First off i would like to state that the original post is not mine and i'm posting this with consent from Nick. S from central and added updates in bold as some of the information was a tad outdated.
As a second note i'm posting this in commens area even though some might argue it should be in the pvp section. I'm doing this because any changes that has been made or might come in the future affects pvp, pve and everyone.
Preface
I've been in lots of ranked duels, lots of tournaments, and lots of "ego" matches with people who are supposed to be the best in the game. There's some things that hold true at higher levels of dueling, the points where KI's pvp system shows itself to be truly flawed, and they will be discussed here.
I hope to get feedback and opinions from centrals many talented duelists to add to or correct the writings of this guide, if you can call it a guide.
First, a brief explanation of opponent types as they are to be understood in this writing.
Hard and Soft Opponents To the beginner there are many options. To the trained eye there are few.
Most of this discussion will be based on tournament dueling. The reason for this particular context is that it's where the cracks in the PvP wall are most visible. Dueling against a Central Tournament opponent who is in the top percentile in their class is what I consider to be a "Hard" opponent.
These people have much experience playing at higher levels of PvP, their training points are spent correctly, they are outfitted in the best gear available, they know your school and how you play, and they have set up a deck to shut you out. Having the bad luck of "Going Second" against one of these opponents results in almost imminent loss.
I consider any match which is not under these circumstances to be a "Soft" opponent. Even in Tournament matches there are opponents who have less practice in the high level pvp environment, gear disadvantages, training points misspent, or any of a host of other reasons which could give a Seasoned Tournament player an advantage. In ranked PvP most opponents are "Soft" simply because of the inability to set a deck to consider every school possible. There's a much more limited amount of critical cards in deck when you cannot know your opponent beforehand.
This discussion is in the context of Hard Opponents. It's a discussion of the flaws in PvP, not in players. Speaking in terms of players who are as close to "perfect" as they can get allows us to focus on the real discussion. For the most part, they are the reason for the discussion. If every opponent you faced played poorly, or at a disadvantage, the flaws in the game would be much less prominent. This has been offset a bit by the introduction of the critical system especially people in full crafted crit gear but basics remain the same.
Going First vs Going Second This is the biggest flaw in the current PvP system. Period.
One person plays at a disadvantage the entire match. It's simply lopsided.
Before anyone chimes in to tell me how often they win from second, please consider that I am talking about Hard opponents. Someone who makes very few mistakes and is very tough to beat even if they are second, getting their powers amplified by the fact that they won the coin toss at the beginning of the match.
Some of the better duelists here at Central have a hard time remembering the last time they lost while having first turn. It's that bad.
Why is it that bad, especially vs Hardened opponents? Nothing new here i just really wanted to underline how bad it is. I haven't pvp'd nearly as long as some of these known people here and neither on a top 1vs1 wizard school but with my current 4:1 win/loss ratio the last time i lost from first was month back starting up a new deck on my balance.
The Metrics of Resist, Attack, and Healing
Resist
Between Defender Pig and Arena Gear, the new standard Arena Resist is 45%. There are possibilities of greater and lesser resists for various tradeoffs, but for this discussion I'm going to consider an Ice Grandmaster in 45% Resist.
Quote: After some discussion in this thread, it has been decided that the original calculations for resist vs HP were incorrect, and they have been adjusted. The new corrections actually show that the healing vs damage rates are further off than I initially suggested.
4,000 HP is the minimum amount of damage that must be done to take down an Ice Warlord. In all reality, their health is usually a bit higher.
This does not sound insurmountable, but consider the effects of healing with resist.
Healing with Resist
The resist and health levels I suggested are based off of an Ice Grandmaster using the Malistaire Drake's Death Edge athame and the Malistaire Drake's Ruby Signet ring. These give 15% Incoming and 15% outgoing heal boost, respectively.
Quote: Note here that the Double Incoming Boost and Double Resist on DoT and HoT spells has been fixed. Removed the information about double healing boost on Sprite.
Okay, but what does that mean in the Arena?
Well, besides the boosted heals, Resist serves to further boost the effects of heals. Here is a quick breakdown of heals and their effective HP gains in 45% resist:
Heal x Heal Boost x Resist = Net HP
Pixie 400 x 1.3 x 1.818 = 945.45
Satyr 860 x 1.3 x 1.818 = 2033.73
Sprite - Condensed for the sake of brevity 30 x 1.3 x 1.818 = 70.91 90 x 1.15x 1.818 x 3 (for the three rounds)= 564.55
As you can see, these are huge heals. How does this stack up against attacks?
Attacks vs Healing with Resist
I'm going to use Helephant as a baseline attack, which is actually one of the stronger attacks per pip. This means that with schools such as Life, Ice, and Death, you will find the offset to be even worse.
