Disclaimer: This guide is the Season 24 Guide for the Firebird Mirror Images Build which does not exist anymore. For up-to-date Firebird guides, go to the Firebird Flame Blades or the Firebird Explosive Blast Guides!
Introduction
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.
But this new rework created a specific playstyle based around channeling Disintegrate to Ignite monsters and build Combustion stacks with the (4) Bonus. These stacks are then used to buff our Ignite DoT when hitting monsters with another Fire ability, on top of reducing our Teleport Cooldown. In Season 24, Ethereals comforted Firebird in its position of strongest build in Diablo III, especially with Mang Song's Lesson allowing the build to annihilate everything as showcased here.
This, however, comes at the price of not being able to benefit from the best way to scale our damage in density: Area Damage (AD) does not work with the Ignite DoT! As a result, we stack Cooldown Reduction and use Pets to maximize our hit count and the resulting Ignite DoT ticks. To get as many (6) BonusIgnite procs as possible, this iteration utilizes Deathwish in conjunction with Mirror Images casting Flame Blades for us (see Mechanics). Let's get into it!
High DPS ✔ Unique Playstyle ✔ Fast Paced Gameplay ✔ Easy to Get Starter Gear ✔
❌ Frustrating Pet AI ❌ Channeling Playstyle ❌ Scales Poorly with Density ❌ Vulnerable to Crowd Control
Core Setup
Items
The Firebird's Finery set provides 80% damage reduction to our character as well as a 5,000% damage multiplier and the central Ignite DoT mechanic.
Deathwish is a staple for any channeling Wizard build, providing us with a 325% separate damage multiplier.
Orb of Infinite Depth grants us a massive 80% damage reduction and a 40% separate damage multiplier when using Explosive Blast.
Ring of Royal Grandeur allows us to complement Firebird's Finery with other sets such as Aughild's Authority and Captain Crimson's Trimmings.
Captain Crimson's Trimmings provides us with 20% Cooldown Reduction and grants us damage and toughness based on our CDR and RCR.
Jewelry Slots offer several options: Endless Walk and Convention of Elements are commonly used in push meanwhile the combination of Squirt's Necklace and Focus&Restraint can be used at higher paragon or for speed runs for more damage.
Global Stat Priorities
You want to stack damage stats wherever possible, especially Critical Hit Chance and Damage as well as Fire Damage. Area Damage is useless in this build (and actively avoided in groups including in Paragon Points). As this build only deals damage with Firebird's Finery(6) BonusIgnite procs, Cooldown Reduction is our most important stat by a long shot in order to maximize Captain Crimson's Trimmings(3) Bonus. It is mandatory to get 4 Arcane Power on Critical Hit (APoC) on your Off-Hand in order to keep channeling Disintegrate for Deathwish, especially for Rift Guardian fights. Attack Speed is not useful as it doesn't scale Mirror Images Attack Rate or Ignite procs damage.
For toughness, we prioritize Vitality and Life % as Mirror Images HP pool is based on our HP pool and double dips these stats (See Mechanics). This is why we aim for around 1 million HP in Greater Rift Solo Push. All Resistances helps to scale Mirror Images toughness as well. In groups, zBarb is incredibly helpful for Mirror Images as they benefit from the 60% Dodge Chance from War Cry Veteran's Warning and the Crowd Control Immunity from Ignore Pain if the buffs are applied directly on them. The next priority would be Armor, mainly in Chest and Pants sockets using Flawless Royal Ruby if you feel too squishy. In solo push, Life per Hit on Bracers is very important to get some welcome recovery.
Crowd Control Reduction is an incredibly valuable secondary Affix to roll on both Rings, Amulet and Helmet as we are extremely sensitive to Hard Crowd Control effects because of Deathwish delay and Mirror Images being crowd controlled, so that mitigating these will ease up our gameplay significantly. Make sure to get the Primary Affixes locked in before attempting to get CCR though. Furthermore even though it only grants Crowd Control Immunity to your character, make sure to use Bottomless Potion of the Unfettered.
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.
