Welcome to the Wizard101 Message Boards

JewelKI on Jun 13, 2020 wrote:

So to start this off, I'd like to say that I am happy Loremaster was nerfed. It made Legendary PvP an unfortunate experience for anyone [other than balances] regardless if you went first or second. However, the general consensus of the community here disagrees with how heavily it was nerfed, and we're scared a treatment like this might happen again and completely dismantle part of a school's strategy and subsequently make it much harder for that specific school to win matches.

I referenced Legendary PvP at the beginning of this post, and would like to note that balance ward was more common among higher ranked players due to the existence of this spell. Loremaster used to do between 390 & 470 damage and leave a -35% mantle and a -20% weakness without any enchantments for four pips. There was not a singular spell better than this at legendary [save for Efreet, but with how pip chance & accuracy are hard to balance, alongside offensive stats being much lower, it wasn't a bigger problem] because of how much raw power it had and how the mantle was able to effectively eliminate counterplay. Cards like Supernova and Mana Burn were uncommon usually at that level, but they were available as item cards and could be used at least once per battle. There is no set shield against balance, so towers were all anyone was able to work with. Some classes have around 10-15 universal accuracy with the right gear, while others do not. This made it a struggle to fight against lore spammers. Most of the time you would get hit with a lore, and then you would try to shield to protect yourself from taking another 1200 damage from another lore. However, depending on your class, you could have a 35% chance to fizzle a tower shield that you have in your hand. If that tower shield fizzled you were in a horrible place and would die to a scorpion or a judgement, depending on whatever did more damage, and there would be nothing you can do about it. Infallible is a popular spell to use since it increases your pierce, but it also gives an accuracy buff. You could use that to counter the mantle, since a tc infal brings it down to only a 15% chance to fizzle, but it was still possible to fizzle that tower shield. However, chances are you won't fizzle that tower, so more experienced Balance wizards would have supernova item cards or TC if they had them to simply pop your aura for 2 pips, deal around 1500 damage without a shield, and not lose match tempo because their net loss of pips by the next round was zero. At that point you don't have infal anymore and would just get lored into lore and you'd lose. Simple as that, no counterplay. Legendary suffered the most from pre-nerf Lore since health pools were way lower and resist was also lower, but you could still maintain about ~75% of the damage Balances usually run today at max. Transcendent balance wizards were a pain to deal with as well since they could just burn & nova you at will, but at least they were at a different level range so you didn't queue as many.

Max level PvP was affected as well, and the offensive potential balances had at that level went up. No class had more than like 4 global accuracy, so the mantle issue continued there. If you tried to infal you'd get popped for a quick 2k damage and then lored into gaze while in shrike and that was usually the kicker. Fire/Ice/Balance ward pets were common at that level and kind of helped, but not nearly enough. A lot of the problems at legendary were the same as at max, except with the existence of Mana Burn to keep you from getting pips to combo and high crit strategies so you could just heal off any damage you did take.

With the catacombs update came the long-awaited Lore nerf. Many of us were expecting something like a pip increase to fix spammability or a slight damage reduction, maybe something like 340-390 with the mantle removed and the weakness slightly buffed for compensation. That was what we had asked for, anyway.

We see the newly nerfed Lore and we as a community were all very surprised. 235-315 damage, neither buff was removed, only nerfed a little bit, and the pip cost was the same. It felt like everything we had said on the forums, Twitter, YouTube, etc had just been ignored. Literally everything. It did the same damage as Locust Swarm but with +10 & -10 on the high and low ends, the mantle was still there but no longer posed enough of a threat, and the weakness became the most laughable part of the spell. -15% is nothing. What we wanted was the spell to be balanced, a lot of people were on the side of raising its pip cost to 5 to keep it on par with other 5 pip spells. Instead it's now a nearly useless spell that is only used when you're trying to make someone fizzle but didn't pull a mantle, or you're trying to stack weaknesses for some reason. There are better alternatives for all three aspects of the spell now, the all-in-one is just no longer worth using in the arena. Ninja Piglets does more damage [it always did, but now the difference is big enough to where people actually care] for the same pips. Black mantles can reduce accuracy by 55% or 60% for no pips. A normal weakness reduces damage by 25% for no pips. The spell is just a shell of what it once was, and future nerfs to Balance spells have left many balances to simply run a jade strat at levels 60-80 or a crit strat at max. Balance has fallen all the way out of the meta due to all the nerfs, but if they still had Loremaster at a reasonable power level they could still hold on and win a lot of matches and live up to their name as a balanced class, especially with the aura pet meta giving them most of their power with Supernova still being around. I don't disagree with nerfs to spells like diffuses and Mana Burn since they went against either what their card description was or the dispel shield mechanic, but Lore was one of their biggest staples and if it were to potentially come back as a 5-pip spell that did the same damage as before [but still remove the mantle lol], you would see a lot more Balance wizards in the arena.

