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So, I started a discussion with darthjt in the Wild Bolt thread that was veering into a different topic and so I decided to start this one. I'd like to have a discussion about whether or not others feel that KI is making other schools dominant. Picking up where we left off:

darthjt wrote:

gtarhannon wrote:

At the risk of going completely off topic here, I'm going to go ahead and give a detailed response because I hope that it can give some context to the whole reason that wild bolt is being addressed in the first place.

I don't think that they went overboard, however, I also don't think that they thought it through. Wild bolt is supposed to be "wild" and that is what they were trying to address. However, they ended up neutering it because now in all likelihood, it will cost you 2 pips for a spell that does 10 or 100 damage, and can strip traps and blades. It has always been used as a pip building spell and it can't be used for that any more. I don't work for KI and I'm not going to sit here and defend their poll. I think it was ill-advised to take a poll showing overwhelming disapproval and then ignore it. I'm totally with you on that point.

I only looked at level 56 boots, hat, robe, athame, and a ring. Clearly, I didn't look that hard because +26% targeting is almost nothing for storm these days. Lets just say that the gent I saw with +61% targeting had to jimmy stuff around by level 56 and is now down to +50% targeting and only +55% storm damage. With the use of unstoppable, he still has a 90% chance of dealing 1550 points of damage for 2 pips using zero blades or traps.

darthjt wrote:

Still, every talks about all the accuracy increases in the game, but those increases come with consequences. No Health and No resistances. Also, they require uses of training points. Yet, this is the biggest waste that was incorperated, because why have a spell to increase accuracy of 20% for 4 rounds and Unstoppable card for +30% accuracy? out of all the spells, 70% accuracy is the lowest accuracy now that they have made bolt useless, so these enhancements are now useless also.

Everything in the game has consequences. If I pick items with the biggest shielding, I'm not likely to boost much damage. That's where the strategy comes in. On the training points... Are you are referring to the new astral schools here? The purpose of accuracy boosts, as illustrated above, is primarily for storm spells or to possibly negate the effects of black mantle and smoke screen. The most useful thing I can think of would be for schools who train storm as their second school because they don't have the gear accuracy.

Having both unstoppable and the +20% targeting star spell would likely be because some folks would rather aura, and some would rather unstoppable to build treasure cards. There are merits to both, but its more a preference issue. I tend to think that this is another unintended consequence issue for KI because the only spell in the game that could benefit from them combined is the formerly "wild" bolt spell.

darthjt wrote:

One final thought, you say that KI is not making other schools dominant. A few examples of other schools dominance.
ICE- Thought to be weakest class? Ice Blade amulet +45%, Ice Blade +40%, Elemental Blade +35%, Dragon Blade +30% (and if you like to spend a little gold (Treasure card Elemental Blade +40 %), and this is just in blades, not to mention traps, bubble, and feints, or gargatuan! Need I say more? Plus Ice has tower shield and Resistance to ALL! and High Health!

I have not seen the new Ice blade amulet, but the rest are all things that storm can do as well. Use disarm, or simply hit them with leviathan which will remove two positive charms. Using the level 56 gear from the bazaar that I mentioned earlier in this post:

A Gargantuaned Storm Lord deals 940 base damage with stun to all.

Typically cast on round 2 of the game, lets say you cast stormblade first, and then lord. Stormblade is 30% and your gear is 68% with a 96% chance of success. Assume no criticals. The math is: 1.68 x 1.30 = 2.18, 2.18 x 940 = 2049.2. On round 2 you have dealt approximately 2049 storm damage to all and stunned. It gets better. You have one friend with you that casts treasure elemental balance blade as well. That is: 1.68 x 1.30 x 1.40 = 3.06, 3.06 x 940 = 2876.4. You see where I'm going with this right?

Lets say you have a full team. The spells cast are stormblade, treasure and regular elemental balance blade, and dragonblade. The math on that is: 1.68 x 1.30 x 1.40 x 1.35 x 1.30 = 5.366088, 5.366 x 940 = 5044.04. Lets say that your team goes first and that round one each opposing team member casts storm shield. We'll say that you have the number 2 position because you have strategy. Guy one casts tempest, you lord, the other two do what the other two do. My ice in test realm was +37% resist to all and around 3100 health. Tempest takes out my storm shields and I get hit with 3177 damage after resist. I probably had the best chance of living.

All of this assumes no criticals. I fail to see how ice is dominant there. Same applies to the rest of your examples (only ice quoted). You can heal too through training or treasure cards. Forest Lord is still less damage than Storm Lord, takes one more pip, and doesn't have any after effects. They can't heal if they're dead.

Skeletal dragon is great, but its a damage over time spell for one target and no after effects. I am still failing to see dominance here, only differences.

To summarize:

Have you noticed the common theme? They all need blades. What is one of your primary powers? To remove blades. What does leviathan do? It removes 2 blades.

