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Balance has always been fairly strong in PvP due to its blade and trap support. Toss in that nothing easily blocks its attacks and attempts to block said attacks are futile the second the blocking player gets hit and toss in a 1v1 per pip damage spell such as judgement and you have a very competant 1v1 assassin as well as a blade and trap spewing game changer.

So balance has always been strong, but this strength alone wasn't what caused balance to be soo out of control in PvP. Rather it was all of the new adjustments and nerfs Wizard101 introduced against fire, ice, and storm.

The first nerf was the ridding of chain stunning, which was a definately improvement but still nerfed the stunning capacity of both storm and ice. Again, this wasn't what made balance soo out of balance compared to the other schools.

Storm got a bit nerfed in comparison to the other schools when blades came out on pets, the new blades allowed non-storm schools to do storm school like damage while storm school remained low on health, accuracy, and pip chance. So the introduction of blades nerfed storm a bit compared to the other schools.

Then was introduced dispels, which nerfed storm school the hardest, life school the second hardest, and not so much ice and fire as they rarely are hit by dispels.

So if you play storm school like I did, you were hit by three storm nerfs in a row without anything to even the playing field for storm back up. Just when things seemed like they just couldn't get much worse Wizard101 decides to come out with the eye of bartlebee against storm school alone. This is a one pip cast dispel card that can easily be bought in bulk for a cheap price of around 300 gold per card (thats right, you can get ten of them for 3,000 gold). Dispels stay on a character until broken off, they do not go away on their own and they stack up. So if anyone uses dispels on a player, unless the player is breaking them off every single turn, that player is effectively stunned out of the game entirely. Storm players even if they wanted to break them off every turn, simply lack the cards to break them off with each and every turn, and while breaking them off storm can not set up any attacks, can not defend itself with shields and so on cause storm only has one play per turn and typically does not have an endless deck.

With all these nerfs against storm school (the school that has been nerfed the most), life school (typically has dispels also stacked upon it), ice school, and fire school, the already strong balance school became super strong as a direct result of the new nerfs that hit everyone else rather hard.

It should also be noted there is no reason at all why balance school should not suffer the same dispel and shielding hardships that all the other schools suffer. When you think about shields against balance, a shield against balance school only attacks aren't that bad as they would only be effectice against incoming balance attacks. That is to say balance shields would not be effective against spectral blast that would be blocked by either ice, fire, or storm shields. See that is the thing, balance already has half of its attacks blockable by shields, so why should balance not have to contend against shields that can block only the other half (sandstorm, judgement, etc.). When it comes to dispels, the same would also apply. A balance only dispel would only work against cards such as sandstorm and judgement as spectral blast, hydra, and the like would be blocked by the other school dispels. In the case of hydra, a school dispel would effectively block only one head.

Dispels in PvP should not rid pips, should not be stackable, and should not ever cost less than two pips (under two pips and the situation is the same as chain stunning). If all of this is too confusing, every time a player is dispelled they could have four protection from dispels cast on them the same as protection shields work against continual stuns. Earthquake should not be allowed to break off any such shields as stun blocks.

sorry seasnake, i just can't not find fault in your wall of "logic".

judgement deals about 0.38 damage more than average per pip. point three-eight. that's all.

also, while judgement is admittedly strong in 1v1, your portrayal of it as unstoppable is completely incorrect and i think you know it. it's worth noting that judgement takes away all the caster's pips; next round, they start from nothing.

let's not forget that few storm OR ice wizards bother to deck any stunning spells whatsoever. and i know full well that tempest, which has a much higher potential, sgould be decked in place of the comparatively weak stormlord. ice has a good reason to deck frostgiant, as it's their best aoe spell, but you seem to like discussing storm, so i'll stick to it.

blades on pets also assisted diviners to make even more epic attacks; it's not as if the effect were "+**% to next non-storm spell".

while storm admittedly has more attack spells, thereby being most greatly affected, storm can aford to deck lower-ranked spells, thereby leading to less pip consumption overall and by dispells.

eye of bartleby is randomly selected; there is no guarantee that a storm dispell will be among the cards (which are single-use anyway).

thing is, a balance dispell actually would affect specblast and hydra, which are balance spells regardless of damage type (if you draw a balance symbol, it is a balance spell).

now, i will concede that a dispell and shield for balance would be reasonable... if and only if they get three other spells that all other schools have: school-specific blade and trap, usable prism.

i like the idea of a dispell being a forced fizzle with no pip consumption, but if that were the goal, they would just be "-200% accuracy to next [school] spell".

While Seasnake’s threads are balance related, each is a different topic: the affects of changes, shielding, potential changes/fixes, etc. We infer his frustration loudly and clearly, but it is not duplicate posting. I am sure the moderators would intervene if this was so. He/She is clearly trying to encourage debate and get a resolution to a passionate problem.

Feel free to start your own threads if Seasnake is too prolific for you.

Devin Darksong – Grandmaster Necromancer – lvl 50 Death
Digby Darksong – Grandmaster Theurgist – lvl 50 Life
Duncan Darksong – Grandmaster Sorcerer – lvl 50 Balance
Dylan Darksong – Grandmaster Diviner – lvl 50 Storm
Dolan Darksong – Master Thaumaturge – lvl 50 Ice
Dustan Darksong – Grandmaster Conjurer – lvl 50 Myth

Moribund wrote:

While Seasnake’s threads are balance related, each is a different topic: the affects of changes, shielding, potential changes/fixes, etc. We infer his frustration loudly and clearly, but it is not duplicate posting. I am sure the moderators would intervene if this was so. He/She is clearly trying to encourage debate and get a resolution to a passionate problem.

Feel free to start your own threads if Seasnake is too prolific for you.

Devin Darksong – Grandmaster Necromancer – lvl 50 Death
Digby Darksong – Grandmaster Theurgist – lvl 50 Life
Duncan Darksong – Grandmaster Sorcerer – lvl 50 Balance
Dylan Darksong – Grandmaster Diviner – lvl 50 Storm
Dolan Darksong – Master Thaumaturge – lvl 50 Ice
Dustan Darksong – Grandmaster Conjurer – lvl 50 Myth

Regardless of the specific nature, seasnake's plethora of posts all carry the same message: Balance is too strong for his personal tastes (I find it ironic that his main Wizard is a Diviner, yet he claims that Balance is the strongest), so it is therefore too strong, period, and needs direct weakening (which has never been done in the two-year history of the game to any school).

By contrast to the number of seasnake's Balance-related posts, which I believe exceed a dozen, I believe that the current record for "Balance is already fair" posts by the same author (in this case, me) is two.

Also, seasnake has been known to use incorrect points to "prove" his arguments. A good example is his assertion that "Judgement's maximum damage is 1600 with 8 Power Pips (paraphrased)." Eight Power Pips is an impossible situation. He also repeatedly states that 100 Damage per Pip is "way over the middle of the road Damage-wise" (paraphrased). It has been stated that, factoring in every attack that deals one hit of standard Damage (WildBolt not included for the sake of realism; a 500 Damage per Pip attack would drastically alter the calculation), the average Damage over all the Schools is 99.62 (rounded to the hundredths place from 99.62103176...); a Judgement cannot deal seven points of Damage over this without Blades and Traps.

Personally, I consider it a mission to defend the School of Balance, which lives up to it's name quite well.

Dugan DragonCloud, Level 46 Sorcerer and advancing.

Firefrog16 wrote:

SEASNAKE, STOP COMPLAINING.

Each school has its own weaknesses and strong point, GET OVER IT

Finally someone who agrees!!!!!!!!!