It is a ranged class, thus able to deal damage while risking taking damage. At least less than a melee class. Wizards have the problems you mentioned but I don't think they will be bad for grifts.
And mandatory skills/passives aren't a problem if the few skills left can carry the class DPS-wise. At the moment, the real problem is damage, not survivability. The wizard doesn't have enough damage, so you have to sacrifice a lot of survivability to compensate that lack of DPS. It is a problem because the class can play with less skills, and it's not fair when you see other classes, but each class has its mandatory spells, be it for DPS or survivability (Akarat Champion Horse, Sentry Vault, Spirit Walk, etc...). It's not that bad.
Wizard main problem is everything. Damage output and toughness suck. Channeling spells with get you killed every time. We have one pet and it needs a lot of work to compete.
I just wish they would give us more abilities that deal fire damage. Seems silly the 6 set bonus only works on fire and then give us so few ways to deal fire damage (although i think every wiz would agree that it would be more fun and allow for amazing build diversity if they dropped the whole firebird set must be fire based stuff). Giving a single rune for AT/disintegrate that dealt fire damage I think would open up a lot more builds as right now while I think we scale much better we are still basically forced into mm conflag (less you have a WoW)
Instead of giving the 2 major arcane spells a fire rune maybe it would make sense to grant some buffs to Arcane Orb - Scorcs, the jumping heatwave and meteor?
There are actually quite a lot of fire spells.. It's just that they all suck for some reason.
@SuchFear: Maybe you should make another thread complaining about the droprate of Wand of Woh.
Or not, I already did, and also, firebirds is pretty strong right now, long live wizards!
What they did with firebirds adds so much versatility to the set. I can't wait to dump AT and start using it!
I just got done testing on the PTR with Mirror Ball+Firebirds and I can say things are beginning to look good for wizards.
based on what`? that you do more damage on the PTR than on live? you don't need to "test" that. it's given. but there are still TONS of problems with the wizard, i wouldn't say it does look good, especially as it looks like the devs really have no ideas on the direction in which they want to move wizards. i don't think much will change in 2.1. more damage, but the old problems keep existing (2-3 mandatory "active passives", bad coefficients since the CM nurf, bad distribution of "good" and "bad" skill (just look at our primaries), et cetera).
You posted the same crap in my other thread, have you tested the set yet?
Im confused by the Furnace, I though it has a chance to deal the 6-8% damage everytime you deal damage, but it seems like he only deals damage once then just runs around. Is this how furnace works, because it honestly looks (At least to me) like the effect described by the new Firebird's. But can someone confirm this is how The Furnace works, I have never tried it myself.
Also, it appears that he is wearing 5 pieces of Firebirds with an RROG but I could be wrong.
The damage in the video is from the furnace. But the reason he only attacked once in the video is because MM Conflag applies a fire dot, then the firebird's new 6pc set bonus makes it so any fire damage dealt is dealt again as a dot over 3 seconds, then MM Conflag refreshes and stacks itself up to 3 whenever fire damage is done (firebird set bonus dot), then the new stacked MM Conflag reactivates the set... which refreshes Conflag... and so on.
Don't know if it's working as intended... but I personally like the new firebird set. I've had 6 pieces of firebird stashed away for a long time... switched to WD cause I couldn't really get many more upgrades for my wizard, both similarily geared but wizard had trouble with survivability in T5... but I got on the PTR today and breezed thru T5 with no trouble at all, like my WD would... so I'm happy with the change personally.
Their isn't anything wrong with Wizard. You probably haven't even tested Firebirds yet have you?
Is isn't any other build that will progress any faster than a Wow build. Hydra build takes too much time and all you do is kite.
But only to hit a brick wall called T6. Survivability isn't easy when you're running into crowds in T6 with the EB build. Sure its fun to have but you're only going to be disappointed when you find out it's very limited.
All you need is max damage and fire damage, a little toughness, teleport, hexing pants of my yen, and the wand of woh, also cooldown. It's pretty simple and I was watching inigo melt T6 with it. Everyone saying Wand of Woh is useless and overrated is ignorant or never watch streamers.
EDIT: Tested the Firebirds set and it is pretty nice, I like the set and hopefully I can get my hands on a Serpents Sparker or Wow. (Erased the original Post)
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Their isn't anything wrong with Wizard. You probably haven't even tested Firebirds yet have you?
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Long Live Wizards!