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Balance School is Unbalanced.

1
AuthorMessage
Explorer
Dec 30, 2014
80
Elemental Shield- Fire, Ice and Storm -50% damage
Spirit Shield- Life, Death and Myth -50% damage

Elemental Diffuse- Dispel next outgoing Fire, Ice and Storm spell
Spirit Diffuse- Dispel Next outgoing Life, Death and Myth spell

Notice how both of these sets of spells involve all 6 schools?
3 on each side- perfectly "balanced"

Now look at these:

Spectral Minion- Summon (at random) a fire, ice or storm minion.
Spectral Blast- Deal (at random) fire, ice or storm damage.
Hydra- Same as spectral blast but stronger and all three instead of random.

See the problem?
The "spectral" spells are "elemental" and there's no "spirit" counterpart to make it even.

Does this make anyone else go OCD crazy?
Just feels so wrong to me...

Survivor
Aug 07, 2013
37
I believe there is a spell called Spirit Blast,Chimera is pretty much a more powerful (spirit) Hydra,and "Spirit Minion" would be impossible because 's minion costs X pips and has multiple minions.

Angela RainbowBlossom Level 86

Delver
Apr 08, 2015
250
I think that there is a spell called Spirit Blast and Chimera which causes damage. However, why we can't summon a random spirit minion is beyond me.

Archon
Feb 07, 2011
3175
Mister Peanut on Apr 29, 2015 wrote:
Elemental Shield- Fire, Ice and Storm -50% damage
Spirit Shield- Life, Death and Myth -50% damage

Elemental Diffuse- Dispel next outgoing Fire, Ice and Storm spell
Spirit Diffuse- Dispel Next outgoing Life, Death and Myth spell

Notice how both of these sets of spells involve all 6 schools?
3 on each side- perfectly "balanced"

Now look at these:

Spectral Minion- Summon (at random) a fire, ice or storm minion.
Spectral Blast- Deal (at random) fire, ice or storm damage.
Hydra- Same as spectral blast but stronger and all three instead of random.

See the problem?
The "spectral" spells are "elemental" and there's no "spirit" counterpart to make it even.

Does this make anyone else go OCD crazy?
Just feels so wrong to me...
it used to make me crazy, too. but, since you just joined, i'm guessing that you aren't yet familiar with the upper levels (unless you had a previous account).

chimera~ rank 9 balance spell learned in avalon; it's similar to the hydra, a 3-headed creature that deals 340 base myth/death/life damage.

spirit blast~ it's a pet spell, available from the harpy pet, which drops from the sand squid tentacle in atlantea (level 70+ dungeon). certain cheat bosses in khrysalis also have it as a rank 4 attack-all spell, which is not available to players.

as for the minions, i don't use them anyway.

i always thought it would be kinda neat if there were a spell that could mutate spectral blast into spirit blast (kinda like locust swarm becomes polar swarm). might make the moon school worth my time.

-von
exalted

Astrologist
Dec 26, 2013
1124
Mister Peanut on Apr 29, 2015 wrote:
Elemental Shield- Fire, Ice and Storm -50% damage
Spirit Shield- Life, Death and Myth -50% damage

Elemental Diffuse- Dispel next outgoing Fire, Ice and Storm spell
Spirit Diffuse- Dispel Next outgoing Life, Death and Myth spell

Notice how both of these sets of spells involve all 6 schools?
3 on each side- perfectly "balanced"

Now look at these:

Spectral Minion- Summon (at random) a fire, ice or storm minion.
Spectral Blast- Deal (at random) fire, ice or storm damage.
Hydra- Same as spectral blast but stronger and all three instead of random.

See the problem?
The "spectral" spells are "elemental" and there's no "spirit" counterpart to make it even.

Does this make anyone else go OCD crazy?
Just feels so wrong to me...
It doesn't make me crazy but it does seem a bit out of "Balance".
Personally, I wish all of the Balance multi-attack spells were random. Spectral Blast would be great IMO if it had a possibility of being ANY of the Spirit or Elemental schools. Likewise with Hydra - you'd get either an Elemental Hydra -OR- a Spirit Hydra. Ditto Chimera. Balance gets Spirit Blade, Spirit Trap and Spirit Spear and only one spell to utilize them (Chimera). I know they're useful to buff teammates but that's another issue altogether.
This might make Balance more like Chaos but I believe a wise man once said that even in Chaos there is ultimately Order (Balance).

Explorer
Dec 30, 2014
80
Angela Rainbowblos... on Apr 29, 2015 wrote:
I believe there is a spell called Spirit Blast,Chimera is pretty much a more powerful (spirit) Hydra,and "Spirit Minion" would be impossible because 's minion costs X pips and has multiple minions.

Angela RainbowBlossom Level 86
Hydra and Chimera "balance" each other out-
Many pardons, I didn't see Chimera while looking at the spells.
That's balanced.