What has me concerned the most is how the Lore nerf went against the community's wishes. Everyone wanted it nerfed, yes, but in a way that would make the card balanced, not in a way that would ruin the spell and make it impossible for them to recover from the cascade of nerfs that followed in the months after. I feel as if a can of worms has been opened, and that we'll start to see spells like Abominable Weaver that everyone agrees should be nerfed get completely destroyed instead of being tweaked to make it more balanced. At the moment the community is divided between nerfing the shield [which is the side I'm on as an ice main] and nerfing the damage. With what happened to Lore so fresh in everyone's minds, if the same procedure is followed and Weaver receives the same treatment and has the shield get nerfed to something like 25% and the damage toned way down to something like 800 while keeping its pip cost, Ice as a school may never recover. Our only other good spells are overtimes, and since it's turn based now, triage & shift are more common and are able to counter that strat with no problem. Weaver does not reduce backlash in shrike either, and with the shrike update that in itself is a strong nerf to the spell. We're less eager to use it since we take more backlash once we get out of shrike if we do.

The bottom line is, what happened to Loremaster has completely determined Balance's fate for the near future. It was the only spell that didn't deserve to be straight up nerfed, just balanced to where it wouldn't be a big problem anymore but still be good enough to carry its own weight in a balance's deck. My message to the designers of this game is, listen to the community on issues like this. Maybe not so much the forums, as I've seen some people here with incredibly questionable ideas, but I know you are in contact with experienced PvPers such as Blake, and I trust people like him who are experienced players and have gotten well over 1000 rank over people who run strange, out of meta experimental builds that don't work and can't keep warlord. Or even some of the people on here who say they're proud to be privates. My advice is to listen to the people who know the meta and are good at the game, rather than cater to the players who say "nerf this nerf that" and their concepts unknowingly ruin spells without them knowing what they're doing. We can learn from what happened to Lore, and make the game better going forward.

Thank you for reading, no matter your stance on this topic.

JewelKI on Jun 13, 2020 wrote:

So to start this off, I'd like to say that I am happy Loremaster was nerfed. It made Legendary PvP an unfortunate experience for anyone [other than balances] regardless if you went first or second. However, the general consensus of the community here disagrees with how heavily it was nerfed, and we're scared a treatment like this might happen again and completely dismantle part of a school's strategy and subsequently make it much harder for that specific school to win matches.

I referenced Legendary PvP at the beginning of this post, and would like to note that balance ward was more common among higher ranked players due to the existence of this spell. Loremaster used to do between 390 & 470 damage and leave a -35% mantle and a -20% weakness without any enchantments for four pips. There was not a singular spell better than this at legendary [save for Efreet, but with how pip chance & accuracy are hard to balance, alongside offensive stats being much lower, it wasn't a bigger problem] because of how much raw power it had and how the mantle was able to effectively eliminate counterplay. Cards like Supernova and Mana Burn were uncommon usually at that level, but they were available as item cards and could be used at least once per battle. There is no set shield against balance, so towers were all anyone was able to work with. Some classes have around 10-15 universal accuracy with the right gear, while others do not. This made it a struggle to fight against lore spammers. Most of the time you would get hit with a lore, and then you would try to shield to protect yourself from taking another 1200 damage from another lore. However, depending on your class, you could have a 35% chance to fizzle a tower shield that you have in your hand. If that tower shield fizzled you were in a horrible place and would die to a scorpion or a judgement, depending on whatever did more damage, and there would be nothing you can do about it. Infallible is a popular spell to use since it increases your pierce, but it also gives an accuracy buff. You could use that to counter the mantle, since a tc infal brings it down to only a 15% chance to fizzle, but it was still possible to fizzle that tower shield. However, chances are you won't fizzle that tower, so more experienced Balance wizards would have supernova item cards or TC if they had them to simply pop your aura for 2 pips, deal around 1500 damage without a shield, and not lose match tempo because their net loss of pips by the next round was zero. At that point you don't have infal anymore and would just get lored into lore and you'd lose. Simple as that, no counterplay. Legendary suffered the most from pre-nerf Lore since health pools were way lower and resist was also lower, but you could still maintain about ~75% of the damage Balances usually run today at max. Transcendent balance wizards were a pain to deal with as well since they could just burn & nova you at will, but at least they were at a different level range so you didn't queue as many.

