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Please Fix Life Before It Becomes An Useless School.

AuthorMessage
Survivor
Apr 15, 2017
8
So it's come to my attention that in terms of how KI treats the life school versus other schools when considering spells offered to them and gear, they tend to be lackluster or nonexistent in options. My main issue as someone who enjoys Life as a concept and school is that regardless of what we do we are outclassed in almost any respect except highest healing stat potential in the game. Here are some examples of a typical issue as a Life whether its bossing or co-op play:

1. Every other school has easier access to high damage spells and aoe spells. When we consider that most schools have a range of 4-6 decent aoe attacks and then consider Life with its measly 2 aoe attacks that dont require extensive pack spending it begins to show as life as a hitter school when farming or questing as a whole. Life has way too many single target attacks in comparison and most require way too many pips to be feasible. If Life fails to kill their targets they have no way to follow up from receiving an attack as easily as other schools. We have to decide between healing and killing a target making our fights extensively longer than other schools.

2. Life cannot support a team without outsourcing other schools as a help factor. Life has to train in balance to triblade everyone, reshuffle, ice for shields, and death for damage mitigation. Life's 3 main support spells are ineffective in late game as they just do nothing to help for the pip cost. Absorb costs 3 pips and doesn't mitigate enough damage for a single hit. We have a spell that gives everyone a 10% accuracy blade for their next spell which isnt enough nor needed in most cases. We have mass triage and triage which the former costs too much to warrant usage of in late game in favor of a heal, reshuffle, or anything else.

3. Life's main gimmick which is healing, is outsourced in terms of the best spell in the game and pets. In fact, a good jade death with a spooky carnival robe and a good pet and has learned pigsie and shadow trickster, can outperform a life in its main functions because of how flexible death is as a school. Death has various traps, spells, and can blade others more effectively. This means Life has less value in a team comp overall and as a school, who wants the lesser version of any other school when you can just be that school?

How I'd fix Life: 1. Fix Wings of Fate and add one to 2 more late game AoE attacks. Wings requires you to blade extensively to be practical when other schools casually blade once or twice and can wipe out enemies quickly. Have it either not be overtime or increase the overtime massively and make it one turn only, alongside with either removing the overtime heal and replacing it with a flat 450 heal or making it do something else entirely such as cleansing all negative effects on your team such as negative charms or traps. Its a really bad support or damage AoE that shames our school entirely. Add another AoE either shadow based or one at the lvl 80-90 range with either as shadow a 1050 damage base or the latter being a 880 damage base. This allows us to be more useful in teams than just that useless healer and allows us to not be physically forced to co-op every step of the way because we just dont deal enough damage.

2. Change or add more support spells that cleanse team and protects them. Make absorb block lifesteal attacks, and make it aoe and increase the damage blocked from 500 to 1200 and increase the pip cost from 3 to 4-5. This way instead of a useless heal I can be proactive in helping my team not die. Change mass triage to be more effective such as a 250 heal and then cleanse or a 250 absorb. The accuracy spell either needs to be increased from 10% to 50% or changed entirely to a new spell or blade effect. In example having a spell that gives aoe hex or increased damage to enemies. Being able to help increasing damage is important especially when bosses block feints all the time.

3. Fix Scion of Life- Its literally the worst spell in existence, for 11 pips i can barely outdo a satyr in base healing and the trigger effect is completely useless at the level it requires you to be to use it. Every other school got a really strong nuke and we get an impractical heal thats worse than every other spell in our arsenal. Either give us a better secondary effect and less ridiculous trigger factor or higher heal and make it aoe. Or change is to be a single target like the rest with a heal to the user. Its easily the most disappointing spell.

4. Fix our gear. It makes no sense for how hard it is as a life to get critical rating and not suffer such a hard decrease in damage when schools like storm can reach almost 160% damage with minimal effort. We can reach 110% damage with max critical after chopping our arms and legs off and thats with a dedicated pet to crit rating and buying packs for the wands. Our dragoons gear is so bad our tier 2 is easily a better investment. I find it completely frustrating in all respects due to how much i’ve invested in my life that other schools just outperform it an any way shape or form and at this point I’d wish id made a death instead.

