Wizard Firebird Flame Blades Build
Introduction
The Firebird set playstyle revolves around incinerating your enemies, ensuring their fiery demise with a combination of burning spells that feed into a singular, buffed up flame. 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 Neph alem Rift Farming Variation, and a Great er Rift Speed Farming Variation.
Quick Reference
Skill Setup
The basic skill setup of the Firebird Flame Blades Wizard is displayed below. Read the dedicated Skills page for detailed information on choices, alternatives and build customization.
Active Skills |
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Passive Skills |
Gear Setup
The required gear setup for the Firebird Flame Blades 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
- Shoulders:
Firebird's Pinions
- Torso:
Firebird's Breast
- Wrists:
Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer
- Hands:
Firebird's Talons
- Waist:
The Shame of Delsere
- Legs:
Firebird's Down
- Feet:
Firebird's Tarsi
- Amulet:
Squirt's Necklace
- Ring #1:
Focus
- Ring #2:
Restraint
- Weapon:
Fragment of Destiny
- Off-hand:
Orb of Infinite Depth
Altar of Rites
The former Season 28 theme, the Altar of Rites, has been revised and re-added to Diablo 3 as a permanent character progression mechanic. — For virtually all builds and players of all skill levels — from casual to advanced — we recommend progressing through the Altar tree using the path outlined below. The suggested path is geared towards maximum quality of life first, then amplifying damage, and then mopping up the tree with defensive and edge case utility nodes.
Note that while they require reaching them with a Seal, Legendary Potion Powers are not part of the Seal cost system; Potions unlock with a separate resource called Primordial Ashes, obtained from salvaging Legendary or Set items of Primal (red bordered) quality. Upgrade them as soon as possible, and in the order shown below (courtesy of Caleko's Altar of Rites planner).

You can read more on the Altar of Rites, Seals and Legendary Potion Powers in our dedicated Altar of Rites Mechanics guide.
Legendary Gems
- Legendary Gem 1:
Bane of the Trapped
- Legendary Gem 2:
Gogok of Swiftness
- Legendary Gem 3:
Bane of the Stricken
Kanai's Cube
- Weapon Slot:
The Furnace
- Armor Slot:
Aquila Cuirass
- Jewelry Slot:
Convention of Elements
Season 35 Theme — Eternal Conflict
This Season revives the Pandemonium Kill Streak buff from Season 19. Each stack grants a bonus to movement speed and damage, capping at +50% movement speed and +100% damage at 1000 kills. Hitting specific kill thresholds unleashes powerful effects. Read more in our dedicated Season of the Eternal Conflict Mechanics Guide!
While speedfarming sees limited use from this theme, Greater Rift
pushing benefits significantly. Effects like Geysers (150),
Meteors (400), and Angels (500) can clear elites and Rift
Guardians instantly. Players may reset streaks after 150 kills to repeatedly
trigger Geysers or push for 500+ kills near boss fights, often using
Nemesis Bracers to spawn extra enemies.
Because the most potent effects (Geysers, Meteors, Angels) can obliterate Rift Guardians instantly up to GR150, players can retool builds for efficiency and comfort. Here’s how:
Legendary Gem Considerations
Since you can rely on killstreak procs to clear the Rift Guardian,
Bane of the Stricken can be safely omitted in favor of:
- Another generic damage-scaling legendary gem (
Bane of the Trapped for builds with any form of crowd control and/or melee range,
Zei's Stone of Vengeance for far ranged builds,
Taeguk for channeling builds,
Simplicity's Strength for primary attack-focused builds,
Enforcer for pet-oriented builds, etc.)
- A survivability-oriented legendary gem (
Esoteric Alteration,
Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard), or additional utility (
Gogok of Swiftness for CDR-reliant builds,
Pain Enhancer for attack speed-heavy builds, or
Wreath of Lightning for extra movement speed).
Equipment and Skill Flexibility
Adjust your equipment to items that favor durability, health sustain, and ease of movement. Consider adjusting non-essential skills for the build to ones that pull, reposition, or otherwise displace enemies to facilitate large pulls of enemy packs. In more concrete terms, this means:
- For class-specific items, Wizards should consider
Halo of Karini if it's absent from the build; this is a powerful damage reduction item that incentivizes you to use
Storm Armor and maintain a pull for procs at all times, synergizing well with the killstreak theme. Another strong option is
Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer to significantly boost the strength of your shielding abilities. These help shore up Wizard fragility, especially in high-tier content.
- For additional options that balance between defense and offense, the
class-specific offhand
Orb of Infinite Depth offers a balanced boost of damage and defense for the reasonable requirement of
Explosive Blast inclusion. Helpful cross-class jewelry includes
Unity (combined with the same ring on the follower plus a follower immortality token), and the Endless Walk set (
The Traveler's Pledge and
The Compass Rose).
- Situational items that can bolster your defenses include
Stone Gauntlets, the drawbacks of which are negated via CC-immunity effects like
Ice Climbers, or the Altar of Rites CC-immunity node.A good number of Wizard builds can also afford the inclusion of an
Aquila Cuirass (for low AP-spenders) or a
Mantle of Channeling (for channelers).