Create a level 1 Demon Hunter and upgrade Swords to get In-Geom
Create a level 1 Witch Doctor and upgrade Maces to get Echoing Fury
Rings to get Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac and Rechel's Ring of Larceny
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 2: Gloves of Worship
Act 3: Avarice Band
Act 4: Can drop any bounty item from any act
Bounty Turn In: Recipes for Captain Crimson's Trimmings, Aughild's Authority, Sage's Journey and Cain's Destiny
6. There is one final required piece that is difficult to acquire, The Traveler's Pledge. 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.
Item Stat Priorities
SLOT
ITEM
STAT PRIORITY
Main-Hand
Deathwish Echoing Fury In-Geom (Cubed) The Furnace (Cubed)
1. Damage Range 2. Socket Ramaladnis Gift 3. Cooldown Reduction 4. Damage % 5. Elite Damage 6. Intelligence
Ideally, you want a Cold or Lightning Damage Range in order to get an additional stack of Elemental Exposure.
Off-Hand
Orb of Infinite Depth Etched Sigil Firebird's Eye
1. Arcane Power on Critical Hit 2. Critical Hit Chance 3. Intelligence 4. Elite Damage 5. Cooldown Reduction
Helm
Firebirds Plume The Swami
1. Critical Hit Chance 2. Intelligence 3. Vitality 4. Socket
To avoid Crowd Control effects during your DPS phases
Gems
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.
Taeguk grants us up to 80% additive damage when we channel, which perfectly complements our playstyle.
Zei's Stone of Vengeance replaces Taeguk in groups as zBarb and zDH grant us a massive amount of additive damage, reducing Taeguk benefits.
Enforcer is used in solo variants purely so that Mirror Images don't die, hence we only need to level it up to 25. The damage multiplier is irrelevant as Mirror Images are only used to trigger our (6) Bonus.
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.
For Nephalem Rifts, Boon of the Hoarder is always included due to its amazing synergy with Avarice Band and Goldwrap.
Skills
Disintegrate is the cornerstone of the reworked Firebird's Finery set. Hitting monsters with this skill applies Ignite on top of building Combustion stacks to reduce our Teleport Cooldown and buff our (6) BonusIgnite procs.
Spectral Blade Flame Blades is there so that Mirror Images can cast this skill and also for up to 30% Fire Elemental Damage.
Mirror Image Duplicates is our main damage source as they cast Flame Blades if you have it on your skillbar and can proc the Firebird's Finery(6) Bonus.
Explosive Blast Chain Reaction is an additional damage source alongside Mirror Images. It is a great way to generate numerous hits to proc the Firebird's Finery(6) BonusIgnite as it has no cast animation and won't interfere with our overall gameplay.
Teleport with either Wormhole or Safe Passage is our mobility skill whose Cooldown is reduced to the minimum 0.5 second mark due to the Firebird's Finery(4) Bonus.
Magic Weapon Deflection is used in some setups to generate Shields on every cast to keep us alive and protect our Squirt's Necklace damage multiplier.
Hydra is used in some Rift Guardian Killer variants. You need to use the unruned skill to make it work!
Slow Time Stretch Time is used mainly in some RGK variants to buff the Attack Rate of Mirror Images.
Passives
Galvanizing Ward is used in speed content in order to protect our HP pool and Squirt's Necklace 100% separate damage multiplier in the process.
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.
Audacity provides us with a separate 1.3 multiplier if our target is within 15 yards. Power Hungry is used in some group push variants for its synergy with Zei's Stone of Vengeance.
Evocation grants us 20% Cooldown Reduction to help with Explosive Blast casts while also providing us a decent damage boost due to Captain Crimson's Trimmings(3) Bonus.
Other options can include:
Conflagration to apply a nice 6% Critical Hit Chance debuff on monsters.
Dominance in speed content to help with shield sustain.
Unwavering Will for a toughness boost and 10% additive damage when standing still.
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. Cooldown Reduction
1. Life %
1. Resource Cost Reduction
2. Maximum Arcane Power
2. Critical Hit Damage
2. Armor
2. Life per Hit
3. Intelligence
3. Critical Hit Chance
3. All Resistance
3. Pickup Radius
4. Vitality1
4. Attack Speed
4. Life Regeneration
4. Area Damage2
1 Aim for a decent HP pool (~1,000,000 Life in Solo Push) as your Mirror Images HP pool scale with it. 2 Avoid any source of Area Damage as this build doesn't scale with it and it can lag the game.
