Firebird's Finery has been one of the weakest and most clunky sets in the game for quite some time, having to juggle between three Fire abilities to benefit from its set bonuses. Comically enough, the strongest Firebird build iterations have been using non-Fire abilities! Yet, Firebird's Finery had its glory days of dominating the META as a Trash Killer from Season 12 to 15 using Meteor Star Pact alongside channeling multipliers like Deathwish.
Patch 2.7.0 and Season 23, however, brought us a complete rework of this set. Firebird's Finery always had a strong fantasy around the Phoenix theme with the (2) Bonus "rising from the ashes" cheat death and the Fire element with an Ignite DoT. The set was successful with builds like Mirror Images or Flame Blades.
But with Season 27 rework to Tal Rasha's Elements around Meteors bringing two new items, The Smoldering Core and Mempo of Twilight, a new Firebird's Finery variant emerged. This build takes advantage of Meteor damage multipliers and unfortunately do not care about the Firebird Ignite DoT gimmick. With the heavy Tal'Rasha's Elements nerf in Season 30, this build now has a very similar if not higher potential than its Tal'Rasha Meteor counterpart.
This is an Area Damage (AD) build, since Meteors can proc it. The whole playstyle revolves around the precise use of Teleport and massive use of Meteor Comet, in order to wreak havoc onto the battlefield. This guide will show you the way to become a formidable Meteor Wizard!
Flavorful ✔ Caster Playstyle ✔ Smooth Gameplay ✔ Easy to Get Starter Gear ✔
❌ Boring Playstyle ❌ Random Meteor Landing ❌ Vulnerable to Crowd Control ❌ Conflicts with Firebird Set Spirit
Core Setup
Core Item Build
Items
The Firebird's Finery set provides 80% damage reduction to our character as well as a 5,000% damage multiplier. The Ignite DoT mechanic is irrelevant for this build.
The Grand Vizier provides us a 400% separate damage multiplier and reduce the Meteor Arcane Power cost by 50%.
The Smoldering Core grants us a stacking damage multiplier on consecutive hits on targets, up to 150%. It also lures normal monsters towards Meteor Impacts.
Mempo of Twilight grants us a 400% damage multiplier on top of the Meteor Shower rune effect, the latest only affecting selfcast Meteors.
Nilfur's Boast gives another huge 600% damage multiplier and even up to 900% when you hit only 3 targets or less.
Squirt's Necklace is a default inclusion for most Wizard builds due to their shield strength.
Halo of Karini is a core Wizard defensive item, providing us with a tremendous 80% damage reduction at the cost of using Storm Armor.
Convention of Elements is another separate damage multiplier, giving you triple damage during your Coldcycle.
Ring of Royal Grandeur allows us to complement our Firebird's FInerySet with another set, Guardian's Jeopardy.
Season 32 Ethereals
Ethereals are powerful rare weapons that can only be found during Season 32. They were initially the Season 24 Theme. They have incredible stats, a random Legendary power, and a free passive for your class. Read our Ethereal Mechanics Guide for full details on how they work and our Ethereal Farming Guide to learn how to acquire them. What you should prioritize on them is the following:
The Legendary Power This build requires The Grand Vizier and The Smoldering Core to be functional. We need our Ethereal to roll The Grand Vizier power so we can cube The Smoldering Core which is not available on Ethereals. We also want a good roll on our Legendary power if it has a range. For speed content it is always helpful to have Ethereals with Echoing Fury, In-geom or Messerschmidt's Reaver powers, so keep those if you find them.
The Ethereal Itself There are 3 different weapons available to us, each with its own benefits:
Mang Song's Lesson - This is an amazing Ethereal for all kind of content from speed runs to endgame push. Its 50% Undead Damage makes it unbelievably strong on specific monstersets, especially the Hulks & Dust Eaters one.
The Oculus - This is the option you can go for when it comes to speed content, especially T16 farming, due to its Damage Reduction debuff and its high Arcane Power on Critical Hit (APoC) roll to help out with resources.
Wizardspike - This Ethereal can be used instead of The Oculus for speed content.
The EtherealStat Rolls Each Ethereal comes with its own fixed set of powerful affixes. While some have a static value, many have a wide stat range. This means the difference between good and bad rolls is significant and something you should look for.
