So i was looking at the top players, and they were all using firebird last season. New season is free firebird set, so I figured why not.

I went with the skills/passives all the top players went for.
Frost nova - bonechill
Ice armor - crystalize
Archon - combustion
Magic Weapon - Deflection
Spectral Blades - flame blades
Black hole - spell steal

with passives
Evocation
Unstable Anomaly
Blur
Audacity

Im full firebirds, with some defensive items like ashneggars blood bracer (to increase deflection shield) and im focusing a lot on toughness. But holy shit, when im not in archon form im fucking useless. I cant kill shit cause I cant get 3 fire spells to ignite the enemy with. I am not nearly tanky enough (like 9mil defense with ice armor up) and 20-40k life on hit. Im at like 50% CDR to use archons as much as possible, and kanai cubes In - Geom for even quicker Archon cooldown, as well as The Swami for the down time when Archon isn't up to help with damage.

But yeah, when Im in archon form i can insta gib bosses in torment 7, 100-0 in less than a second. When not in archon form, im barely able to kill non-elites and die in like 2-3 seconds. Wtf am i doing wrong that the top tier players are doing differently? (Yes i know they have min maxed gear, but thats why they're doing GR 105, im having trouble with 30. So im doing something else wrong outside of just "better gear")

Really? not a single post, thanks guys

rip

You should be using ancient parthian defenders with fire% and 11-12% damage reduction on them. Freeze counts as stun for those things

Halo of Arlyses + ancient parthen defenders m8

I have a small tip.. use the cdr potion. I use it and when I leave archon form it gives u an instant 20% of your cdr. Even if you don't need to heal it is a free heal to your cdr. Also, I just started playing again 2 days ago so I'm no expert but for the archon/tals set I use the archon stacks belt and so I still do a ton of damage outside of archon mode. Not sure if that's still the best with your build but worth trying. I just solo'd a gr70 and it's my 3rd day playing since like 4 seasons ago. Game too easy now:(

Swami will never make you actually deal legitimate damage to whites, only to elites which survived your time as an archon. You need the firebirds multiplicative bonus to be doing damage. Until you get to very high levels, I'd say use aquila cuirass here. The suggestions of the ring and the bracers are good ones. Your CDR isn't enough, is a big part of your problem. The goal is to be archon 3/4 of the time, spend the rest of the time getting chantodos stacks and finding the next pack. You will ALWAYS suck against whites unless you take the time to ignite 20 of them, or have a pack ignited already and and just wander into white piles for mass murder.
PS, I suggest you swap flame blades to arcane torrent - lightning bolts rune because otherwise you have to be close. Just make sure you're staying north of 90% resource which is usually fire, wander, fire, wander, etc.
Spell steal is a skill that requires a decent amount of practice. Switch to teleprots instead, to find more packs. Especially when in-geom is in use.
Use gogok of swiftness if you can't get more CDR easily.

it could be your passive still set up what do you have picked?