In its current state, Firebird is not powerful and not fun for a large part of the player base. Consider the following rework:
2-piece bonus:
Your fire spells have a small chance to ignite enemies for 10 seconds. Attacking an ignited enemy returns 40 Arcane Power.
4-piece bonus:
Killing an ignited enemy ignites all enemies within 20 yards. When you die, a meteor comes down to revive you. This effect can occur every 60 seconds.
6-piece bonus:
Ignited enemies take 15,000% damage from your fire signature spells and Arcade spenders.
I think that this would create a playstyle true to the “fire” theme. You would group enemies, and then hit the group with a low-cost, high AOE skill to try to ignite one of the enemies. During this time, you’re doing no damage, and only focused on starting the spark. Once an enemy is ignited, you will use your most powerful single-target abilities to kill that enemy so that the fire spreads.
The wording of the 6-piece bonus is intentionally designed to avoid archon and chantodo interaction. The part that’s flexible would be whether or not the bonus is limited to fire spells.
This is just a working-concept, but really, any redesign would be welcome, I think.
Well, how does that fulfill the fire fantasy? Besides the visuals of ignited enemies, you would play that set exactly the same as if the bonus were “get damage reduction and damage for using Spectral Blade”. I actually don’t find that to be engaging gameplay. I really want SB to be viable, but I’d rather have the supporting legendaries buffed so that you can use them with Tal, firebird, or LoD.
To me, I want playing firebird to feel like starting a wood fire with a match. If you’ve ever done this, you’ll know that you light the kindling first, which allows you to light the rest of the fuel.
Imagine you’re looking at a screen full of monsters. You’re using your fire skills, trying to get something to ignite. Once it does, you want to make that spark spread, so you’ll focus all your energy on that spark until it burns the whole map down.
What makes it engaging is that there are decisions to make.
Do I try to kill the tough monster that’s ignited in the middle of the pack? Or do I take the sure bet with the weak monster on the edge of the screen and work my way in? Do I drag a burning enemy to the next pack to help me spread the flames? Or do I start from scratch?
To me, this is a larger issue that needs to be addressed seperately. Across all sets, channeling is a little too dominant. As it stands, your only options are vyr/chantodo or some sort of channeling. I’d like to see generators, manald heal, hard cast twisters, frozen orb, and explosive blast all roughly balanced in terms of damage output. If this happens, then my proposed changes for Firebird would allow for multiple playstyles other than just channeling.
And to reiterate: I’m just spitballing. Poor Firebird has never really met its full potential and I’d love for the devs to take a crack at it.
Igniting enemies shouldn’t be a chanceful occurrence, especially a low one at that.
Besides those two things, it’s a good start as the fire bird should buff any and all fire skills.
You can also word it like:
6 piece effect:
Ignited enemies take XX,XXX% more damage from your fire spells that are manually cast.
The “manually cast” part should make it so that skills that are automatically cast by etched sigil as well as chantodo’s wave of destruction, receive no damage bonus from the 6 piece bonus.
@Poconut Good thought, I don’t fully agree on the bonuses you suggested, but as far as the idea of a fire build option were the fire spells would be more “direct”. On that I agree 100%.
Also I am a bit disappointed on all this talk about channeling. I too would like to see a viable alternative to the Deathwhish/E.Sigil.
As a set mechanic maybe it would be a nice idea to have a form synergy between fire spells in order to build up the total damage.
Good too see all brainstorming, no idea is better than the other.
I’m not trying to mess with everyone here, but I kinda liked the overall playstye of Firebird when it was bugged as hell (the firebug phase of season 6).
You would set them on fire and walk away, or move around to dodge attacks, and they would die due to the burn!
Unlike every other wizard buid where monsters die because you keep attacking them and any DoT is an extra damage, it was a real DoT build! The burn effect wasn’t a generic trigger to +XXXX% damage to Y skill.
Sure the bonus damage was broken, and the burn effect was also broken, and you could solo a GR90+ without weapon, BUT, the fantasy and the gameplay were unique. Firebirds gameplay should be: set them on fire, and let them burn. Not set them on fire and keep cough channeling cough until they die from repeated attacks.
2-piece: extra life
4-piece: enemies hit by fire damage will ignite and keep taking this damage for the next 3 seconds as burn damage (you can’t stack multiple ignites for multiple burn damages)
6- piece: the burn damage increases by XXX% for each yard between you and the enemy (max of 50 yards for Maximum damage).
