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All About Wild Bolt: A Lengthy Explanation

AuthorMessage
Astrologist
Aug 13, 2009
1087
Hmm, the new Wild Bolt, in my idea, has advantages.

1: It's a useful spell to break shields.

2: It added a little more balance to PvP, but still, I believe that KI might need to create another prototype of WB.

3: The way I see it, even in PvE, storm had way too much advantage with 1,000 solid hit.

4: Wild Bolt really was just a nuisance. Diviners had way too much advantage to begin with. Sorry, diviners. But, they get so much gear with added precision, it's just ridiculous. So, I finally say my idea of what the Wild Bolt should be, due to my personal taste.

I say wild bolt should be at 50% precision, 750 damage, and 2 pips.

Or, it could be something like this. 250, 500, or 750, but even that would be unfair.

MAYBE KI should take it out of the game and make a new, more fair storm spell.

Survivor
Aug 25, 2009
34
Thank you KI for the detailed history and explanation of the Wild Bolt spell. Initially, I was very disappointed in the change and voiced my opinion on these boards. I removed wild bolt from my deck and accepted the change.
I should mention that I rarely PvP.
When reading the explanation, I discovered that the way the spell was intended was the way I used it, almost exactly. I did not cast it unless I was on the brink and was always thrilled when it worked. When it did not, I usually died. After getting a storm wizard through Marleybone, dying was certainly nothing new!
I have one loaded in my main deck now and will use it if I need to. However, my storm wizard in Celestia is the best she has ever been. She is strong, accurate and a powerhouse. I have no recent memory of dying.
I have crafted some gear and consistently use the spells that increase my accuracy. I love playing her and use her when I feel like running around helping other players. In the past, those times would have been spent playing my life.
Thanks again KI for a wonderful game.

Survivor
Mar 02, 2009
48
NicoUzumaki wrote:
There is one tinsy winsy problem (request)

Could diviners get at least 200 more health points? we are getting defeated out there! Unfortunately, storm was suppose to be the strongest school but since Celestia came out and critical, gargantuan, etc was introduced, storm is no longer the strongest.

Any top PVP duelist will tell you that Fire is the top school on PVP with Ice right on its heels. Even myth is in better shape than storm now. Diviners are probably somewhere between 4th and 5th.

We'd like a little more health please. I mean we are legendaries and barely have 2300 health! Even Master wizards from other schools have more health than that!
Strongest School!?! You have apparently yet to realize that THERE IS NO STRONGEST SCHOOL! The entire reason for nerfing Wild Bolt was because it was a completely unfair advantage to storm, and with it storm always won. The schools are balanced like this:

Storm- High damage, low health.
Ice- High health, low damage.
Fire- DOT and good damage, almost complete lack of defensive spells.
Death- Health for damage, same as fire.
Myth- Minions, if your minion dies you lose half your power.
Life- Healing yourself and others, very little attack except Centaur.
Balance- Touchy subject, a wide variety of spells and abilities make it possible to have all the strengths and all the weaknesses at the same time. It depends on how their deck is.

There never has been a best school, and there never will be. The 'best' PvP schools will soon have strategies made against them and will be replaced by the schools with the majority of good PvPers. Rinse, wash, repeat. That's the way it always has been and it won't change soon, my advice is to learn from your failures, not try to get things changed.

Defender
Sep 18, 2009
181
I understand your concerns as far as the power of WildBolt goes, but when you, in effect, crippled the 'hail Mary', of storm school, could considerations for the lack of health also be reevaluated?
My storm grandmaster is at 1980 health, and Celestia bosses can do 2,200 with one hit. That seems a bit of an imbalance of power too. She needed that Hail Mary. And I know you say it hits 33.3% of the time on 1000, but I wrote it down and in 20 hits, I got 1000 once. Seems to be set at. 3.33% instead. I guess it doesn't really matter. I haven't played my storm since getting to Celestia because they kill me before I can get the 6 pips and 2 traps I need to do the same amount of damage as the old wildbolt could do.
And since Higher Celestia bosses start with 4 power pips, why have their been no upgrades to allow players to do the same? Since I don't PvP, the balance of power between players concerns me far less than the balance of power between me and the things trying to kill me. Even one more pip would come closer to evening the odds.

