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...And THAT is how you balance low level PVP!!

AuthorMessage
Survivor
Feb 28, 2017
14
THANK GOODNESS, is all I'm saying right now! Monsterous, as well as most of the other Treasure Card damage enchants have been marked "NO PVP", along with all the enchanted spells they produce.

In lower level PVP, one of those enchants can double; Even TRIPLE; The damage of a rank 1-4 spell due to how strong they are and how easy they are to farm from Vestrilund ( which is already a popular farming spot for gold ), so they were VERY broken in low level PVP. Especially if they're used to enchant rank 2 DOTs like Fire Elf.

By removing these treasure cards from PVP, lower level PVP returns to what it's supposed to be: A contest of skill, wit, and proper shield and healing usage, instead of a contest of who has the most Monsterous in their sideboard.

Oh, and this doesn't take these cards away from those who rely on them to solo quest. Some people really struggle to solo without that extra damage output, especially Life and Ice.

So yeah, +1 for you, KI.

Survivor
Aug 02, 2009
13
I would have argued banning Deckathalon decks as a better place to start due to the extra bonus to damage, the extra pip and jewel slots and the significant health buff.

The player with the OP-d card from their pet or a rank 7-8 tc and the bonus pips from the deckathalon deck is still going to kill me on round one or two. This isn't fixing that issue, though at least I may face fewer deadly minotaurs.

I am frustrated though as I finally had my gardens built so that I could be competitive, and now they changed the rules... I'll end up having to buy (no doubt a new) crown plant to keep up.

And the best gear and the spell that allows you to remain competitive will remain locked behind ranked pvp requirements that you can't get to because you constantly lose to the people who have them because the match system just doesn't work.

Survivor
Mar 03, 2020
23
low lvl pvp rn can't really be accurately looked at because of the exploit that lets grandmasters queue against lvl 1-49s but ignoring that all i've really seen the pre enchant ban update do is encourage more use of jading.
should be fairly obvious too, without +175s or other pre enchanted hits, low lvl simply doesn't have the damage output to do enough to jades whatsoever, jades need to be addressed if they truly want to make low lvl pvp a thing again.

A+ Student
Mar 02, 2010
1643
caleb10104 on Dec 30, 2020 wrote:
low lvl pvp rn can't really be accurately looked at because of the exploit that lets grandmasters queue against lvl 1-49s but ignoring that all i've really seen the pre enchant ban update do is encourage more use of jading.
should be fairly obvious too, without +175s or other pre enchanted hits, low lvl simply doesn't have the damage output to do enough to jades whatsoever, jades need to be addressed if they truly want to make low lvl pvp a thing again.
What exactly do you refer to when you say "jade" at low level? Jading isn't really a problem in low level because there is no gear that gives better resist than Commander gear, and Commander gear is very balanced in an offensive-defensive picture. Meaning, the best gear at those levels supports aggro, control and defensive playstyles depending on how you decide to spec out your stats with the rest of your gear.

Even if someone were to go with the highest health and resist possible (which is only 50% resist) and sacrifice damage to truly "jade", you can't afford to lose damage at low level. Unlike at higher levels where you have flat resist and minions are only resorted to being shield breakers, at low level they actually do quite large amounts of damage if left untouched. If you don't run a setup with adequate enough damage to take out a minion with 4 pips (equal pip cost to what they're casted with), a jade/tank WILL get overrun by minions very quickly. At a level range where the highest amount of card copies offered by any deck is 4 cards, a minion will force you to shield (which you only have 4 of) and heal (which you also only have 4 of) for something that the wizard is not even doing, meaning that you can't last forever. This is all thanks to jades not being able to enchant their hits and get around the fact that they wouldn't be able to kill minions otherwise. The pre-enchant ban has taken care of that beautifully.

In my experience, after pre-enchants got banned, the pace at low level (specifically Magus and Master) has been the best that it's been at for a very long time. At the current moment it is the only place in the game where you can slow down the tempo and play control, summon minions, stack Infections, and doesn't feel like you're constantly stuck playing aggro like every higher level in the game. Finally.

