Wizard Firebird Explosive Blast Build

The Firebird Explosive Blast playstyle revolves around incinerating your enemies, using the ceaseless detonations of this skill into a fiery source of burning destruction. This guide will cover all of its available playstyles. The base one presented on this page is the Greater Rift Solo Pushing Variation, but this build also has a N ephalem Rift Farming Variation, and a Gr eater Rift Speed Farming Variation.

The basic skill setup of the Firebird Explosive Blast Wizard is displayed below. Read the dedicated Skills page for detailed information on choices, alternatives and build customization.

Active Skills
Disintegrate Chaos Nexus Magic Weapon Deflection 1 Explosive Blast Chain Reaction 2 Frost Nova Bone Chill 3 Teleport Safe Passage 4 Diamond Skin Prism
Passive Skills
Audacity Elemental Exposure Galvanizing Ward Evocation

The required gear setup for the Firebird Explosive Blast Wizard is listed below. Check the Gear page for detailed information on the required stat rolls on gear, itemization alternatives, gemming, Kanai's Cube and Paragon distribution.

• Head: Firebird's Plume with Int/ChC/Vit/Socket
• Shoulders: Aughild's Power with Int/Vit/CDR/Life %
• Torso: Firebird's Breast with Int/Vit/Life %/3 Sockets
• Wrists: Aughild's Search with Int/ChC/Fire %/Life on Hit
• Hands: Firebird's Talons with Int/ChC/ChD/CDR
• Waist: Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle with Int/Vit/Life %/Armor
• Legs: Firebird's Down with Int/Vit/Armor/2 Sockets
• Feet: Captain Crimson's Waders with Int/Vit/Armor/All Res
• Amulet: Squirt's Necklace with ChC/ChD/Socket/Fire %
• Ring #1: Convention of Elements with ChC/ChD/Socket/Flat Dmg
• Ring #2: Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac with ChC/CDR/RCR
• Weapon: Deathwish with High Dmg/CDR/Damage %/Socket
• Off-hand: Firebird's Eye with High Dmg/ChC/ApoC/CDR/Fire %

Season 29 introduces a season-specific cap to stat benefits from Paragon levels, all while updating how Paragon point distribution is handled. For the duration of this Season, you can only assign 800 Paragon stat points to your character, removing the long-standing practice of main-stat stacking (with some gearing implications — see below) after you reach Paragon 800.

On top of that, you could only allocate 50 Paragon stat points to each of the four stats in a given Paragon category (Core, Offense, Defense, and Utility). In Season 29, you can allocate up to the full 200 points per category into any attribute, allowing you to more easily reach necessary build breakpoints (as outlined in the Gear page of the guide) for Cooldown Reduction, Resource Cost Reduction, etc.

With the changes to Paragon in mind, we recommend using the following Paragon distribution for this build:

• Core: Intelligence: 200 points.
• Offense: Cooldown Reduction: 200 points.
• Defense: Life and All Resistance: Allocate points to maximize survivability; for Wizards, this is usually achieved by evenly splitting 100 points into Life (directly increasing your Health pool) and Armor (to complement the naturally high All Resistance stat of Intelligence-based characters).
• Utility: Life per Hit: 200 points.

In terms of gear, keeping the Paragon cap in mind is paramount, as it stymies the traditional endless supply of main stat after Paragon 800. This means re-rolling mainstat off your gear is no longer desirable, and full equipment augmentation with your main stat is even more critical. Additionally, you should take a careful look at your build and consider if you can fit the following changes to strengthen your damage and survivability:

• Guardian's Jeopardy: This is a craftable armor set, and the recipe for its creation drops from Bounty farming. Guardian's 2-piece provides a decent damage reduction bonus, but the true powerhouse of the set is the 3-piece bonus, which nets you an additional 100% of your main stats from equipped items. This is a tremendous benefit in an 800 Paragon capped Season. If the Guardian set can fit into the build with minimal sacrifices (other craftable sets, tertiary damage multipliers, etc.), consider its implementation. The available pieces are Guardian's Aversion (Wrists), Guardian's Case (Waist), and Guardian's Gaze (Head). Of course, you can wear 2 pieces of the set and complete the full 3-piece bonus with a Ring of Royal Grandeur (found from Act I bounty caches).
• Endless Walk:This is a jewelry set consisting of The Traveler's Pledge (Amulet) and The Compass Rose (Ring), and is randomly found through farming, gambling Blood Shards, and/or Kanai's Cube recipes. The Endless Walk set is a nice compromise between damage bonuses (building up while stationary) and defensive bonuses (building up while moving). It can replace glass cannon choices like the Bastions of Will set ( Focus and Restraint) and Squirt's Necklace with acceptable losses to DPS.
• Unity: A character wearing this ring, along with another Unity on their follower plus an immortality relic for them (i.e., Enchanting Favor), will reduce their damage taken by 50%. Unity can roll excellent offense-oriented stats and has an innate Extra Damage to Elites roll, which somewhat offsets losing all-out offense jewelry.