Spirit blast exists, okay, good, but why is it only available as a pet spell?

Also, why is the elemental blast called "spectral" blast?
Same question for summon spectral minion.
Wouldn't it make more sense and be more orderly to call it summon elemental minion?

As for the spirit pet, I see the problem with death minions being an X spell and with myth minions since there are so many-maybe just have a rank 4 minion since it's a 4 pip spell,
or pick one of the death and myth minions that matches the other minions summoned in rank and power?

As is, it just feels...wrong.
I think this is certainly something that ought to be changed.

Archon
Sep 17, 2012
4162
Part of this "imbalance" is evident in Balance creatures as well though. One of the main reasons for our elemental & spirit spells is for fighting balance foes. All balance creatures boost to spirit school. Giving us low level spirit spells to battle them would tip balance further towards being an overpowered school.

Explorer
Dec 30, 2014
80
seethe42 on Apr 30, 2015 wrote:
Part of this "imbalance" is evident in Balance creatures as well though. One of the main reasons for our elemental & spirit spells is for fighting balance foes. All balance creatures boost to spirit school. Giving us low level spirit spells to battle them would tip balance further towards being an overpowered school.
Not likely at all.

Each school has areas in which they excel and areas where they fall behind-
and in addition, each school has a potent feature like none other.

Balance neither excels or falls behind in anything-
it's everything spread thinly.

For example, death school has drain spells (a unique attribute to them and them alone) and spells that give them an advantage and spells that give your opponents a strong disadvantage that sometimes costs a portion of their own health.

Life wizards have ridiculously powerful healing spells and spells that don't just reduce damage but block it altogether and spells that remove damage over time-
have you seen the rebirth spell? It heals and gives them a shield that absorbs 400 damage. Not just them, but the entire team. That's pretty flippin awesome. Guardian Spirit? Nobody could match life as a healer.

Fire wizards have strong damage over time spells-that you can explode to do a heaping helping of damage.
It also has spells that trigger a damage over time on your enemy and a heal over time on yourself and/or teammates.

Then there's storm- have you seen the damage done by those spells?
The sheer force of them is unmatched to such an extent they had to reduce the accuracy just to make it fair.
They have an X rank spell like Judgement- that gets all enemies. All of them.
Windstorm and Darkwind in combination with the regular storm and trap?

Total annihilation. This school gets my "Most likely to mop the floor with multiple enemies" hands down-
goodness help people when they level up enough to get storm shield break and critical.
They got an impressive healing spell as well, though it's a real gamble.

I could keep on going but I've reached the character limit but the point is, just about every school has some real potent gameplay to them-

and all balance can really say is:
"I can bend the rules of combat by taking advantage of type disadvantage, and I have potent support spells"

If anything, this will even the playing field.

Survivor
Oct 27, 2012
6
I see your point! I think that you should be able to naturally lure spirit blast, and chimera earlier!

Mastermind
Nov 19, 2014
365
Mister Peanut on Apr 29, 2015 wrote:
Elemental Shield- Fire, Ice and Storm -50% damage
Spirit Shield- Life, Death and Myth -50% damage

Elemental Diffuse- Dispel next outgoing Fire, Ice and Storm spell
Spirit Diffuse- Dispel Next outgoing Life, Death and Myth spell

Notice how both of these sets of spells involve all 6 schools?
3 on each side- perfectly "balanced"

Now look at these:

Spectral Minion- Summon (at random) a fire, ice or storm minion.
Spectral Blast- Deal (at random) fire, ice or storm damage.
Hydra- Same as spectral blast but stronger and all three instead of random.

See the problem?
The "spectral" spells are "elemental" and there's no "spirit" counterpart to make it even.

Does this make anyone else go OCD crazy?
Just feels so wrong to me...
do have spectral blast for spirit (get a pet) aka "Harpy"

Geographer
Oct 09, 2011
946
Laura WinterWhispe... on May 2, 2015 wrote:
I see your point! I think that you should be able to naturally lure spirit blast, and chimera earlier!
A learned Spirit Blast would be nice, an earlier Chimera is a terrible idea.

Delver
Apr 08, 2015
250
I think the reason why Balance doesn't have more Spiritual () based powers is because Spirits boosts against Balance NPC's, so if Balance people had a bunch of them, they would be unstoppable (let's face it, they should be, but they're not because it would break the game). Anyway, I still agree with naturally learning Spirit Blast, and having a spell that gives you a random , , or minion.

"It's only logical."

Archon
Sep 17, 2012
4162
Mister Peanut on Apr 30, 2015 wrote:
Not likely at all.

Each school has areas in which they excel and areas where they fall behind-
and in addition, each school has a potent feature like none other.

Balance neither excels or falls behind in anything-
it's everything spread thinly.

