Tags: beginner

Wizard Firebird's Finery Fresh 70 Starter Build (Patch 2.7.6 / Season 29)

Last updated on Sep 15, 2023 at 09:00 by Deadset 58 comments

This build is a starter build for fresh Level 70 Wizards who have access to the Firebird's Finery set.

This guide is part of our Wizard Seasonal Progress Guide, which also includes a leveling build and other early builds for fresh 70 characters.

1.

Introduction

The Firebird starting build is a natural continuation of the leveling and fresh level 70 build. The fresh level 70 build is specifically created not to require any specific legendary items, and the Firebird set from Haedrig's Gifts alone is quite possibly the best augmentation to a basic Disintegrate Disintegrate build.

The following build assumes you will assemble the build in 2-piece increments, similarly to how Haedrig's Gift would dole the set out. Haderig's Gift is a seasonal participation reward that gives you a full class-specific set as you complete Chapters II, III and IV of the Seasonal Journey (accessible via the leaf-shaped icon in the top right corner). The cadence of early natural character progression is also not too far off the listed strategy, so even if the set is not part of Haedrig's Gift, you can put the advice below to good use.

2.

Build at the 2-piece Bonus

Active Skills
Left Mouse Button Disintegrate Icon Disintegrate Chaos Nexus Chaos Nexus Right Mouse Button Teleport Icon Teleport Safe Passage Safe Passage 1 Explosive Blast Icon Explosive Blast Chain Reaction Chain Reaction 2 Magic Weapon Icon Magic Weapon Deflection Deflection 3 Black Hole Icon Black Hole Spellsteal Spellsteal 4 Storm Armor Icon Storm Armor Power of the Storm Power of the Storm
Passive Skills

At the 2-piece Firebird bonus, your only offense-oriented benefit is the ignition effect when you strike enemies with Disintegrate Disintegrate. You also get a secondary defensive benefit that provides you with a "cheat death" effect, so you can consider dropping Unstable Anomaly Unstable Anomaly even in Hardcore. Note that despite its fiery theme, the Ignition effect of the Firebird set does not care about the elemental nature of your Disintegrate Disintegrate rune; thus, we will be using the superior spread of Chaos Nexus Chaos Nexus.

We will be making some additional changes from the leveling 1-70 build to accommodate our ambition to progress through Torment levels while still rocking humble gear. Some offense-oriented buffs like Force Weapon Force Weapon will give way to Deflection Deflection, and you can consider swapping out Wormhole Wormhole to Safe Passage Safe Passage. You will also get your first taste of endgame crowd control with Black Hole Black Hole Spellsteal Spellsteal instead of Familiar Familiar.

At this point, no additional helpful legendary items are assumed. You might have lucked out during the leveling journey (especially if you followed the gambling and crafting advice in our Seasonal Guide), or in your first couple of farming sessions with items such as:

3.

Build at the 4-piece Bonus

Active Skills
Left Mouse Button Disintegrate Icon Disintegrate Chaos Nexus Chaos Nexus Right Mouse Button Black Hole Icon Black Hole Spellsteal Spellsteal 1 Explosive Blast Icon Explosive Blast Chain Reaction Chain Reaction 2 Magic Weapon Icon Magic Weapon Deflection Deflection 3 Teleport Icon Teleport Wormhole Wormhole 4 Storm Armor Icon Storm Armor Scramble Scramble
Passive Skills

At the 4-piece Firebird bonus, you get the second half of the Ignition-Combustion combo, but lack their interaction which comes with the 6-piece. What the 4-piece adds is a massive source of defense and utility, as you get a whopping 80% damage reduction bonus while you maintain any Combustion stacks (by using Disintegrate Disintegrate), and cut down your Teleport Teleport cooldown with 2% each stack, nullifying it at the 50th. This all but removes Illusionist Illusionist and Wormhole Wormhole as candidates for your skills and passives, allowing you to keep the additional defense with Safe Passage Safe Passage and Galvanizing Ward Galvanizing Ward.

It is not unreasonable to assume that at the 4-piece bonus, you have attained at least one key item for Firebird Wizards. If you follow the advice in our "Get the build started" section below, this item will likely be Orb of Infinite Depth Orb of Infinite Depth. This is a utility-laden item that further scales your damage reduction while also adding to your damage, all for the mere cost of using Explosive Blast Explosive Blast. Of course, you will be using the multiple detonations of Chain Reaction Chain Reaction, as it maxes out the orb bonuses faster than the other runes.

