Season 6

[Deleted]

You run Ignite + EB + Fire AT and 20 Fire 19 arcane so chantodo does fire as well incase one of the 3 didn't hit.

95 was alrdy done after the Swami change and the addition of 400% more to FB and the 60% DR with those skills. Also he was 1400 paragon too.

I hate to suggest something so similar to another set build, but I have always felt that Firebird should be "Shoot Fire EVERYWHERE, burn everything indiscriminately and run about like a madman cackling with Glee until you get stomped and have to revive like a Phoenix". Having to be much more calculating about ensuring each mob gets hit by 3 different spells just to ensure endless burning seems like it requires too much thought. On the otherhand, if the buff was moved to the player, like Tal Rasha, then 1 Fire spell gives you a buff that applies 1000% fire damage to everything you hit, 2 = 2000% and on the 3rd fire spell anything you with with any fire spell get 3000% and burns until it dies, and you get a nifty aura that reduces damage taken.

You get to keep the "you must use 3 fire spells" but you don't have to be so conscious about what you hit with what spell.

[Coldkil]

I hate to suggest something so similar to another set build, but I have always felt that Firebird should be "Shoot Fire EVERYWHERE, burn everything indiscriminately and run about like a madman cackling with Glee until you get stomped and have to revive like a Phoenix". Having to be much more calculating about ensuring each mob gets hit by 3 different spells just to ensure endless burning seems like it requires too much thought. On the otherhand, if the buff was moved to the player, like Tal Rasha, then 1 Fire spell gives you a buff that applies 1000% fire damage to everything you hit, 2 = 2000% and on the 3rd fire spell anything you with with any fire spell get 3000% and burns until it dies, and you get a nifty aura that reduces damage taken.

You get to keep the "you must use 3 fire spells" but you don't have to be so conscious about what you hit with what spell.

IIRC there's an offhand making your Disintegrate cast your other spenders aswell.

I remeber Firebird Disintegrate being a thing at some point, and i don't know if there's actually room for said offhand, but maybe there's the synergy needed to make it possible with ease. IIRC again, not all spenders are affected by this offhand though, but i suppose that a Hydra+Disintegrate+other spender would be fine.

EDIT: i have just thrown a random setup on d3planner. Turns out it may be working good - i'd like to see how meteor/explosibe blast is going to be procced. http://ptr.d3planner.com/985541667

Also switched from Disintegrate to Arcane torrent due to more dmg reduction and basically all legendaries i wanted work also with it.

EDIT2: works really well with hydra as it doesn't double cast it until it's expired/out of range. Also works with both Blizzard and Black hole so there's a lot of room to work with skills. I'm sure someone will find a better setup.

[Jellospally]

EB and Meteor it only casts it if its off CD and it can only use it as often as the CD as well. At least that how it worked in first PTR of Firebirds when it first got changed.

Nothing is gonna beat Chantodo build unless it actually gets changed to work only with Vyrs.

[Deleted]

IIRC there's an offhand making your Disintegrate cast your other spenders aswell.

I tried a number of builds using Etched sigil. They were Extremely Tanky, with up to 500 million toughness.
Mantle of Channeling, Infinite ORB, APD and Aquilla Cuirass giving many stacking damage reductions on top of the Firebird bonus. You use this build. Skills can change, but I'd consider using meteor with no rune, to get a spammable version.

[Coldkil]

EB and Meteor it only casts it if its off CD and it can only use it as often as the CD as well. At least that how it worked in first PTR of Firebirds when it first got changed.

Nothing is gonna beat Chantodo build unless it actually gets changed to work only with Vyrs.

Yes, they are cast on CD but they don't trigger the actual skill CD. By default, it's cast every second of channeling so skills with no CD are cast once per second for free. As for EB, this means you can cast it manually in addition to the offhand procs, and you can time it so between the two casts there are 3 seconds cd - i'm not counting any CD reduction.
Ypou could swap the Meteor rune to the Shower one, and get a swarm of them cast every second for free.

Yes, Chantodo may be better anyway. I wanted only to come up with a different setup that made the stacking easier.

Another question: FB stacks now depending on used skills. How many damaging skilss do you have with it? Wave and Disintegrate only iirc, meaning you stack only 2 buffs of the set bonus while in Archon. But then again, would like to try it.

- - - Updated - - -

I tried a number of builds using Etched sigil. They were Extremely Tanky, with up to 500 million toughness.
Mantle of Channeling, Infinite ORB, APD and Aquilla Cuirass giving many stacking damage reductions on top of the Firebird bonus. You use this build. Skills can change, but I'd consider using meteor with no rune, to get a spammable version.

Yes, tinkering again with the profile, i have choosen the meteor shower which is cast once per second too.

EDIT: given the choice of gems and all, i came out with this http://ptr.d3planner.com/212179722 because i decided to focus on shields. But yes, you could throw an Aquila/parthan for even more tankiness since i suppose high levels will just melt your shields away.

Anyway, Parthan are an easy swap. Aquila on the other side means no CoE = great damage loss for a very small dmg reduction increase.
counting 5 only stunned monsters for pathan, dmg reduction goes from 95.25% to 97.63%. getting 10 monsters with parthan bring you to the same reduction while running CoE.

EDIT2: for giggles, capping at 20 stunned monsters i can reach 3,937,678,075 toughness with CoE.

[Jellospally]

Ya its 3 spells to cap it. You have 4 using Ignite, EB, Fire AT and Chantodo with 20% fire and 19% arcane. You can cover enough with EB/AT easily and Ignite is kinda random and Chantodo first pulse will cover the rest(unless they haven't gotten hit for over 3 seconds).

