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Armor pierce went too far

AuthorMessage
A+ Student
Mar 02, 2010
1643
Eric Stormbringer on May 25, 2014 wrote:
Exactly, gear lasts forever while the others are limited. Fortify is a direct counter and whether you fortify or conviction is a player decision. Balance's aura denial is one of the reasons it is the current top PvP school at nearly every level. Weakness is useful for damage mitigation not negation and I think that is what throws off a lot of people about this meta. Prior defenses that tacit negation moves(lowering the attack so much it could easily be recovered from at much less pip cost) have become damage mitigation moves. The low level vs high level issue will continue to rear its head and will only get worse as levels increase. The only viable fix is a matching system fix.
No, I don't think there should be a matching system fix. The reason why it pairs you up vs those high levels is because there isn't anybody at your skill level in the queue, so it chooses to pair you up against a high level. If it was "fixed", you could be a rank 2000+ player facing a Captain who doesn't even have his Commander gear yet, so the logical solution would be giving a normal spell to decrease armor pierce that lasts for 4 turns, because it would be acceptable to all levels unlike Fortify. It's extremely hard being a level 30 wizard fighting a level 70 with critical, high damage boost, only about 12 less resist than you, and quite some armor pierce.

Astrologist
Dec 16, 2009
1035
PvP King on Jun 2, 2014 wrote:
No, I don't think there should be a matching system fix. The reason why it pairs you up vs those high levels is because there isn't anybody at your skill level in the queue, so it chooses to pair you up against a high level. If it was "fixed", you could be a rank 2000+ player facing a Captain who doesn't even have his Commander gear yet, so the logical solution would be giving a normal spell to decrease armor pierce that lasts for 4 turns, because it would be acceptable to all levels unlike Fortify. It's extremely hard being a level 30 wizard fighting a level 70 with critical, high damage boost, only about 12 less resist than you, and quite some armor pierce.
I have to disagree here. Mismatches are not fair to either side. On the one hand you have lvl 50's who simply have no way to match a high level's statistical advantage. On the other hand they are often matched with high level sub privates or those who do not know their way around the arena. A soft cap on rank as expounded in this thread would create much more even matches than what is seen currently. An armor pierce reduction spell would do nothing to mend the resource gap between lvls(damage, critical, health, attack boost, card options and resources) A soft cap would allow those with similar stats and skill sets to fight one another rather than pulling from either side of an extreme.

Defender
Dec 16, 2009
170
You know I was in the practice arena last night. and I am coming back from a 2 year break from the game. any way I'm a life wizard and I like to play defensively. so I stack allot of shields. but when I was dueling in the arena last night. I noticed that every shield I had up was basically useless.

With how high pierce is now. ki might as well have removed shields from the game. life wizards don't get enough resist to counter pierce. some times I wonder if ki even knows what it's doing. when it comes to spells and their counters. or if they just go oh well this sounds like a good idea lets do it.

Who cares about the players we make millions. I honestly don't think the people in charge of ki and wizard 101 have the games best interest in mind. they need to be fired just take a look at pvp gear for example. It has not been updated to match any new pvp stats since the day pvp came out.

I don't even think the people at ki even know. what stats are needed for pvp if they did. pvp gear would be a
100 times better then it is now. with level and school appropriate pvp stats for all schools.

I think if pierce is going to be in the game then there needs to be a 10-30 ratio between pierce and resist.
10% pierce per 30% resist at least that would be reasonable pierce is way to O.P right now

I do agree that pierce and resist should both have caps though resist should cap at 60% and pierce should cap at 20% this is what it should look like for life ice and the dps schools

Ice resist 60%

Pierce to ices resist 20%

Life resist 50% cap

Pierce to life's resist 20%

The rest of the schools resist 40%

Pierce 20%

But these are just examples of a reasonable ratio between the 2 stats heh ki should hire me to fix pvp lol

A+ Student
Mar 02, 2010
1643
Eric Stormbringer on Jun 2, 2014 wrote:
I have to disagree here. Mismatches are not fair to either side. On the one hand you have lvl 50's who simply have no way to match a high level's statistical advantage. On the other hand they are often matched with high level sub privates or those who do not know their way around the arena. A soft cap on rank as expounded in this thread would create much more even matches than what is seen currently. An armor pierce reduction spell would do nothing to mend the resource gap between lvls(damage, critical, health, attack boost, card options and resources) A soft cap would allow those with similar stats and skill sets to fight one another rather than pulling from either side of an extreme.
KingsIsle already put a "soft cap" to fix level mismatches and has been improving on it for years, and let's deal with it, this is probably going to be the best it can get to. You could wait for somebody your level and rank to join the match, or you could simply click the button to search for all opponents, which gets you a match a lot faster but could be potentially a lot more of a challenge.

