The above is a quick Torment VI run to test 6-pieces of Firebird’s Finery using Magic Missile/Conflagrate and Mammoth Hydra. Item details at start of clip.
The 6-set bonus (along with a +2 Mirror Ball) allows my character to move from T4 solo (optimal) on live to T6 solo. Previous PTR build allowed my arcane wizard to move to T5 solo but was not very effective at T6 and had much slower clear speed at T5 than the above.
Note: I did try Disintegrate/Arcane Torrent again and like the first PTR build, did not find them compelling enough to bother… Sure, the initial 30 AP cost was removed, but with the lowered initial damage, it takes a couple of seconds to ramp back up to the original damage levels. By the time I even get to the higher damage levels (if my channeling hasn’t yet been interrupted by self/force), I’m out of AP.
With the above, I don’t even have to worry about AP. I can cast one set-and-forget hydra for 15 AP which lasts 15 seconds and spam off a non-spender.
The rift in this clip had some of the worst elite packs in the game (corrupted angels, anarchs, winged assassins, mallet lords) and I played it fairly sloppily on purpose where aside from having a thumb on the spacebar to stand still when needed, it was mostly one handed play with my mouse spamming left-click.
My character’s eHP/toughness isn’t what I would call great either for T6, but it managed fairly well even when I mis-clicked/teleported to the wrong spot since I rarely kept a finger near that button/didn’t move quickly enough because I was looking at something else on my iPad.
Mammoth Hydra does most of the damage (no Serpent’s Sparker here so only one hydra is up; a decent SS is probably one of the end game weapons for the class at this time). A single hydra still procs electrified way too much (several packs had that affix); funny how quickly they hotfix proc issues with character classes/items, but it takes them forever to address something like this when it’s a monster.
Everything else I have to say about the set is in this previous post.
July 18th update: because I’ve taken to not reading the Battle.net forums (to the point of also deny myself access), I didn’t even realize there was a bug with the Firebird set where the 6-piece bonus was not working with pets (in this case, hydra). Thus in the above, it shows just how much better Mammoth Hydra is sans the bonus, and just how much better it will be (unless the devs tweak the damage numbers) once this is fixed.