Firebirds dot is minimal compared to chantodo anyway so even if a few aren't burning it really doesn't matter.

[Coldkil]

Ya its 3 spells to cap it. You have 4 using Ignite, EB, Fire AT and Chantodo with 20% fire and 19% arcane. You can cover enough with EB/AT easily and Ignite is kinda random and Chantodo first pulse will cover the rest(unless they haven't gotten hit for over 3 seconds).

Firebirds dot is minimal compared to chantodo anyway so even if a few aren't burning it really doesn't matter.

Ok, got it.

Anyway, afaik FB bug was about snapshottin/double dipping the dot counting for a lot more damage than intended. New FB solved the dot double dipping thing, Chantoido AFAIK is still here.

[Jellospally]

Yep. Bug was due to hitting below the threshold they put in place to cause the infinite dot(though you couldn't do it in one hit anyway... so idk why they did it). Which then did all sortas fuky things.

Chantodo in its current state is still too strong to make all but DMO sets play the same thing(as long as twister dies that is .... someday we can hope).

As fun as Firebirds and Tals Chantodo is I wish it was Vyrs thing only and that set was better. Set is a more fun version to play where your actual archon skills do something too.

Make Firebirds and Tals have their own way to play. IE: old Deathwish Disin build when firebirds was first changed or something more oriented around you know... not archon(as much as I love the spell, its a vyrs thing imo).

[Coldkil]

Agree completely. I feel it's just a contradiction to have an Archon-themed set which sucks while other sets are best performing with Archon.

[Kontinuum]

Changes that will affect high-end group dynamics (by Wyatt Cheng)
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/20745654682#1

[Kyanion]

Well this is some good news if these changes are going to be in before next season starts.

[Jellospally]

Well this is some good news if these changes are going to be in before next season starts.

Other than changing how pulling works(unless it is just not posted) its all in other than a Heal Sader Nerf.

Monks got Soothing Mist 60% reduced and Blinding Light from 40% to 25%. WD was obviously already nerfed from the start of the patch.

[Kyanion]

Other than changing how pulling works(unless it is just not posted) its all in other than a Heal Sader Nerf.

Monks got Soothing Mist 60% reduced and Blinding Light from 40% to 25%. WD was obviously already nerfed from the start of the patch.

All in all I'm fine with healing and support builds getting nerfed. Make some new builds stand out for a change and maybe shift things away from the 3 support 1 dps stagnation.

[Jellospally]

All in all I'm fine with healing and support builds getting nerfed. Make some new builds stand out for a change and maybe shift things away from the 3 support 1 dps stagnation.

Idk 3 support is good. People don't realize how fucking cancer it will be to have 4 dps and a couple have low paragon or not the right gear and you might as well have a support who only brings 50% dmg and like 25% dmg reduc.

I don't think anymore than 2/2 is gonna be good for the game. Plus lag is a huge issue they can't fix. Granted they can by making pulling a not thing. Since thats why we get lag because we group up so much and Area Damage is why we lag.

[Kyanion]

Idk 3 support is good. People don't realize how fucking cancer it will be to have 4 dps and a couple have low paragon or not the right gear and you might as well have a support who only brings 50% dmg and like 25% dmg reduc.

I don't think anymore than 2/2 is gonna be good for the game. Plus lag is a huge issue they can't fix. Granted they can by making pulling a not thing. Since thats why we get lag because we group up so much and Area Damage is why we lag.

I'd even be fine with 2/2 or 3 dps/1 support. 4 dps would likely be quite awful. Either way I'm way bored of only one dps being allowed to do the top group content as it limits fun options.

[Kontinuum]

I assume more nerfs are coming in the next patch (Tuesday?).

[Tradu]

The group setup doesn't really bother me that much(although 2/2 or the reverse 1/3 of what we have now would probably make more people happy), I just want more than 1 class to be able to fill the DPS slot. Which hasn't been the case since like... 2 monk+2 barb group setups.

[Sting]

The group setup doesn't really bother me that much(although 2/2 or the reverse 1/3 of what we have now would probably make more people happy), I just want more than 1 class to be able to fill the DPS slot. Which hasn't been the case since like... 2 monk+2 barb group setups.

That's just part of the meta. It's impossible for Blizzard to balance it so perfectly right that every class would do the exact same dps when played perfectly with the best support setup for that class.

Even so, I'd say this only matters if you're pushing for the regionwide rank 1 or close to it.

[Coldkil]

The group setup doesn't really bother me that much(although 2/2 or the reverse 1/3 of what we have now would probably make more people happy), I just want more than 1 class to be able to fill the DPS slot. Which hasn't been the case since like... 2 monk+2 barb group setups.

Yeah, the idea is exactly that. It's not that 1dps/3sup is a problem; the problem is a) supports can buff party damage way more than a dps and b) given previous point, you have room only for the best dps spec in game, making all others useless.

We're always in the rank#1 mentality, most of the discussion doesn't apply to players who just ignore ladders.

[Tradu]

That's just part of the meta. It's impossible for Blizzard to balance it so perfectly right that every class would do the exact same dps when played perfectly with the best support setup for that class.

Even so, I'd say this only matters if you're pushing for the regionwide rank 1 or close to it.

Well sure, there'll always be a best option, but they can at least try to get the gap to the other options a bit smaller(which they sort of said they wanted to do in their big post)