The only things that need addressing at low level are high level TC and maycast auras. If you go in with a pet that gives you a card that's exclusive to levels 50+, or if you go in with a sideboard that contains a card from level 50+, or if you go in with a pet that holds a maycast aura (Fortify, Infallible, Brace, etc.). then you should be tiered up into the Intermediate tier where you face levels 60-99 that carry such cards. Once the TC problem gets fixed, I think we have a very good level to PvP at the way it's looking right now.

Survivor
Jan 10, 2009
47
Low level PvP is in a TERRIBLE state at the moment! Higher level players are taking off gear to be put into a lower tier for the matchmaking system. Matchmaking desperately needs to be revamped. This is an awful exploit and KI needs to fix this as soon as possible. @ratbeard @falme @greyrose @the entire kingsisle company.

Delver
Mar 30, 2014
229
Balanced? Fixed? Low level pvp is so badly broken now that not one single person I know is willing to rank any more. Not one. Most of them are gone.

PVPking, I've seen some of your thoughtful posts and usually agree. But I'm astonished by your take on this. Where you are seeing all these wonderful low level matches? I haven't been able to find any ranked low level matches to watch for many weeks now. If I see anything at all, it's another poor level 12 kid getting clobbered by a same rank level 60 who exploited their way into an unfair match up, or occasionally it's two low ranked players from the same division. Ranked pvp now is an absolute wasteland for low levels. Before the new matchup system killed low level pvp entirely, I saw a lot of stalemates and Diego deciding. It stands to reason that if you nerf damage hard and do nothing to defense, that people become unable to kill. I'm looking at the kiosk right now. There are 10 matches going on. 8 are 140s and 2 are 99s. Where is this low level wonderland?

People like to organize their decks with enchanted tc in the sideboard. Please bring those back. That was not a popular change. Most players cannot afford to buy all their tc for pvp. This is not friendly to newer players, who used to be able to just put monstrous on their hits but now are looking at 1000-2000 gold price tags for equivalent damage.

The new divisions in the ranked matching system have spawned a huge issue with people exploiting the system. Those divisions were unnecessary, they are being exploited, and match ups are way more unfair now. Even if those loopholes are closed, three issues will remain:

1. Having any such division will always create motivation for players to be at the top of this artificial division to gain advantage. This is just unnecessary. PVP shouldn't be for levels 49 and 99 only.

2. There do exist players who are high enough ranked that they should be facing players in a higher division. We needed the prior matching algorithm tweaked a bit to be more fair to players whose rank isn't astronomical, not hit with a sledgehammer.

3. When you ruin the game this badly, it doesn't matter anymore what the matchup algorithm is because no algorithm can make fair match ups with a nearly empty queue.

Can KI please just roll back the past year's changes to pvp--give us back enchanted tc, remove deckathalon decks, return to the old match up system, and leave it that way until an actual fixed balanced game is available? Those of us who remain expect a playable game for the money we are paying and that is not what we are getting. Thanks. And also your long time low level pvp players would appreciate if their feedback is listened to, not only just kids on youtube who don't even play low level. Thanks again.

Survivor
Jul 31, 2009
14
i am kind of replying to a few things. First of all the guy who said that removing enchants for low level pvp was a good thing. I disagree ( although once again I have adapted) what Ki doesn't seem to understand is that there are still players that have pets that give -80 resist to at least 3 schools, without enhancements it is impossible to win. On top of that i would like to suggest that pvp tournaments and ranked should be from level 10 in tours to level 19. At level 20 adepts have a really big advantage. People level 10-19 have the same chances for the same gear and depending if you are lazy or not both can get good pets. At level 20 the gear changes there are jewels that can be put on that greatly increases your stats. I am level 17 and have fought level 10 with better stats than me ( good for them :) ) All that removing enchants in low level pvp has done is make lower levels use the 7 pip and higher treasure cards. A level 20 can one hit me with a fire dragon or scarecrow or in some cases orthus and that is through 65 resist .People do not use in most cases their own cards such as reindeer knight , deer knight etc unless is in a classic because decks are too small for initiates and journeymen .So it would have been a lot easier and a lot more fair to make say a card like gargantuan available to all in bazaar. It would also have made it more fair to the people who have spent time farming for sunions and for lore spells. I have spent months on wiz farming. Others were to lazy to do the work so complain. Same as deckathalon decks. People are complaining about them yet the deckathalon is held in wiz city . is available to everyone and everyone has the same life etc no matter what their level. It is a question of putting in the work. It is sad that people who are willing to put in the work are being constantly punished for it because others complain . I know KI that you tend to think of pvp as a max level thing but i have 5 accounts , have been playing wiz since right out of Beta and have done pvp at all levels and right now my preference is journeyman . I pay for my accounts and I think the level I pvp at should be my choice. A lot of the stuff you have done are probably wonderful for high levels but at low levels it has ruined it for many. I would like to thank you though for trying . I know it is not easy. I would also like to say that changing gear etc at the new age is not really fair. Every age since the first has had to deal with the fights to get their gear against people who already have it. We have worked hard and paid our dues. when i start new characters in the arena I always fight against people with gear till i get to commander and can get my own. It is a right of passage for my newbies. you win some you lose some . Now people at least have the ability to do tournaments to get more tickets and get the gear that is level not rank related .I think it is a big mistake to take our gear . Thank you all for listening. I just feel that these rights of passage are what makes you good. you learn through trial and error and in the end come out stronger .