Explorer
Jun 11, 2009
67
Here's an idea. Stop basing your game around RNG because eventually it's just going to ruin it.

People have been complaining about Wild Bolt for more than a year and a half and you've changed it to 70% 10, 100, 1000? They have a 33.3% chance to cast a spell for 1k damage at a 70% rate which is increased by either cards or gear.

You've done internal testing? You should grab a handful of actual players who play this game every day in the pvp arena and have them test out your problems in the arena.

The next RNG based system you've implemented that should be fixed is critical rates.

Survivor
May 27, 2009
30
I think the reason for not making it locked in at 10% accuracy is faulty.
You have other spells in the game that do not follow the "game rules" so why not wildbolt. IT IS suppose to be different. Thats why it had 10% on the card. It should have been locked in when you guys released the game back in 2008...
I know you didnt think your percentage system was going to be all messed up like this back then, but it is. Your best fix for wildbolt would have been locking it in at 10% and keeping the 1000 damage (no boosts from clothing or pets.)
In my opinion i think you guys took the easy way out by creating another dynamic.

Hopefully in the future you can put wildbolt back to the real way its suppose to be.

Survivor
Apr 17, 2010
2
Professor Falmea wrote:
It has come to my attention that many of the wizards around the spiral are upset or confused about the most recent changes to the spell Wild Bolt. Merle, the Professors, and I felt that some clarification was necessary for why these changes were made even though they were deemed unpopular with the community via the poll taken. I will attempt to explain even though it is NOT my school of focus (Halston was able to fill me in on the details in between tinkering with his newest invention)...

The different schools of magic in The Spiral are balanced around potential damage output relative to fizzle rates (for example, storm snake does WAY more damage than frost beetle, but frost beetle has a higher % chance to hit). This is matched up with other effects such as AoE, DoT, Charms, Wards, and even gear potential in an attempt to make the classes all balanced against each other (for example, sandstorm does way less damage than other rank 4 single target spells because it hits all targets).

The problem is that this system starts to break down when through the natural progression of gear and spells one can get the effective accuracy of a spell like Wild Bolt close to 100%. When combined with the high power pip chance that most wizards in Celestia posses this results in a spell that can be cast almost every round and do 1000 damage. At this level you have spell which is arguably better than Leviathan, and that is not only unbalancing but was never the purpose of the spell.

Wild Bolt was always intended as being the “Hail Mary” of spells. A spell used in desperation to win a duel with a low probability of success. It unfortunately turned into an uber spell with a very high probability of success. This change was intended to bring the spell back to its original purpose.

To specifically answer some of the main questions we're seeing...

Q: Why didn't you just make Wild Bolt immune to accuracy increases or cap at a certain %?

A. We really try to avoid at all costs creating spells that have exceptions to fundamental rules in our system, so we didn't want to make this ONE spell's accuracy unable to be boosted. We don’t have any spells in the game with an accuracy cap and it would feel weird to have one spell that exists outside the rule set in this regard. In addition, it would be confusing to more novice players who are still getting used to the game, and just in general, we find simplifying the rules works better than making thing more confusing and technical.

Q. Now that the spell doesn't fizzle, but casts at a lower amount of damage, it eats up buffs! Did you consider this in the design?

Yes, the fact that it eats up 2 pips and uses up buffs like feint 100% of the time was considered in the balance. We had originally considered making 5 or even 10 different potential damages for this spell in order to make it match up with the original base probability of Wild Bolt. That probability being that it does big damage 10% of the time. We decided to go with a much higher probability ( 33% ) because of the point that you are mentioning above. Having the spell hit for 10 damage and use up your traps and blades is really rough, but as mentioned previously, that is the purpose of this spell. It was never designed to be a spell that you use as a staple of your spell deck, but instead as a last ditch effort for victory. By switching the spell over to give you a 33% chance for massive damage we feel it has returned to what its goal was.