For example, death school has drain spells (a unique attribute to them and them alone) and spells that give them an advantage and spells that give your opponents a strong disadvantage that sometimes costs a portion of their own health.

Life wizards have ridiculously powerful healing spells and spells that don't just reduce damage but block it altogether and spells that remove damage over time-
have you seen the rebirth spell? It heals and gives them a shield that absorbs 400 damage. Not just them, but the entire team. That's pretty flippin awesome. Guardian Spirit? Nobody could match life as a healer.

Fire wizards have strong damage over time spells-that you can explode to do a heaping helping of damage.
It also has spells that trigger a damage over time on your enemy and a heal over time on yourself and/or teammates.

Then there's storm- have you seen the damage done by those spells?
The sheer force of them is unmatched to such an extent they had to reduce the accuracy just to make it fair.
They have an X rank spell like Judgement- that gets all enemies. All of them.
Windstorm and Darkwind in combination with the regular storm and trap?

Total annihilation. This school gets my "Most likely to mop the floor with multiple enemies" hands down-
goodness help people when they level up enough to get storm shield break and critical.
They got an impressive healing spell as well, though it's a real gamble.

I could keep on going but I've reached the character limit but the point is, just about every school has some real potent gameplay to them-

and all balance can really say is:
"I can bend the rules of combat by taking advantage of type disadvantage, and I have potent support spells"

If anything, this will even the playing field.
Balance has a very distinct advantage in PvE against every school except Balance. By giving it a low level option to eliminate the only real disadvantage the school has, it takes away the balance and unevens things. Every school has it's weakness and strength. This really just removes Balance's only weakness.

Delver
Nov 05, 2011
249
As a balance wizard, I feel very displeased with my school. I don't like the spells that do other schools damage like the above mentioned. I know this is the whole point of balance and you can yell at me all you want, but I would like blades, traps, prisms, and shields of our own. We don't do nearly as much damage as the other schools, and we can hardly even use OUR OWN SCHOOL'S MAGIC! Ther shadow school spell from darkmore is such a rip off! For a shadow pip I would much rather use a spell that I know what trap to put on, and not put on every kind of trap on! I should probably start another school, but balance is impossible to solo!

Explorer
Dec 30, 2014
80
seethe42 on May 3, 2015 wrote:
Balance has a very distinct advantage in PvE against every school except Balance. By giving it a low level option to eliminate the only real disadvantage the school has, it takes away the balance and unevens things. Every school has it's weakness and strength. This really just removes Balance's only weakness.
It need not be a low level spell.

Also, considering the fact that all balance has going for it mechanic wise is it's ability to circumvent the enemy's defences, I hardly think it would be "game breaking"

(especially considering that spirit blast already exists via a pet,
so nothing would really be changed but the availability of the spell.)

When I made this topic, I had overlooked Chimera, so that's fine as it is.

Spirit blast on the other hand simply must be made learnable at some point in time.
Maybe in a later content update as a higher level spell.

but as it is, it just goes against what balance essentially stands for.

Life has heals, Death has drains, Myth has summons,
Ice has defence and stuns, Storm has the greatest damage, Fire has damage and heal over time,
and Balance takes a tiny bit from each.

So, while I see your point, I strongly (and respectfully) disagree.

Explorer
Dec 30, 2014
80
Max Sterling on May 3, 2015 wrote:
I think the reason why Balance doesn't have more Spiritual () based powers is because Spirits boosts against Balance NPC's, so if Balance people had a bunch of them, they would be unstoppable (let's face it, they should be, but they're not because it would break the game). Anyway, I still agree with naturally learning Spirit Blast, and having a spell that gives you a random , , or minion.

"It's only logical."
I just think it makes sense for balance to be balanced-
with just as many spirit spells as elemental spells.

Picture a scale:

the left weight- the center- the right weight-


with one side missing-
the scale is unbalanced.

In this case, the side that is primarily lacking
just happens to be the spirit spells.

Archon
Sep 17, 2012
4162
Mister Peanut on May 4, 2015 wrote:
I just think it makes sense for balance to be balanced-
with just as many spirit spells as elemental spells.

Picture a scale:

the left weight- the center- the right weight-


with one side missing-
the scale is unbalanced.

In this case, the side that is primarily lacking
just happens to be the spirit spells.
You seem to be missing the flaw in all of that. The reason for the boost of spirit schools against Balance foes is balanced out by the lack of low pip spirit attacks for Balance. If they add more low pip Spirit spells, the boost against balance needs to go away.

Astrologist
Dec 26, 2013
1124
One point being glossed over in this debate is that Balance is the only school that can make decent use of off-school spells using their naturally available universal blades and traps without having to rely on TC. By obtaining dropped or crafted spells they can also buff them using Sun and Star spells. Vastly superior than doing the same thing with TC. Combining this ability with pre-determined specialized decks, pets and gear sets the Balance wizard can "customize" their strategy dependent upon the current enemy and can be extremely powerful by mixing in off-school spells with their complement of Balance spells... thus making them truly Balanced.

