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Help: How to be a more efficient wizard?

AuthorMessage
Armiger
Jan 11, 2012
2497
Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Ok, so I have a problem. I’m in Avalon and getting my tail kicked often, even by the mobs. I have decent gear and all my spells up to Avalon. I would like to solo more of the game, but seem to have hit my limit. How can I improve?

My Braided Silver Deck, is currently loaded with:

Colossal (6)
Pixie, Sprite, Mega Blaze (4 each)
Fire Dragon, Amplify (5 each)
Efreet, Firetrap, Fireblade, Helephant, Rain of Fire (8 each)
Firezilla, Phoenix (1 each – item cards)

I don’t use treasure cards (tho I have a ton of them) . If they’re off school, they become a nuisance to wait for pips

My Stats are as follows:

Damage: Fire 33, the rest 9
Resist: 17 Fire, the rest 8
Accuracy: Fire 10
Crit Hit: 204 Fire, 40 the rest
Block Rating: 138 Ice, 118 Storm, 77 the rest
Power Pip: 79
Healing: 17/16
Stun Block: 0
Pierce: 5

I keep hearing that people carry less cards, and have read articles about it, but they don’t seem to work for me, or Im using the wrong strategy. I can provide my gear if you need it, but I didn’t want to overload this post with all the stats. I’m a Grandmaster Crafter and have crafted gear before. What else can I provide you guys that would give you a better idea of how I can improve? I will say this, as I stand now, I work well with friends VERY well and can hold my own, but I’m looking more for soloing, and by that I mean NOT buying henchmen, TRULY soloing. I know I can’t truly solo the whole game, but I wanna be as self sufficient as possible. I can tell you I haven't gone thru WW yet, my attempts have failed at getting people together to try it, and I know that many people consider WW gear the best, and others think Avalon/Azteca crafted gear to be better.

Thoughts?
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Developer
Hello young Wizard, perhaps I can provide some assistance.

Overall, I think you have a very good deck and a few small changes could provide you with the extra efficiency you are looking for.

When questing, spells that damage all your opponents at once will be the most efficient, which are also known as area-of-effect spells (AoEs). For Fire, that means Fire Dragon and Rain of Fire. Rain of Fire requires 9 pips versus 7 for Fire Dragon so for general questing, you may just want to keep Fire Dragon in your deck.

The same goes for Helephant and Efreet. While both are excellent spells, keeping both in your deck for questing may not be the most efficient. Remember, the more spells you have in your deck, the less likely you will receive the spell you want at any given time. You can add Efreet back to your deck before you fight a boss since it does more damage and adds the -90% weakness effect.

Also, blades are the most efficient way to boost damage of your AoE spells. Instead of using Fire Trap against each enemy, you can train Elemental Blade in the Balance School in Krokotopia which will stack with Fireblade.

I also noticed you don't have any shields in your deck. These are immensely helpful when soloing. A well-timed shield before an enemy uses a high-damage spells will keep you in the battle longer and lessen your reliance on healing spells.

If you have training points available, you may want to consider Tower Shield and putting a few of those in your deck. That gives you a universal shield against all damage types. Training to Tower Shield will also grant you Volcanic Shield, which will protect you against Fire and Storm damage (which typically do the most damage).

I hope that helps and good luck on your journey!

Explorer
Feb 22, 2011
78
You might want to try a deck with:

2 colossal, 2 firedragons, 2 fireblades, 1 reshuffle, and 2 links or other heal.

and wear a Shango's Fireblade Amulet.

With your 33% fire damage and a colossal fire dragon, if you do:

trained fireblade and shango's fireblade in the first two rounds then colossal fire dragon in the third,

you can pump out 2,617 damage to each minion, which should be enough to take them out.

If that is not enough, adding in a trained elemental blade before you fire dragon will pump out 3,533 damage to each minion.

Heal or shield if needed.

Good luck!

Survivor
Jun 08, 2009
29
The main way to carry fewer cards is to work a little math. Plan what it will take to take out the enemy in one hit. Multiple blades that will stack makes a huge difference.

Blades from gear, from pets, from other schools. Fireblade and Elemental Blade is a great start for your colossal Fire Dragon! You could also add a Dragonblade, Balanceblade or another type of Fireblade from gear/pets to further boost your dragon.

For bosses, add a Feint or two to your deck. I rarely use shields or heals. I do catch wisps when duels are over and there is an occasional time that I get blasted with some critical mega hit and have to start over.