Survivor
Jul 31, 2009
14
I would truly like to see you win against an adept with the cards that we get at level 10-19 without using a higher level tc. especially if they have pets that give them a 70-80 resist .If we were just against people our own level ,who would have the same cards as you, I might agree but that isn't how it works. Also your saying stacking things like infection and weakness to me that means spamming and that isn't pvpnot all schools have minions at the same levels or the minions for some are great while others are useless. Unless pets are changed so that all resist is taken away people either use higher level tc or they lose. At least when we had enchants we could use our own cards. Out of all my friends who pvp and that is all my friends list of 200 I don't know 1 who likes the fact that enchants have been taken for low levels. For higher levels you can enchant in match and the cards are your own cards so it doesn't matter - all it means is that you might not be able to pull both as fast to hit. At low level many are going off school which means giving up the schools they chose to play - because the cards other schools have at that level are stronger.it is sad :( Ki is working so hard to make us go back to the schools being what they were intended and instead they have people hitting with other schools and an amulet. So truthfully I don't agree with you at all about enchants. Sorry. Other than making many avid pvp people waste many hours farming for sunions or hundreds of dollars buying sunions and many hours tending them useless and wasted for nothing because now these plants are useless. If ki wanted to make it even they could have made gargantuan available to all levels..would have been a lot easier

A+ Student
Mar 02, 2010
1643
I didn't mention anything in my post that's been confirmed to be worked on in the dev letters. The exploit to face lower levels is obviously not an intended feature and will get taken care of, hence it being called an exploit. Another thing I didn't mention was specific school pet resist because, like we've been told by the devs, resist and damage are getting a rework so there's very little merit in talking about "resist caps" or "banning ward talents" or "resist being too high when somebody sets". I also didn't mention matchmaking because the devs already confirmed that we'll get a warning for facing a player over 10 levels higher than you, which means that matchmaking is also a work in progress and will improve.

What I did give feedback on was exactly what the reason for banning tc enchants was for; to affect the pace of matches and create a lower entry barrier for new players. The pace of even level matches in a non-set, non-high -level-tc match is very good and we don't need damage enchants, increased damage, or pierce at lower levels to make it more aggro.

"Low levels do not deal enough damage"
I'll label the best stats you can achieve for every level band from 1-49, combining Commander hat/robe/boots, Sky Iron Hasta for levels 30+, and a triple damage double resist pet (22% damage and 15% resist), combined with the Duelist's Fatal Razor and Duelist's Daredevil Ring for each appropriate level. I'll use the Death school as the example for stats because it's in the middle health-wise and damage per pip wise with its spells:

Level 10: 910 health, 50% damage, 50% resist. Unbuffed Banshee would do 206 (23% of opponent's health) for 3 pips.
Level 20: 1245 health, 56% damage, 50% resist. Unbuffed Vampire would do 273 damage (22% of opponent's health) for 4 pips.
Level 30: 1595 health, 69% damage, 50% resist, 1% pierce. Unbuffed Vampire would do 301 damage (19% of opponent's health) for 4 pips.
Level 40: 1920 health, 74% damage, 1% pierce. Unbuffed Vampire would do 311 damage (16% of opponent's health) for 4 pips.

