The fantasy of Firebirds

PTR Feedback
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From the 11/12 update of the current PTR Patch:

Developer’s Note 11/12: Based on player feedback, we’re taking a different approach to nerfing Firebird’s Finery. Rather than having pets do the heavy lifting, we want to lean into the fantasy of the player being a brawling battle mage.

I want to focus on the phrase “fantasy” in this post.

When I hear the word “Firebird”, what comes to me are thoughts, ideas and images like:

  • Fire Aura
  • Rebirth (in a wave of flames)
  • Phoenix
  • Scorched Ground
  • Ignite / Burning
  • Self-Incineration
  • Fire Frenzy
  • Pyromania

… but what does not come to my mind are things like:

  • Arcane Lasers
  • Teleport / igniting yourself allowing you to Teleport more often
  • Meteors
  • Illusions / Mirror Images
  • (magical) Spectral Blades

You took care about the Mirror Images in the recent update, but overall the Firebird Set - in my opinion - does not feel like a true Firebird-themed set, even with Mirror Images being removed from the set.

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I know there is a saying that players are good at seeing / noticing problems but not good at finding solutions, but just to throw in some thoughts:

  • what about a Fire Aura that increases in radius and damage the more you attack with Fire Skills, and these Fire Aura Stacks then also give you increased Fire Damage and reduced Damage Taken for each Stack?
  • the Wizard is lacking a true Fireball Skill, like in D2 and D4, aka a Fire Missile that detonates on contact with enemies, so maybe you could turn the Scorch rune from Arcane Orb from a giant black boulder that pierces through enemies, into a true Fireball* and let it benefit from the Firebird Set.

(*) You already have the visuals assets for a true Fireball in D3:

The Rift Guardian Agnidox’s Fireball
https://imgur.com/IsPApM8

Iron Wolves Fireball (Act 2 Bounty ‘Blood and Iron’)

https://imgur.com/XycTmRw

Adria’s Fireball
https://imgur.com/FTaKnjn

Explosion from the Arcane Orb rune Scorch (could be re-used for a true Fireball)
https://imgur.com/NQqUSIl

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Whatever you take from this post, my main takeaway is that the current version of the Firebird Set does not really feel like a Firebird-themed set.

Ty!

4 Likes
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But there is also the fantasy of the player. Where their fantasy is to play a wizard that scorches his enemies with fire. Playing such a wizard with the new Firebrds brings that fantasy to life. So don’t always relate fantasy to fantastical stories.

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You mean the new version of the Firebird set that no longer buffs Mirror Images?

It still will primarily use Signature Skills, because they attack significantly faster and therefore apply the damage from the set much more often, since it is not totally based on skill damage.

So most Firebird builds will eventually use Spectral Blades, which imo does not fit the fantasy too much. After that it might be Meteor Shower or Blizzard with the Apocalypse rune.

I personally would like to play a Firebird Sorcerer with Fireballs, Flamestrikes, Firewalls and Hydras. A Flamestrike might be in D4 and Firewall had to moved from the Witch Doctor to the Wizard, but a Fireball would be relatively easy to make in D3 from assets that are already in the game.

Scorching your enemies with Fireballs is much more in line with the fantasy of a “Scorching Wizard” than doing it Spectral Blades imo.

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Doesn’t matter whether it is blades or from afar, you are still scorching enemies with fire.

5

… or if it is a giant Fire Hammer that slowly falls from the sky, it still would scorch enemies with fire as well.

But that is kinda the point, it does not really feel like a Fire Mage / Fire Sorcerer.

AKA, it is not about what the Fire Wizard does, it is about how he is doing it.

If he would scorch his enemies with Fireballs, Firewalls, Flamestrikes, Fire Orbs, etc, that feels a lot different than him scorching enemies with Spectral Blades.

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The whole point is that they are still fiery blades even though they are called Spectral Blades.

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just as a fiery hammer that slowly falls from the sky onto the ground is a Fire Spell, but still does not really fit the fantasy.

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It’s a flavor vs. crunch issue. A character build can have a defining archetype (the fantasy according to the D3 team) in the context of how it feels and how it does things. Most players will think of the flavor side of things when they hear a build lives up to the fantasy of something. Bones of Rathma lives up to the fantasy of a necromancer field commander, leading skeletal armies and reanimated corpses to battle… but the build’s linchpin skill is not a pet skill. Rathma totally lives up to the fantasy of a necromancer and not the gameplay archetype of the Necromancer.

Firebird’s Finery right now is the opposite, as clueso pointed out. In mechanical terms, it’s totally a fire set. Everything about it is fire. Everything is burning. There’s even resurrection! But the way it does those things is not what we imagine the mythical firebird would do. Fantasy and genre fiction fans would not associate “a wizard themed after the phoenix” and “a brawling battle mage”.

The easiest and least clunky solution would be to simply drop the word “fantasy” and use “gameplay archetype” instead. It’s extremely simple, but the word has become something more complex within the D3 team jargon apparently.

1 Like
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This is my fantasy of Firebirds:

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The problem is that they made Disintegrate, a channeling spell part of the set. And if you stop to cast other spells you need to stop channeling disintegrate and then you lose combustion and Taeguk stacks which makes you squishy. We didn’t have this problem with Mirror Images.

The solution could be that the 6 piece bonus also auto cast other equiped fire spells casted in the last 5-10 seconds. This will make up for the loss of mirror images, we will keep our combustion and Taeguk stacks and the set will not lose its flavor.

4 Likes
11

It would be fine if Firebirds would buff the Convergence rune from Disintegrate (the fire rune), but I agree that having Disintegrate as a whole (including the arcane runes) are a core mechanical feature of the set was a bad idea because…

  • …there are already many builds that use Channelling Skills as a means to amplify your damage without Channelling Skills being the primary damage source

  • … the Combustion Mechanic (which gets triggered by Disintegrate) also involving Teleport for some reason feels out of place

  • … it does not feel like it belongs on the Fire Set.

Another way of thinking about is to ask “what are the most iconic / archetypical Fire Spells?” and then build the set around it in some way.

What comes to my mind are Fire Spells like Fireball, Firewall, Fire Bolt, Flamestrike, Meteor, Flaming Hands (like a Cone of Flames that gets emanated from your hands, either channelled or an instant cast).

The most iconic Fire Spell is definitely Fireball, followed by Firewall and then Meteor.
I really think that Arcane Orb’s Scorch rune should be turned into a true Fireball, especially since they already have the visual assets for it in the game.

Then you could replace Disintegrate on the Firebird set with Fireball, where every cast of Fireball gives you 5-10 stacks of Combustion and it would fit perfectly.

2 Likes
12

This would also make up for the terrible change to etched sigil.

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Well, I think that the only skill where there is a real need and a real desire for being proced by an item like the Twisters from Etched Sigil is Meteor, …

… so theoretically there could be a single new Wizard Off-Hand that makes Meteor proc every second and also adjusts the powerlevel of that build with an appropriate damage multiplier.

For the other skills, there is either not a need for being proced by something like Etched Sigil, and/or a desire for it to be proced by an Etched-like item.