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Guide to Choosing Classes

AuthorMessage
Survivor
Feb 02, 2013
1
This is a guide to picking your primary and secondary types/schools when you first enter the game. It is recommended that you pick one spiritual (Death, Life, Myth) or Balance and one Elemental (Fire, Ice, Storm) as you other. Do NOT pick Death, Myth, or Balance as your secondary skill. These schools are very limited to those not in their schools. For Myth, if you’re not a part the school, you don’t have the ability to summon minions (unless by treasure card), and many of their spells revolves around theses minions, so you are better off choosing something else. Balance and Death have very limited number of skills you can learn without having to go to a secret place (Death to Nightside, Balance to Krakotopia), so you have many less you can learn. It is also best not to use Life as your Primary School, for it has the same effect for being a secondary and most of their attacks are weak, but it makes a great secondary. I also recommend that you choose a spiritual or Balance as you beginning skill and then choose an elemental, but some of the combinations are not like that. Here are some combos I recommend:
Choosing Ice as your Primary skill, then choosing Life as your secondary skill: Being an Ice mage, you have high health and use taunts to direct opponents to yourself. Life is a good secondary because you can learn enough to help yourself to healing so you can annoy your opponents because it will take forever to finish you off.
Choosing Death as your Primary skill, then choosing Storm as your secondary skill: Being a death mage, or Necromancer, you have the ability to steal health from you opponents, as well as using Pacify, an extremely useful technique that makes you less targeted for attack. Because Storm has such a high Fizzle rate, using Pacify is a good idea in order to reduce the danger of being attacked if you Fizzle. At the same time, using spells from death, since storm does so much damage, using spells such as plague and infect is good so they can heal much less from the heavy damage taken.
Choosing Death as your Primary skill, then choosing Life as your Secondary skill: Many of Death’s spells such as Death Pact, requires players to play their own HP, or health points. Using Life may give you an edge since there is a death skill that plays life points to give pips, if you take more damage, using the pips you can play a good healing spell like satyr or another Life Healing Spell.
Balance to itself: Balance is better played on its own because your job is to use a single spell that can deal damage of different types (like playing Hydra) to attack their weakness, but often also their resistance. They will also go well with any other type because they have attacks such as balanceblade, which can boost any other type, but as your progress to higher levels, it will be hard and harder to play balance just because it does not focus on one major school, so group playing is recommended with a Balance wizard.
Thats all for now!

Defender
Jun 02, 2013
164
I applaud the time you put into your post to offer advice to new players, but I have several different POVs on this subject.

Gear acquired while progressing is usually to enhance your Main school, so w/e secondary school you choose, those attack spells don't (generally) hit as hard. If you use secondary school attack spells more often, I feel you chose the wrong school to start with.

Secondary schools are often chosen for their utility, such as Feint, Satyr, Earthquake, and Tower Shield. These spells are purposely placed rather high on the initial Trainer's list to force the wizard to think about importance vs. Training Point consumption while leveling.

Feint, the Tri-Blades, and Satyr are some of the most sought after secondary school spells in the game.

As a Death wizard myself, it NEVER occurred to me to choose Storm as a secondary school for 2 main reasons.
1. Lowest casting rate percentage.
2. Low damage due to lack of Storm school gear.

As a Death wizard, I don't need the Life school, I use Drain spells to heal me. I can use Death shield to lower any damage to self for spells like Dark Pact. I don't even need Satyr, as I could heal others with Sacrifice.

My Balance school wizard uses Death and Life to boost damage, and healing when necessary.

You also didn't mention when selecting a secondary school, Mastery Amulets are a major factor in their effectiveness to reduce Power Pip consumption.

Everyone's play style differs to some degree, but after six years, players have already tried and tested many effective methods, tactics, and strategies. I suggest you read some of their suggestions before attempting to
"build a better mouse trap".

