~28 GRs behind everything else, why means it needs to do ~81x more damage.
For example, that’s a bit more than changing from a 4000% multiplier to a 12,000% multiplier, (which is a 3x increase)
If they adjust the 2- piece to have Fire spells deal 500% more damage with a 10,000% modifier on all Fire damage on the six piece.
if the buff Wand of Woh, we can have an EB Firebird build.
If they fix Scorch, we can have an AO firebird’s build.
But if they do nothing, It’s be a better LoN Mammoth Hydra build.
I don’t even know where a Meteor Shower Firebird’s will stand. It would probably be a strong contender, but not as strong as Hydra (which probably needs an 400% Hydra on SS itself.)
How’d I’d design Firebird’s, off the top of my head
2 Piece: Gain 100% damage for every Fire rune you have equipped. Stacks up to 3 times. (Max 300%)
4 Piece: Take 17% less damage for every Fire rune you have equipped. Stacks up the 3 times (max: 51%) If you die, a meteor falls from the sky and revives you (60 second cooldown).
6 Piece: Increase all Fire damage by 10,000%.
This would likely end up a channeling DW/ES build, probably with Hydra. Deathwish is simply too good not to use. It should probably be 325% to channeling skills. But it might be too hard to change it, because every build needs that multiplier to just stay even. It would set off a cascade of changes to balance wizards.
Of course, there are obvious things you can do, like buff Smoldering Core to fix meteor builds.
Hydra would need to make up that 325% multiplier. Which is why I suggested 300% Fire damage on Firebird’s set.
Typhon’s would have to get larger multiplier, plus base damage on the non-Mammoth Hydra runes.
They would have to tweak Wizard offhands to be comparative with ES, too.
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Primordial Soul can go up to 40% damage per stack,
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Winter’s Flurry. Something like “Enemies frozen by you take 100% more damage.”
TLDR: Lots of little, interconnected (but not really onerous) changes would have to be made, but you could remove Deathwish as mandatory.
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My proposal for Firebird:
Firebird’s Finery (proposed simplification) :
- 2 piece bonus :
- When you die, a meteor falls from the sky and revives you. This effect has a 60 second cooldown.
- 4 piece bonus :
- Dealing Fire damage with one of your skills causes the enemies to take 1500% weapon damage as Fire per second for 3 seconds. This effect can repeat an additional time. If an enemy is attacked with a Fire skill while burning, the enemy will become ignite, taking 3000% weapon damage per second until they die.
- 6 piece bonus :
- Attacking with a Fire skill reduces the amount of damage you take by 60% for 6 seconds. Igniting an enemy or attacking an ignited enemy with a Fire skill increases your Fire damage by 12000% for 6 seconds.
The reason is because of Star Pact. At the time they buffed Tal’s to 8000%, Firebird’s Star Pact was a thing. They didn’t want to make Firebird’s Star Pact stronger than it already was. That sort of backfired once LoD Bazooka became a thing, but that’s the reason Firebird’s is 4000%.
There was also the issue of Endless Walk. Prior to Squirt’s, Firebird’s could fit Endless Walk easily, whereas Tal’s couldn’t. You’d be super squish. That’s another reason why Firebird’s was left at about half of Tal’s. Now with Squirt’s, some of that advantage is gone.
I don’t think there’s any real reason anymore for Firebird’s not to have basically the same multiplier as Tal’s.
Honestly, most of it could’ve been avoided if they had Firebird buffed only fire damage, instead of giving a general buff.
Oh yeah I agree 100%. Having Firebird’s be a global damage modifier is silly when it’s the fire set that triggers off fire skills. Having it only buff fire skills just makes way more sense.
Thing is… Firebird is a wreck. Period. The current design is a massive pain in the rear, it’s underpowered, gimmicky and really annoying to play - at least from my own experience. So I’m all game for yet another redesign, because it’s not a fun set to use, and it will stay meh if they just buff numbers.
Oh, if so, make that “frozen or chilled”…
I could imagine something like Venaliter suggested change to firebirds. It should be simple. Thing is, I don’t know what to expect from the devs. Do they like the current ignite mechanic and want to keep it, or do they agree to change it completely… but regarding that redesign, I would argue that I might want to keep the Cheat Death effect tied to the (2) piece bonus.
