Firebird Flame Blades Wizard Guide

1. Do the Challenge Rift for the materials to cube Legendary Powers. You can complete this once a week for additional resources and we always update the guide for you!

2. Gather the full Firebird's Finery set. Each piece can be gambled from Kadala for Bloodshards. Do not salvage any duplicate pieces you find! Instead convert them to another part of the set with Recipe 4 in Kanai's Cube. If you have extra materials you can use Recipe 3 to craft the remaining pieces, but this is expensive and not recommended for new players.

3. Gamble from Kadala in this order:

1. The full Firebird's Finery set
2. Etched Sigil and Orb of Infinite Depth
3. Ranslor's Folly and Nemesis Bracers
4. Goldwrap
5. Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac and Rechel's Ring of Larceny
6. Convention of Elements, Focus and Restraint for other variants

4. Craft using Recipe 3 in Kanai's Cube in this order:

1. Create a level 1 Demon Hunter and upgrade Swords to get In-Geom
2. Create a level 1 Witch Doctor and upgrade Maces to get Echoing Fury
3. Rings to get Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac and Rechel's Ring of Larceny
4. Anything from the Gamble list in Step 3 that you haven't already acquired.
   
   

5. Do Bounties to acquire several important items for this build:

• Act 1: Ring of Royal Grandeur
• Act 2: Gloves of Worship
• Act 3: Avarice Band
• Act 4: Can drop any bounty item from any act
• Bounty Turn In: Recipes for Captain Crimson's Trimmings, Aughild's Authority, Sage's Journey and Cain's Destiny
  
  

6. There is one final required piece that is difficult to acquire, Squirt's Necklace. With amulets being so expensive to gamble and craft, we'll have to search for it to drop in Nephalem and Greater Rifts. The biggest hint is to party up with other players and kindly ask them to drop any duplicates they find.

7. Use Primordial Ashes in Kanai's Cube with the new Curiosity of Lorath Nahr recipe to obtain a free Crafted Primal Ancient. Since you can only equip one of them, choosing the right item to focus matters! Great candidates are Weapons, Offhands, Jewelry or any item with an important multiplier. With that in mind, we recommend getting one of the following items:

• Deathwish
• Convention of Elements
• Squirt's Necklace

• Bane of the Stricken helps us kill the Rift Guardian. As long as you don't need more than 2 minutes to kill it you can equip Bane of the Powerful instead.
• Bane of the Trapped (BotT) grants us a global separate 1.6 damage multiplier. It requires us to stand within 15 yards of our enemies to apply its effect, which is the same range we require for Audacity. On the Rift Guardian our Follower will continuously reapply a slow.
• Gogok of Swiftness gives 15% Attack Speed, 15% Cooldown Reduction and up to 30% Dodge based on the amount of stacks you have. You gain a stack with each hit up to a maximum of 15, and all stacks are refreshed if you attack every 4 seconds.
• Pain Enhancer for endgame solo Greater Rift push in order to reach crazy Attack Speed Breakpoints in density and burst down Elites.
• For Nephalem Rifts, Boon of the Hoarder is always included due to its amazing synergy with Avarice Band and Goldwrap.

• Disintegrate is the cornerstone of the reworked Firebird's Finery set, hitting monsters with this skill applies Ignite on top of building Combustion stacks to reduce our Teleport Cooldown and buff our (6) Bonus Ignite procs.
• Spectral Blade Flame Blades is our main damaging ability due to its high Attack Speed allowing us to proc Ignite damage ticks insanely fast.
• Explosive Blast Chain Reaction activates our Orb of Infinite Depth and is also a good way to proc the Ignite from the Firebird's Finery (6) Bonus because it has no cast animation and therefore won't interfere with our overall gameplay.
• Teleport is our mobility skill whose Cooldown is reduced to the minimum 0.5 second cooldown due to the Firebird's Finery (4) Bonus.
• Magic Weapon Deflection is used to generate Shields on every cast to keep us alive and protect our Squirt's Necklace damage multiplier in some variants.
• Blackhole Spellsteal and Frost Nova Bone Chill in some variants for massive additive damage buffs before our Fire Convention of Elements cycle.