Q. I swear that I get 10 more often than not, and monsters get 1000 all the time! Are the spells any different? Is it equally as likely to be 1000 as it is 10?

Well actually, if you do a dance emote right before combat and the game clock is at a multiple of 5 then... just kidding - it’s exactly 33.3% for players and mobs. Same chance to get each outcome. Let us put that superstition to be right now. If you're finding anything else, you might want to get a lucky charm.

Q. Why the change all of a sudden? Is it because of PVP? Celestia?

Wild bolt has actually been on our hit list for a while (even before Celestia and level 50+ combat changes), but we wanted to take the time to think through a change that would be both balanced, but still within the spirit of the spell (it's very unique and we didn't want to take that away). What took the cake is some of the enhancements that brought up the accuracy so much that it was reliably hitting for 1000. That was never intended and obviously needed to change.

While it's absolutely true that it was a hot button topic in PVP and initially brought to our attention in that capacity, we feel that the imbalance wasn't only in the arena (especially after the level cap increase). We as a team would not simply make a global change to a spell that worked fine in PVE but was broken in PVP. However, that was not the case, and hence why we made the change to the spell that we did.

In summary, we far far far prefer to buff rather than nerf classes. We just really had our hands tied on this one. We’re sorry we had to make the change and we know it stinks to lose some power but we are always reviewing class balance. That's the wonderful thing about an MMO that's constantly updated - we always have a chance to make changes when they're appropriate.

I hope this answers more questions than it raises, and we just wanted to address this in more detail as it is a heavily discussed topic on the forums lately!
I think its called wild bolt because the "wild" part means it could happen or it couldnt happen. I dont have that spell, but im just saying. Those people were mad about just one simple spell. thank you.

Mastermind
Jun 13, 2009
332
This is addressed to professor Falmea who took the time to give us a detailed response about the "wild bolt issue"

Prof. Falmea,

I would like to thank you for taking the time to come on the message boards and give us a lengthy explanation about wild bolt and why it needed to be changed.

Being the producer of wizard101 is a hard task and must take up a lot of your time, so i really appreciate the fact that you value us so much so that you deemed it necessary to give your two cents on the subject.

I know that you are not obliged to do this and can make changes to the game where you see fit without consulting us. However, you have chosen to involve us in some of the decisions regarding wizard101 and for that i thank you.

I have a Legendary Storm wizard and after doing a critical hit of 4000+ damage with wild bolt to a boss in Celestia, i realized that it was too powerful for a 2 pip spell and the change was more than warranted.

i must confess, however, that their are times when I am on the verge of death and I used wild bolt as a last ditch effort to win the duel but it only does 10 damage. This made me want to change my mind about the change but being a reasonable man, I support the change even though at times it cost me dearly.

Having said that, I am still not sure if you are considering making more changes to wild bolt because this discussion is still going on.

I am respectfully asking you to let us know if the changes to wild bolt are still up for debate or if the changes are final.

If the changes are final, then I would be obliged if you would let us know so that we can stop ranting and raving and suggesting about wild bolt. However, if you are still open to suggestions, would you be so kind as to let us know what considerations you have in mind for the spell?

I thank you for your kind attention.

Logan Frost,
Celestia

Defender
May 17, 2009
144
Jaypaw101 wrote:
NicoUzumaki wrote:
There is one tinsy winsy problem (request)

Could diviners get at least 200 more health points? we are getting defeated out there! Unfortunately, storm was suppose to be the strongest school but since Celestia came out and critical, gargantuan, etc was introduced, storm is no longer the strongest.