Coming back to the topic of this thread... without the old wild bolt, things are weird and still settling out but not completely out of balance. With it, its ridiculously out of balance. That's why KI needs to address it. Did they get the fix right? No, I don't think they did. Will they eventually? I hope so, but again, I don't work for them so I don't know. I hope you take this in the constructive tone which I am hoping I have conveyed it in because I am not trying to start a fight. I'm just trying to show (from my perspective) that I don't think any school is now becoming dominant or completely unbalanced.

Thanks for listening.

Ok, this is not an arguement, but, you stated your point, now let me state mine. Yes, I understand that all the increased accuracy of storm is why Bolt had to be dealt with. Yet, as I stated, it made no sense to allow all the accuracy increases when 70% was the lowest spell except for Bolt.

Now, they want to get around Smoke Screen and Black Mantle? Then why even have those spells in the game? It drops your percentage, but you can still get the spells to work. That is what sniper, accuracy, and other treasure cards are for. If I got a black mantle or a smoke screen, I simply ddid not attempt to cast Bolt. Not that I ever used it often, mainly when I went into a Boss, I would spend a wild Bolt Shot at the minion to see if I could make it a 1v1. If not, I would blade up, then Storm Lord.

Anyway, that is getting off the issue. This is not the test realm, we human players only start out with 4 pips, not 6 like in test realm. We dont get to cast powerful attacks second round. Our enemies can, but not us. Yes, I do realize the power of Storm, even without the use of Bolt, never said we were not powerful. Yet, We do have the worst health imaginable. 1980 at level 50.

We do not have multi round attacks, or damage over time, we have 1 shot. So, with a storm shield, subtract 80% damage right there. or 70%, either way. Some really go all out and use storm shield and tower shield, or 2 different storm shields. So yes, I agree, a lot of times, you would have 2 storms, one to take out shields and the other to kill the opponent.

yet, what you dont seem to understand is that nothing is being taken away from other schools. Balance has shifted. Yes, Leviathan can take 2 blades away, great. But how long is Storm going to last with low resistance and very low health?

You said that Life is like Storm Lord, except not as powerful. Yet, if my memory serves me correctly, Life gets a +40 Blade? You say the most you have seen ice with is 26 resist all? You sound like you have been around, but if that is the most you have seen, then maybe you haven't. Ice has been seen up to 61% resist all spells. Plus, storm shields, plus tower shields, and anything else you would like to throw at them. You say tower shields are easy to take out, yes they are, but Ice can have 7 in their deck, plus storm shields, plus enchanted shields. And Ice, can hit as fast as storm with Stun. And, if bladed properly, as hard as storm does. Plus, Ice has 3500 health at level 50. compared to 2000 for storm.

Just saying

So, take a good spell from Storm, but nothing from any other school. What about judgment? A critical on a judgment spell is instant death, because the only shield is tower shield. So, Critical is the new Bolt, for all schools, and Storms Bolt is a pip waster?

My Suggestion, and I will say it again. Make it 50/50 200 damage or 1000 damage, heck, I would even settle for 100 or 1000 if it is a 50/50 shot. Or, if they insist on leaving it this way, making it a 0 pip spell. But the way bolt is now, most of the time, you are just throwing pips away

Hey darthjt. I hope that you find this thread and continue our discussion. I'm going to go ahead and make the points I wanted to earlier here:

darthjt wrote:

Anyway, that is getting off the issue. This is not the test realm, we human players only start out with 4 pips, not 6 like in test realm. We dont get to cast powerful attacks second round. Our enemies can, but not us. Yes, I do realize the power of Storm, even without the use of Bolt, never said we were not powerful. Yet, We do have the worst health imaginable. 1980 at level 50.

Is that natural or augmented with gear. I don't have a storm yet, so I don't know.

darthjt wrote:

We do not have multi round attacks, or damage over time, we have 1 shot. So, with a storm shield, subtract 80% damage right there. or 70%, either way. Some really go all out and use storm shield and tower shield, or 2 different storm shields. So yes, I agree, a lot of times, you would have 2 storms, one to take out shields and the other to kill the opponent.

You have options for damage over time, either with pet spells, or low pip spells such as fire elf, etc. You also can arm a storm wand and break shields. You can do high damage without the use of blades because gear boosts are so high in addition to the highest base damage in the game. You are also the only class in the game to have a rank X spell which hits all enemies.

darthjt wrote:

yet, what you dont seem to understand is that nothing is being taken away from other schools. Balance has shifted. Yes, Leviathan can take 2 blades away, great. But how long is Storm going to last with low resistance and very low health?

I understand that they have only created a different problem with the new bolt spell. I sympathize with you and I hope that they come up with a better solution in the future. But what is really being taken away here in terms of what was intended? The bolt spell was never intended to be relied on. It was a random success spell that with luck ended an enemy before they could do anything. With criticals, you still probably still have that chance or a better one.

Let's have a look shall we? Kraken. 4 pip spell with damage in the range of 520-580. Add gargantuan and now its 770-830. Let's continue with the damage boosts for the generic level 56 bazaar gear that I have been using which was 68%. Without a blade or a critical, that's damage in the range of 1293 to 1394. With a critical, that's damage in the range of 2587 to 2788. That's one hit kill range for most enemies if critical, and "oh geez, I need to heal" range otherwise.