Best of luck to you,

Lincoln Realm
Gabriel 100
Michael 87
Brahm Spellbreaker 74

Archon
Sep 17, 2012
4162
The idea of a "secondary" school goes completely against my game play. I choose my off school trained spells based off utility, NOT attacks. Every wizard I have learns Death to Feint. My Balance is the only one that ever used any Death attacks, because they are good against Balance bosses. I also learn Life to Satyr on all my wizards except for Death. I have an extra 10-15 training points left over on some of my wizards.

A+ Student
Dec 11, 2010
1665
ShadowDracoX on Jun 23, 2015 wrote:
This is a guide to picking your primary and secondary types/schools when you first enter the game. It is recommended that you pick one spiritual (Death, Life, Myth) or Balance and one Elemental (Fire, Ice, Storm) as you other. Do NOT pick Death, Myth, or Balance as your secondary skill. These schools are very limited to those not in their schools. For Myth, if you’re not a part the school, you don’t have the ability to summon minions (unless by treasure card), and many of their spells revolves around theses minions, so you are better off choosing something else. Balance and Death have very limited number of skills you can learn without having to go to a secret place (Death to Nightside, Balance to Krakotopia), so you have many less you can learn. It is also best not to use Life as your Primary School, for it has the same effect for being a secondary and most of their attacks are weak, but it makes a great secondary. I also recommend that you choose a spiritual or Balance as you beginning skill and then choose an elemental, but some of the combinations are not like that. Here are some combos I recommend:
Choosing Ice as your Primary skill, then choosing Life as your secondary skill: Being an Ice mage, you have high health and use taunts to direct opponents to yourself. Life is a good secondary because you can learn enough to help yourself to healing so you can annoy your opponents because it will take forever to finish you off.
Choosing Death as your Primary skill, then choosing Storm as your secondary skill: Being a death mage, or Necromancer, you have the ability to steal health from you opponents, as well as using Pacify, an extremely useful technique that makes you less targeted for attack. Because Storm has such a high Fizzle rate, using Pacify is a good idea in order to reduce the danger of being attacked if you Fizzle. At the same time, using spells from death, since storm does so much damage, using spells such as plague and infect is good so they can heal much less from the heavy damage taken.
Choosing Death as your Primary skill, then choosing Life as your Secondary skill: Many of Death’s spells such as Death Pact, requires players to play their own HP, or health points. Using Life may give you an edge since there is a death skill that plays life points to give pips, if you take more damage, using the pips you can play a good healing spell like satyr or another Life Healing Spell.
Balance to itself: Balance is better played on its own because your job is to use a single spell that can deal damage of different types (like playing Hydra) to attack their weakness, but often also their resistance. They will also go well with any other type because they have attacks such as balanceblade, which can boost any other type, but as your progress to higher levels, it will be hard and harder to play balance just because it does not focus on one major school, so group playing is recommended with a Balance wizard.
Thats all for now!
Ok first of all we can all agree the myth and balance are the worst secondary to exist (myth's best spells are either non trainable with training points, or is outclassed) not to mention the utility with the 2 are weak if you learn from the regular teachers and second teachers. Death however is good to train in ONLY for utility mainly being for feint. Also by the time you get to those levels you SHOULD be able to get into where the second teachers are.(They aren't secret as the story forces you to go there) Life is not a terrible school, they can do heal better then other schools and aren't meant for soloing, they are meant for teams to support others.Your theory "train a spiritual or balance then choose an elemental" is really bad but I will get to that later.

Yes ice can run life secondary, but that is more useful for pve and your better off with a life wizard as they are much more valuable and almost guarantees you a spot in darkmoor runs.

Life isn't as good as a secondary for death as they already have ways to get health back (but I will get to the suggested soon!) Also omg storm is absolutely horrid for death and infection isn't as useful in pve because not a lot of enemies heal.

