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Here's what I've seen in pvp recently:

1. With infallible now having armor pierce as well, even harder to win when going second

2. Infallible aura is really speeding up matches

3. Schools with damage over time spells now have huge, huge advantage

4. Ice is a joke, especially with their new crafted gear (is any thought being put into pvp lately????)

5. Poor balance has nothing going for it in pvp now, no good way to boost spells and everyone has high resist to balance. RIP balance, my favorite character.

5. Spritely: it SHOULD just only trigger when we are hit!!! I don't care if you raise the chances of it triggering for being hit, but get rid of the chance of it triggering for everything else!!! Rather, make the other may cast talents trigger a little more often, we work hard to get them

Use weakness for schools with damage over time spells. Trained Balance weakness and treasure weakness. Power Nova helps too, for Balance, but sadly it isn't terribly pip efficient, especially for 1v1

In what way do you find Ice a joke? Just curious. Too easy for them to win? Too hard for them to win? I wouldn't say that ice is overpowered exactly. Because of their combo especially, their love of life and myth mastery amulets and infection and defenses I find them to be a school way too hard to bring down into the "kill range" while staying alive in the duel. However, it is in their Modus Operandi to be hard to beat. Basically, if you're not fire or myth against an Ice, pretty much, good freaking luck. I'm going to go ahead and say it: To me they are tougher than Fire or Myth.

I'm going to tie in what you said about Infallible to what you said about the Balance school: Infallible (preferably the treasure card version) is an excellent spell for Sorcerers. For one thing, it raises the Kill Zone of your opponent considerably. With your opponent in the kill range (approximately 1900-2100 health), an infallible aura around yourself and a feint laid down and no tower shield protecting your opponent (you'll need to spend some turns clearing tower shields with wands or I use fire elf treasure cards with unstoppable enchantments so they don't fizzle), consider how feeble their options become (assuming you've fought off all weaknesses placed on you):

1. If they opt to heal out of the Kill Zone, your max pip Judgement with feint will render their heal a ridiculous waste of pips, at least, if it doesn't finish them off entirely, at best. This is why, if they do survive, it is advisable to work a second Gargantuan or Colossal copy of Judgement into your hand as backup and pray you get another power pip next round to take them out. Even if they heal again: Pips aren't that easy to come by and you got them on the run at that point.

2. If they tower shield, your feint plus infallible aura will be enough to take them down. This defensive gesture is, in fact, what the majority of wizards in ranked PvP will do. There is no way that tower shield can save them if it is only one at that point. Even better if you have been able to work up a balance blade on yourself by that point.

3. Weakness. Won't save them, unless perhaps its virulent plague and you got no blade on. In which case, simply rinse and repeat and the next round or two they are dead.

4. Cleanse Ward, Dark Pact, Sacrifice, and Immolate are all ways to defend this, that I can think of.

Cleanse Ward: For this option, with your infallible aura up and potentially a balance blade, given that they are in the kill zone, it is seriously questionable whether this defense will even be enough to save them. The Feint is more there to negate tower shielding, really, than it is necessary to pull off the kill.

Dark Pact: Even worse, with a Feint the damage they do to themselves plus your Judge ensures they will be dead as the proverbial doornail.

Sacrifice: With a feint on them, I question the efficiency of this defensive move. However, I think it is a little better than the others. I don't know. I rarely find it necessary to use feint on death wizards is another thing.

Immolate: Assuming you got enough health to survive their attack, they are also dead as a doornail (amazing how 200x1.7 worth of damage further widens the Kill Zone). This brings up another point: It's preferable to have their school shield on you to defend the feint shield on you. However, tower will do.

5. Unbalance. Yeah, well, you, being a Sorcerer, can carry more of those in your deck than anybody else can and (in their right mind given everybody's perception of Balance as a weaker school) should, if they are conserving deck space. Try to find moments in the duel to work Unbalance on your opponent to quash this defensive move. The posts in this forum are chock full of wizards who boast how easy it is to stop max Judge. Well, in my experience, in the real live Arena, they are far ess than half as skillful at getting that Balance dispel on me than they imagine themselves to be here.

6. Very important! Disclaimer: This strategy is far too time consuming and, if you think about it, totally unnecessary if you are going second against a Storm wizard.

7. Sometimes, you'll find you won't even need the feint or max pips. Infallible and perhaps a blade will do. In fact, the great thing there is it gives you element of surprise, whereas Feint plus Max pips does telegraph quite a bit. However, for good reason: It most likely won't need a surprise to pull it off. It can be made that consistent in its effectiveness.

Now the tougher part is working the early and mid game to find yourself in this favorable position. I have found that not being passive (shielding too much, basically) but remaining active and decisive in the duel without being too wasteful with pips improves the performance of my balance wizard immensely. Don't always merely react to what they are doing from first but be pro-active and figure out ways to get them dancing to your tune from second. Finding a happy medium can turn you into an excellent player. The danger with Balance in PvP is too often to succumb to passive indifference, thinking, oh well I already lost I can't do any real damage to them, might as well turtle with my shields and hope I can hit sometime. Not true! Lol. One time I lost to an ice, going second: I got them down to 65 points of health (imagine how hard it is going second! to get an Ice down to 65 health! rofl! ugh!) and failed to have any backup Judgement to negate his healing in my hand, just to put in perspective how much Balance can, in fact, do. Aggravating as that lost was, it was such a rich learning experience. Maybe one of my favorite matches. Poor Lady Judgement, missed it by that much

Final Thoughts:

Weakness can literally save your life. Chimera ain't as bad to me as the rap it's currently getting (maybe I'll start a thread about Chimera).

Sorry for length. I really like your idea about Spritely pets. However, maybe not just damage but having them more oriented toward when any spell (especially infection) is cast on you?

I hate Spritely anyway. In my matches it always seems like my opponents pet heals them on a 3:1 ratio to mine. Sometimes makes me wonder is there like a cheat button for sprite to activate or something? lol :?

KI did reduce the amount of times spritely casts on the test realm, but they changed it back to as is due to the overwhelming complaints of players.