Fixing Firebird's – the set with the worst mechanics in the game

Wizard
1

I thought we could have some fun in this thread and brainstorm some ideas on how to fix/change the Wizard’s Firebird set, because if there is one set in the game that is the most in need of a redesign, probably most of us would agree that it is the Firebird set, because of the annoying playstyle that its mechanics results in.

I have some ideas that I will share below, but I would like to see your ideas as well, because you might come up with something better.

The problem with the mechanics of the Firebird set are as following:

  • you need to have 3 different fire skills on your hotbar (or two skills and another source of fire damage) and use all of them against every single enemy in order to ignite them (which will trigger offensive and defensive buffs), however, you primarily only focus on one fire skill while the others are just there to trigger the ignite effect.
  • in order to keep up the damage and defensive buffs of this set, you constantly need to drag an ignited elite around with you, without wanting to deal damage to that elite (because you would loose the buff if you kill it), since you will not always have enough normal enemies around you to fully benefit from the buffs.

To fix these issues, the ignite mechanic either has to go or be changed completely because it is at the core of the problem of this set. Eventually enemies still can be ignited and take damage over time, but this effect shouldn’t require 3 sources of fire damage to proc it and you shouldn’t get a damage and defensive buff from it (especially not one that depends on how many nearby enemies you have ignited).

Below is my proposal:

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To still remain true to the fantasy of a pyromaniac Fire Mage who sets everything ablaze, my idea would be to let the 4 piece set bonus give you a Fire Aura that increases in size/radius and damage for xx seconds everytime you use a fire skill, stacking up to x times and also giving you a bonus to reduced damage taken based on the stacks of the aura.

The 6 piece set bonus could simply increase the damage of your fire spells by xxx% for each stack of the fire aura you have from the 4 piece bonus. This would only effect the damage of your fire skills, not the aura itself.

The 2 piece set bonus is fine for what it is and it doesn’t cause any issues, so it is not in deed of a redesign. If anything could be done to it, the ignite mechanic can be kept and put on the 2 piece bonus so that every enemy that was hit by one of your fire skills take xxxx% damage per second for x seconds (the Helltooth set also has a similar effect on the 2 piece set) but don’t make the Wizards damage and defense depending on the ignite effect or how many enemies are ignited!. So this 2 piece bonus would just be a nice bonus on top of the rest.

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This would definitely lead to a much more satisfying playstyle, because it would be much easier to keep up the buff and not having to constantly drag an ignited elite with you and you also wouldn’t be required to use 3 different fire skills to ignite every single enemy.

The playstyle would be that everytime you use a fire skill, your fire aura increased in size/radius and damage up to a maximum, which deals damage to enemies within an xx yards radius (a nice source of passive damage, sicnce it also would deal damage if you just run around) and for each stack of te aura, you would take less damage and your fire spells would deal more damage. You had to use your fire spells in order to keep the buff up instead of having to drag ignited enemies around with you.

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Here is how it could look like on the set:
~https://imgur.com/GX0iZzK~

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Do you have other ideas?

13 Likes
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I’ll probably try brainstorming an idea later, but thus far I really like your proposed idea.

2 Likes
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Probably a bit wonky, but wanted to convey the idea of an immortal phoenix.

2 piece set bonus:
*When you die, a meteor falls from the sky, reviving you. This effect has a 150 second cooldown. Upon taking fire damage, reduce the effect’s cooldown by 1 second and recover X% of your maximum life.

4 piece set bonus:
*Dealing fire damage to enemies causes them become ignited, making them take xx% more damage from all fire attacks. Dealing additional fire damage to ignited enemies causes them to explode, dealing xxx% to nearby enemies and to themselves. While an enemy is ignited, take xx% reduced damage and gain xx% movement speed for 10 seconds (effect is reapplied whenever you ignite an enemy or damage an ignited enemy with fire attacks).

6 piece set bonus:
*While an enemy is ignited, convert X% of any damage you take to fire and increase all fire damage dealt by xxxx%.

1 Like
4

To be honest, I like the idea; however I’m afraid we won’t see any big changes on sets (besides number tweaking), as sets are also tied to set dungeons - and with a rework like that, also the set dungeon (goals, most likely) would have to be reworked.