Balance, yes your right but they still should follow the main training point guideline

Ice to tower (only if you pvp)
Balance, learn the tri utility spells of your school from niles
life to satyr
death to feint
sun, learn the Base Damage fist line all the way. Along with sharpen and potent
star, learn the azteca aura of your school

Train nothing else outside your school and you will do fine

Archon
Feb 07, 2011
3175
ShadowDracoX on Jun 23, 2015 wrote:
This is a guide to picking your primary and secondary types/schools when you first enter the game. It is recommended that you pick one spiritual (Death, Life, Myth) or Balance and one Elemental (Fire, Ice, Storm) as you other. Do NOT pick Death, Myth, or Balance as your secondary skill. These schools are very limited to those not in their schools. For Myth, if you’re not a part the school, you don’t have the ability to summon minions (unless by treasure card), and many of their spells revolves around theses minions, so you are better off choosing something else. Balance and Death have very limited number of skills you can learn without having to go to a secret place (Death to Nightside, Balance to Krakotopia), so you have many less you can learn. It is also best not to use Life as your Primary School, for it has the same effect for being a secondary and most of their attacks are weak, but it makes a great secondary. I also recommend that you choose a spiritual or Balance as you beginning skill and then choose an elemental, but some of the combinations are not like that. Here are some combos I recommend:
Choosing Ice as your Primary skill, then choosing Life as your secondary skill: Being an Ice mage, you have high health and use taunts to direct opponents to yourself. Life is a good secondary because you can learn enough to help yourself to healing so you can annoy your opponents because it will take forever to finish you off.
Choosing Death as your Primary skill, then choosing Storm as your secondary skill: Being a death mage, or Necromancer, you have the ability to steal health from you opponents, as well as using Pacify, an extremely useful technique that makes you less targeted for attack. Because Storm has such a high Fizzle rate, using Pacify is a good idea in order to reduce the danger of being attacked if you Fizzle. At the same time, using spells from death, since storm does so much damage, using spells such as plague and infect is good so they can heal much less from the heavy damage taken.
Choosing Death as your Primary skill, then choosing Life as your Secondary skill: Many of Death’s spells such as Death Pact, requires players to play their own HP, or health points. Using Life may give you an edge since there is a death skill that plays life points to give pips, if you take more damage, using the pips you can play a good healing spell like satyr or another Life Healing Spell.
Balance to itself: Balance is better played on its own because your job is to use a single spell that can deal damage of different types (like playing Hydra) to attack their weakness, but often also their resistance. They will also go well with any other type because they have attacks such as balanceblade, which can boost any other type, but as your progress to higher levels, it will be hard and harder to play balance just because it does not focus on one major school, so group playing is recommended with a Balance wizard.
Thats all for now!
as seethe42 and mmoluvr have mentioned, i appreciate the time you took to make this guide. however, allow me to respectfully disagree.

when i was just starting out, my first wizard (balance) had fire and death as secondary/tertiary schools, and it wasn't until later that i realized just how useless it actually was. put simply, it was a rookie move that i had to spend almost a hundred dollars to fix- an expensive mistake that i won't be repeating... and, believe me, your (or your parents') wallet will thank me.

like seethe42, i train my spells based on usefulness. here's how i (re) spent them:

-balance, ice, and myth all have death to feint (death gets it for free, obv.);

-storm (who is more fragile, healthwise), life (who is generally expected to keep her team alive), and fire (my pvp wizard) all have ice to tower instead;

-all 7 schools have stun block, reshuffle, and elemental or spirit tri-blades/traps, and those over level 50 (all but one) have their sun and star spells as well.

-balance also has infection, for added usefulness in castle dreadmore-related situations. and, because she is my only wizard to do both main and side quests, i still have about 17 points to work with.

unless you buy a mastery amulet (which costs $20 in real money and most non-pvp players don't need), secondary school spells are not worth the pip cost or sacrifice to other stats. the exception to this would be life and death, who don't get any attack-all spells until quite late in the game (death gets scarecrow at level 48, and life gets forest lord at level 58). in this case, if you *must* have a second school, i would suggest myth: not only do you get 2 attack-all spells, but your spirit tri-blades/traps are good for both.

/my 2 cents,
-von

exalted
arch
grand
magus

Survivor
Dec 22, 2013
24
You forgot about "prizims" and that most people use a secondary school magic.