Max level PvP was affected as well, and the offensive potential balances had at that level went up. No class had more than like 4 global accuracy, so the mantle issue continued there. If you tried to infal you'd get popped for a quick 2k damage and then lored into gaze while in shrike and that was usually the kicker. Fire/Ice/Balance ward pets were common at that level and kind of helped, but not nearly enough. A lot of the problems at legendary were the same as at max, except with the existence of Mana Burn to keep you from getting pips to combo and high crit strategies so you could just heal off any damage you did take.

With the catacombs update came the long-awaited Lore nerf. Many of us were expecting something like a pip increase to fix spammability or a slight damage reduction, maybe something like 340-390 with the mantle removed and the weakness slightly buffed for compensation. That was what we had asked for, anyway.

We see the newly nerfed Lore and we as a community were all very surprised. 235-315 damage, neither buff was removed, only nerfed a little bit, and the pip cost was the same. It felt like everything we had said on the forums, Twitter, YouTube, etc had just been ignored. Literally everything. It did the same damage as Locust Swarm but with +10 & -10 on the high and low ends, the mantle was still there but no longer posed enough of a threat, and the weakness became the most laughable part of the spell. -15% is nothing. What we wanted was the spell to be balanced, a lot of people were on the side of raising its pip cost to 5 to keep it on par with other 5 pip spells. Instead it's now a nearly useless spell that is only used when you're trying to make someone fizzle but didn't pull a mantle, or you're trying to stack weaknesses for some reason. There are better alternatives for all three aspects of the spell now, the all-in-one is just no longer worth using in the arena. Ninja Piglets does more damage [it always did, but now the difference is big enough to where people actually care] for the same pips. Black mantles can reduce accuracy by 55% or 60% for no pips. A normal weakness reduces damage by 25% for no pips. The spell is just a shell of what it once was, and future nerfs to Balance spells have left many balances to simply run a jade strat at levels 60-80 or a crit strat at max. Balance has fallen all the way out of the meta due to all the nerfs, but if they still had Loremaster at a reasonable power level they could still hold on and win a lot of matches and live up to their name as a balanced class, especially with the aura pet meta giving them most of their power with Supernova still being around. I don't disagree with nerfs to spells like diffuses and Mana Burn since they went against either what their card description was or the dispel shield mechanic, but Lore was one of their biggest staples and if it were to potentially come back as a 5-pip spell that did the same damage as before [but still remove the mantle lol], you would see a lot more Balance wizards in the arena.

What has me concerned the most is how the Lore nerf went against the community's wishes. Everyone wanted it nerfed, yes, but in a way that would make the card balanced, not in a way that would ruin the spell and make it impossible for them to recover from the cascade of nerfs that followed in the months after. I feel as if a can of worms has been opened, and that we'll start to see spells like Abominable Weaver that everyone agrees should be nerfed get completely destroyed instead of being tweaked to make it more balanced. At the moment the community is divided between nerfing the shield [which is the side I'm on as an ice main] and nerfing the damage. With what happened to Lore so fresh in everyone's minds, if the same procedure is followed and Weaver receives the same treatment and has the shield get nerfed to something like 25% and the damage toned way down to something like 800 while keeping its pip cost, Ice as a school may never recover. Our only other good spells are overtimes, and since it's turn based now, triage & shift are more common and are able to counter that strat with no problem. Weaver does not reduce backlash in shrike either, and with the shrike update that in itself is a strong nerf to the spell. We're less eager to use it since we take more backlash once we get out of shrike if we do.

The bottom line is, what happened to Loremaster has completely determined Balance's fate for the near future. It was the only spell that didn't deserve to be straight up nerfed, just balanced to where it wouldn't be a big problem anymore but still be good enough to carry its own weight in a balance's deck. My message to the designers of this game is, listen to the community on issues like this. Maybe not so much the forums, as I've seen some people here with incredibly questionable ideas, but I know you are in contact with experienced PvPers such as Blake, and I trust people like him who are experienced players and have gotten well over 1000 rank over people who run strange, out of meta experimental builds that don't work and can't keep warlord. Or even some of the people on here who say they're proud to be privates. My advice is to listen to the people who know the meta and are good at the game, rather than cater to the players who say "nerf this nerf that" and their concepts unknowingly ruin spells without them knowing what they're doing. We can learn from what happened to Lore, and make the game better going forward.

Thank you for reading, no matter your stance on this topic.