A Useful Passive This is just icing on the cake because a fifth passive is not going to make or break your build. You're better off hunting for the things above. Check out the Passives section down below to see which ones you're looking for.
Global Stat Priorities
You want to stack damage stats wherever possible, especially Critical Hit Chance and Damage, Area Damage as well as Cold Damage and Meteor Damage. Some Resource Cost Reduction is welcome (Shoulders and Flawless Royal Topaz in Helmet). You do not care about Firebird's Finery Ignite DoT mechanic to deal damage.
Regarding toughness, like most Wizard builds, in some setups we take advantage of Galvanizing Ward and Diamond Skin Prism to generate Shields based on our HP pool. This means Vitality and Life % are very important as they double dip into Shields. This is the reason why you want to aim for a decent HP pool.
Crowd Control Reduction is an incredibly valuable secondary Affix to roll on both Rings, Amulet and Helmet as we are very sensitive to Hard Crowd Control effects and mitigating these will ease up our gameplay significantly. Make sure to get the Primary Affixes locked in before attempting to get CCR though.
Assembling the Build
1. Do the Challenge Rift for the materials to cubeLegendary 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.
Staves to get The Smoldering Core and The Grand Vizier
Amulets to get Squirt's Necklace
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 4: Can drop any bounty item from any act
Bounty Turn In: Recipes for Captain Crimson's Trimmings and Guardian's Jeopardy
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:
The Grand Vizier
The Smoldering Core
Convention of Elements
Halo of Karini
Item Stat Priorities
SLOT
ITEM
STAT PRIORITY
Main-Hand
The Grand Vizier The Smoldering Core (Cubed) Starfire (Solo Speeds)
1. Damage Range 2. Socket Ramaladnis Gift 3. Damage % 4. Area Damage 5. Intelligence
Ideally, you want a Fire Damage Range in order to get an additional stack of Elemental Exposure.
Off-Hand
Firebird's Eye (Solo Speeds)
1. Critical Hit Chance 2. Arcane Power on Critical Hit 3. Intelligence
To avoid Crowd Control effects during your DPS phases
Gems
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.
Zei's Stone of Vengeance is another damage multiplier which complements perfectly Power Hungry.
Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard can be used in Solo Speeds instead of Bane of the Powerful for more shields to keep up Squirt's Necklace.
Skills
Disintegrate is purely used to activate Firebird's Finery bonuses, hitting monsters with this skill builds Combustion stacks to reduce our Teleport Cooldown and buff our Meteor damage.
Meteor Comet is our main damaging ability.
Teleport is our mobility skill whose Cooldown is reduced to the minimum 0.5 second cooldown due to the Firebird's Finery(4) Bonus.
Storm Armor is the activator for Halo of Karini. Without this buff you will be squashed like a fly, so make sure to keep it up.
Diamond Skin Prism is used for defensive purposes but also to reduce the Meteor Resource Cost.
Blackhole Absolute Zero is used for a massive elemental damage buff before our ColdConvention of Elements cycle.
Passives
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.
Power Hungry provides us with a separate 1.3 multiplier on target further than 30 yards away.
Galvanizing Ward is our main defensive passive for variants using Squirt's Necklace, to protect its 100% separate damage multiplier.
The last passive can be:
Conflagration to apply a nice 6% Critical Hit Chance debuff on monsters with Disintegrate Convergence.
Unstable Anomaly for another cheat death mechanic on top of the (2) Bonus.
Blur for some decent flat mitigation.
Paragon Points
Core
Offensive
Defensive
Utility
1. Movement Speed
1. Critical Hit Damage
1. Armor
1. Area Damage
2. Maximum Arcane Power
2. Critical Hit Chance
2. Life %
2. Resource Cost Reduction
3. Intelligence
3. Attack Speed
3. All Resistance
3. Life per Hit
4. Vitality1
4. Cooldown Reduction
4. Life Regeneration
4. Pickup Radius
1 Aim for a decent HP pool (~1,000,000 Life in Solo Push) as your Shields (Galvanizing Ward and Diamond Skin) scale with it.
Altar of Rites
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!