Helephant does 625 - 705 damage, for an average of 665 Damage. 22% Arena Gear attack boost brings this to 811. It's a 6 pip spell so we'll divide by 6 to get the damage per pip. This gives us roughly 135 damage per pip. Lets compare that to heals.
The most obvious issue here is Sprite.
Sprite - 1 pip - 636 health per pip. Fire base damage - 135 damage per pip.
Even if you used a Power Pip to case sprite, cutting it's effective Pip Value in Half, you get a large difference.
Sprite - Power pip wasted - 318 health per pip. Fire base damage - 135 damage per pip.
The downside to Sprite is that it takes 3-4 rounds for full effect, so it's easier to use with schools who have a large HP Buffer, like Ice. Still, when used to maintain a high health level before becoming critical, damage per pip simply can't compete.
Pixie - 2 pips - 472 Health per pip. Pixie - Wasted power pips - 236 Health per pip.
Satyr - 4 pips - 508 Health per pip. Satyr - Wasted power pips - 254 Health per pip.
What does this mean? It means it's not possible to damage faster than your opponent can heal it off without more boosts(blades, bubble, etc).
Only two attack cards in the game work outside of this rule. Those cards are Immolate and Wild Bolt. Those cards also come with drawbacks that handicap their effectiveness.
Consider how this information interacts with the Second Turn handicap. As i was only allowed to post 10k(full post being 44k). characters i will post the rest of this when/if it pops up.
Healing vs Attacking vs Going Second: The Dirty Truth
We have established that you cannot damage anyone faster than they can heal(with very few exceptions). Now we are faced with having to use cards which resolve this issue. Those cards are Blades, Bubbles, Infection, Minions, and Enchantments(tough, strong, giant, and monstrous). I have excluded traps because they are so rarely useful in PvP. The same reason that Blades are hard to use makes Trapping nearly impossible.
The most consistent damage modifier in the game is your attack bubble. This is where the going second disadvantage is really broken. You can not have more bubbles than your opponent. The only way to do this is to have more treasure bubbles than they do, and there's no guarantee that they won't have stacked as many as those as you have either. The person going first always gets a turn to overwrite your bubble if you are going second. This takes the advantage of using a bubble away from the second player, and basically makes it an expensive blade that can easily be countered.
Using your bubble going second becomes a defensive technique, as a way to delay large hits by debuffing your opponent. Other than that, there's no real way to win the bubble war against a like-minded player.
This same "response" advantage applies to every other modifier in the game also. You cast a 4 pip minion and they can slay it with a 4 pip card of their own. This is generally an Area of Effect attack like Meteor, so you incur damage also. There's no way to shield your minion before it can be killed, you end up having to heal off damage, the attack modifier is Nullified.
You can cast a blade and they have a turn to cast a shield, you can cast an infection, they have a turn to cast sprite.
All of that aside, the Shield dynamic when going second is a huge issue unto itself. In a game where you have to figure out how to damage someone faster than they can heal, firing into a shield you had no way of knowing would be there is the quickest way to lose parity with the other player. All things being equal, the person who manages their resources the best will win the game. When half of your resources get blocked at a rate of 70% because your opponent shielded the same round you attacked, it creates a nearly insurmountable offset.
This offset would be less of an issue if your opponent had the same problem, however they will always be able to see your shields the round before and technically should never have to attack into one against their will.
Shielding themselves is not where it stops, they also have a turn to shield their minion when it comes out. The only thing worse than losing pip parity to an attack on your opponent is losing pip parity to an attack on a Minion and being rewarded with damage from 2x opponents.
What does this mean for the deck building metagame, and duels in general? This whole section still holds true and even more so now with updated legendary gear and even higher healing boosts. While the resists are no generall for everyone but ice the healing boost have gone up by crazy amount especially if you take the time to make the crafted items. This of course imo makes the current arena gear outdated but the issue remains the same and with ice's legendary set puts them a lot higher on the pvp ranking system. And again this underline the impact of going first vs second.
Broken Turn System and Healing vs Playstyle
Going first or second is random, so noone is able to set a deck to perform one way or the other. It's a tough job to balance your deck with attack and defense so that you can survive going second and still have enough push to reign down damage going first.
The result, frequently, is underpowered decks. They are designed for winning going second and attempt to manage resources better over a long period of time. High level tournament duels regularly take more than an hour to complete, unless the person going first is able to quickly overwhelm their opponent. I've also encountered the problem in ranked PvP where an opponent is unable to deal enough damage from first position and the game stalemates for hours.
School Dominance All Schools are not created equal.
You will frequently see people ask which school is the best for PvP, and you will frequently see responses such as "all schools are just as good as the other". This is a good response to keep children from bickering or belittling players of other schools. It is not, however, the truth. Some schools are more dominant in PvP and here we will discuss that.