Any top PVP duelist will tell you that Fire is the top school on PVP with Ice right on its heels. Even myth is in better shape than storm now. Diviners are probably somewhere between 4th and 5th.

We'd like a little more health please. I mean we are legendaries and barely have 2300 health! Even Master wizards from other schools have more health than that!
Strongest School!?! You have apparently yet to realize that THERE IS NO STRONGEST SCHOOL! The entire reason for nerfing Wild Bolt was because it was a completely unfair advantage to storm, and with it storm always won. The schools are balanced like this:

Storm- High damage, low health.
Ice- High health, low damage.
Fire- DOT and good damage, almost complete lack of defensive spells.
Death- Health for damage, same as fire.
Myth- Minions, if your minion dies you lose half your power.
Life- Healing yourself and others, very little attack except Centaur.
Balance- Touchy subject, a wide variety of spells and abilities make it possible to have all the strengths and all the weaknesses at the same time. It depends on how their deck is.

There never has been a best school, and there never will be. The 'best' PvP schools will soon have strategies made against them and will be replaced by the schools with the majority of good PvPers. Rinse, wash, repeat. That's the way it always has been and it won't change soon, my advice is to learn from your failures, not try to get things changed.


Do we have to spell it out for you? Storm is the strongest school. They hit the highest LIKE YOU SAID! That is what we mean by strongest. If you are still having trouble understanding I can try to draw it out for you.

Survivor
Dec 14, 2008
3
I used wild bolt for a good while and out of 25 times it had 1000 once for me.
So why would I waste 2 pips If I get more or same damage with my wand for free?????

Survivor
Dec 15, 2010
9
Lissi wrote:
I used wild bolt for a good while and out of 25 times it had 1000 once for me.
So why would I waste 2 pips If I get more or same damage with my wand for free?????

same for me...I always get 10 instead of 100 or 1000. If you ask me, they should make it 100, 250 and 500. Something like that. I mean, even with the 500 damage it wouldn't be enough to knock someone out. But the 10 damage is unfair, especially when you consider the fact that wand spells, the ones that don't cost pips, do at least 40 damage. And you can buy some that do 80 damage. plus, several wizards have already complained about getting 10 more than they get 100 or 1000. why not just make the lowest value somewhere within the 90's or 100's but lower the 1000 value (as mentioned above)? At least this way, with the 33.3% probability, the wild bolt spell will be doing the same damage as every other wand spell if it uses the lowest value.

Survivor
Dec 15, 2010
9
One more thing, I know there has been issues with the wild bolt spell for some time. But the updated version of the spell only fixes the problems that other people had with the spell. You've created a whole new problem for people who actually use the spell.

I think you should get rid of the 1000 value altogether since it seems to be at the pit of all problems. But as I said in my last post, boost the lowest possible value. Maybe if the spell is balanced there may not be as many problems as before.

Old version:

33.3% chance of getting 10 or 100

forget about the 1,000 value for right now

New version
33.3% chance of getting 100 or 250

33.3% chance of getting 500/550 (or some other value so long as it's not 1,000)

If you look at it, a 2 pip spell that does 10% or 100% damage most of the time is unfair compared to a 2 pip spell that does 100, 250 or 500 damage. Or 100, 350 and 550 damage. Or 150, 250 and 550 damage. Or 120, 220 and 520 damage.


Survivor
Oct 26, 2010
11
Just a suggestion on a new possible change to consider for this spell. Give it back its original 1000 damage, 70% base accuracy, and to truly make it WILD and stay in the previously mentioned "hail-mary" cast and pray ideology, make it choose its own target from anyone in the combat field including the caster.

Even in its current form you still see people throw up a critical vengeance aura and spam the spell every round knowing they have a very good chance of getting one eventually to slam in full force while demolishing any defenses along the way. With legendary gear a critical wild bolt does not need blades or traps to one shot even an ice mage.