At levels 10-20 it takes roughly 4 unbuffed, non-lore spell 4 pip attacks to take out your opponent. At level 30 it takes 5. and at level 40 it takes about 6. Once you factor in blades/traps, heal reductions (Infections), shields, bubbles, and minion chip damage + shield removal, it seems to me like the amount of damage dealt (and therefore pace) is fine in a non-set environment. This is also excluding the Vulpine Avenger mount which gives 2% pierce, the Immortal Lore Pack wands which give high damage and pierce and extremely powerful maycast attacks, and pierce pet talents which would all be seen in a more aggro setup. There is also no gear at any of those level ranges that gives more resist than the gear I listed above.

What you're all complaining about seems to be that players will set resist to one or two schools with their pet (10% Proof, 15% Ward, 10% school-proof) and get 75% resist to those schools. Your solutions are all to increase damage output so you can deal with 75% resist. If that happens, then the damage output when facing non-set resist would be too high because your aggro stats would be designed for 75. This exact thought process is what's lead to max level PvP becoming so aggro, and lots of people are complaining about the pace at higher levels being too fast. The correct solution is to deal with the amount of resist being able to be obtained itself, which is what KI is doing with their resist rework.

"People like to organize their decks with enchanted tc in the sideboard...put monstrous on their hits"
What you seem to not understand about the old enchant system is that it completely threw damage-per-pip value off balance. Take Sunbird, average dpp is 108 vs Phoenix average dpp is 111. Add a TC Monstrous enchant to them, and Sunbird is averaging 167 dpp while Phoenix is averaging 146 dpp. The higher the pip cost of your enchanted attack, the less value you would get for its pip cost because they would be enchanted by the same value. This encouraged low-pip attack spam because it was significantly more valuable to spam a low pip attack then it was to build pips. The old enchant system just cannot come back if PvP is ever going to be balanced.
This also completely takes away the pip value of using minions, where they are meant to be strong at low level. Why use a 400 health minion for 4 pips when my opponent can take it out with a base 400 damage Frost Beetle that costs them 1 pip, or better yet that they could use the same amount of pips as I did to cast the minion to deal a 665 base damage Meteor Strike that does 590 damage (74% damage vs 50% resist) to me and takes out my minion,putting me under a massive pip disadvantage at the cost of a large portion of my health.
You can still organize your sideboard the exact same way as you could with enchants, just without the attack doing well above what it should be doing. Want to pack Poison TC? Go ahead, the only difference is that it's no longer a base 775 damage spell for 4 pips. Want to pack Helephant? Go ahead, the difference is that it's no longer a 925-1005 base damage spell for 6 pips. TC attacks still have the benefit of doing more damage because they are TC.
"This is not friendly to new players."
The truth is actually quite the opposite. As a player who's been growing Sunion plants for years, I have hundreds of Colossal TC (+300) on my low level wizards. Versus any new player, they may not even know what pre-enchanted hits are or at best would only have Monstrous TC (+175). On top of the fact that I would be a much more skilled player, would have better gear because I am a higher PvP rank, I would also have more efficient damage spells just because I knew to grow specific plants years ago. If the entry level for new players would be months of gardening so they can gather hundreds of Colossal TC (you burn through enchanted hits every match) to be able to do as much damage as me, then this is not a system that's friendly to new players at all, or even a system welcoming to players who want to queue multiple times a day, because you'll eventually run out of Colossal TC and be playing at a disadvantage.
The already announced patching of matchmaking exploits, future stats audits, future spell audits, TC audits, matchmaking fixes and general fixes to low level, combined with the removal of damage enchants, will make for a very good PvP at low level. My opinion stands that the removal of damage enchants at low level PvP was one of the many steps in the right direction needed to bring low level PvP where it belongs. Like Kyle in the OP, my feedback is that I am very happy with what the devs are doing.

Delver
Mar 30, 2014
229
Low level pvp enthusiasts are nearly unanimously unhappy with the removal of enchants. Few of them are inclined to give KI feedback because they say that KI does not listen to us, and historically that has been true, and it also has been true with respect to this issue. I posted on these forums several times on this issue and was never even acknowledged. This is really important to many of the low level pvp players. Like Dreamweaver, I have a friends list full of longtime low level pvp enthusiasts, and most of them voted with their feet. They're gone.