Some of the fansites have guides with videos so you can see a deck in action. Duelist101.com and Mercenaries101.com are great places to look for this type of help.

Here are 2 links to examples of a Fire wizard using stacked blades and Feints in a 1v3 enemies in solo fights. The videos are at the end of the articles.

This one uses a Rain of Fire, but there are so many blades and traps it take them out by the first tick. The hit is at 8:43 on the video.
http://www.duelist101.com/other-w101-guides/w101-spell-guides/wizard101-azteca-sun-school-quest-video/

Another one, this uses a dragon. The hit is at the 9:53 on the video, but it shows you how to effectively stack blades. http://www.duelist101.com/videos/dueling-vids/wizard101-sun-serpent-fire-88-spell-quest/

Hope this helps.

Geographer
Feb 19, 2010
935
dayerider on Mar 3, 2013 wrote:
Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Ok, so I have a problem. I’m in Avalon and getting my tail kicked often, even by the mobs. I have decent gear and all my spells up to Avalon. I would like to solo more of the game, but seem to have hit my limit. How can I improve?

My Braided Silver Deck, is currently loaded with:

Colossal (6)
Pixie, Sprite, Mega Blaze (4 each)
Fire Dragon, Amplify (5 each)
Efreet, Firetrap, Fireblade, Helephant, Rain of Fire (8 each)
Firezilla, Phoenix (1 each – item cards)

I don’t use treasure cards (tho I have a ton of them) . If they’re off school, they become a nuisance to wait for pips

My Stats are as follows:

Damage: Fire 33, the rest 9
Resist: 17 Fire, the rest 8
Accuracy: Fire 10
Crit Hit: 204 Fire, 40 the rest
Block Rating: 138 Ice, 118 Storm, 77 the rest
Power Pip: 79
Healing: 17/16
Stun Block: 0
Pierce: 5

I keep hearing that people carry less cards, and have read articles about it, but they don’t seem to work for me, or Im using the wrong strategy. I can provide my gear if you need it, but I didn’t want to overload this post with all the stats. I’m a Grandmaster Crafter and have crafted gear before. What else can I provide you guys that would give you a better idea of how I can improve? I will say this, as I stand now, I work well with friends VERY well and can hold my own, but I’m looking more for soloing, and by that I mean NOT buying henchmen, TRULY soloing. I know I can’t truly solo the whole game, but I wanna be as self sufficient as possible. I can tell you I haven't gone thru WW yet, my attempts have failed at getting people together to try it, and I know that many people consider WW gear the best, and others think Avalon/Azteca crafted gear to be better.

Thoughts?
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I usually ran my fire with this deck while in avalon and it worked quite well for me;

3 fire blade
3 colossal
4 meteor
1 efreet
1 fire dragon
1 reshuffle
1 tower
1 pixie

So try something like this and see if it works for ya. As you said alot say to slim down and their right for the simple fact of being logical, The less you have the higher chance of getting what you need quickly.

Armiger
Jan 11, 2012
2497
Pacal Redmask on Mar 4, 2013 wrote:
Hello young Wizard, perhaps I can provide some assistance.

Overall, I think you have a very good deck and a few small changes could provide you with the extra efficiency you are looking for.

When questing, spells that damage all your opponents at once will be the most efficient, which are also known as area-of-effect spells (AoEs). For Fire, that means Fire Dragon and Rain of Fire. Rain of Fire requires 9 pips versus 7 for Fire Dragon so for general questing, you may just want to keep Fire Dragon in your deck.

The same goes for Helephant and Efreet. While both are excellent spells, keeping both in your deck for questing may not be the most efficient. Remember, the more spells you have in your deck, the less likely you will receive the spell you want at any given time. You can add Efreet back to your deck before you fight a boss since it does more damage and adds the -90% weakness effect.

Also, blades are the most efficient way to boost damage of your AoE spells. Instead of using Fire Trap against each enemy, you can train Elemental Blade in the Balance School in Krokotopia which will stack with Fireblade.

I also noticed you don't have any shields in your deck. These are immensely helpful when soloing. A well-timed shield before an enemy uses a high-damage spells will keep you in the battle longer and lessen your reliance on healing spells.

If you have training points available, you may want to consider Tower Shield and putting a few of those in your deck. That gives you a universal shield against all damage types. Training to Tower Shield will also grant you Volcanic Shield, which will protect you against Fire and Storm damage (which typically do the most damage).