Explorer
Dec 08, 2009
55
I might be a bit late on this one, but has KI considered giving wild bolt a 70% chance to cast, and then something like a 90% chance to hit 200dmg and a 10% chance to hit 1000? This way, the whole hail mary effect would still apply :) I now have a grandmaster storm wizard and I have not once used wild bolt. It seems to have went from a great card to a pretty much useless card now. I agree that i was overpowered before and I am glad a change was made. However that 33.3% chance of hitting 10 is a HUGE downfall for this spell as it is even weaker than a 0 pip wand spell. Giving this spell a 90% chance to hit something like 200 makes it weaker than bats, but it would be the price to pay for the chance to hit 1000 :). Also, you get wild bolt at a higher level than bats so it is only natural that it would be a little more usefull :)

Survivor
Jul 18, 2008
12
Wait a second so your saying it hits 1000 damage for 33.333% of what it used to hit 10% chance so your just giving it more accuracy for a spell? like you said it diviners would go crazy if you changed the balance of the spell to something like this but then again this spell does need to be changed against my better judgment you should change it back to an oral amount of being equal i feel that you should make it 10% and 1000 damage to make equal.

Defender
Apr 30, 2010
114
The first time I saw the post about the changes to wild bolt i was pretty frustrated, even though my storm wizard is only level 15 and not my main character, but this one made much more sense since it was actually explained. Your reason are justified and are, oppisite of my former opionion, not because of pvp. The fact that this spell was supposed to be a 'hail mary' it makes more sense to change it so it remains that way. To the wizards still complaining about this, please read through the reasons once more, this is a last resort spell and shouldn't be a main spell so don't waste buffs and charms on it, would you have done as much when you were lvl 40 and still only had a 10% chance of hitting (well maybe 20% by this point) Well if you did it wasn't a very smart move because more likely then not it will fizzle, and like now it will more likely be weak then powerful. In the world of PvE, this would also be an unfair advantage for storm wizards, allowing them to beat monsters too easily and more able to solo the game, taking away the challenge.

Thank you for finally explaining this in detail, Professor
Sincerely your student Aaron FireStone, legendary pyromancer

Champion
Jan 23, 2009
410
rmperrez wrote:
Why not make wild bolt 250, 500, 1000. Isn't the whole point of storm school power (damage)? Unlike many of the other schools, storm cannot get around shields so we have to find clever ways of winning, which inevitably leads up to power and mutated storm elf ( which is STILL bugged, only going 2 rounds instead of 3). I understand trying to have balance in the game, but where is balance when now everyone can hit major damage?


I absolutely agree with this as a compromise that may the resolve of the companies "balanced" mathmatics in this game. I wasnt that upset about the change accept the spell is STILL a 2 pip spell and 10 is the equvilent of nothing in this game. It cost you more pips to use it on a hail mary and you lose your pips and any charms for a 10 point spells.

My additional suggestion is lower the accuracy again maybe to 50 or 45% - then 250, 500, 1000 goes back to be the gamble it have always been and even if the accuracy is consistant (which i doubt i am a legend and i still see the fizzle)the damge is still a toss up worth 2 pips and whatever eles it uses to boost.

just my two cents.

Survivor
Feb 05, 2011
3
Regarding Wild Bolt, it would seem that both incarnations of the spell have significant problems.

As has been established, the 10% accuracy/1,000 damage version was too powerful.

Additionally, I think it can be agreed that the current iteration of 70% accuracy with 10, 100 or 1,000 damage is far too weak (10 damage and the consumption of pips, blades and traps is such a painful eventuation that it's not worth casting).

Here are two suggestions that I can make for improving the spell, keeping to the spirit without making it overly weak/powerful:

First suggestion - Damage across targets:

Cost: 2 pips
Accuracy: 50%
Damage: 300-350, with a 50% chance to arc and hit the next target. This would continue until all targets have been hit or the check fails.