I would argue that balance hasn't shifted so much as, well, balanced a little.

darthjt wrote:

You said that Life is like Storm Lord, except not as powerful. Yet, if my memory serves me correctly, Life gets a +40 Blade? You say the most you have seen ice with is 26 resist all? You sound like you have been around, but if that is the most you have seen, then maybe you haven't. Ice has been seen up to 61% resist all spells. Plus, storm shields, plus tower shields, and anything else you would like to throw at them. You say tower shields are easy to take out, yes they are, but Ice can have 7 in their deck, plus storm shields, plus enchanted shields. And Ice, can hit as fast as storm with Stun. And, if bladed properly, as hard as storm does. Plus, Ice has 3500 health at level 50. compared to 2000 for storm.

Yes. I said that Forest Lord (Rank 8 spell) is weaker than Storm Lord (Rank 7 spell) but with no stun or any other after effect. Life gear damage boosts are nowhere close to storm, so how does a 40% blade matter, when your 30% blade and your gear is going to be a higher cumulative multiplier on a higher base damage spell?

On the ice resist. The highest I've seen is 36% resist to all, so I may have had a typo. We can agree that a combination of gear resulting in a 61% resist to all spells is broken. I wouldn't support anything over 45% and I would tend to feel more comfortable with a max of 40% for that category.

On the shields arguments. I'm afraid those fall on deaf ears with me. I know that they can can have 7 of each, but but you can have 7 -70% ice shields and tons of -55% tower shields in your sidedeck (assuming you don't learn a regular tower shield as well), and -80% ice shields (usually at least 5 depending on your deck). The biggest problem with this argument from personal experience is that when have this many, its VERY difficult to get blades and attack spells to come up. Sure, gargantuan helps everyone with damage but we're well into the black art of setting up your deck here.

On the health. At level 55, my base ice base health is 2181. Because I like balanced gear favoring high resist and decent targeting and damage, I have never personally exceeded 3300 health (though I know its possible) because that requires giving up a lot of resist, and often damage or targeting as well. I am actually under 3000 currently. It also appears that gear giving ice a real option of criticals comes with heavy loss of resist, so we're back to the tradeoffs issue. Even with criticals and gargantuan, you're likely to survive any unbladed ice attack, and the ones that have a chance of killing you require at least a round to build pips during which point you could shield.

darthjt wrote:

So, take a good spell from Storm, but nothing from any other school. What about judgment? A critical on a judgment spell is instant death, because the only shield is tower shield. So, Critical is the new Bolt, for all schools, and Storms Bolt is a pip waster?

I hear a lot of complaints about judgement. Judgement takes quite a lot of build time, there are multiple versions of tower that can be applied to layer your defense, and I have to call foul on the critical because as demonstrated with your 4 pip kraken above, storm can one hit kill with a critical much sooner than judgement.

To summarize, with the exception of being able to resist all above a 40%-45% level (which I agree is wrong), I remain unconvinced that any class has become more dominant than another. I also remain unconvinced that even if bolt went completely away, that everything is somehow tipped in favor of every school but storm. I would like to hear other people's thoughts on it as well.

colagada wrote:

Moderators: this needs to be moved to PvP, in my opinion. Most of the "discussion" in the old thread involves complaints by PvP players, and the opening poster has brought it all to a new thread here.

So that I'm on topic, I'm going to list my views here.

Most Storm Grandmasters who I've spoken to don't have a Wild Bolt card in their deck, unless they're in the Arena. The few who do carry them for PvE generally cast it if it's in the deck at the start of a battle as sort of a free shot at 1,000 points; if it misses, they discard any additional ones, as they now have enough points to do damage with 70% spells.

I don't believe that any spell that can be cast by a level 5 wizard (as a treasure card) should be able to do 1,000 damage, no matter how low the probability.

I don't believe that any spell that can be cast with only two pips should be able to do 1,000 damage, no matter how low the probability.

As far as I'm concerned, the spell benefits two types of players: the kind who want a quick win in PvP, and the kind who want to impress everybody with how good they are at level 5 in PvP.

Now for a solution: eliminate Wild Bolt altogether, and replace it with a light Damage-over-Time spell, similar to Fire Elf (Storm already has too much power to get a HeckHound-strength spell).

If Wild Bolt is returned to its former status, then every other school should also get a 10% 1,000 damage spell, and Storm can have the "Storm-Elf" spell to compensate.
If Wild Bolt is returned to its former status, then every school should have a similar card that does 1,000 damage with 10% probability.

Hey Colagada. While there is discussion of the Wild Bolt decision in this thread, I wasn't trying to make it about that specifically, or about PvP specifically. I know there's a ton of conversation in the first post (I clicked submit on accident before I could add my comments), but this is to discuss everyone's opinions about specifics that may make one school dominant vs. another one.

That being said, I would support replacing bolt with a storm-elf like spell. I think a lot of storm players would be ok with that... particularly at the 2 pip level because a common complaint is the amount of shields available. I hesitate to talk too much about bolt because I don't want this to be another wild bolt discussion. That's why I veered off to a new thread.