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 mainstat (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.
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.
With these in mind, let’s get into our recommendations for this build.
T16 Enchantress
For T16 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 T16 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 extra Elites, Death’s Breaths and In-geom procs.
Avarice Band: For the insane pickup radius.
Ring of Royal Grandeur: To complete our sets.
Gloves of Worship: For 10 Minute Shrine Buffs.
Sage’s Journey: For double Death’s Breaths.
Cain’s Destiny: For 25% more Greater Rift Keystones.
GR Templar
For Greater Rift at lower Paragon or if you feel too squishy we recommend this Templar setup for the sustain from Heal with Hillenbrand's Training Sword to halve its cooldown. He’ll stay alive because we have Enforcer with Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard. This will also give us 10% increased damage from Onslaught, and the Cheat Death from Guardian. If you don't want to bother gearing him, using Enchanting Favor to make him invulnerable is possible.
Stat Priorities:
Since we do not have the immortality relic, we need to stack survivability on our Templar.
Strength > Cooldown Reduction > Vitality > Life % > All Resistance > Armor > 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.
Leoric's Crown and Captain Crimson's Trimmings: For more Cooldown Reduction on Heal.
GR Enchantress
For Greater Rift we recommend this Enchantress setup because she is the only follower that gives a wide array of offensive and defensive buffs. She’ll stay alive because we have Enforcer with Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard and use Hand of the Prophet to gain all skills. This will give us Attack Speed, Cooldown Reduction, Elemental Damage, Reduced Damage from Ranged Attacks, Armor, and a Cheat Death.
If you don't want to bother gearing her, using Smoking Thurible to make her invulnerable is possible.
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.
Blind Faith and Cord of the Sherma: To consistently blind monsters and the Rift Guardian, protecting our Mirror Images.
Ice Climbers: To make your follower immune to Freeze and Immobilize effects.
Tal Rasha's Relentless Pursuit and Cain's Destiny: For more Attack Speed.
Gameplay
The general playstyle for pushing Greater Rifts with Firebird's FineryMirror Image is pretty straightforward once you get all your buffs running. The first thing to do is cast Disintegrate for 2 seconds to build your Combustion stacks for 80% damage reduction and a 0.5 second Teleport Cooldown. Use Teleport to get the Safe Passage 25% damage reduction and cast Explosive Blast Chain Reaction to build your Orb of Infinite Depth stacks for another 80% damage reduction.
The only thing left to do is to Teleport around and bodypull enemies together using Disintegrate while spamming Explosive Blast to keep Orb of Infinite Depth stacks up at all times. Never stop castingExplosive Blast Chain Reaction! A few seconds before your FireConvention of Elements cycle starts:
Set up on a pull of monsters with Teleport.
Channel Disintegrate to get your Combustion stacks to 50 and make sure all monsters are ignited.
Cast a few Flame Blades to get some Fire Elemental Damage but only if the density is decent or if you're playing with Focus&Restraint to refresh the damage multiplier buff. It is important to cast them before Mirror Images (especially when using Taeguk) because Flame Blades animation can be canceled early.
Cast Mirror Image Duplicates, preferably back to a wall or in the middle of the monsters so they're not instantly running away instead of casting.
Channel Disintegrate to gain Deathwish separate damage multiplier after its 1 second delay.
Sit back and watch Mirror Images destroy monsters with their Flame Blades!
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. All iterations use Orb of Infinite Depth for another 80% damage reduction. The set also allows us to get a 0.5 second cooldown on Teleport to escape danger at any time and, last but not least, Shield mechanics can be used with Galvanizing Ward and Magic Weapon Deflection for another layer of defense to guarantee you'll never die!
Variants
Nephalem Rifts
GR Solo Speeds
GR Group Speeds
GR Solo Push
GR Group RGK
Concept Like usual we utilize Boon of the Hoarder with Goldwrap and Avarice Band to become invincible and instantly vacuum the juicy Progression Orbs from Elites.