Note: The suggested path assumes you are playing Solo and used the Challenge Rift Cache to help you level up.
Optimal Path
Node 2: Choose Anointed to gain a full set of 70 yellows from level 18-70!
Node 6: Rush to gain double Bounties to help unlock other Nodes in the Altar.
Node 7: Take Vigor to help your build sustain its resources.
Nodes 8-14: These are the last Nodes you can gain until the Challenge Rift resets. Take at least 1 Node at the bottom of each path to unlock all 3 Potion Super Powers. Pick up the Mirror Node at the top for a colossal 41% extra XP all season. Remember to unlock Father once you clear GR70 solo and have your first Primal!
Nodes 15-26: Pick up the final Quality of Life, Damage, and Defense Nodes (in that order) to finish the Altar.
Potion Super Powers: Take Father first, then Mother, and finally Mortal.
Disclaimer: The Mortal and Mother Potions require you to salvage 2 and 3 Primals respectively. Unlock them as soon as you have those materials as they don't cost a point!
Recommended Altar Path Use the Scroll Bar to see Altar Progression
Follower
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:
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.
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.
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.
Followers share 20% of their Experience, Magic and Gold Find stats with you.
Legendary gems do not work on followers, except Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard.
Cooldown Reduction does not work for any follower skill except the Templar’s Heal.
Followers never deal significant damage; you’re on your own to clear the content.
Select Follower
Speed GR Enchantress
Speed GR Enchantress
For speed Greater Rifts we recommend this Enchantress setup because she is the only follower that gives Cooldown Reduction, allowing you to spam your abilities more. Since this is speed content, she’ll stay alive with Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard and use Hand of the Prophet to gain all skills. This will give us Cooldown Reduction, Elemental Damage, Reduced Damage from Ranged Attacks, Armor, Attack Speed, and a Cheat Death. Stat Priorities:Since we do not have the immortality focus, we need to stack survivability on our Enchantress.
Intelligence > Vitality > Life % > Armor > All Resistance > Life Per Hit > Attack Speed.
Key Items:
The Flavor of Time: For double duration on Pylons.
Nemesis Bracers: For more progression from Elites.
Oculus Ring: For 85% increased damage.
Ice Climbers: To make your follower immune to Freeze and Immobilize effects.
Hellfire Ring, Leoric's Crown and Cain's Destiny: For more Experience and Attack Speed.
GR Pushing Templar
For Greater Rift pushing we recommend this Templar setup for the sustain from Heal, 10% increased damage from Onslaught, and the very powerful cheat death mechanic from Guardian. This is the only follower build that stacks Cooldown Reduction because it works with Heal. Since we take the immortality relic, we do not need any survivability stats. Stat Priorities:Since we have the immortality relic, we do not need to stack survivability on our Templar.
Strength > Cooldown Reduction > Attack Speed.
Key Items:
The Flavor of Time: For double duration on Pylons.
Nemesis Bracers: For more progression from Elites.
Oculus Ring: For 85% increased damage.
Unity: For 50% damage reduction if you're also wearing one.
Ice Climbers: To make your follower immune to Freeze and Immobilize effects.
Leoric's Crown and Captain Crimson's Trimmings: For more Cooldown Reduction on Heal.
Gameplay
The general playstyle for pushing Greater Rifts with Firebird's FineryComet 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.
The only thing left for you to do is to Teleport around and bodypull enemies together using Disintegrate. A few seconds before your Cold Convention of Elements cycle starts:
Set up on a pull of monsters with Teleport.
Spam some Comets to stack up The Smoldering Core.
Make sure at least one target is ignited to activate the Firebird's Finery(6) Bonus damage multiplier.
Before your Cold cycle, cast Black Hole Absolute Zero to lock monsters and group them up while getting a huge elemental damage buff for 10 seconds.
Make sure to cast Diamond Skin Prism for your burst to protect Galvanizing Ward but also to reduce the Arcane Power cost of Comet. Outside of your Cold cycle, use it to help refresh Galvanizing Ward.
Spam Comet to kill monsters!
Hardcore
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. 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 Diamond Skin Prism 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!
Variants
Nephalem Rifts
GR Solo Speeds
GR Solo Push
Firebird Solo T16
Concept Like usual we utilize Boon of the Hoarder with Avarice Band (on follower) to become invincible and instantly vacuum the juicy Progression Orbs from Elites.
