Instead of giving the firebird Wizard 60% damage reduction by igniting the monsters, how about that the Firebird Wizard gain the damage reduction by stacking Increase Fire skill damage affix and it capped at 60%?
With Bracers, Source and Amulet that roll with increase Fire Skill Damage, Firebird Wizard can easily get 60% damage reduction.
This is more consistent and actually fix one of the biggest Firebird Wizard’s weakness; survivability at higher difficulty and GR level.
Sorry, but not the best suggestion in my opinion since it forces you to wear Firebird source, therefore losing access to either available (etched/deathwish combo) or future sources with multipliers. Although I agree (obviously) that the current DR/damage system on Firebird is atrocious.
You mean like:
“You gain Damage Reduction equal to your Static Increased Fire Damage, up to a maximum of 60%”
???
I like that idea. It definitely is more consistent then having the damage reduction tied to the ignite mechanic. It is also an interesting Special Affix. Maybe this could also be a legendary item, dunno.
You also can wear SoJ with %Fire Damage, although SoJ pretty much sucks and is in need of a redesign / buff as well.
Let’s just assume that these two items get redesigned so that they only or primarily buff Channelling Skills and not other skills (so much anymore) while channelling.
It is said that the next patch is gonna be a major Balancing Patch, so I can imagine that especially DW and ES could be a focus of that balancing / redesigning., since these items effect so many Wizard builds and also significantly reduce build and item diversity for the Wizard.
DW & ES are probably some of the most problematic items in the game.
I’ll be happy to see myself proven wrong, but if there is something D3 has taught me is that disappointment is right around the corner. Now that PTR is further delayed, I see the hype train being blown out of proportion - and the inevitable forum rage after the patch notes are published.
Imo, they should just have firebird grant you damage reduction when you cast a fire skill.
Or you could make it like the WD mundun set and get the DR for x amount of time after casting teleport.
This of course depends whether or not firebirds uses tele…never played firebirds as I never liked too many mechanics in wizards sets besides DMO.
If teleport had a fire rune, I could see that working. However, since it doesn’t, it’d be a bit odd imo to tie teleport to Firebird, especially for it’s damage reduction. Honestly, I think they should keep the damage reduction part simple with the usage of fire skills.
Attacking with a Fire skill reduces the amount of damage you take by 60% for 6 seconds.
That is an effect that imo fits better on a legendary.
Actually, it already is on a rune (Save Passage), so maybe there could be a legendary that increases the effect to 50-60% for ~10-15 seconds after teleporting.
Putting Teleport into the current version of the Firebird set would weird, since it already requires 3 different fire skills on your bar to ignite an enemy.
As Oblivion said, it could work if one of the Teleport runes gets assigned Fire as an element (but than other runes should get lighting and cold elements too, not just arcane).
Yes there’s a rune for extra defense on tele but there is on WD too. You can still utilize the defensive buff from the rune but also the set.
As far as no fire rune for tele and tele versus any fire skill, I was just making it like the mundun WD set as in “tele like spirit walk is a defensive skill therefore procing a defensive buff”.
WD is a lot like wiz in the fact they both have had a couple items they have been tied to in almost every single build…DW/etched and ornament/harvester.
I only played LoD hydra and DMO orbit builds so I’m not in the know for wizards lol. Now WD I have always played.
I think you forgot about Cindercoat and Magefists as well. Or Swampland Waders. Hopefully, Burning Axe of Sankris gets a massive +Fire damage tweak on it too, up to 50% instead of it’s current 20%.
Possibly another solution is gain damage reduction equal to 50% of your Area Damage or something.
This is actually a pretty good, and unique, idea.
Probably not area damage, as isn’t that a cause for lags in high-end greater rifts? If they do scale the damage reduction to fire damage %, then the set bonuses should inherently give a bit of fire damage %, perhaps in it’s 2 piece or 4 piece bonus.
No, I didn’t. If you wear magefists etc you are forced to take the source for 6 pc, or wear rorg. In this case you’ll have 80% dr with source which is great - but at a significant loss of multipliers (or a ring). It would be easier to say if this is viable when we see 2.7 legendaries. If some fire skill like EB gets two large multipliers (woh and another) I can see it replacing channeling. But at this moment, channeling is just too strong to replace. The idea is really good, but not with available legendaries.
Also, you can easily stack 100% so I don’t see this happening unless there is a cap which weakens the “invest rolls/items and win something back” premise (amulet,bracers, soj, source, magefists)
No question. We’re missing a TON of information we’d need to balance it. But I think gaining a percent of elemental damage isn’t a bad idea. It would be easy to say “You gain damage reduction equal to your Fire elemental bonus damage, up to a maximum of 60%”
To me, it fits the theme of the phoenix, rising stronger from the ashes. Who knows, if Blizzard does their job right, Deathwish is channeling-only next patch.