If this gives a too wide range of options and you want a more specific skill being used, or you think it’s too passive and player should attack more often, or elites and bosses should be treated differently than trash, you can rework some items here and there to make enemies take bigger DoT if you hit them with a certain skill. (Primordial Soul and Atrophy share a fire theme and are useless, as well as Blackhand Key). As long as is the burn what is killing them, the fantasy should remain.
There’re no other ways of killing monsters if not by hitting them constantly, Firebird could introduce a new way of playing the game. Firebug proved, in a very messed up way, that the concept works.
I think that your idea has some interesting set/theme-feel philosophy behind it. It reminds me a bit of Jade Harvester, which requires you to haunt and LS everything then HARVEST them with SH for damage. If I read you correctly, you want to “start” little fires with skills then ignite them into a conflagration with your big damage dealers that would spread and deal some massive damage. I’d like to hear more on what skills you see really playing into this, and especially if you know of a way in which a real variety of skills could be employed, unlike in some builds (Sunwuko, Rolands, etc.) where only one of the skill builds really works well - I am assuming that although SWK is technically the best TR build right now, POJ really steals this by rights, IMO.
Interesting, I hadnt considered that this was the way it originally worked. I found the built-in cheat death the most appealing aspect as a noob player so that was most of my engagement with the build tbh. What skills would be the best for a dot build?
Funnily enough; the firebird set was originally both an exploding and burning set. When you killed enemies with fire damage, they’d explode and set nearby enemies on fire. It was changed later on to be mostly a burning (dot based) set.
But firebird was definitely more enjoyable during season 6 than it is now imo.
Good point. What would you suggest? My initial thought would be to take less damage from ignited enemies, something like 60%.
Like I said above, to me this is a separate issue. I think channeling should be balanced with other playstyles through buffs to items that compete with the weapon/orb slots. That way you don’t have a “channeling set” or a “non-channeling set”, but instead you can have different ways to do damage within the theme of a set. I think Firebirds should have a channeling version and a non-channeling version, and both be about equal.
Agreed! Hopefully someone will come up with a great idea and maybe Blizz will notice.
I think I could get behind that. To make it fit the theme, ideally the DOT would spread to other targets. I mean…fire spreads!
Correct. The idea would be to start a spark, and then spread the fire. Like I said above, engaging gameplay requires you to pay attention and make decisions. In my set design, tt wouldn’t make sense to blast every enemy you see with your most powerful skills, because nothing is ignited yet and you’re not dealing damage. Likewise, once you do ignite an enemy, you need to kill it quickly to spread the fire.
Sure. My idea would be that to start the spark, you just want to spam a lot of “heat”, which means spells that cheap to cast, (like the fire rune on electrocute) or have high AOE (like Armageddon or blazar). The important thing to note is that you don’t need skills with multipliers here, because you’re just using them for the utility of ignited an enemy. After something ignites, you want to hit them hard, which means using your big multipliers, like meteor, hydra, twister, etc.
While that would fit in well with the theme of igniting enemies; gameplay-wise it would be a nightmare especially when fighting against enemies who can attack you from out of your attack range. Instead it could be something like:
• You take XX% reduced damage for 5 seconds after you ignite an enemy or damage an ignited with fire spells.
Honestly wizard builds being reliant on death wish and etched sigil isn’t much of an issue for me. I’ve only wrote that as another way of phrasing your proposed 6 piece effect.
As you can see here:
I’m not against fire bird or any sets to have a wide variety of uses; in fact I welcome it.
I really dislike how clunky Firebird’s dmg reduction is along with how uninteresting its effects are. If I could change it I’d turn Ignite into more of a crit/combust type of thing.
Something along the lines of
2pc: Meteor drops from the sky to revive you upon death 60s cd. Dealing a critical strike with fire damage causes the target to ignite, increasing their chance to be crit by x% for 10 seconds
4pc: Igniting a target reduces your damage taken by x% for 10s. Your Fire damaging skills on ignited targets reapply the effect.
6pc: Critical strikes from fire skills against an ignited target deal X% more damage and combust the target dealing that damage to nearby enemies. If there are no nearby enemies the target implodes for y% more dmg and your fire skills cost no resource for z seconds
Maybe its too weak or too strong? I don’t know. All I want is for enemies to explode.