Since Mirror Images are not fit for T16 Nephalem Rifts, we focus on Explosive Blast Chain Reaction in conjunction with Cooldown Reduction and Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac to kill monsters.
Gameplay Immediately cast Disintegrate to build Combustion stacks. Another good trick is to numlock Explosive Blast. While Teleport is a good mobility skill, its animation time and minimum 0.5 second cooldown are the reasons why we will move faster by running around using the Movement Speed buffs of Boon of the Hoarder, Echoing Fury, Rechel's Ring of Larceny and Illusionist.
Move from Elite to Elite and use Teleport only to keep up the Illusionist Movement Speed buff. Then cast Disintegrate on top of your character to proc an Energy Twister from Etched Sigil that sucks all the monsters in while you Ignite them with Explosive Blast Chain Reaction doing the work.
Setups If you lack damage early in a season, remove Echoing Fury to equip In-Geom and cube Orb of Infinite Depth. If you don't like the Ranslor's Folly playstyle, you can swap them with Warzechian Armguards and equip Orb of Infinite Depth while keeping both Echoing Fury and In-Geom.
In groups, replace Warzechian Armguards with Nemesis Bracers and Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac with Avarice Band. Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac is mainly used to help us kill the first Elite pack to get our In-Geom proc so losing it should not impact you in parties as your teammates can help you kill the first Elite. If you are comfortable enough with your damage, use Sage's Journey instead of Captain Crimson's Trimmings. On the Rift Guardian, you can swap to Cain's Destiny while keeping your Firebird's Finery(6) Bonus if you rotate out Etched Sigil for Firebird's Eye.
Concept Explosive Blast is still one of our damaging abilities but we add Mirror Image Duplicates to burst down tougher monsters. We replace Boon of the Hoarder with Taeguk for additional 80% additive damage as we channel all the time due to Deathwish.
Gameplay Your biggest enemy will be Hard Crowd Control Effects since you have no way of mitigating these except for Crowd Control Reduction on your Amulet, Helmet and Rings. Don't forget to refresh your Bastions of Will buffs with Flame Blades before casting Mirror Images and channel. For a step-by-step gameplay description on how you should sequence your skills, check out the "Gameplay" section above.
Setups Replace Bane of the Powerful with Enforcer if your Mirror Images are dying too much. If your survivability is an issue, swap out Bane of the Powerful for Esoteric Alteration 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.
Concept In Group Speeds the setup is exactly the same you use in Solo Speeds with the exception of can replacing Dominance with Elemental Exposure for more damage. The setup revolves around two Mirror Images Wizards supported by a zBarb pulling Elites and grouping monsters together so you can hit many targets at once, with a zDH tremendously buffing your damage.
Gameplay The gameplay stays the same as in Solo Speeds: rush to Elites and big pulls of monsters, kill them and move onto the next pull quickly. Luckily, you won't have to care about Crowd Control Effects since the zBarb is providing you with Ignore Pain Mob Rule. Don't forget to refresh your Bastions of Will buffs with Flame Blades before casting Mirror Images and channel.
Setups As there are two Mirror Images Wizards in the party, the Wizard with the least damage should replace Elemental Exposure with Conflagration to provide everyone with a 6% Critical Hit Chance debuff.
Reverse ArchonMirror Image is a possible setup with 67.5% Cooldown Reduction to get a 39 seconds Archon Cooldown and Dominance to sustain shields for Squirt's Necklace but can be wildly inconsistent due to Pet AI in comparaison to a Reverse ArchonFlame Blades setup found here.
Concept This build is very straightforward in terms of gearing. We use the same setup as in Speeds with the exception we take more toughness with Flawless Royal Ruby and more Vitality. We also take Enforcer to ensure our Mirror Images don't die as they are pretty squishy.
Gameplay As usual, Hard Crowd Control Effects when you're actively channeling Disintegrate to buff your damage are going to be your worst enemy since you have no way of mitigating these except for Crowd Control Reduction. Cast Frost Nova right before casting Mirror Images to protect them. For a step-by-step gameplay description on how you should sequence your skills, check out the "Gameplay" section above.