Well, OP’s suggestion already had a cap in placed, so gaining 100% damage reduction via firebird scaling with fire damage wouldn’t be possible.
My opinion on that though, is that the set should then also give a boost to your fire skill damage, somewhere around the 2 piece or 4 piece bonus.
Something like:
2 piece bonus:
Fire Skills deal 25% more damage. When you die, a meteor falls from the sky and revives you. This effect has a 60 second cooldown.4 piece bonus:
Gain damage reduction equal to your static Fire damage bonus to skill, up to a maximum of 60%.6 piece bonus:
Fire skills deal 10,000% more damage.
Make sense. Then how about wearing Firebird set also increases your fire skill by 1.5?
So if you have 40 Fire skill damage, your wizard will have a 60% damage reduction (40 x1.5) and your fire skill bonus increased from 40% to 60%? And if you have a 80% fire skill, you will get a 120% (80 x1.5) fire skill bonus for your firebird wizard?
The problem with this is your wizard won’t get a huge power boost before 6 pieces, so it would difficult for the firebird wizard to do anything worthy until she gets the 6 pieces. At least for the current Firebird, it gives some power for the firebird wizard to carry herself at a higher difficulty.
Current Firebird 4 pieces power:
- Dealing Fire Damage with one of the Wizard skills causes the enemy to take 1000% damage as Fire per second for 3 seconds. This effect can be repeated a second and third time by different skills. If an enemy is burning due to three different skills simultaneously, the enemy will Ignite, dealing 3000% damage per second until they die (4 pieces)
You’re quite right about that. Admittedly, I wasn’t being too serious about that suggestion, so it’s certainly lacking in areas.
If anything I would just prefer it if Firebird was made to be like:
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.
Just a major simplification of it’s current form.
This is, quite frankly, an excellent 4P idea provided that DR is capped at some point. Probably the best I’ve seen in the bazillion suggestions on Firebird that insist on having the obsolete ignition DoT when the game has moved way past that point. If you reach max DR with only two rolls, wearing the source or RoRG are not obligatory, they just give you some more damage if you choose so. Even X2 fire damage would be great, always with a DR cap.
These still would require you to use the source, or a ring of Royal Grandeur if you still don’t wanna use the source.
There are other elemental-themed items that could gat that or a similar treatment as well.
I would love ti see much more of these kinds of affixes.
I had the idea of a Fire Aura that could give you DR and Damage, but this DR based on %Fire Damage also sounds really sweet I have to say.
I think the ignite mechanic could be changed so that instead of a fixed amount of damage, it actually could deal additional damage over time based on the initial damage of a fire skill.
E.g. “Your Fire Skills deal 300% of the damage of the initial hit over 3 seconds.”
So when your initial hit with a fire skill deals 10.000 damage, the Ignite deals an additional 30.000 fire damage over 3 seconds.
Firebirds: Obviously all numbers can be interchanged by smarter math folks than me for balance purposes.
2pc bonus: If you would die, you are instead revived by a falling meteor. This grants 60% damage reduction for 10 seconds. (60 second cooldown, starting AFTER damage reduction buff drops.)
4 pc bonus: Dealing fire damage with a wizard skill has a 50% chance to cause the enemy to ignite and burn for 1000% weapon damage per second for 3 seconds. This effect can only happen once per second, per skill, and will stack. Once an enemy obtains 3 stacks, they will explode in a fireball dealing 500% of the remaining stacked damage to all enemies within 20 yards and clearing all stacks of ignite.
6 pc: You gain 3% damage reduction and 200% increased fire damage for each fireball caused by the 4 piece bonus of Firebird’s set. This ability is capped at 20 stacks. The stacks reset 10 seconds after dealing no fire damage to enemies.
I really like 3 Fire skills forming the backbone of the set. With your proposed version, it’s just a better LoD Mammoth Hydra set.
I’ve proposed in the past you get 4,000% damage and 20% defense for every Fire skill you have equipped (max 3). If Teleport had a Fire rune, we could easily built around a Fire Spender, Ignite, and Teleport. Or Channeled Spell, Spender, and Teleport.
Maybe it’s a simple enough fix that “Wormhole” simply becomes a “Fire” rune; though I’d prefer it does damage. Maybe it can call down an unruned “meteor” where you arrive. Something. I just want flexibility on the skills I can use.
Hell, even Sparkflint could be used if it could hit multiple enemies at once. I try to avoid complicated fixes…but I’d love it if Familiar cast “Fireball” in addition to that 10% damage.
We could built around this if the set is designed with 60% DR and 12,000% damage.
We just need Blizzard to give us that flexibility.