Also, the numbers you put in for 6-set bonus seem to be a bit lowish.

1 Like
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Yeah, it might too much to expect a overhaul at this point, but the requirement of using multiple different fire spells and elite dragging needs to go.

2 Likes
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I am afraid the combination of your 2piece bonus and the 6 piece bonus might be a bit too powerful because everytime you get hit you recover a decent amount of life, which would eventually make you immune if you fight against a larger amount of smaller enemies, which in return might incentivice rift fishing, dunno.

[quote=“Oblivion-1520, post:3, topic:577”]
Probably a bit wonky, but wanted to convey the idea of an immortal phoenix.
[/quote]]

That idea is definitely cool, so why not replace the meteor from the 2 piece set with a massive wave of fire that is spreading out from your corpse and something like a Phoenix animation that is raising from the fire in the style of the animation of the Witch Doctors skill Horrify, just with a screeching Phoenix?

It definitely would look cool and fit the set.

That is decent. I would take that anytime over the current mechanics of Firebirb.

This are indeed the main things that has to change.

No matter how a potential rework might look like, it shouldn’t require you to use several fire skills on an enemy and also not amke your damage and defense depending on how many enemies you have ignited (or if an elite is ignited.

But I guess it would be acceptable if the requirements would just be to have one single enemy ignited regardless of whether it is an elite or just a normal enemy and that the ignite would trigger from a single fire skill and not from three.

The numbers on the 6piece set in my example are exactly the same as they are right now.

Currently Firebird’s gives you a maximum of 4000% increased damage (200% increased damage for each ignited enemy up to a maximum of 20 = 4000% max) and in my example you would gain 400% increased damage for each stack of the Fire Aura which stacks up to 10 times (10 stacks = 4000% increased damage), so the damage increase is exactly the same as it is currently.

But the numbers are just examples to illustrate the idea anyway.

It still funnels you into very specific builds that all have to use three different sources of fire damage. Not having this requirement allws players more freedom in what skills to use for their build.

You are right, it might be too much too expect.

As Oblivion suggested, it might be enough to reduce the requirement for causing the ignite effect on an enemy down to one skill and giving you the full damage and defense bonus even if only a single enemy is ignited.

Not a too create solution, but a simple one that also would easily fix the issues this set has…

1 Like
8

What about simply returning to an earlier design, without 3 buffs and the elite bonus, simply retuned to make it work?

I enjoyed the set back then. I might enjoy now, just don’t happen to play it.
At that point I simply played it by igniting all the creatures I could (Blizzard, Fire Orb, Fire Missiles, Fire … vacuum) and gradually kept proceding.

It totally fails at so-called farming (ultra easy) difficulties and some challenges designed around instant screen clear (cursed chests), so you could say it doesn’t belong to Diablo 3, but I had no issues playing it in general.

1 Like
9

Yeah, I’m not going to lie, I wasn’t really thinking of balance when I was coming up with that idea, so you’re prob right haha.

That’d definitely work too.

Yeah, my idea of firebird is that instead of burning enemies to death, you’d be blowing them up with explosive firepower

Honestly, I think most of us would be satisfy if they go that route.

1 Like
10

First things first, we would need to at least double the current 6 piece. Secondly, we need to uncouple it from the “elite is burning” clause to get the DR and damage multiplier. I don’t care how they do it. I’d suggest adding 20% DR for every fire skill (max 3) and doing 9000% damage to only fire damage to keep it away from star pact.

Gives you couple different build paths off the top of my head. BH (Blazer) Archon- (Combustion) or Flame Blades, plus Flame Ward and MW: Ignite. You’d likely pick Archon- Combusition, Flame Ward, and either BH or Flame Blades. Possibly Mammoth Hydra, if it’s ever viable.

Deflection is likely too good to pass up with Ashengarr’s.

11

Get good bro. Many builds of the game already dumbs down due to demands from crappy players like OP that unable to handle complex mechanics. How hard is it to maintain buffs? CoE has 12 secs window. Drag the mobs 2 screens up. Different sets have different purposes. FB solo is not designed for GR lvl too low.

FB mechanics do not need a change. The damage % is outdated and requires touch up though.

