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Pips & Pip Chance/Pip Conversion

AuthorMessage
Survivor
Aug 06, 2009
40
Something is definitely up with this and it really needs to be revaluated.

For example:
My level 150 fire wizard that uses the uber athame has a 81% pip chance with 784 (71%) pip conversion. In all honesty, this isn't exactly bad stats for these and if pip failure, she still has the dragoon amulet to fall back on. Ok, whatever, it's still dead on or before round 2.

BUT ...................

My level 150 myth wizard uses the Morganthe athame and has a 93% pip chance with 807 (75%) pip conversion so I really shouldn't be having a pip failure that often. She has the dragoon amulet too for backup, but ... tonight I spent most of this evening farming mobs and I literally had pip failure 4 times in a row!!! This is without hitting yet and not being able to use orthrus until round 3. This SHOULD NOT be happening. This isn't even including how many times it failed for me the entire day today.

My question is this: Just what is the use of pip conversion if it isn't converting a weaker pip into a full one? You would think with as high they are (pip chance or conversion) on my wizards, one or the other would correct for a weak pip.

Can this be looked into and fixed because situations like this is absolutely ridiculous. I know we all hate having pip fails.

Delver
Jun 10, 2012
236
convert have 2 effects:
- return 1 pip when cast a odd pip cost spell with power pip (2 ppip for 3 pip spell )
- improve pip to ppip when reach max capacity ( with 7 pip and ppip a pip can upgrade with your conversion probability each turn)

as long you dont reach max capacity no pip will evolve.

pip fail like fizzle or draw is the part that make the game interesting we hate them sometime but never fail would be worst what the interest of a 100% win rate game?

reach 100% ppip 100% accuracy and small deck to avoid all 3 and go on alpha striking; no more fail like that

Defender
Oct 16, 2014
189
That's normal. If you really want a good chance, get 95% or more power pip chance.

Yes 93% is still a decent fail chance. I won't bore you with an essay explaining why, but you should aim for 96-97% for something as frequent as power pips to optimize max/min chance.

Survivor
Aug 06, 2009
40
I got 4 pip fails 4 times in a row with a 93% pip chance? Would that sort of thing be normal for you because I can say that a lot of players don’t have 100% pip chance but still remain somewhere in the 90s. Doing the math, that is getting a weak pip for only 93 out of a 100 times!!!!! 93/100. a 95% + chance isn't really going to make that much difference, that is absurd. For a 75% pip conversion, that is a chance of changing the the pip to a stronger one 75 out of 100 times. So to get that FOUR TIMES IN A ROW, consider the odds. Also, this has never happened this frequently before on any of my wizards and they all have a high pip chance except for my fire which is 80%. I have 7 wizards. Even if the gear on my balance is lower than that because I have her healing jade gear on, I rarely have a pip fail at all. I noticed most of this pip failure in Heap farming cows and the ONLY place I have ever experienced this high of a failure rate. (My friend and I returned to farming cows the following day and he didn’t get enough pips to scarecrow until round 5. ) I’ve also played this game 13 years, I think I would have noticed a big problem with my pip chance by now if the problem were me. If I could also get a dev to comment on the rate of pip conversion at a 75% conversion rate or higher, that would be great because a lot of us don’t even understand or consider pip conversion as part of our stats to know much about it to be able to accurately answer a question about it.

"convert have 2 effects: - return 1 pip when cast a odd pip cost spell with power pip (2 ppip for 3 pip spell ) - improve pip to pip when reach max capacity ( with 7 pip and ppip a pip can upgrade with your conversion probability each turn) as long you dont reach max capacity no pip will evolve. pip fail like fizzle or draw is the part that make the game interesting we hate them sometime but never fail would be worst what the interest of a 100% win rate game? reach 100% ppip 100% accuracy and small deck to avoid all 3 and go on alpha striking; no more fail like that "

To the contrary, on all wizards, I run an 8 card deck and use the dragoon amulet where I can hit with 4-5 pips which I always have on round 1. I just didn’t want to use this on the cows because one sometimes blocks so I wait for my 6-7 pip spell unless there is someone else with me that is hitting for a backup kill. My accuracy is also over 20-30 on my wizards. There is no such thing as a 100% no fail chance like that unless you are a storm wizard that has a x pip cost aoe. You know, like tempest which gives storm an advantage over any other school. You forgot to take in equation that some schools like life and death don’t even have a no shadow spell under 7 pips without special training so they have to wait for their pips. (Insert eye roll emote here) Sorry, but not all of us are Masters of the Universe like a storm simply based on the spells we are trained depending on our school.

Just so you get an idea to the type of gear I run on my wizards: .

Dragoon or merciless hat
Tennisyn robe
Dragoon or merciless boots
Morganthe athame (fire currently using Uber)
Director or executive ring
Dragoon amulet
Frilly, Uber or Supreme damage/pierce wands

Triangle sockets are either a 10% pip chance or a combination of 13% or higher accuracy with pip chance. Trust me, it’s not a problem with that. I have all the best gear and socket as high as I can for that gear for what it will allow for that school. It’s not my gear, it’s the game. Perhaps it’s specifically the cow mobs in Heap which is where I noticed it.