This will be focusing on 1v1 PvP as the dynamic in Team play is completely different. Coincidentally, the two schools who suffer the most in 1v1 are most instrumental in Team PvP which does offer a sort of balance.
The Anatomy of a Dueling School
The schools who are dominant in PvP are the ones which are best prepared to overcome the issues in PvP, especially while going second. Schools that are likely to win going second, are nearly unbeatable going first.
Here are considerations that go into making schools more adept at winning.
Shield Breaking
The ability of a school to climb over, around, and straight through shields is one of the most important aspects of PvP. Attacks like DoT and Double Hits level the playing field when you go second by making it harder for your opponent to shield.
This type of attacking also feeds the next property of a good school. A few new things came with CL like death getting Skeleton dragon and ice getting a wooping 2 more dots in the form of snow angel and polar swarm putting them yet again higher in the ranking system.
Ability to Boost Attacks
When your opponent is less likely to shield against you, you are free to blade up. This helps in overcoming the damage vs healing issue.
Another important aspect of boosting is shown by Balance. They actually struggle with shields, but there's a lack of shields in the game to defend against them. This, coupled with the ability to boost a single attack to insane damage amounts makes for a dynamic all its own.
Another important factor in boosting attacks is Bubbles. Some schools don't have attack bubbles, some schools bubbles cost more than 2 pips. Having a cheap and effective bubble is the best way to assert offensive dominance on the playing field, and some schools just aren't built to compete in this aspect. Changed a bit again although i still see many cling to this "old" form of setting up attacks. Blading has become less and less commen with the introduction of monstrous and gargantuan. As for balance more schools have gotten more dots and with the the recent introduction of "unbalance" spell puts them a good deal down the list of what balance used to be, but lets not get into that futher right now.
Base Attack Strength
When going second, it's sometimes impossible to boost your attacks. Schools that have naturally weak attacks are further victim to the healing vs damage issue.
The offset for these schools is that they generally have large amounts of health and/or healing abilities. It makes them hard to kill, but it makes it hard to close out games.
Storm, on the other hand, has low health and shielding issues, but boasts attack strengths that mean they need very little boost to overcome healing. Only changed a slight bit in the form that the weaker attack school now adds gargantuan and crits to thier arsenal giving schools like ice a huge boost in this area.
Minions
The spell pool, health amount, and pip cost of minions is also a big deal in high level PvP. Schools with the most useful minions dominate from second position. Minions that have the HP to survive long periods of time and cast spells that earn their pip cost back are by far the most effective in game.
Will probably add more here later... Minions die easier now with CL gear and every school now having aoe minion killer spells(life got forest lord). This area remains a bit in the grey zone for now with all minion spells having changed ect ect and while i remain that any top lvl deck should make good use of thier minions many might disagree.
Pecking Order of the Dueling Circle A listing, in order, of the most dominant to least dominant schools in PvP.
Please remember that this is mainly in the context of tournament dueling. I understand that some of the less dominant schools actually have an advantage in Ranked PvP because shields against them are less prominent. going second in a Tournament Duel is where the strengths and weaknesses of your school are most obvious, so that is how this section will be approached.
It's also notable that the difference in school dominance is not always huge margins. Ranking some of these as better than others is kind of a close call.
Quote: Originally Posted by Alex Deathflame View Post Lets look at the Hall of Fame and the schools the players there used most to win tournaments:
1st: Chunkyfresh - Fire, Myth, Balance, Storm, and Life. Don't remember him winning a tournament with his Ice or his Death, someone correct me if I'm wrong. 2nd: Alex Deathflame - Fire, Myth, Death 2nd: Dapangrulez - Balance, Ice 4th: Alex Jaderider - Myth, Balance 4th: Donna Pixiesong - Myth, Balance 6th: Carlitos - Fire, Myth 6th: $cottiedubs - Fire, Life 8th: Kenneth Deathsword - Fire 8th: Kane Darkwalker - Myth 10th: Nick S. - Fire, Myth There is of course more to be added since this post was made but i didn't want to do the extra work or found it needed to list it all. Statistics pretty much remain the same except for ice winning a good deal more now.
Myth is the most effective 1v1 school currently in the game. Period.
Myth is the only school which doesn't need some type of DoT or low PiP attack to break shields. This means it's easier for them to boost attacks going first or second, and it means they can boost attacks further.
The Time of Legend bubble fits the exact criteria for perfect Dueling Bubble. It only costs 2 pips, it boosts attack, and doesn't help other schools. This is the type of Field card that wins bubble wars and controls the game tempo.
Minions. Myth also dominates the Minion game. They have the highest health per pip minions in the game, their minions cast a variety of helpful and vicious spells, and they have a toolkit for manipulating them.