Back in the first age, I would enchant my hits with tough or giant, whatever I could afford to buy. I enjoyed playing with my own hits and never used over-level tc. I couldn't have afforded them anyhow. PvP king is saying it is balanced for us to use lower-than-first age damage hits to vs 4th-5th age resist/heal set ups. Actually, I understand the damage per pip issue perfectly well. The solution would have been to cap damage enchants, not to remove them entirely. And only to do so in conjunction with capping resist and healing. You cannot cut damage in half while doing nothing to resist and heals and maintain any kind of game balance.

Nerfing the pet infallible served no purpose that I can see, and that combined with the severe damage nerf has made it extremely difficult to vs players with high resist and yes there are players with more than 50 percent resist playing ranked.

PvP king claims that the ban on enchanted tc fixed these supposed problems before the enchanted tc ban:

1. Minions were useless because they were way too easy to kill. We know this is not true because many good players were using minions. I used them on several of my wizards. The clockwork paladin was hands down the most popular pet for low level pvp and even with enchanted tc it was pretty overpowered. It was also popular for midlevel pvp where players had even more damage.

2. High damage strategies were way overpowered. We know this is not true because many of the top ranked players were using high resist, ward pets etc, with ice and life being very strong schools.

3. Monstrous enchants weren't useful to new players because some people have colossal enchants. That doesn't even make sense. People can do pretty well with monstrous enchants. It was very possible to rank to warlord with monstrous and new and young players would not be high enough ranked to be facing experienced high rank players using colossal, and in fact, not every high ranked player even used colossal or even gargantuan.

4. The changes have been good for low level pvp. In fact, a lot of players were enjoying low level pvp in the past 2 years or so and participation was pretty good, way, way better than it is now, even pre-covid it was much better than now. If it's better now, why is everyone gone?

PvP king, I can't really follow any numerical analysis that hand-waves away 60-70% resist and ignores heal bonuses. Your level 40 unbuffed 4 pip vampire does 311 damage for 4 pips? My level 40 friend has more like 60 percent resist to death. So it wasn't even 311 damage, it was more like 250. Even with only 50% resist, it's more than fixed with a 1 pip sprite with a modest heal boost. Do that a few times and your pip disadvantage will be so great you won't know what hit you but it will be big. You'd need to put 4 blades on that vampire to do ANY net damage (around 50-100 points, whoopee) over my level 40 friend casting satyrs. While you were putting up all those blades my friend had plenty of time to find a cleanse on that infection. Now just rinse and repeat 25-50 times. Good luck killing anyone that way.

I'm willing to believe that the prior system can be made better but the current half baked situation is terrible and I don't feel I am getting what I pay for. I'm paying for this month, not something sometime in the future with a total mess now. Until a completed, actually better system is ready to release, KI please put back the game people were actually enjoying playing.

A+ Student
Mar 02, 2010
1643
Sword tree stated: "Back in first age, I would enchant my hits with tough or giant, whatever I could afford to buy...PvP king is saying it is balanced for us to use lower-than-first age damage hits to vs 4th-5th age resist/heal set ups.you cannot cut damage in half while doing nothing to resist and heals and maintain any kind of game balance."

I'm glad you mentioned 1st age, because that's an age I know very well and 1st age just so happens to be a time where damage talents on pets didn't exist and there was no such thing as wands, rings or athames that gave damage (Sky Iron Hasta, Duelist's Fatal Razor, Duelist's Daredevil Ring which all came out in 2nd age), and armor pierce didn't exist until after the Zafaria expansion. The most popular pets at the time were SPUD pets (Spritely, Proof, Unicorn, Defy; 2 maycast healing talents and 14% resist). At the time, the highest damage setups would run 22% damage and 49% resist. Even with a Tough, Strong or even a Monstrous enchant, your hits would be doing less than they do now with the 74% damage and 1% pierce available. Let's compare the same Vampire spell with the best First Age stats on a Monstrous TC which is stronger than the enchants you mentioned you were fine with:

350+115(175*0.66 due to how enchants worked at the time)*1.22*0.49 = 289 damage.