At that point it is a good idea to transition from a long range to a point-blank fighting playstyle, as you have to stack your Orb of Infinite Depth Orb of Infinite Depth, and future changes will force you in that range anyway. Swap from Power Hungry Power Hungry to Audacity Audacity for the multiplicative damage increase against enemies within 15 yards (roughly the detonation range of Explosive Blast Explosive Blast).

4.

Build at the 6-piece Bonus

Active Skills
Left Mouse Button Spectral Blade Icon Spectral Blade Flame Blades Flame Blades Right Mouse Button Disintegrate Icon Disintegrate Chaos Nexus Chaos Nexus 1 Explosive Blast Icon Explosive Blast Chain Reaction Chain Reaction 2 Black Hole Icon Black Hole Spellsteal Spellsteal 3 Teleport Icon Teleport Safe Passage Safe Passage 4 Magic Weapon Icon Magic Weapon Deflection Deflection
Passive Skills

At the 6-piece Firebird bonus, you finally get to the meeting point of the set's dual mechanics. You will now Ignite enemies with Disintegrate Disintegrate and obliterate them by multiplying the damage of your non-channeled Fire spells by the Combustion stacks. While certainly not the only option, it is suggested that you go with Spectral Blade Spectral Blade Flame Blades Flame Blades and Explosive Blast Explosive Blast Chain Reaction Chain Reaction as your combustion skills.

We have gone over the massive value of Explosive Blast Explosive Blast that you get from Orb of Infinite Depth Orb of Infinite Depth, and now it also gets to trigger the set mechanic. Flame Blades Flame Blades is a very convenient choice as it synergizes with multiple items: The Shame of Delsere The Shame of Delsere and Fragment of Destiny Fragment of Destiny (at least one of which you likely have at this point), as well as stacking up the generator portion of Focus Focus and Restraint Restraint and the shields of Magic Weapon Magic Weapon Deflection Deflection incredibly fast.

You will now transition in an endgame-approximate rotation of Teleport Teleporting around, grouping enemies with Black Hole Black Hole and igniting them via Disintegrate Disintegrate to gain Combustion stacks (keeping your stacks at or near the 50 maximum is very important!), and then spending stacks with Explosive Blast Explosive Blast and Flame Blades Flame Blades spam for utter destruction of anyone in the way. Keep up the Magic Weapon Magic Weapon buff and do not neglect Galvanizing Ward Galvanizing Ward, as they — likely in conjunction with Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer — will keep you alive and safeguard a potential Squirt's Necklace Squirt's Necklace bonus.

Please refer to our endgame Firebird Flame Blades guide to get an in-depth explanation of the necessary rotation, skills, passives, gear and gems, as well as details like stat priorities and breakpoints that will get this beginner Firebird build into endgame Greater Rift pushing.

5.

How to Get This Build Going?

In this section, we'll 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 Reusable Parts, 350 Arcane Dust Arcane Dust, 125 Veiled Crystal Veiled Crystals, 35 Death's Breath Death's Breaths, and 15 of each Bounty cache material: Khanduran Rune Khanduran Rune, Caldeum Nightshade Caldeum Nightshade, Arreat War Tapestry Arreat War Tapestry, Corrupted Angel Flesh Corrupted Angel Flesh, and Westmarch Holy Water 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 Soul Forgotten Souls, 10x Death's Breath 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 to the following.

  • 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 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 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 Aquila Cuirass.
  • Gamble or upgrade rare Bracers for Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer 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 Nemesis Bracers or Ranslor's Folly Ranslor's Folly.
  • Craft lvl 70 Wands at the Blacksmith and use the 'upgrade rare' recipe to obtain Fragment of Destiny 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 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 Firebird Flame Blades Wizard 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 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 Convention of Elements, Focus Focus and Restraint Restraint, and Squirt's Necklace 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 Unity, or Oculus Ring Oculus Ring and The Flavor of Time The Flavor of Time for your Follower.
6.

Changelog

  • 15 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Season 29.
  • 22 Feb. 2023: Reviewed for Season 28.
  • 10 Nov. 2021: Thorough rework for Season 25.
  • 23 Jul. 2021: Reviewed for Season 24.
  • 02 Apr. 2021: Reviewed for Season 23.
  • 13 Mar. 2020: Reviewed for Season 20.
  • 22 Nov. 2019: Page added.
Show more
Show less