On single target Rift Guardians, you will have troubles with Arcane Power, just make sure you can channel during your CoE Fire cycle.
Setups At lower Paragon, cubing Mantle of Channeling instead of Tasker and Theo is a good option and you can also use Blur. You can replace Enforcer with Zei's Stone of Vengeance for more damage or Invigorating Gemstone for the welcomed Crowd Control Immunity for lower Greater Rift pushing. This build has great single target damage so we usually don't need Bane of the Stricken.
You can use different followers: Enchantress with all skills (Hand of the Prophet) or Templar with halved cooldowns (Hillenbrand's Training Sword) as they can survive due to our Enforcer 90% Pet damage reduction, but you can just play with the immortality token (Smoking Thurible or Enchanting Favor) if you want to. At lower Paragon or if you want to feel safer, the Templar is a great choice due to its Heal while the Enchantress is a more cut-throat full damage option.
Select Build Version
Standard Setup
Concept You're the Rift Guardian Killer. As usual we stack as much Cooldown Reduction as possible for Captain Crimson's Trimmings (3) Bonus, but we add Bane of the Stricken as third gem and fit Elite Damage where we can. We also utilize Power Hungry to take full advantage of Zei's Stone of Vengeance. One Arcane Power on Critical Hit (APoC) roll is critical to fuel Disintegrate channeling costs.
Tasker and Theo is used as it increases the Attack Rate of Mirror Images and Hydra. 7% Increased Attack Speed on Weapon will allow you to reach the 30 FPA Hydra Breakpoint.
Gameplay Before your Fire Convention of Elements cycle, cast your Mirror Images and Hydra on the Rift Guardian, Teleport 40 yards away for Zei's Stone of Vengeance and Power Hungry then start channeling Disintegrate. Go back on the Rift Guardian afterwards to refresh your Orb of Infinite Depth stacks and stack Bane of the Stricken using Flame Blades but make sure you're 40 yards away and channeling for every Fire Convention of Elements cycle. Unfortunately Rift Guardians that are teleporting around or summon minions are tough to deal with.
Setups At lower Paragon, Slow Time Stretch Time is generally more beneficial than Hydra as it buffs the Trash Killer with 10% Attack Speed while also applying a 20% Attack Speed Debuff on monsters. Slow Time Stretch Time also benefits you as it buffs the Attack Rate of Mirror Images. If you feel too squishy, swap out Conflagration to take Unwavering Will or Blur instead.
Concept You're the Rift Guardian Killer. This setup is a more endgame oriented Reverse Archon variant with a 48 seconds cycle, the idea being to spawn the Rift Guardian while in Archon to benefit from 100+ Archon stacks given by your Trash Killer and prompty kill the Rift Guardian.
In order to include The Swami and Fazula's Improbable Chain and take Archon on your skillbar, you have to give up Captain Crimson's Trimmings and Orb of Infinite Depth, which is why we take The Furnace. As always, one Arcane Power on Critical Hit (APoC) roll is critical to fuel Disintegrate channeling costs.
Gameplay Before your Fire Convention of Elements cycle, cast your Mirror Images and Hydra on the Rift Guardian, Teleport 40 yards away for Zei's Stone of Vengeance and Power Hungry then start channeling Disintegrate. Go back on the Rift Guardian afterwards to stack Bane of the Stricken using Flame Blades but make sure you're 40 yards away and channeling for every Fire Convention of Elements cycle. Unfortunately Rift Guardians that are teleporting around or summon minions are tough to deal with.
Setups If you feel too squishy, swap out Conflagration to take Unwavering Will or Blur instead.
Video Guide
Mechanics
Firebirds Finery
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.
The Ignite DoT benefits 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, Multishot Wind Chill or Conflagration don'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, Multishot Wind Chill or Conflagration do 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.
Only the unruned Hydra procs the (6) Bonus, Blazing Hydra and Mammoth Hydrado not work.
Mirror Images
Mirror Images cast some spells equipped on your skillbar with the assigned rune. They cast Flame Blades and Explosive Blast and can proc the Firebird's Finery(6) Bonus. They can cast Hydra but it cannot proc the Firebird's Finery(6) Bonus.