…if so, I would change it to this:
(2) piece bonus:
If you die, a Meteor falls from the sky and revives you. This can happen once every 60 seconds.
(4) piece bonus:
Every fire skill you have equipped increases your damage dealt by 100% and reduces your damage taken by 20%, stacking up to three times.
(6) piece bonus:
Fire skills deal 10000% more damage.
or alternatively, if they want to keep some kind of simple ignite mechanic:
(2) piece bonus:
If you die, a Meteor falls from the sky and revives you. This can happen once every 60 seconds. While this or a different Cheat Death ability is on cooldown, all fire damage taken is ignored. Instead you are healed for 20% of the absorbed damage.
(4) piece bonus:
Attacking with a fire skill reduces all damage taken by 60% for 8 seconds and your fire attacks now apply Conflagration.
(6) piece bonus:
Conflagration lasts forever and conflagrated enemies take 25000% more fire damage from you.
Or they simplify it the way Oblivion suggested. Would be way better than what we have today.
They could also add an additional primary affix (Fire skill %) on every Firebird set item, not just on the source. That would also be something unique that no other set has.
I think that would be functional
With the exception of the “underpowered” portion, this is basically what they want for any build. Blizzard has always hated ease of use. Most of the better builds I have seen reflect this; juggling skills, micromanaging multiple buffs, rotations of skills activated at various intervals…if you don’t have it, you don’t climb.
It’s especially prevalent in pet and aura builds, unless someone has found a way to make either of those tactics actually function in spite of Blizzard’s active dislike for them. I wouldn’t know…I gave up on the concept a long time ago.
I disagree. The strongest builds are easy to play. WW Rend. GoD. The more complicated builds, are just annoying and something injuring to play.
There are people who would say GoD is complicated and fiddly to play. I don’t find it particularly difficult, but others do. Maybe this is one of those areas where personal preference rears its ugly head.
Honestly, I would love for a more creative take on it. However, time and time, there seems to always be some kind of problem cropping up with Firebird; as such simplicity may be the best route to take with Firebird. Of course, that is only my own humble opinion.
Considering wizard is LAST atm, I think we should be #1 for whatever balance so that we are at least middle to upper tier.
I just hope that whatever balance they do it does’t mean re-farming the gear…kinda got miffed that my primal SoJ didn’t get converted. Having to redo firebirds for example when I got so many good pieces atm, just goes to show they want us wasting our time.
If an item change is beneficial to players, they will have to re-farm for them. If the change is detrimental, it will be retroactive and affect all existing items. Seems to be their standard operating procedure. -_-
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If they make any changes to the sets (good or bad), you won’t have to refarm for the pieces as the changes will be retroactive. This has almost always been the case when it came to changes with sets. The only exceptions, that I can think of, were when loot 2.0 happened and the crafting sets got buffed (such as crimson and aughild).
That’s normally the case for legendary items instead of set items.
While Wiz is currently last, I feel it’s not so much because Wizard is weak (Wizard is actually pretty solid atm), but because most previous Wizard players before S19 were just FotM players, and they’ve all rerolled DH for this season. If you look at non-season, Wizard’s are still solid. You have Sader, WD, and DH at the top currently, and then Barb, with Monk, Necro, and Wizard all at roughly the same GR.
Though, personally, it’s looking like Blizz may as well rebalance around GR 140 rather then 130 atm.
That’s bulls. Wizard in between s19 has eaten like three nerfs. it is inargruable Wizards are not the worst class in the game.
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Since someone did an 130 with it almost 3 years ago it’s kinda hard for it o be 28 GR’s lower i believe. Still, it really needs a rework.
With Star Pact, a build that will largely no longer work. It’s still theoretically possible, the meteor delay is 1.25 seconds and the Deathwish/Etched Sigil delay is 1 second. But you need crazy high attack speed (like 4-5 APS) to get animation lengths down short enough to cover that 0.25 second gap, otherwise you can’t be channeling for a full second before the Star Pact lands.
Not sure what Firebird’s Meteor Shower could do, but it’s likely more in the GR115-GR120 range.
EDIT: And Star Pact will for sure no longer work for solo. It could still work as a trash killer in groups with PE to get the necessary attack speed, but for solo you’d never be able to kill the RG since you wouldn’t have the attack speed to get your channeling buffs up in time for the drop.