Defender
Oct 16, 2014
189
Sassy Rocker Chick on Feb 5, 2022 wrote:
I got 4 pip fails 4 times in a row with a 93% pip chance? Would that sort of thing be normal for you because I can say that a lot of players don’t have 100% pip chance but still remain somewhere in the 90s. Doing the math, that is getting a weak pip for only 93 out of a 100 times!!!!! 93/100. a 95% + chance isn't really going to make that much difference, that is absurd. For a 75% pip conversion, that is a chance of changing the the pip to a stronger one 75 out of 100 times. So to get that FOUR TIMES IN A ROW, consider the odds. Also, this has never happened this frequently before on any of my wizards and they all have a high pip chance except for my fire which is 80%. I have 7 wizards. Even if the gear on my balance is lower than that because I have her healing jade gear on, I rarely have a pip fail at all. I noticed most of this pip failure in Heap farming cows and the ONLY place I have ever experienced this high of a failure rate. (My friend and I returned to farming cows the following day and he didn’t get enough pips to scarecrow until round 5. ) I’ve also played this game 13 years, I think I would have noticed a big problem with my pip chance by now if the problem were me. If I could also get a dev to comment on the rate of pip conversion at a 75% conversion rate or higher, that would be great because a lot of us don’t even understand or consider pip conversion as part of our stats to know much about it to be able to accurately answer a question about it.

"convert have 2 effects: - return 1 pip when cast a odd pip cost spell with power pip (2 ppip for 3 pip spell ) - improve pip to pip when reach max capacity ( with 7 pip and ppip a pip can upgrade with your conversion probability each turn) as long you dont reach max capacity no pip will evolve. pip fail like fizzle or draw is the part that make the game interesting we hate them sometime but never fail would be worst what the interest of a 100% win rate game? reach 100% ppip 100% accuracy and small deck to avoid all 3 and go on alpha striking; no more fail like that "

To the contrary, on all wizards, I run an 8 card deck and use the dragoon amulet where I can hit with 4-5 pips which I always have on round 1. I just didn’t want to use this on the cows because one sometimes blocks so I wait for my 6-7 pip spell unless there is someone else with me that is hitting for a backup kill. My accuracy is also over 20-30 on my wizards. There is no such thing as a 100% no fail chance like that unless you are a storm wizard that has a x pip cost aoe. You know, like tempest which gives storm an advantage over any other school. You forgot to take in equation that some schools like life and death don’t even have a no shadow spell under 7 pips without special training so they have to wait for their pips. (Insert eye roll emote here) Sorry, but not all of us are Masters of the Universe like a storm simply based on the spells we are trained depending on our school.

Just so you get an idea to the type of gear I run on my wizards: .

Dragoon or merciless hat
Tennisyn robe
Dragoon or merciless boots
Morganthe athame (fire currently using Uber)
Director or executive ring
Dragoon amulet
Frilly, Uber or Supreme damage/pierce wands

Triangle sockets are either a 10% pip chance or a combination of 13% or higher accuracy with pip chance. Trust me, it’s not a problem with that. I have all the best gear and socket as high as I can for that gear for what it will allow for that school. It’s not my gear, it’s the game. Perhaps it’s specifically the cow mobs in Heap which is where I noticed it.
Until you pip fail 6 times at 96% and fizzle 98% 2 times, ALL IN A ROW, I don't want any complaints about having bad luck .

(Ready for my essay that I spared you last time ? Or at least a summarized version...)

Let me say that you "theoretically" have a 93% chance. Throw in reality and you have a variation of chances, and because I have quite "extreme" luck, I ended up derived an equation to calculate absolute expected chance.

The theory behind it is basically undefined intervals.
For example, you are given a bottle of water and there is a 30% chance it will turn into milk. The question is "at what interval was this product tested at?".
  • If the interval was one second, then after 3s there is a 34% chance the water has not turned into milk, and after 10s there is less than a 3% chance the water has not turned into milk.
  • If the interval was one minute, then after 3s there is a 98% chance the water has not turned into milk, and after 10s there is a 94% chance the water has not turned into milk.
  • Despite the major probability gap between the two above scenarios, there is also a chance that the water still has not turned into milk with the 3% chance while the other water did turn into milk while having a 94% chance of not doing so.
  • When exactly is "0 seconds"? Is it the moment the product was made? Or when the product is opened? Has 10s passed? 10 minutes? 10 hours? 10 days? Etc.
So as you can see, there are 2 major factors: a) the interval of expectation and b) the initiation time.

Ex: you have a 93% power pip chance. You fail the first 4 times, then 40 instances later you fail once, another 30 instances later you fail twice, and lastly you succeed another 24 times. Throughout these 100 instances, you failed 7 times and thus have a 93% chance of success! However looking at the first 5 instances, you ended up with a 20% chance of success. Looking at the 3rd to 7th instances, you ended up with a 60% chance of success.

So now that brings us to the crux of all RPGs: "Random" Chance

A - The Interval of Expectation
(I'll skip the boring details)
Let's briefly discuss chance expectations! This is basically setting a good interval to accurately predict a chance; this interval is considered a single instance.

B - Initiation Time
(Skipping more details)
OS have a unique way of generating a random number, so the point that it's unpredictable. In other words, you want to have a good chance no matter when you start. (10s in, 10 mins in, 10 hours in, 10 days in, etc.)
So the goal is to have a chance in which at any point (nth instance) you are still within expectation. For W101, it is best to consider each round an instance. Pip chance is accumulated each instance, thus you want a very low chance of failure. Critical is accumulated whenever you cast a hit, so as long as that instance is a success you will do a critical. So for a set of 5 battles each lasting 5 rounds, you have 25 instances; all 25 is used for pip gain while only every 5th instance is used for a critical. If I had a 20% power pip chance and 20% critical chance, it could appear as having terrible luck to only get a power pip 5 times within 25 rounds while having great luck getting a critical all 5 battles.

(Skipping even more details)
Some calculus this, some reverse engineering that, a hint of reality, and I eventually got an equation that is freakishly accurate. Of course it's not 100% accurate cuz randomness but predicts very well.

Anyways, something you should try when you are having bad luck (low drops, fizzling a lot, many fail pips) is to switch realms.