Delver
Apr 08, 2015
250
TucsonWizard on May 4, 2015 wrote:
One point being glossed over in this debate is that Balance is the only school that can make decent use of off-school spells using their naturally available universal blades and traps without having to rely on TC. By obtaining dropped or crafted spells they can also buff them using Sun and Star spells. Vastly superior than doing the same thing with TC. Combining this ability with pre-determined specialized decks, pets and gear sets the Balance wizard can "customize" their strategy dependent upon the current enemy and can be extremely powerful by mixing in off-school spells with their complement of Balance spells... thus making them truly Balanced.
You got a point there, TusconWizard. Sometimes TC crafting is pain, meanwhile Balance has this advantage. I'll remember it when I start my Balance Wizard.

Explorer
Dec 30, 2014
80
seethe42 on May 4, 2015 wrote:
You seem to be missing the flaw in all of that. The reason for the boost of spirit schools against Balance foes is balanced out by the lack of low pip spirit attacks for Balance. If they add more low pip Spirit spells, the boost against balance needs to go away.
I agree.
The boost against balance spells should go away-
also- spirit blast already exists, it just isn't learnable.
the only thing that would be added would be the spirit minion,
simply for keeping it balanced.

When I say balanced, I mean just as many spirit spells as elemental spells.
I'm not really referring to anything else.

Explorer
Dec 30, 2014
80
TucsonWizard on May 4, 2015 wrote:
One point being glossed over in this debate is that Balance is the only school that can make decent use of off-school spells using their naturally available universal blades and traps without having to rely on TC. By obtaining dropped or crafted spells they can also buff them using Sun and Star spells. Vastly superior than doing the same thing with TC. Combining this ability with pre-determined specialized decks, pets and gear sets the Balance wizard can "customize" their strategy dependent upon the current enemy and can be extremely powerful by mixing in off-school spells with their complement of Balance spells... thus making them truly Balanced.
It seems quite a few people misunderstood what I meant when I said balanced.

Archon
Sep 17, 2012
4162
Mister Peanut on May 4, 2015 wrote:
I agree.
The boost against balance spells should go away-
also- spirit blast already exists, it just isn't learnable.
the only thing that would be added would be the spirit minion,
simply for keeping it balanced.

When I say balanced, I mean just as many spirit spells as elemental spells.
I'm not really referring to anything else.
Removing the spirit school boost would upset game balance vs creatures. Spirit blast exists, but it's only 1 card available only on one pet that only drops in a lvl 70 dungeon from a lvl 90 boss. It's not the game changer that adding it to spell decks of learned spells would be. You don't seem to care at all about game balance, just an compulsive desire for "balance" of spell count. That's almost OCD, not actually thinking about game balance.

Explorer
Dec 30, 2014
80
seethe42 on May 5, 2015 wrote:
Removing the spirit school boost would upset game balance vs creatures. Spirit blast exists, but it's only 1 card available only on one pet that only drops in a lvl 70 dungeon from a lvl 90 boss. It's not the game changer that adding it to spell decks of learned spells would be. You don't seem to care at all about game balance, just an compulsive desire for "balance" of spell count. That's almost OCD, not actually thinking about game balance.
Like I said in the original post-
it definitely triggers something in my mind akin to OCD.

To be honest,
all this blah about game balance is beyond my understanding-
I personally don't see why everyone can't get blades, prisms and traps at the same level-
but I'll just assume there's a good reason for it.

Astrologist
Dec 26, 2013
1124
Mister Peanut on May 5, 2015 wrote:
Like I said in the original post-
it definitely triggers something in my mind akin to OCD.

To be honest,
all this blah about game balance is beyond my understanding-
I personally don't see why everyone can't get blades, prisms and traps at the same level-
but I'll just assume there's a good reason for it.
There's definitly a good reason for it. It's why we have different schools...differing strengths, weaknesses and strategies. Otherwise we'd all end up with basically the same spells with different names and we'd be picking our school by favorite color.

Archon
Sep 17, 2012
4162
Mister Peanut on May 5, 2015 wrote:
Like I said in the original post-
it definitely triggers something in my mind akin to OCD.

To be honest,
all this blah about game balance is beyond my understanding-
I personally don't see why everyone can't get blades, prisms and traps at the same level-
but I'll just assume there's a good reason for it.
There is very good reason for it. If everyone gets everything the same at every level, it pretty much makes all schools the same. The game play is balanced to allow for different playing styles for every school. It also makes replaying the game with different schools a different challenge and experience. Each school is unique and one strategy will not work for all. Every new school you play is a unique game, not just repeating it with a different name/class.

1