It seems to me like your golden standard for damage in First Age was actually lower after enchants than in the modern meta without enchants. It's crazy how we do post-enchant First Age damage without enchants in the 4th age, right? And now without enchants, we're basically using already enchanted First Age attacks without the RNG of needing to pull an enchanted hit from your sideboard, which is the most common complaint about banning pre-enchants. Unless you want to retract your statement about being happy with First Age damage, I see this as a very positive step forward. And according to how happy you said you were with the damage you dealt in 1st Age, so do you.

Sword tree said: "Nerfing the pet infallible served no purpose that I can see."

May cast Infallible's cast rate was nerfed because it's a 5 turn buff that gives you 15% armor pierce at virtually no cost, which is actually far more powerful than the may cast damage aura meta we have now. The swing factor that may cast Infallible provided was insane. If you got Icebirded, Storm Beetled, Hephaestus, Gaze of Fate, or used any blade and got a free 15% pierce out of it, you gained way too much offensive momentum and it was uncounterable especially at the rate it casted. I don't know how anyone could say that wasn't a problem.

"PvP King claims that minions were useless because they were way too easy to kill. We know this is not true because many good players were using minions...clockwork paladin was hands down the most popular pet for low level pvp and even with enchanted tc it was pretty overpowered."

Clockwork Paladin and other minions were powerful "in the past 2 years" because of the First Turn Advantage before Turn Base came out. You could not react to minions from 2nd because even if you predicted with an AoE , they weren't considered part of the match and couldn't be targeted. This gave the player going first a turn to shield and minion and let it survive a hit that the player going 2nd used. A 50% shield effectively meant you had to deal 1100 damage (550 health) with a 4 pip hit to kill the minion for an equal pip trade, and a 70% shield meant you had to deal 1834 damage with 4 pips to have an equal pip trade and still kill the minion, which was impossible. Minions were basically a free way to get a huge pip advantage and were known to be significantly worse from second than from first. Now that Turn Based is around, minions are actually not powerful at all in a meta where enchants exist since they can be AoE'd immediately to both kill the minion and deal significant damage to the caster of the minion.

"High damage strategies weren't way overpowered because many of the top ranked players were using high resist, ward pets, etc, with ice and life being very strong schools."

We've already been over this. Saying that damage output wasn't high because players decided to take advantage of Ward talents and the broken amount of resist you could have isn't a valid argument. Countering overpowered resist with overpowered damage just makes somebody who doesn't go for overpowered resist get OHKO'd or 2HKO'd. As I previously stated, the highest universal resist you can get at levels 1-49 is 50% and the only way you can increase it is to use a pet with specific school resist and bump it up to 80% if you commit your entire pet to resisting one school. The devs already confirmed that a resist rework is happening. They took care of the damage at low level, and now they are taking care of the resist. Again, low level PvP is going in the right direction..

"Pvp King said Monstrous enchants weren't useful to new players because some people have colossal enchants. That doesn't even make any sense...it was pretty possible to rank to warlord with monstrous and new and young players would not be high enough ranked to be facing experienced high rank players with using colossal."

I don't know why you're changing my words. I never said that Monstrous enchants weren't useful, I said that having an enchant that buffs my hit by 300 damage vs someone who is only able to enchant hits with +175 damage or may not even carry them at all is an astronomical difference. The 300 enchanted Colossal hits are doing 125 more base damage than an enchanted hit with Monstrous. Considering you're disappointed that you can no longer enchant +75/+100 damage enchants in your golden era First Age PvP because they made such a massive difference to your hits, 125 damage per hit seems like quite a lot. You saying that newer players never faced warlords with enchants.....you're aware of how many complaints there are of Privates going against lower level Warlords with better stats and TC, right?

"If pvp is better now, why is everyone gone?"

Lower level players aren't doing PvP because of the exploit that you mentioned about high level wizards queueing with no critical/block to enter Beginner tier and then change their gear to face lower level players with a massive advantage. Look at where level 60 PvP went after the changes. Most of those players leveled up to level 99 to take advantage of the queue at a higher level and now level 60 PvP is a barren wasteland. The issue is a matchmaking issue and not a meta issue.

"Pvp King,I can't really follow any numerical analysis that hand-waves away 60-70% resist and ignores healing bonuses...even with with only 50% resist, it's more than fixed with a 1 pip sprite with a modest heal boost."