An armor pierce reduction spell would help level 50 wizards be able to defend against level 90+ wizards. Most Grandmasters don't have Fortify in their main deck or even trained at all, and keeping them in your sideboard isn't always reliable, because if a match progresses for an even longer duration then the Grandmaster would be put into a major disadvantage. The idea of the spell is to give all levels a sort of Fortify spell, but one that doesn't affect the attack, just the amount of armor pierce. Later on when you get to level 50, it can obviously be replaced by Fortify. I'm not sure why you're so against the spell, but I'm 100% sure it would help. Most Grandmasters that fight level 90 wizards anyway already have around 70-80% damage boost, 16% accuracy, 140-ish critical, 115 block, fair power pip chance, 54-55 resist, and just 1000 less health than the Promethean wizard, so the only thing that needs to be used by a Grandmaster is the armor pierce reduction spell and both sides would be doing even amounts of damage (unless the Promethean has less damage boost or if they critical).

Survivor
Aug 08, 2010
1
*note there is now a gear set up with 36 possible crit
Hunter, out.

Defender
Dec 16, 2009
170
you know i just left a post. where a storm wizard was was saying. they can get 48% pierce.
i was like. and you don't think that's insane?. how are us defensive and wizards. supposed to
counter that much pierce?. or are we just supposed to just sit back and get slaughtered. that is seriously OP
and it is a game breaker. again KI's staff that is in charge of this kind of stuff. need to be fired do you people not think. before you raise stats? thank you KI. you have effectively removed defense from the game.
and thank you again KI you have inspired me to create a better game

Hero
Aug 18, 2011
776
Pierce is good where it is, in fact it could go a little higher. The counters are shields, dispels, weakness, juju, plague, smoke, healing, etc etc.

If you were used to playing turtle behind Jade resist or school immunity - now you can't. Sorry if it requires a change to you playing style, but it's better for the game overall.

Astrologist
Dec 16, 2009
1035
AngelicWolf1337 on Jun 6, 2014 wrote:
you know i just left a post. where a storm wizard was was saying. they can get 48% pierce.
i was like. and you don't think that's insane?. how are us defensive and wizards. supposed to
counter that much pierce?. or are we just supposed to just sit back and get slaughtered. that is seriously OP
and it is a game breaker. again KI's staff that is in charge of this kind of stuff. need to be fired do you people not think. before you raise stats? thank you KI. you have effectively removed defense from the game.
and thank you again KI you have inspired me to create a better game
How are you supposed to counter it? Toss up a shield maybe? Go on the offensive? If a storm has that much pierce they are sacrificing pretty much every other defensive stat leaving them wide open.

Astrologist
Dec 16, 2009
1035
PvP King on Jun 5, 2014 wrote:
KingsIsle already put a "soft cap" to fix level mismatches and has been improving on it for years, and let's deal with it, this is probably going to be the best it can get to. You could wait for somebody your level and rank to join the match, or you could simply click the button to search for all opponents, which gets you a match a lot faster but could be potentially a lot more of a challenge.

An armor pierce reduction spell would help level 50 wizards be able to defend against level 90+ wizards. Most Grandmasters don't have Fortify in their main deck or even trained at all, and keeping them in your sideboard isn't always reliable, because if a match progresses for an even longer duration then the Grandmaster would be put into a major disadvantage. The idea of the spell is to give all levels a sort of Fortify spell, but one that doesn't affect the attack, just the amount of armor pierce. Later on when you get to level 50, it can obviously be replaced by Fortify. I'm not sure why you're so against the spell, but I'm 100% sure it would help. Most Grandmasters that fight level 90 wizards anyway already have around 70-80% damage boost, 16% accuracy, 140-ish critical, 115 block, fair power pip chance, 54-55 resist, and just 1000 less health than the Promethean wizard, so the only thing that needs to be used by a Grandmaster is the armor pierce reduction spell and both sides would be doing even amounts of damage (unless the Promethean has less damage boost or if they critical).
Actually, the matchmaking system while improved still has very large errors. Ask any lvl 50 past 1000+ rank what opponents they get. There is no soft cap in place and one would be immensely assistive. The single biggest killer of lvl 50's isnt armor pierce, it's critical. The reason I am against this spell is because so many other counters to armor pierce already exist.