Firebird's Finery(6) Bonus procs from Mirror Images are considered to be your damage, meaning Oculus Ring procs without any trouble unlike most Pet builds.
They last for 7 seconds, meaning they can each cast up to 7 skills by default as their Flame Blades and Explosive Blast have a base 60 FPA. Tasker and Theo works but only allow them to cast up to 9 skills (42 FPA Breakpoint). Slow Time Stretch Time also buff their Attack Rate, allowing them to do up to 11 casts when combined with Tasker and Theo (36 FPA Breakpoint). However in the latter case, their first cast is going to be Slow Time so they do 10 effective casts.
Mirror Images' HP pool takes a percentage of your HP pool as base (50% for Duplicates) then scales similarly to other Pets, adding your Vitality * 100 to this base HP and using your HP % as a separate multiplier. This means your HP pool double dips into your Mirror Images' HP pool.
Like most Pets, Mirror Images scale their toughness with All Resistances while Armor and Damage Reduction sources have no effect besides Enforcer. They benefit from Dodge Chance (War Cry Veteran's Warning) and double dip All Resistances buffs like Mantra of Salvation. Inspiring Presence Life Regeneration is also double dipped by them. Mirror Images summoned while Shield Pylon is active do not get the invulnerability effect.
Casts from Mirror Images proc your Arcane Power on Critical Hit if you have some on your equipment.
They can be crowd controlled (frozen, jailed, knocked back...) but they are affected by Crowd Control Reduction on your equipment as well as Ignore Pain Mob Rule and Inner Sanctuary Temple of Protection Crowd Control Immunity.
Mirror Images are not affected by Fragment of Destiny, Mirrorball and The Shame of Delsere.
Mirror Images can proc the Firebird's Finery(2) BonusMeteor upon dying a first time but do not proc the (6) Bonus with it.
Mirror Images have a pretty bad AI and often run away instead of attacking with Flame Blades. This is due to specific monster immunities and aggro mechanics, which affects some monster types but also Shielding and Juggernaut affixes as well as some Rift Guardians. The best way to avoid that is summoning them while surrounded by monsters or in a tight spot.
Deathwish
When channeling Arcane Torrent, Ray of Frost or Disintegrate, the Deathwish 325% damage multiplier is activated after 60 frames of channeling (1 second) and lasts for as long as you channel, dropping immediatly when you interrupt the channel.
Being teleported by the Wormhole Elite affix doesn't interrupt the Deathwish damage multiplier.
Due to this 1 second delay, it is not always optimal to teleport into an Oculus Ring proc during a damage burst.
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.
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 build procs by default the Fire stack with Explosive Blast and Flame Blades and the Arcane stack with Disintegrate. Some variants might use Frost Nova, which procs the Cold stack. This is why Item Stat Priorities state you want a Weapon with Lightning or eventually Cold Damage Range.
The 5% damage from each stack is additive to each other adding up to a total of 20% separate damage multiplier.
Console Version
On Console Versions, the build replaces Mirror Images by Energy Twister Gale Force.
The main reason is that channeling mechanics are different on Console: it is possible to cast Energy Twister while channeling without interruption.
This means you can selfcast Energy Twister while channeling, maintaining the damage multipliers from Deathwish and Mantle of Channeling at all times.
The gameplay is similar to the Mirror Images setup described in this guide, the main difference being that you want to pull monsters in tight spots in order to make Twisters bounce on walls to maximize hits for the Firebird's Finery(6) Bonus.
In order to sustain the heavy Arcane Power cost of Energy Twister Gale Force (35 AP base cost), the console variant uses Magic Weapon Conduit and at least one Resource Cost Reduction roll (Shoulders).
Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac allows for more Explosive Blast casts and permanent Diamond Skin Crystal Shell uptime, so that Squirt's Necklace can be used.
Attack Speed has more value in this setup to increase your Energy Twister Attack Speed Breakpoint.
Summary
Put together the core items and acquire the full Firebird's Finery set.
Channel Disintegrate at the start of every Rift for damage reduction and infinite Teleports.
Try not to get mad at Mirror Images running away!
Hard Crowd Controls Effects are now your worst nightmare!