I've told you numerous times now that resist is getting reworked in the future. PvP is in a transitional phase and they can't fix every problem all in one go. KI realized that damage output and resist were a problem, so they decided to deal with the damage first and resist is coming next. I have huge doubts that low levels will have an easy time going above 50% resist in the future. This is the last time I'm going to comment on "60/70% resist" because you ignoring that KI openly stated hundreds of times that they plan to fix resist makes it look like you're here to complain about resist just because you want to complain. I'm not here to reply to complaints that have been answered over and over again. I'm here to have a discussion about where PvP is at after the changes so the devs have an idea of where players think the game is. I'm simply answering your questions with a mind that resist is going to be around 50% which is where it should be.

Sprite out-healing a Vampire is a valid point and I don't disagree with that. However, Sprite is by far the highest heal-per-pip spell in the game healing at 300 per pip and is far and above where every other heal is in the game. The next rank Pixie spell heals only 200 per pip in comparison. That's an issue with Sprite itself and not the damage being dealt. I find heals balanced since heals are essentially capped at 4 pips (Satyr being the highest rank trained heal for every school except Life) while higher pip attacks are available and can therefore out-damage a heal. This also means more copies of attacks can be carried in decks than copies of heals since there is a larger variety of hits, allowing decks to out-damage the amount of heals in a deck aside from TC which is also getting restricted in the future. It is also far easier to buff an attack than it is to buff a heal since buffing heals is exclusive to the Life school while all schools can buff damage. Heal boost is also extremely low at low level so that's hardly even relevant.

"I'm willing to believe that the prior system can be made better but the current half baked situation is terrible."

That's a pretty terrible way to look at it. I don't understand how you can think the prior system was fixable but that this one is an unfixable one even though it's not the complete product. You came here with claims that you were satisfied with the amount of damage being dealt in First Age.

I told you that damage was lower in First Age after enchants than it is now without enchants, and you said you were happy with First Age post-enchant damage. Your only argument so far has been the high resist available which is already going to be reworked in the future, and like I said, I highly doubt it will be easy for low levels to go far beyond 50% resist. If you want to see where the audts will take low level PvP, join the Wizard101 Central Low Level PvP Tournaments where resist is capped at 50%, high level TCs are banned and various overpowered spells are banned or limited. The low level tournaments are very balanced and it's a pretty good picture of where low level PvP would go.

Delver
Mar 30, 2014
229
PvPking, you kind of fixated on my mention of first age hits. It wasn't some golden standard that I loved, but a passing mention that even back then we had some level of enchants but did not have to face people with wards, fortify, etc. I'm not really interested in arguing about first age with you.

The larger point is you cannot cut damage in half while doing nothing to resist and heals and maintain any kind of game balance. KI nerfed the huge damage boosts we were getting from enchants while doing nothing to resist and heals. KI nerfed infallible while doing nothing to fortify. The prior system was actually pretty balanced--people were successful on damage and on jade strategies, and it's obvious if you severely nerf one side of this while not touching the other, that it becomes unbalanced, and saying that some months from now this plan will be fully implemented is no excuse for the current mess. This isn't just my opinion, KI says the work is only half done and they are going to adjust resists to compensate so I don't know why you keep bringing up more and more numerical analyses. My point is we pay for a playable game not one that is halfway done. Roll it out when it's done and don't inflict a broken game on us until then.

Another issue is that many of us don't like to rely on main deck hits. That adds a lot of RNG to the game, how long it takes to find the card you need. There is a similar problem with the deckathalon decks, where we no longer have 2 streams of cards to draw upon. Most of us just enjoyed playing with the old format better.

I don't think most of my friends even knew about the queue exploit. I think they looked at their cards being marked no pvp on that first day and they left. If the ranked queue was the issue, they would be playing tournaments. They aren't. They left. Many of them were tournament players, and they still left.

The decision to make these divisions in ranked is just bad, and already we are seeing players at 99 dominating the midlevel. When the exploit is fixed, it will be players at 49 dominating the low level. How is this better than before, when many levels were viable for pvp? What was wrong with using rank and level to do match ups? It wasn't perfect but it was a heck of a lot better than what we have now even when the exploit is fixed, I don't see what is gained with the new system. I see a lot of ridiculously unfair match ups now that have nothing to do with the exploit. I see rank 2000 vs private of the same level. I see people of the same rank being matched when they are 40 levels apart. KI can fix the exploit, I'm still not ranking because the new system is so bad.