We focus more on mobility and utility like Teleport. The idea is to spam Thunder Crash on packs of monsters and Elites while running. We use Stone of Jordan and drop The Smoldering Core since its mechanics are not speed content friendly.
Gameplay Teleport through the rift with Teleport while spamming Thunder Crash everywhere on the screen. Use Diamond Skin Prism on cooldown to ensure you never run into Arcane Power issues.
Setups In groups, replace Warzechian Armguards with Nemesis Bracers and Ring of Royal Grandeur with Avarice Band while replacing Pride's Fall with Firebird's Plume. Swap The Witching Hour with Goldwrap if you want to be invulnerable.
Firebird Thunder Crash Solo Speeds
Concept We focus more on mobility and utility like Teleport. The idea is to spam Thunder Crash on packs of monsters and Elites while running. We drop The Smoldering Core since its mechanics are not speed content friendly.
Gameplay Teleport through the rift with Teleport while spamming Thunder Crash everywhere on the screen. For a step-by-step gameplay description on how you should sequence your skills, check out the "Gameplay" section above.
Setups If incoming damage is an issue, swap out Bane of the Powerful for Esoteric Alteration or Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard instead. You can also replace Teleport Wormhole with Safe Passage for an additional 25% damage reduction. If you're comfortable with both your damage and toughness, go for Invigorating Gemstone instead of Bane of the Powerful for the Crowd Control Immunity. Furthermore, you can go back to a Dual Staves setup with The Smoldering Core similar to the Solo Push setup for higher but slower clears.
Firebird Comet Solo Push
Concept We stack up as much damage as possible and take advantage of Teleport. The idea is to spam Comet during your Cold Convention of Elements cycle. Don't forget that Wizard shielding mechanics scale with your HP pool, so adding more Vitality and Life % is always a huge toughness boost.
Gameplay Pull monsters all around using Teleport and Disintegrate. As your Cold CoE cycle is coming up, use Black Hole Absolute Zero to lock monsters and start nuke with Comet. For a step-by-step gameplay description on how you should sequence your skills, check out the "Gameplay" section above.
Setups It is possible to play this build using Endless Walk instead of Squirt's Necklace and Convention of Elements. This setup has less damage but does not require you to keep Shields and rely on CoE cycles to deal damage if you do not lke that. Alternatively, it is possible to play this build with Star Pact.
If you're comfortable with toughness, go for the Enchantress as follower instead of the Templar. For more toughness, you can drop Zei's Stone of Vengeance for Esoteric Alteration (at the cost of massive damage loss) or swap Elemental Exposure with a defensive passive like Dominance or Unwavering Will.
Video Guide
Mechanics
Firebirds Finery
Most of these mechanics are irrelevant for this build which only takes advantage of the Firebird's Finery damage multiplier to deal damage with Meteor.
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 Apocalypsedoes not proc the (6) Bonus either.
Pets such as Hydra and Mirror Imagesdo not proc the (6) Bonus since a nerf in Season 25.
Wizard Shields
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 Smoldering Core
Each hit from Meteor on an enemy applies a debuff granting you a 50% separate damage multiplier, up to 3 stacks.
Meteors from Tal Rasha's Elements(2) Bonus and Mempo of TwilightMeteor Shower effect are stacking the effect.
This effect is a debuff on monsters, meaning another Wizard with The Smoldering Core equipped can stack the effect for other Wizards in the party but one has to equip it to benefit from the damage multiplier.
The debuff stacks add up as one combined 150% separate damage multiplier.
The debuff stacks have a duration of 5 seconds. All stacks have their duration refreshed on hit.
The ground DoT effect of Meteor does not contribute to stacks.
The lure effect means enemies are taunted by your MeteorImpacts and run towards them.
Elemental Exposure
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.
Summary
Put together the core items and acquire the full Firebird's Finery set.
Gather the Meteor related supporting items.
Channel Disintegrate at the start of every Rift for damage reduction and infinite Teleports.
Enjoy this flavorful Wizard spellcaster playstyle!
Hard Crowd Control Effects are now your worst nightmare!