12

If firebird started off with it’s overly complex mechanics (like tal-rasha), then I personally wouldn’t be asking for any changes to it. It started off as a decent set, then became a great set that could complement tal-rasha, but now sadly it’s a crude set at best.
If you like it like that, more power to you, I however don’t and as such will continue to ask for changes to firebird as long as it’s possible. At least until they get rid of the needing different fire skills and dragging elites around aspects.

2 Likes
13

Oh… how about

2 pc. “enemies slain while burning automatically cast one of your fire skills on death”.

Would make for a true apocalyptic feel. Hydras everywhere? Molten impact raining down? Explosive blasts centered on enemy?

  1. All burn damage stacks for up to 3 seconds. ?

  2. 9000% more damage for some fire mechanic

1 Like
14

The one set that “couldn’t get right” (so many major iterations)…good ideas here but i doubt we’ll such changes at this stage.

16

I would love to play FB with Explosive Blast but dragging Elite around for buff is the killer for me. Maybe reduce requirement for how many ignited mobs needed for max buff would help. I want to be a walking fire ball.:rofl:

1 Like
17

That’s not nearly enough to bring the set damage up to par, I don’t think. Also, that much fire damage % would DR with gear and be even less effective then a straight % damage buff.

18

I think a simple damage increase will not fix the set. It should be redesigned from the ground imo, due to is mechanics that lead to an annoying playstyle.

19

Maybe a super simple change would help here.

2pc: revive, fire immunity
4pc: 60%dr for 6 sec after using fire skill
6pc: all fire skills get same damage as molten impact, all fire damage increased by 5000%

Makes all fire skills usable for dps.

21

Strangely, I’d actually be happy if they changed the Firebird’s set to model the current boring design structure we’re seeing in new sets:

  • 2pc: some sort mechanic that try’s to make the set interesting
  • 4pc: X0% DR after activating X skill
  • 6pc: X0,000% damage

So I’d be happy with something along the lines of:

  • 2pc: When you die, a meteor falls from the sky and revives you. This effect has a 60 second cooldown.
  • 4pc: Gain 90% damage reduction when Energy Shield is active (the DR is higher as we cannot use with Karini or Halo… but this would free up a ring slot)
  • 6pc: All fire damage is increased by 20,000% and gain a further 60% damage reduction when a Staff is equipped

Why the Staff? Well, I see us being stuck with what ever skill has the highest multipliers so I can see this being another channeling meteor set up or some sort of Firebirds Archon setup with Chantodos.

All the other builds use a wand + source or Deathwish + ES combo which I’m really sick of gearing up with. Staves don’t get much love so this would be a nice way of making them usable whilst giving some of the Staves an opportunity to have legendary affixes reworked or added to them to support under utilised skills.

I mean we have:

  • Maloth’s Focus: completely useless item. Could add a damage bonus against feared enemies… yeah, I know we don’t like the fear effect but it would make this partially useful when gearing up
  • Valthek’s Rebuke: could do with a extra damage buff to Energy Twister on this item
  • The Broken Staff: No affix on this, could buff Blizzard
  • Mark of the Magi: No affix either… could buff Disintegrate for a channeling build where the channeled skill actually does some damage rather than be a medium to cast a damage dealing skill

Equipping a staff would also break the potential for the DW + ES combo and make the gameplay more of a caster playstyle rather than channeling.

22

DW + Etched is definitely an issue for all Wizard builds (especially when it gets combined with Meteor and the Meteor Boots), but it is not the core issue for the Firebird set.

I rather would like to see DW and Etched only increase the damage of channeling skills, or that they buff non-channelling skills for a lot less than what they currently do. That would solve a lot of the issue.

Then the Firebird set does not specifically need to be build around non using that item combo.

24

A shame to say this, but imo that’s a bit of the cube’s fault along with how they gave main hands and off-hand weapons massive multipliers.

That said, they could have staffs grant an inherent damage bonus when they’re actually equipped; although that mayn’t happen, considering that sounds more like a passive ability, and the chance of any passive skill being changed at this point is close to nil.

All in all, I’m afraid to say that we won’t ever see a 2-handed staff build that isn’t overshadowed by a 1hand + off-hand variant combo; not unless there’s a major overhaul or a set and/or legendary effect grants a great damage bonus to those who’ve equipped staffs (such as suggested by Mugsy).

1 Like