Another issue is that with all these changes and inconsistent and incomplete documentation and markings on cards, there is massive confusion. I don't know which of my tc I can now use in pvp. And I haven't had a chance to go through and test each one of them. Obviously this should be clearly marked on the cards, but I'm hearing that some cards are not marked but are not useable. Even if I test all my cards, next week it may be different. I'm hearing contradictory reports on what is useable. I'm hearing that the rules on which tc you can use are different in home arenas than in ranked so you have to do these tests in practice. This is just a huge mess.

All around, the recent changes to pvp are not improving the game and the rollout has been bug-ridden and very unprofessional.

A+ Student
Mar 02, 2010
1643
"PvpKing, you kind of fixated on my mention of first age hits, even back then we had some level of enchants but did not have to face people with wards, fortify, etc...The larger point is you cannot cut damage in half while doing nothing to resist and heals and maintain any kind of game balance."

Wards & resist comment - See resist audit.
Fortify comment - See TC restrictions and Maycast audit

Cutting damage in half while doing nothing to resist and heals comment - I clearly explained to you that damage has scaled up by 52% compared to what it used to be, and showed you that we're doing more damage without enchants than we were previously with enchants. Universal resist has not gone up and remains 50% as it used to. If you're worried about resist because of Ward pets, see Wards & resist comment above. If you're still worried about it, then repeat the process until you acknowledge that there will be a resist audit.

"KI nerfed may cast Infallible while doing nothing to Fortify."

See maycast audit.

"The old system was actually pretty balanced."

See my Monstrous Sunbird vs Monstrous Phoenix comparison.

"Saying that some months from now this plan will be fully implemented is no excuse for the current mess."

I thought earlier you were saying that you were sick of KI providing you half baked solutions. Thankfully the devs have been putting out every update one at a time and gathering player feedback in between before moving forwar for literally every single update.

"If you severely nerf one side of this while not touching the other, that it becomes unbalanced."

Yeah. Damage went up by 52% while non-set resist stayed the same. Thankfully they took away enchants as damage vs a non-set player got out of hand.

"Another issue is that many of us don't like to rely on main deck hits. That adds a lot of RNG to the game, how long it takes to find the card you need."

I don't understand where people come up with the idea that pulling one card at a time from your sideboard isn't RNG but automatically pulling 1-7 cards from your main deck every turn is. If there's a secret function from your sideboard that lets you pull exactly what card you want from it at any time, please let me know because I'm clearly missing something. If you have a problem with card draw RNG in general, then a card game isn't for you. This isn't chess. RNG will always exist.

"I don't think most of my friends knew about the queue exploit. I think they looked at their cards being marked no pvp on that first day and they left."

This sounds like confirmation bias. If your friends all really did quit on the first day of changes then I'm glad "few of them inclined to give KI feedback" like you claimed they did in an earlier post because they really don't have a right in giving feedback at all if they haven't even cared to try the new metagame.

"If ranked queue were the issue, they would be playing tournaments."

Funny enough a 2v2 tournament just ended and there were plenty of level 30 teams. I currently see 10 Turn Based 1v1 tournaments and tournaments the bottom 5 divisions are all below level 50 and completely filled.

"The decision to make these divisions in ranked is just bad."

See matchmaking update coming up.

"All around, these changes are not improving the game."

According to what the dev letters suggest, you're in the minority here.

To end, I'm not going to act like I'm immune to distaste towards changes that change the way I play or force me to adapt to something entirely different. To this day I strongly dislike that we can't multiply cards with an enchant + Reshuffle because that mechanic added a whole new depth to the game. I dislike the fact that there's a timer that forces matches to end rather than creating an "artificial timer" to ensure a player cannot survive forever, like heal dampening, since the Diego timer forces you to play a certain way and can feel really unrewarding. I may not like these changes and have strong beliefs that the game is better with/without them, but I see the merit in why those changes were made. At the end of the day, instead of constantly complaining about them, I've adapted to those changes and suggested feedback on how I feel they could be improved on. I suggest you do the same with enchants because I can almost guarantee you the old system is never coming back.