Armiger
Jan 11, 2012
2497
We have, at least for now, all the healing we could want. I disagree that life needs to farm out to other schools to be effective because it depends on your playing style. I don't do the stereotype of "life to satyr, ice to tower, death to feint" that other people do. When I play the healer roll, that is what I focus on; maximizing healing. Other methods, like shielding, are valid approaches, but I don't go down that path. When I play the healer role, my team knows that that is what I will focus on, and my outbound healing percent is quite high (about 130%) because of that.

As for attack spells, I agree that life needs a better selection. We have asked for things like Leaf Storm, Pot Boiler, and Life Leviathan to be school trained spells, as well as Wings of Fate being a one round hit and one round heal, but have yet to be heard. When I started a new life wizard, I made sure to get it the Kookaburra pet since it had leafstorm very early on. This helped make life MUCH easier to sol, but that's all I've done with it so far, soloed.

Regarding life having more support spells, I think opening access to other school's utility spells like Cleanse Charm (for example) would help out a lot. I figure if we quest for the spells, and it costing a training point would be fair compensation. There are spells from ALL schools that would be helpful to share like this. Making Life's Guidance available to all schools would help those with lower accuracy, etc etc etc. I think if more of these utility spells could be learned by other schools, many of the suggestions regarding a school's deficiency would be eliminated..

I will say that while life may feel deficient in attack spells, with the right gear, Life CAN hit for a ton!

Survivor
Apr 15, 2017
8
dayerider on Apr 2, 2020 wrote:
We have, at least for now, all the healing we could want. I disagree that life needs to farm out to other schools to be effective because it depends on your playing style. I don't do the stereotype of "life to satyr, ice to tower, death to feint" that other people do. When I play the healer roll, that is what I focus on; maximizing healing. Other methods, like shielding, are valid approaches, but I don't go down that path. When I play the healer role, my team knows that that is what I will focus on, and my outbound healing percent is quite high (about 130%) because of that.

As for attack spells, I agree that life needs a better selection. We have asked for things like Leaf Storm, Pot Boiler, and Life Leviathan to be school trained spells, as well as Wings of Fate being a one round hit and one round heal, but have yet to be heard. When I started a new life wizard, I made sure to get it the Kookaburra pet since it had leafstorm very early on. This helped make life MUCH easier to sol, but that's all I've done with it so far, soloed.

Regarding life having more support spells, I think opening access to other school's utility spells like Cleanse Charm (for example) would help out a lot. I figure if we quest for the spells, and it costing a training point would be fair compensation. There are spells from ALL schools that would be helpful to share like this. Making Life's Guidance available to all schools would help those with lower accuracy, etc etc etc. I think if more of these utility spells could be learned by other schools, many of the suggestions regarding a school's deficiency would be eliminated..

I will say that while life may feel deficient in attack spells, with the right gear, Life CAN hit for a ton!
There's a huge need for any and all support schools to farm out to other schools in order to be complicit or helpful to a team comp. You not having tower shield, feints, triblades, reshuffles, cleanses, and shatter in your deck as a support will decrease favorability with players in the community. As for life next to none of our school support spells see endgame use as they are massively outdated or like I said earlier are unfavorable due the state of endgame.

As for our heals, noone here is going to argue that as life we dont have good heals, the caveat is that like I said earlier death has the upper hand at playing a healer school due to their school having similar if not superior outgoing alongside more support spells and access to the best healing spells in the game via tc and crafting and the best all school healing wand in the game.

Being a sole healer in comps where you need various damage mitigations such as storm titan or devourer or any endgame boss is unfavorable since many times you need to use many of the support spells listed above in the team as your team will be multiple damage schools and you may be the only support existing at the time. Therefore, having a lack of school specific support spells that are viable in the current scheme of things would massively improve our schools placement in the hierarchy of useful schools.