I hope that helps and good luck on your journey!
You know, I think I was thinking "get more free spells" vs "do more damage", so I could stack while building pips. The Elemental + Fire blade combo certainly packs more punch, and really doesn't cost much difference. I'll definitely try that one again and see how that works.

As for shields, no, I don't normally use them. I think it's because I simply have not devised a winning strategy while using them. The shields I have are Volcanic, Tower, Legend, Fire, Glacial and Fortify. So, here's what I'm changing to, to see if it will be more beneficial:

(8) Fireblade, Glacial Shield**, Helephant
(6) Colossal, Elemental Blade, Tower Shield
(4) Pixie, Sprite, Amplify

** Would Volcanic Shield be better than Glacial Shield? I know if I use them together, they stack, and I can arm 2 more glacial than Volcanic. My thinking here, and please, let me have your input, is to maximize the quantity of shields while maximizing the number of attacks it can be used on.

I have 2 empty slots, but I think Im gonna keep them empty for now. The Item Cards are remaining the same. I was trying, for a while (tho this deck combo I showed you earlier didn't reflect it), a brand new strategy for attack, trying to use the spells with the most damage per pip, because brute force wasn't working well for me. I will certainly try this and see how it well fares.

Developer
Regarding Volcanic Shield and Glacial Shield, remember, you can easily change your spells before a battle depending on the enemies you will be dueling. If you will be facing Storm enemies, take Volcanic Shield, and if you are facing Ice enemies, take Glacial Shield.

Also, heed the advice of your fellow Wizards. They have offered some excellent suggestions on building your deck. Try some different combinations and discover what works best for you!

Good luck on your journey.

Adherent
Jul 03, 2010
2634
We chose not to slog though WW with our Fire wizard, it seems as you start new wizards up that fight just becomes too much to repeat 100's of times so I craft the Wintertusk gear. It took me months to get it on my first wizard, I finished Zafari to Mirror Lake, pretty much solo, in my Rapture robe lvl 58. In Zafari I learned of the Wintertusk gear and did the helmet mainly for it's stackable extra blade from there I began crafting for the other schools I was playing.

It seems to be holding out ok in Avalon with a switch out of ring, atheme and wand for more health and critical block mainly, some bought at the bazaar and the wands mostly dropped. I have heard some of the Avalon crafted gear is better but I have not gone past the Seal of the Seven Seas so can not craft there.

You must have completed the Seal of the Seven Seas quest to craft the gear in the Ice Forge House in Grizzlehiem - so you don't use a table at your house for it. It is purchased from a vendor in Surilund (spelling maybe off).

As for deck we run all our wizards now on a deck of 9-20 tops, the latter for Boss and solo fights. We actually set up 2 decks - one for mobs and one for boss fights adding in things that are needed. With the monsters getting their best shots in first you do not have time for them to rebuild pips and hit you again. Blade, Blade, hit. I think I agree with the Tower Shield as it would provide a generic shield against all and we are seriously thinking of adding this. Our fire is in the Lady of the Lake area now. We still carry Meteor shower in our deck since it only requires 4 pips it can be a good all around spell to break them down or finish them up. As you add more damage to your gear you spells become more efficient also.

The way we practice new things with our wizard is we go back a few worlds - say Mooshu and pick a fight with something there - this gives us time to work out our honed down deck construction on something that isn't going to defeat us in 4 rounds.

Hero
Jul 30, 2012
771
I'm not fire school, but I think some thoughts may apply.

I believe there are two different types of "efficiency" in this game:

1. Completing a battle, quest, or area as fast as possible (in real time).
- Battle strategy usually involves a bit more risk, but you complete battles faster.
- Overall strategy is to dispense enemies as fast as possible.
- Getting optimal use out of blades, traps and fients.
- Animations take a long time, so minimizing spell casts and battle rounds obviously speeds up the battle. Battling with strangers often slow things down considerably. Battling with a skilled cooperative friend can make things go real fast.
- Getting bogged down with health spells and shields really slows it down. More rounds gives enemy more opportunities to cast shields, dispels, etc, which drags the battle out more.

2. Defeating enemies with little risk of losing.
- Different schools may have differing strategies.
- In solo battle: I find it best to reduce the number of enemies as fast as possible. 1vs1 is much easier than 1vs2.
- In team battle (increased enemies): I find it best to apply traps, feints, blades, and then big coordinated AoE hits. Communicate with team mates.
- In team battle that might get dragged out because of powerfull bosses: Applying traps, blades, feints, against one enemy at a time. Reduce enemies.