- Utility items like
Nemesis Bracers are essential as more elites mean more killstreak maintenance and faster progression. When soloing, they should be equipped by your follower; in groups, at least one party member should commit to wearing them. Edge cases will see the inclusion of
Strongarm Bracers (extra damage vs. displaced enemies),
Warzechian Armguards or
Krelm's Buff Belt (more speed for easier scouting and pulls), and an
Aether Walker if you can spare the weapon slot for ultimate mobility. To facilitate large pulls, consider using a Follower equipped with
The Ess of Johan, a proc-based analogue to an enemy-pulling skill (albeit outside your control).
- Skill-wise, make sure to include at least one movement skill tool like
Teleport and an enemy-pulling tool like
Black Hole. Take a look if you can include passives like
Illusionist (for easy mobility resets) or
Unstable Anomaly (for a cheat-death).
How to Get This Build Going?
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 Flame Blades 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.
- Gamble or upgrade rare Belts for
The Shame of Delsere; attack speed is a major source of damage in the build, while resource stability will help you maintain skill spam and possible buffs like
Aquila Cuirass.
- Gamble or upgrade rare Bracers for
Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer, a solid protective piece for the build. Gambling/upgrading rares in the Bracer slot can also net you other valuable pieces like
Nemesis Bracers or
Ranslor's Folly.
- Craft level 70 Wands at the Blacksmith and use the "upgrade rare" recipe
to obtain
Fragment of Destiny, one of the biggest damage pieces in the Flame Blades build. Gambling is also possible, but undesirable due to the high Blood Shard costs of weapons.
- 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 net 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,
Focus and
Restraint, and
Squirt's Necklace will all bring massive damage bumps to the build, with other standout pieces that can also substitute or be temporarily helpful in the face of
Unity, or
Oculus Ring and
The Flavor of Time for your Follower.
Changelog
- 03 Jun. 2025 (gear page): Added Season 35 Eternal Conflict killstreak recommendations.
- 03 Jun. 2025 (skills page): Skills and passives reviewed for Season 35.
- 03 Jun. 2025 (this page): Added Season 35 Eternal Conflict killstreak recommendations.
- 20 Jan. 2025 (gear page): Added Season 34 Angelic Crucible recommendations.
- 20 Jan. 2025 (skills page): Skills and passives reviewed for Season 34.
- 20 Jan. 2025 (this page): Added Season 34 Angelic Crucible recommendations.
- 23 Oct. 2024 (gear page): Added Season 33 advice for 4th Kanai slot.
- 23 Oct. 2024 (skills page): Skills and passives reviewed for Season 33.
- 23 Oct. 2024 (this page): Added Season 33 advice for 4th Kanai slot.
- 10 Jul. 2024 (gear page): Added Season 32 advice for ethereal weapons.
- 10 Jul. 2024 (skills page): Skills and passives reviewed for Season 32.
- 10 Jul. 2024 (this page): Added Season 32 advice for ethereal weapons.
- 10 Apr. 2024 (gear page): Added Season 31 advice for the unbound Kanai's Cube slots.
- 10 Apr. 2024 (skills page): Skills and passives reviewed for Season 31.
- 10 Apr. 2024 (this page): Added Season 31 advice for the unbound Kanai's Cube slots.
- 10 Jan. 2024 (gear page): Revised guide for the permanent addition of the Altar of Rites, and added Season-specific Soul Shard recommendations.
- 10 Jan. 2024 (skills page): Skills and passives reviewed for Season 30.
- 10 Jan. 2024 (this page): Revised guide for the permanent addition of the Altar of Rites, and added Season-specific Soul Shard recommendations.
- 13 Sep. 2023 (gear page): Added Season 29 Paragon Cap and Gearing recommendations.
- 13 Sep. 2023 (skills page): Skills and passives reviewed for Season 29.
- 13 Sep. 2023 (this page): Added Season 29 Paragon Cap and Gearing recommendations.
- 22 Feb. 2023 (gear page): Added Season 28 Altar of Rites recommendations.
- 22 Feb. 2023 (skills page): Skills and passives reviewed for Season 28.
- 22 Feb. 2023 (this page): Added Season 28 Altar of Rites recommendations.
- 26 Aug. 2022 (gear page): Added Season 27 Angelic Crucible recommendations.
- 26 Aug. 2022 (skills page): Skills and passives reviewed for Season 27.
- 26 Aug. 2022 (this page): Added Season 27 Angelic Crucible recommendations.
- 14 Apr. 2022 (gear page): Guide reviewed for Season 26.
- 14 Apr. 2022 (skills page): Guide reviewed for Season 26.
- 14 Apr. 2022 (this page): Guide reviewed for Season 26.
- 06 Dec. 2021 (gear page): Added Season 25 Soul Shard recommendations.
- 06 Dec. 2021 (skills page): Removed reference to pet procs for Firebird for Season 25.
- 06 Dec. 2021 (this page): Added build assembly advice and Season 25 Soul Shard recommendations.
- 22 Jul. 2021 (gear page): Added S24 Ethereal recommendation.
- 22 Jul. 2021 (skills page): No changes required for Season 24.
- 22 Jul. 2021 (this page): Added S24 Ethereal recommendation.
- 24 Mar. 2021 (this page): Guide added.
- 23 Mar. 2021 (gear page): Guide added.
- 23 Mar. 2021 (skills page): Guide added.
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This build is presented to you by Deadset, one of the very few professional Diablo 3 players. Deadset regularly publishes video guides on Youtube and streams on Twitch, where you can see how this and other builds play out in practice.
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