Life has access to 2 aoe spells that are non paid nor pet specific. This is almost the same for death who has 2 direct aoes and 1 single target and then aoe overtime spell, however death's shadow spell call of cthulu is a spell that has high returns and high base damage and is easily accessed upon reaching darkmoor. Meanwhile in the main story, Life gets forest lord and thats pretty much it until 108 where we get a severely impractical aoe called wings of fate, the difference between wings of fate comparatively to other schools is that we get no initial hit and the overtime is quite small comparatively. As for the paid one ratotoskr, that costs you an arm and a leg and is a low base hit comparatively. In a state of endgame where mobs not only have significant base health but also significant block its unrealistic to think that spell is effective. As for leaf storm, you cannot enchant it so it becomes less effective later on. The fact that both our most attractive spells are so cost ineffective and hard to get for our school shows how its cared for in the grand scheme of things. Life has the lowest attractive stats for dps besides balance but balance gets more aoes than us and has various support spells they can use in a team setup.

Currently I do not as a full blown life feel comfortable playing the school because I feel its a major downgrade to death and balance. Especially when the life masteries continuously get buffed and easier access to. If you feel its rather fine that half of life's deck is not used then its fine. Im just saying at the state of the game with how much access to life's various prominent spells its becoming further and further unappealing to have one in your team and I dont think its fair.

Astrologist
Mar 16, 2012
1061
Hello, I've created a new wizard and made her a Life. She's level 32 now and with some good gear ( handed down from my other wizards ) she's tough and hits like a brick! ( With Life attacks ).I would like a 4 pip AoE, but it's really not necessary.
I've been soloing up till now and have had no problems in beating mobs or bosses.
BTW, Death school doesn't have a lower level AoE either. And I had no problems soloing with her until Avalon. I even soloed most of Khysalis with her.

Astrologist
Feb 28, 2014
1113
H34rty on Apr 1, 2020 wrote:
So it's come to my attention that in terms of how KI treats the life school versus other schools when considering spells offered to them and gear, they tend to be lackluster or nonexistent in options. My main issue as someone who enjoys Life as a concept and school is that regardless of what we do we are outclassed in almost any respect except highest healing stat potential in the game. Here are some examples of a typical issue as a Life whether its bossing or co-op play:

1. Every other school has easier access to high damage spells and aoe spells. When we consider that most schools have a range of 4-6 decent aoe attacks and then consider Life with its measly 2 aoe attacks that dont require extensive pack spending it begins to show as life as a hitter school when farming or questing as a whole. Life has way too many single target attacks in comparison and most require way too many pips to be feasible. If Life fails to kill their targets they have no way to follow up from receiving an attack as easily as other schools. We have to decide between healing and killing a target making our fights extensively longer than other schools.

2. Life cannot support a team without outsourcing other schools as a help factor. Life has to train in balance to triblade everyone, reshuffle, ice for shields, and death for damage mitigation. Life's 3 main support spells are ineffective in late game as they just do nothing to help for the pip cost. Absorb costs 3 pips and doesn't mitigate enough damage for a single hit. We have a spell that gives everyone a 10% accuracy blade for their next spell which isnt enough nor needed in most cases. We have mass triage and triage which the former costs too much to warrant usage of in late game in favor of a heal, reshuffle, or anything else.

3. Life's main gimmick which is healing, is outsourced in terms of the best spell in the game and pets. In fact, a good jade death with a spooky carnival robe and a good pet and has learned pigsie and shadow trickster, can outperform a life in its main functions because of how flexible death is as a school. Death has various traps, spells, and can blade others more effectively. This means Life has less value in a team comp overall and as a school, who wants the lesser version of any other school when you can just be that school?

