So, I'm a pretty new player. Only been active for about a month now, and I'm sitting around level 45 Ice Wizard. While I was leveling I've taken the time to do some PvP. I've played 172 Ranked Matches total.
I realize, in the scheme of things, 172 Ranked matches is not a whole lot. However, I do have enough experience to make an observation that I would like, if incorrect, to be corrected by the more experienced players.
Wild Bolt: I realized within the first few moments of checking the message boards that this was a common issue. I would like a real answer as to how it is justified. A ~1000 damage hit for a power pip seems to be a bit unfair, no?
A few people defended this skill, saying to use Storm/Tower shields. While shields do reduce the damage, even with a 50% Tower Shield, 1 power pip/2 pips for ~500 damage is still very, very powerful. While Storm Shield would provide more reduction, the problem with shields is you lose a round to cast them, or dropping cards hoping to draw another one.
Say you go second and a Storm Wizard starts with 2 power pips (Common with higher level gear from what I can tell), That's a ~1000 damage hit to you if the spell is successful, drastically changing the tempo of the game before your first spell is cast.
It's nice to see a fresh face around here! Welcome!
The argument for Wild Bolt has always been one of its universality. That is to say, since it IS part of the metagame and it is a strategy everyone can use to their advantage, there's no reason to call foul on it as it really is quite easy for everyone to use. Along with this logic you see arguments such as "play the answer cards", or in other words, put Storm Shields and/or Tower Shields in the maindeck. In this way, you take a popular strategy and make it far less effective.
I have a couple of issues with this. Generally, you can determine the health of a metagame by looking not at the threats, but at the answers. In other words, Wild Bolt's effect is more determined by the cards people play in response than the actual Bolt. So when I see people advocating Storm Shield over Tower Shield, I see a very narrow card being suggested to answer a common threat. I don't believe it's indicative of a healthy metagame that I should be expected to carry an answer for a single element.
I'm all for metagaming answers, good players do it in other TCGs all the time. But when one dominant strategy requires everyone to dedicate a non-insignificant portion of their deck towards answering it, it bears examination. I've seen it happen in other games; anyone who played Magic: The Gathering back when Mirrodin was in Standard remembers Skullclamp. If you remember the format, that was a prime example of a card which defined the format it was legal in. The whole of Standard was bent around either playing it or answering it, and the sad fact was that in the end the higher-ups had no real choice but to admit it wasn't making a healthy game.
The Wild Bolt strategy - that is, the Treasure Card altered Wild Bolt spamming strategy - crosses builds in a way that makes it a must-answer. You must always be ready to deal with Wild Bolting from any given Wizard. While I don't have much beef with allowing the frail Storm Wizards of the game to play the odds with such a strategy, I fail to understand why it's okay to let the resilient Ice/Life wizards do it when they are basically built to take hit after hit and resist/recover.
Really Wild Bolt just reveals a problem with Treasure Cards in the Arena on the whole. It's no mark of a fair fight when the schools are so blurred by those Treasure Cards which are derived from "School-Only" spells. I saw in the Bazaar the other day a Treasure Card version of "Summon Cyclops Minion". Really? Every Wizard should have access to that spell? I don't believe that. I don't think Ice Wizards should be able to cast, say, Immolate - the potential for abuse is pretty significant there. When you take a system like Wizard101 which primarily separates Wizards by their health and their available spells, and then devise a means to share spells across builds, you disable those builds with lower health and enable those builds with higher health to dominate. That's the biggest problem with Wild Bolt, and Treasure Cards as a whole, in the Arena.
I hope the person above me set you straight cause MAN that was too much for me to take in I got overwhelmed reading it that I didnt read everything he said. lol.....
But okay uhm yah wild bolt sucks especially if you get hit on the first round. Honestly its hard to come back from that but it can be done. I think your post is more along the lines of about fairness which your argument should probably be more concerned with the 'who goes first' issue, because if you went first instead then you would be better off against that wild bolt.
But wild bolt users argument is going to be its 10% accuracy blah blah blah and if they have gear and such I have seen storm users have all the way up to 41% accuracy. Anyways, my remedy (until and if the 'who goes first' issue is resolved) is to not 1v1 as much because this will give you the opportunity to have someone there to pick up your slack and heal you if you get hit with a first round wild bolt.
In other news, ya just gotta get over it for now, cause wild bolt is a pain but its not going anywhere. Take your loss and try again. Or you could do like a lot of treasure users do and invest in some Bolts yourself and use them in the first round to make you feel more justice. lol.