• Evocation for additional damage through Captain Crimson's Trimmings (3) Bonus or for Archon setups.
• Elemental Exposure is a separate and global multiplier debuffing each target once for each element (Fire, Cold, Arcane, Lighting) for up to 5 seconds when you hit it with said target. The elemental type of the damage range on your equipped weapon will also be applied with each ability that you hit with.
• Audacity provides us with a separate 1.3 multiplier if our target is within 15 yards.
• Unwavering Will grants us a toughness boost and 10% additive damage when standing still.
• Galvanizing Ward is our main defensive passive for variants using Squirt's Necklace, to protect its 100% separate damage multiplier.
• Other options can include:
  • Conflagration to apply a nice 6% Critical Hit Chance debuff on monsters.
  • Unstable Anomaly for another cheat death mechanic on top of the (2) Bonus.
  • Blur for some decent flat mitigation.

¹ Aim for a decent HP pool (~1,000,000 Life in Solo Push) as your Shields (Galvanizing Ward and Deflection) scale with it.
² Avoid any source of Area Damage as this build doesn't scale with it and it can lag the game.

The Altar of Rites is a tree that grants tremendous powers to your entire account in exchange for sacrifices. It requires you to farm Bounties, kill the Ubers, craft the Staff of Herding, and more. Completing all 26 of these tasks, along with sacrificing 6 Primal Ancients grants you extra Damage, Defense, Quality of Life, Increased Drops and 3 Potion Super Powers. Read the full guides on Unlocking the Altar and the Altar Mechanics by Raxxanterax and Chewingnom to learn everything about this fantastic mechanic!

Optimal Path

Patch 2.7.0 revamped the follower system giving all 3 hirelings new powers and the emanate system. The first thing you should do is read our complete follower guide and remember the key takeaways:

1. The emanation system allows followers to share certain legendary and set powers with you. The most important ones are: The Flavor of Time, Nemesis Bracers, Avarice Band, Sage’s Journey and Cain’s Destiny. Click the guide above for the full list.
2. Follower’s powers are based on their main stat (maxed at 25,000, but they have a 2.5x multiplier so you only need 10,000). This means we stack Intelligence on the Enchantress, Dexterity on the Scoundrel and Strength on the Templar.
3. Guardian's Jeopardy (3) Bonus works for followers by improving their inherent stat multiplier from x2.5 to x3.5, making it slightly easier to hit the 25,000 main stat threshold if needed.
4. Followers share 20% of their Experience, Magic and Gold Find stats with you.
5. Legendary gems do not work on followers, except Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard.
6. Cooldown Reduction does not work for any follower skill except the Templar’s Heal.
7. Followers never deal significant damage; you’re on your own to clear the content.

Select Follower

The general playstyle for pushing Greater Rifts with Firebird's Finery Flame Blades is pretty straightforward once you get all your buffs running. The first thing to do before moving is casting Disintegrate for 2 seconds in order to build your Combustion stacks granting you 80% damage reduction and a 0.5 second Teleport Cooldown. Use Teleport to get the Safe Passage 25% damage reduction and cast Explosive Blast Chain Reaction to build your Orb of Infinite Depth stacks for another 80% damage reduction.

The only thing left for you to do is to Teleport around and bodypull enemies together using Disintegrate while keeping your Orb of Infinite Depth stacks up. A few seconds before your Fire Convention of Elements cycle starts:

• Set up on a pull of monsters with Teleport.
• Channel Disintegrate to get your Combustion stacks to 50 and make sure all monsters are ignited.
• Cast Black Hole Spellsteal to lock monsters and group them up while getting a huge additive damage buff for 5 seconds.
• Spam Flame Blades to kill monsters!

Firebird's Finery builds are a good choice for Hardcore players as the (2) Bonus provides a free cheat death every 60 seconds and the (4) Bonus grants you 80% damage reduction as long as you keep at least 1 Combustion stack. Furthermore, all iterations are using Orb of Infinite Depth for another 80% damage reduction. The set also allows us to get a 0.5 second Cooldown Teleport for a huge mobility to escape danger at any time and, last but not least, Shields mechanics are used with Galvanizing Ward and Magic Weapon Deflection for another layer of defense to guarantee you'll never die! Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!