How I'd fix Life: 1. Fix Wings of Fate and add one to 2 more late game AoE attacks. Wings requires you to blade extensively to be practical when other schools casually blade once or twice and can wipe out enemies quickly. Have it either not be overtime or increase the overtime massively and make it one turn only, alongside with either removing the overtime heal and replacing it with a flat 450 heal or making it do something else entirely such as cleansing all negative effects on your team such as negative charms or traps. Its a really bad support or damage AoE that shames our school entirely. Add another AoE either shadow based or one at the lvl 80-90 range with either as shadow a 1050 damage base or the latter being a 880 damage base. This allows us to be more useful in teams than just that useless healer and allows us to not be physically forced to co-op every step of the way because we just dont deal enough damage.

2. Change or add more support spells that cleanse team and protects them. Make absorb block lifesteal attacks, and make it aoe and increase the damage blocked from 500 to 1200 and increase the pip cost from 3 to 4-5. This way instead of a useless heal I can be proactive in helping my team not die. Change mass triage to be more effective such as a 250 heal and then cleanse or a 250 absorb. The accuracy spell either needs to be increased from 10% to 50% or changed entirely to a new spell or blade effect. In example having a spell that gives aoe hex or increased damage to enemies. Being able to help increasing damage is important especially when bosses block feints all the time.

3. Fix Scion of Life- Its literally the worst spell in existence, for 11 pips i can barely outdo a satyr in base healing and the trigger effect is completely useless at the level it requires you to be to use it. Every other school got a really strong nuke and we get an impractical heal thats worse than every other spell in our arsenal. Either give us a better secondary effect and less ridiculous trigger factor or higher heal and make it aoe. Or change is to be a single target like the rest with a heal to the user. Its easily the most disappointing spell.

4. Fix our gear. It makes no sense for how hard it is as a life to get critical rating and not suffer such a hard decrease in damage when schools like storm can reach almost 160% damage with minimal effort. We can reach 110% damage with max critical after chopping our arms and legs off and thats with a dedicated pet to crit rating and buying packs for the wands. Our dragoons gear is so bad our tier 2 is easily a better investment. I find it completely frustrating in all respects due to how much i’ve invested in my life that other schools just outperform it an any way shape or form and at this point I’d wish id made a death instead.
So you want Life to be a power hitter and a power healer? Don't you think that would make Life over powered than what it suppose to be causing the game to be off balance? Sure Kingsisle can buff Life's damgaing spells and add more aoes. But what healing spells and healing boosters do you want to Kingsisle to take away to keep Life wizards balanced with the game? Each school has their own uniqueness in strength; not to be comparable like apples to oranges. Yes some spells may be weeker compare to other schools but look at other things Life wizards can do what others can not. I play a few Life wizards and I still can throw a mighter strong punch by every hitting spell I cast.

I agree "Scion of Life" and "Wings of Fate" needs to be fixed so it's more usefull in a team for the pips it costs to cast

Defender
Aug 01, 2014
144
Scion is life is also a really bad spell, its just an overpriced dryad with an unnecessary HoT. Would be much better as a damage spell since life wizards already get all the healing spell they need from 1-50

Explorer
Feb 21, 2010
58
The only reason you are complaining at all about life being under-appreciated is because they gave that pigsie spell to anybody that wanted it. they did this after, they as a company, complained about needing to restrict high level sought after spells to the schools they were intended for. life would be a lot more viable if they were the main source of healing in the game but they are not. anybody with pigsie and a life mastery amulet can be a healer. Death are supposed to ward the enemy not forego their wards and become a healer. wards mitigate the need for a high powered healers. working together as a death player in conjunction with a healer player makes bosses a lot easier to manage and somewhat more fun. Quit griping about this school and look at the real issue. restrict the pigsie spell to healers and let life mastery users heal on rebirth only.

Explorer
May 06, 2013
54
Lfe is a healer not a hitter. Their main power is to heal not to hit brings me to why is scion of life near useless for an 11 pip spell when other heals do a better job costing less pips and the same goes to wings of fate for being a 6 pip 1 shadow pip spell.