Survivor
May 30, 2009
1
Armor pierce well what can I say it was on of the best things that happened to this game but also one of the worst because in PvP armor pierce has its ups and downs it can be your greatest strength and best downfall the thing that goes wrong with me is PvP my fire lvl 95 no shadow spells has firestarter helm on unseen lords plate with 6 Or seven pierce on and some crowns boot with 5 pierce plus Hades wand another 5 pierce now I Got all blades and pierce on and traps with the pierce aura on I USe immolate and I critical I kill my self and kill my opponent it glitches and says you have been defeated


A+ Student
Mar 02, 2010
1643
Eric Stormbringer on Jun 7, 2014 wrote:
Actually, the matchmaking system while improved still has very large errors. Ask any lvl 50 past 1000+ rank what opponents they get. There is no soft cap in place and one would be immensely assistive. The single biggest killer of lvl 50's isnt armor pierce, it's critical. The reason I am against this spell is because so many other counters to armor pierce already exist.
At lower levels of PvP, a spell like this does not exist. There is no Fortify for them. And no, I have a couple Grandmaster wizards, and I don't find critical blocking me as much as pierce does. If they're critical monsters, I have a fair amount of critical myself to counter that with more block rating than they do. To top that, I also have Conviction. I do admit though, I do dislike going against higher level opponents, but I feel that we've gotten what we need to fight them. Farm Loremaster a couple times and get your spells, get Warlord gear, get the Frosty Stare Tiki Torch, do tournaments and get your ring and athame, get a pet with a fair amount of resist, damage and healing talents, get a mastery amulet and use both your main and secondary school for attacks, and you're good to go. The problem, however, is that armor pierce destroys Grandmaster's only advantage, resist. They lose health to get resist, so I don't see why they should take away that advantage from Grandmasters.

Astrologist
Dec 16, 2009
1035
PvP King on Jun 8, 2014 wrote:
At lower levels of PvP, a spell like this does not exist. There is no Fortify for them. And no, I have a couple Grandmaster wizards, and I don't find critical blocking me as much as pierce does. If they're critical monsters, I have a fair amount of critical myself to counter that with more block rating than they do. To top that, I also have Conviction. I do admit though, I do dislike going against higher level opponents, but I feel that we've gotten what we need to fight them. Farm Loremaster a couple times and get your spells, get Warlord gear, get the Frosty Stare Tiki Torch, do tournaments and get your ring and athame, get a pet with a fair amount of resist, damage and healing talents, get a mastery amulet and use both your main and secondary school for attacks, and you're good to go. The problem, however, is that armor pierce destroys Grandmaster's only advantage, resist. They lose health to get resist, so I don't see why they should take away that advantage from Grandmasters.
The reason the gear takes away their only advantage is because lvl 95+ gear was not designed to face grandmaster gear and gm gear was not designed to face lvl 95+. That is why I believe the only real fix will be a matchmaking one especially since this problem will keep reoccurring every lvl cap.

A+ Student
Mar 02, 2010
1643
Eric Stormbringer on Jun 10, 2014 wrote:
The reason the gear takes away their only advantage is because lvl 95+ gear was not designed to face grandmaster gear and gm gear was not designed to face lvl 95+. That is why I believe the only real fix will be a matchmaking one especially since this problem will keep reoccurring every lvl cap.
In my personal opinion, I think that the Glendemming gear was made to fight higher level wizards. You don't often see an overpowered Grandmaster with high damage boost and critical, but you see it at the higher levels. Critical block was the reason you can tell that. I mean, if most Grandmasters didn't have critical in the first place, why put block rating in the gear? So, I'm pretty sure the gear was made to fight higher level wizards, but it doesn't work very well because of the existence (and increase) of armor pierce.

Survivor
Aug 31, 2010
15
Well i was disappointed about the whole shadow magic and its mass pierce. I thought to myself (Before it even came out) hmm i always get beat by ices because they have mass resist. So i made a ice got it to level 90 in a month or so and boom here comes the dang shadow magic. I am so mad i spent all that time getting my character to that level and now i cant even us it cause of that dang spell litterally infuriates me that they did this now ice is basically trash because they only thing they good at is defense and with that spell goes all of its school so thanks alot for that one .

A+ Student
Mar 02, 2010
1643
Aaron Nightflame on Jun 24, 2014 wrote:
Well i was disappointed about the whole shadow magic and its mass pierce. I thought to myself (Before it even came out) hmm i always get beat by ices because they have mass resist. So i made a ice got it to level 90 in a month or so and boom here comes the dang shadow magic. I am so mad i spent all that time getting my character to that level and now i cant even us it cause of that dang spell litterally infuriates me that they did this now ice is basically trash because they only thing they good at is defense and with that spell goes all of its school so thanks alot for that one .
Ice wizards can counter and use Shrike the same way everybody can. You can stall out with Winter Moon, Freeze. Frost Giant, and then hopefully find a Melt or Entangle if your opponent is Ice/Life. The third turn is sometimes tricky, but you'll get used to it.