(2) Conflagration now lasts 10 seconds and conflagrated enemies take 100% increased damage from your Arcane Power spending or generating skills… Also, when you die a Meteor falls from the sky and revives you. The latter effect has a cooldown of 60 seconds.
(4) Attacking with a fire skill reduces your damage taken by 60% for 10 seconds.
(6) Your fire attacks deal XXXX% increased damage against conflagrated enemies and dealing a critical hit to a conflagrated enemy now detonates an explosion, spreading area damage to nearby targets. This effect can cascade once.
Alternatively all defensive effects could be baked into the 4p bonus while the 2p and 6p are purely offensive:
(2) Conflagration now lasts 10 seconds and conflagrated enemies take 100% increased damage from you.
(4) Attacking with a fire skill reduces your damage taken by 60% for 10 seconds. Should you die, a Meteor falls down from the sky and revives you. You can be revived once every 60 seconds.
(6) Your fire attacks deal XXXX% increased damage against conflagrated enemies and dealing critical hits to a conflagrated enemy now have a chance to detonate an explosion, spreading area damage to nearby targets. This effect can cascade twice.
2pcs
The meteor revival as is (makes this set stand out)
Each fire skill ignites your enemies, when hit by 3 different fire spells they become “overignited” lasts until they die. Each time your attacks ignites an enemy it gives you the ignition buff, 2.5% damage reduction per stack. Max stacks 20, lasts 8 seconds.
4pcs
“Overignited” enemies are spreading the debuff to nearby enemies.
Each stack of your ignition buff gives you 0.2% Max life per attack and raises all your damage by 50% per stack.
6pcs
At 20 stacks you gain the pyromaniac’s frenzy which raises your damage by 2000% per stack up to 5 stacks. Lasts 8 seconds.
Your generator spells adds 2 seconds to your buffs.
The numbers aren’t important as they can be tweaked.
What wanted is first of all to make our attacks give a buff that stays on us and to be intependant of the mobs.
The idea is that each attack will raise the stack number no matter if is single target or not as long as it is three different spells.
Side note the overignited term, I couldn’t think of any better choice
Lastly I didn’t add the following idea. Overignited enemies become obsessed with and follow you. That is supposed to be a permanent taunt.
So let’s hear your judgement.
I honestly would like to get rid of the “needing different fire skills” requirement so I would change it to:
2 piece effect:
When you die a meteor falls from the sky and revives you. This effect has a 60 second cooldown. Fire attacks ignites your enemies. Attacking your enemies with 3 additional fire attacks will cause them to become “overignited” and attacking them with additonal fire attacks causes them to explode dealing XXX% damage as fire to nearby enemies.
4 piece effect:
Igniting an enemy or attacking an ignited enemy with fire attacks causes you to take 50% reduced damage for 8 seconds. Causing an enemy to become “overignited” or attacking an “overignited” enemy with fire attacks raises the damage reduction bonus to 60-70%.
6 piece effect:
Igniting an enemy or attacking an ignited enemy with fire attacks causes your fire attacks to deal XXXX% more damage; this effect stacks 5 times and lasts 8 seconds. You receive the maximum damage bonus for 8 seconds whenever you “overignite” an enemy or attack an “overignited” enemy with fire attacks. “Overigniting” enemies now require 1 additonal fire attack instead of 3.
That said, “overigniting” as a concept could be interesting.
Cheers,
@Oblivion if understand you correctly you like a change or rather add to the 6th piece bonus that any fire spell directly apply the max debuff on the enemy. I guess it has to also keep up your stacks… Important in boss fights.
BTW the overignited is basically based on the current set debuff. So no credit for me
Ah right; in that case we could refer to “overignite” as “burn” or “ablaze” instead.
But regarding:
It’s pretty much to ensure that you can get your full bonus whenever you fight singular opponents such as bosses; which just as you said, is very important.
This is actually the worse firebird fix I’ve ever seen proposed. That was a fairly high bar. I think they’d have to triple the bonus on Fragment of Destiny just to begin, and add another 4.5x item multiplier in there.
This is all in addition to a set where you literally stand there and cast Spectral Blade and nothing else. Worse idea I ever saw proposed. High bar.
so that was most of my engagement with the build tbh. What skills would be the best for a dot build?