Overall Strategies:
- In team battle: pay attention to what others are casting.
- Make every round count. Don't waste rounds. And don't be wasting blades & traps (ie: wasting previous setup rounds).
- Be Careful using DoT spells, especially when playing with others. They wipe out traps & feints preventing the setup of a huge hit. A non-lethal DoT acts as a protective shield for your enemy. DoT spells limit what team mates can do.
- Always discard unnessesary spells so useful spells can emerge.
- Do not attack prematurely. Wait for as much setup as possible to get best use out of blades, traps, pips, sun spell boosts.

Armiger
Jan 11, 2012
2497
Thank you all for your input. I will start applying the tips you've given me. I do have another question. it SEEMS, thru all the advice you guys and gals are giving, revoles around damage stacking, which I love, but I haven't seen many people suggest healing. Clearly these strategies work for you guys, which is awesome, but do you not need to heal? cca714 mentioned to bring Link along, lastdaysgunslinger mentioned pixie, etc. I'm very new to the dwindled down deck strategy, so of course my concern is being healthy enough into the battles to stay in it and win. I understand fully that ONE pixie/link/etc is UNLIMITED due to reshuffle (which I already have learned), but it just seems that you guys have soo much success, you don't need to concentrate on healing nearly as much as I am. Do you all had good success with these battle plans that you normally dont need to heal (much) in battle? If so, great! I'm just trying to figure it all out, and with your guys input, I know I will :)

Armiger
Jan 11, 2012
2497
Northlite on Mar 5, 2013 wrote:
We chose not to slog though WW with our Fire wizard, it seems as you start new wizards up that fight just becomes too much to repeat 100's of times so I craft the Wintertusk gear. It took me months to get it on my first wizard, I finished Zafari to Mirror Lake, pretty much solo, in my Rapture robe lvl 58. In Zafari I learned of the Wintertusk gear and did the helmet mainly for it's stackable extra blade from there I began crafting for the other schools I was playing.

It seems to be holding out ok in Avalon with a switch out of ring, atheme and wand for more health and critical block mainly, some bought at the bazaar and the wands mostly dropped. I have heard some of the Avalon crafted gear is better but I have not gone past the Seal of the Seven Seas so can not craft there.

You must have completed the Seal of the Seven Seas quest to craft the gear in the Ice Forge House in Grizzlehiem - so you don't use a table at your house for it. It is purchased from a vendor in Surilund (spelling maybe off).

As for deck we run all our wizards now on a deck of 9-20 tops, the latter for Boss and solo fights. We actually set up 2 decks - one for mobs and one for boss fights adding in things that are needed. With the monsters getting their best shots in first you do not have time for them to rebuild pips and hit you again. Blade, Blade, hit. I think I agree with the Tower Shield as it would provide a generic shield against all and we are seriously thinking of adding this. Our fire is in the Lady of the Lake area now. We still carry Meteor shower in our deck since it only requires 4 pips it can be a good all around spell to break them down or finish them up. As you add more damage to your gear you spells become more efficient also.

The way we practice new things with our wizard is we go back a few worlds - say Mooshu and pick a fight with something there - this gives us time to work out our honed down deck construction on something that isn't going to defeat us in 4 rounds.
Your last statement is a great idea, and when i tried it last, I must not have given it enough time, so back a few worlds I go. Smart advise for ANY new strategy

Hero
Jul 30, 2012
771
dayerider said:

"I do have another question. it SEEMS, thru all the advice you guys and gals are giving, revoles around damage stacking, which I love, but I haven't seen many people suggest healing."

Healing is not efficient, it is only a necessity sometimes to stay alive. Every time you heal you are using up pips and not using your round that could otherwise be used towards the goal of defeating the enemy. It effectively sets you back. Healing may be necessary, but for effeciency should be avoided.

In team battle it is effecient to cast health in the final round so you finish with full health, allowing you to engage the next battle immediately. Death wizards like to finish with a hit to top up their health. Finishing with full health is important for rapid questing.

Armiger
Jan 11, 2012
2497
thanks for all the tips guys. Im currently trying the reshuffle idea, and so far it's working well. i've been changing it up and adding things like wyldfire in there as well, to see if it's still optimal, and it's been working. I had been a free player for a few months but now am back to being a member so will pick it up and try it some more on my fire, and first time around on my death. Just didn't want you guys to think I didnt appreciate your suggestions/ideas; just couldnt post for a while :)