• Legendary Gem 1: Bane of the Trapped
• Legendary Gem 2: Taeguk
• Legendary Gem 3: Bane of the Powerful (GR Solo Speeds) or Bane of the Stricken (GR Solo Push)

• Weapon Slot: Orb of Infinite Depth
• Armor Slot: Mantle of Channeling
• Jewelry Slot: Ring of Royal Grandeur

In this section, we will briefly go over how to kickstart this build into reality; which items you should aim for with priority when farming and gambling, and what is their relative priority for the functioning of this spec. Note that these suggestions are exclusively aimed at getting you up and running into endgame farming, and might not reflect the gear you need to wear for high-end Greater Rift solo or group pushing. This section also assumes a fresh Season's start, which usually is the point where most players work on assembling their first build with a particular set.

If the Firebird set is part of the Haedrig's Gift for the Season, your simplest and most straightforward path to assembling the build is to complete the Seasonal Journey chapters up to Chapter IV. The Seasonal Journey chapters will gradually give you a complete class-specific set, giving 2-3 pieces for Chapters II, III and IV.

From the pre-game menu, choose and do this week's Challenge Rift. When successfully completed, this weekly event will grant you 5,1 million Gold, 475 Blood Shards, 370 Reusable Parts, 350 Arcane Dust, 125 Veiled Crystals, 35 Death's Breaths, and 15 of each Bounty cache material: Khanduran Rune, Caldeum Nightshade, Arreat War Tapestry, Corrupted Angel Flesh, and Westmarch Holy Water. This will allow you some early Seasonal leeway to extract and reforge items in Kanai's Cube, speeding up the assembly of this build with the items recommended below.

Having some materials at your disposal, either from farming or the Challenge Rift, is particularly important when you get duplicate pieces of your desired set. When you do, you can use Kanai's Cube Skill of Nilfur recipe (10x Forgotten Souls, 10x Death's Breaths, 1x Set item) to convert into another item from the same set. You should never salvage duplicate pieces of a desired set before you have it assembled.

In order to assemble a Firebird's Explosive Blast Wizard, you should:

• Gather the full 6-piece Firebird's Finery set using the advice above, or by spending Blood Shards at Kadala. In order of gamble chance, you should spend for: Shoulders, Boots, Pants, Gloves, Off-hand, Chest, and Helm. A trick you can also use is to gamble for duplicate pieces with an easier gamble chance (i.e., Shoulders) and convert them into another piece from the same set using the Skill of Nilfur recipe in Kanai's Cube.
• Gamble Off-hands or upgrade rare (Hope of Cain recipe in Kanai's Cube) Wizard Sources for Orb of Infinite Depth. This will be a massive damage reduction boost to the build, while simultaneously adding to DPS. It will also net you Etched Sigil, which will be helpful in T16 runs — check the Nephalem Rift Farming Variation to find out more about its application.
• Upgrade rare One-handed Swords to get Deathwish and In-geom. Deathwish is a foundational damage multiplier for the playstyle that enables the Explosive Blast build in GRs. If you are looking for In-geom specifically, upgrading rares on a level 1 Demon Hunter alt will improve your chances due to their lowest loot pool of legendary swords. In-geom greatly benefits Explosive Blast Wizards in T16 runs, since it allows for unmatched Explosive Blast spam and makes Teleport a constantly available asset. Gambling these two swords is also possible, but undesirable due to the high Blood Shard costs of weapons.
• Upgrade rare One-handed Maces to get Echoing Fury; doing this on a level 1 Witch Doctor or Necromancer alt will improve your chances due to their lowest loot pool of legendary maces. Echoing Fury is the preferred alternate weapon for T16 runs.
• Gamble Bracers for Nemesis Bracers and Ranslor's Folly, both of which will be immensely helpful during any form of farming.
• Do Act I bounties to attain the act-specific Ring of Royal Grandeur from Bounty caches. This will be helpful either in completing the basic set bonus, or mixing other helpful sets in (Cpt. Crimson, Aughild...) as described in the Gear page. Bounties will get you the craftable set recipes to begin with, so you will be killing two birds with one stone. Bounties will also net you Avarice Band (Act III), another farming-oriented staple for most builds and classes, this one included.
• While largely undesirable due to high costs, gambling or upgrading rare Jewelry is also possible; Convention of Elements, Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac, and Squirt's Necklace will all bring massive value to the build, with other standout pieces that can also substitute or be temporarily helpful in the face of Unity and Stone of Jordan, or Oculus Ring and The Flavor of Time for your Follower.