I think this is a fun suggestion as it has a 'chain lightning' effect that could have its accuracy locked, so that the fizzle chance could be affected by accuracy gear but the subsequent arc chance would be fixed to make sure that it could not become too powerful.

Second suggestion - Repeated damage to same target:

Cost: 2 pips
Accuracy: 50%
Damage: 300-350, with a 50% chance to strike additional times, up to a maximum of three strikes.

Again, this is a sort of 'chain' effect, but it's being applied to a single target rather than damaging groups. I think it sticks to the core idea of the 'wildness' of the spell because of the additional damage is a gamble. As with suggestion one, the additional strike chance would be unaffected by accuracy buffs to prevent it from becoming over-powered.

I just picked the accuracy and damage figures out of the air, so those would need to be examined more thoroughly, but I think that both ideas are sound in principle.

Thoughts?

Defender
May 17, 2009
144
I figure we should just get rid of wild bolt and get a DoT that we don't have to access through a pet (storm elf and storm hound).

Survivor
Dec 13, 2008
22
Hey Professor Falmea! I first off want to say that it's great that you took time out of your day to explain to us just why you altered Wild Bolt. And, correct me if I'm wrong, but did I read somewhere that this is only a temporary solution? Because I had an idea:
What if Wild Bolt had a 50% chance to hit 200 or 1000 to your oppenent, but it also has a 50% chance to do 200 or 1000 damage to you, the caster?
You see, I'm an aspiring author, and I was reading up on types of "practical magic," and one type was Wild Magic, where you suummon the magic, but not controlling it. This way gives it a "OK, you summoned me, now who knows what'll happen?" aspect to it. And in my opinion it fits in more with the Storm theme, randomly striking and whatnot. Feel free to do with this suggestion as you wish, I feel confident that you wonderful people at KI will find a permanent solution that everyone will agree on. Keep up the good work!

Explorer
Apr 04, 2010
56
maxitola2009 wrote:
I would be more ok with it if you at least took out the 10.
I agree, Wild Bolt doing 10 damage is just, useless. At least make it do 100, 250, or 1000 Damage. 100 is understandable and 250 is the reasonable amount of damage a rank 2 storm spell should do.

Armiger
May 10, 2010
2080
alanthewizard101 wrote:
maxitola2009 wrote:
I would be more ok with it if you at least took out the 10.
I agree, Wild Bolt doing 10 damage is just, useless. At least make it do 100, 250, or 1000 Damage. 100 is understandable and 250 is the reasonable amount of damage a rank 2 storm spell should do.


Yes, for lower levels, it is not as powerful, but you can still enchant Wild Bolt. When you are high enough, use Gargantuan. You will be amazed at the new results you can achieve and never miss the old wild bolt again. With Crafted gear 3/6 are over 1000 to 4000.

Champion
Jan 23, 2009
410
maxitola2009 wrote:
I figure we should just get rid of wild bolt and get a DoT that we don't have to access through a pet (storm elf and storm hound).


Yes!! that's a great idea as well just get rid of it and give us storm elf or something like that.

But Iam a legend Storm and I am curious? The last school spell does over 1000 in damge without a boost and its 70% accurate (or more) so why is everyone scared of wildbolt? its not like its better it just takes less pips but trust me I normally spend the time killing shields.

The thing is that unless you are playing a game of chance you have to have some skill to win. PVP is a place for people who have skill for the game. You cant keep changing the game because you dont think its fair you arent as good as another school.

In the end if you get your way you have not earned anything you were given it and who cares about what they give everyone.

If you want to be a Beast of a Walord in PVP you are not going to get there by crying foul everything someone is better than you. You win by changing your style and making them try it again.

That is my lengthy 2 cents on this topic.

Survivor
Jul 13, 2009
1
thx professor for telling this i just read it right now :)

Survivor
Jan 02, 2010
2
why not make a crazy damage range instead of fixed damage.
like instead of 10, 100, or 1000 it could be 250-900 and only 50% accuracy.