• The Meteor that revives you from the Firebirds Finery (2) Bonus has a 60 second internal cooldown (ICD) and resets when you die.
• The Ignite DoT of Firebirds Finery (2) Bonus has a maximum range of 200 yards. Once you exceed this distance to an ignited enemy the DoT is removed from the target. The Ignite DoT is also removed when you change Greater Rift floors or die.
• You gain Combustion stacks from Firebird's Finery (4) Bonus very quickly when channeling Disintegrate. Combustion stacks decay at the rate of 2 per second.
• Teleport Cooldown is reduced by up to 100% at 50 Combustion stacks, but still has a minimum cooldown of 0.5 seconds.
• Ignite DoT benefit from "Fire skills deal X% more damage" and include Critical Hit Chance and Damage (1 + CHC * CHD) as a damage multiplier but cannot proc Area Damage. Like any DoT, crit debuffs applied on monsters such as Iceblink or Multishot Wind Chill doesn't work.
• Firebird's Finery (6) Bonus procs benefit from "Fire skills deal X% more damage" and can critically hit but cannot proc Area Damage. Crit debuffs like Iceblink or Conflagration does work.
• Firebird's Finery (6) Bonus cannot proc from effects with a proc coefficient of 0. Thus Etched Sigil and Wand of Woh procs do not trigger the (6) Bonus!
• Blizzard Apocalypse does not proc the (6) Bonus either.
• Pets such as Hydra and Mirror Images do not proc the (6) Bonus since a nerf in Season 25.

• In order to keep up your shields to survive while maintaining Squirt's Necklace damage multiplier, you need to learn to judge the incoming damage and how fast you can build those shields yourself, which requires practice.
• Shields have no direct UI indicator unless you mouseover your health globe.
• You can see that you have any shield up when you see a transparent blue bubble around your character (not the size of the shield, however).
• Because Wizard Shield values scale with your total life, Vitality and Life % stats become substantially better for toughness scaling compared to other builds.
• Galvanizing Ward is the main shielding mechanic used for most Wizard builds, which combined with Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer adds up to 120% of your total life as a shield. This shield will reset to its maximum value every 5 seconds if this shield in particular doesn't take any hit in the meantime.
• Spectral Blade Barrier Blades and Magic Weapon Deflection represent the secondary shielding mechanic of the Wizard and can be stacked as much as you like, but their shield value is set at 4% (up to 8% with Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer) of your total life and they only lasts for 3 seconds. The duration is counted for each stack individually. For this specific build iteration, we want to use Flame Blades.
• While Barrier Blades or Deflection (or any other shield in that matter) protect the Galvanizing Ward shield, it is possible to reset the shield gained from the passive to full even while taking hits.
• All of these mechanics make it so that when your shields start breaking or your Galvanizing Ward doesn't find enough time to reset, the whole setup will fall apart really quickly. Make sure you understand your limits and survivability in different situations.

• The Attack Speed bonus of The Shame of Delsere and Fragment of Destiny are multiplicative with each other and with other bonuses. This means using both will grant you a 1.5 * 1.5 = 2.25 Attack Speed multiplier. This allows us to get the 11 FPA Attack Speed Breakpoint on Spectral Blade in this setup in order to get as many Ignite procs as possible from Firebird's Finery (6) Bonus.

• Each stack is a debuff for one of the following elements: Arcane, Cold, Fire or Lightning.
• Each stack is unique and refreshes its own duration when reapplied.
• Any ability with a proc coefficient greater than zero applies a stack of its respective element. This inherently means that only selfcasted abilities grant stacks.
• The elemental range on the Weapon applies its respective stack with all abilities if the elemental range is of the type: Arcane, Cold, Fire or Lightning. This is why Item Stat Priorities state you want a weapon with Cold or Lightning Damage Range.
• The 5% damage from each stack is additive to each other adding up to a total of 20% separate damage multiplier.

During Season 27, there was a variant to the Firebird Flame Blades build thanks to the Sanctified Magic Missile Power.

Concept & Gameplay
The general playstyle for pushing Greater Rifts with Firebird's Finery Magic Missile is pretty straightforward once you get all your buffs running. The first thing to do before moving is casting Disintegrate for 2 seconds in order to build your Combustion stacks granting you 80% damage reduction and a 0.5 second Teleport Cooldown. Use Teleport to get the Safe Passage 25% damage reduction and cast Explosive Blast Chain Reaction to build your Orb of Infinite Depth stacks for another 80% damage reduction.

The only thing left for you to do is to Teleport around and bodypull enemies together using Disintegrate while keeping your Orb of Infinite Depth stacks up. A few seconds before your Fire Convention of Elements cycle starts:

• Set up on a pull of monsters with Teleport.
• Channel Disintegrate to get your Combustion stacks to 50 and make sure all monsters are ignited.
• Cast Black Hole Spellsteal to lock monsters and group them up while getting a huge additive damage buff for 5 seconds.
• Make sure to stay within Audacity & Explosive Blast range.
• Spam Magic Missile to kill monsters!
• Note you can still consult the Season 27 Firebird Magic Missile Wizard Guide, obviously outdated!