They are also best prepared to kill enemy minions from second position. They have a strong 4 pip AOE attack in HumongoFrog which damages the opponent and takes down most minions. They also have 5 pip Minotaur spell which overcomes the opponents ability to shield minion on turn 1.
They have one of only two zero pip stun spells in the game, which means they can cast a stun while gaining a pip. This gives Myth the ability to lock you out of blocking an attack you would have otherwise shielded before they had the extra pip.
In summary, Myth is the most adept 1v1 PvP school. There's really no arguing it. Only changed slightly and myth have also added medusa to thier arsenal(which currently is major bugged is said myth is going first. If a myth succesfully land a stun with medusa while going first it will also work as a dispell meaning the spell the opponent was casting from 2nd he or she will spend the full pips on the spell they cast if they get stunned. This is a major bug on the medusa spell and KI should fix this asap). Myth still remain in the top competing with fire and ice.
Fire
Fire runs a close second to Myth in PvP.
The main difference is shield breaking. Fire relies on low pip DoT attacks instead of double hits, which means they are more prone to waste blades on breaking shields.
Fire also has a 2 pip attack bubble, which is on par for bubble dominance.
Fires minion is shabby in the HP department which makes it nearly impossible to establish vs a strong duelist when you go second. This is the biggest drawback for Fire currently. The minion removes shields so Fire can boost, however the minion has to live that long.
Fire also has a stun, but it is 1 pip. It requires you to already have the pips to make an attack, meaning your opponent should already know to shield.
One of Fires biggest strengths is the spell Link. It's a low pip DoT attack for removing sheilds, but it also comes with a heal. This mean you can break shields and heal for 2 pips, it also means you can remove infection every time you cast your shield breaker, which is often.
Weird, but true information. Quote: Note here that DoT resist has been fixed. Removed information about Double Resist on DoT spells. Another fact about DoT spells is that they don't take Gear Boost. So a Fire Wizard with 30% attack boost doesn't transfer any of that into the DoT attack. They are only boosted by Blades, Bubbles, and Traps.
At any rate, Fire is still one of the most successful PvP schools to date. Changed in the form of fire getting Efreet spell only argumenting thier power by lessening the need for tower shields and gaining currently the best way in the game to deal with dots or boosted X pip spells. Fire still remains the undisputed champion school in pvp with myth and ice gnawing at thier feets to share the pedistal.
Ice
Ice is a heavy hitter in the Arena. They have the tools at their disposal to compete with any other school out there. It is hard sometimes to do enough damage with an Ice wizard from Second position to close the game out though. This is the only real reason they are not in one of the top Two spots.
Ice has massive health which means they are able to heal off damage with sprite much easier than almost any other class. This makes their game much more efficient, but the health tradeoff comes at the expense of Damage in their attack cards.
They have a two pip offensive bubble. This puts them on par with any other bubble dominant class. The real issue with this is that they absolutely need the bubble to generate large amounts of damage. Going second and losing the bubble war on Ice can feel like boxing with pillows taped to your hands. Most Ice warlords, however, are very adept at winning the bubble war.
Ice has Tower shield as a school spell. This means that they will carry 7 in deck and possibly another from a Guardian Dragon pet. That's 8 shields you have to crawl through to get a solid hit, further exasperating the issue of killing a 4000 HP mountain of pain.
Ice has one of the highest HP per pip minons in the game, and it is very effective. One the defensive side, Ice has Blizzard which is a 4 pip AoE spell for killing your minion and maiming you in the process.
As far as shield breakers, they have a ton of options. There's Frost Bite(5 pip DoT), or they can simply steal your shield for themselves with Steal Ward, or they can train Fire Elf and make enchanted Ice Elf cards(2 pip DoT). They do not have much issue coming over shields. They also have enough HP buffer to allow them lots of time to cast multiple blades, so they can waste a blade on Elf and still have a few for a big combo.
The final piece that makes Ice dominant in PvP is their 7 pip AoE spell that comes with a stun. This is used as a combination attack with Colossus to end games in a quick and ugly manner.
In summary, Ice is highly competitive in high level PvP. The only drawback is that they struggle to do massive amounts of damage and this is compounded by the damage/heal ratio in full resist, especially when going second. Huge changes here putting ice now well at the top. First off the biggest boost, ice legendary gear now giving more general resist then full arena gear along with much more boosts in dmg, acc, crit and block. Added spells like the vastly powerfull snow angel which is not only a dot spell but also aoe and gaining an extra dot in the form of polar swarm. Ice will now sit with atleast 4k hp resists can be over 50% with the right talents on pet, a lot easier way of boosting thier weaker attacks in the form of gargantuan and with added healing boost. With full legendary gear, a few crafted items and the right talents an ice wizard can now be close to impossible to drop below 2k hp. Along with being a mountain of hp and resist to drop thier dots can now crit for atleast 1k on a crit per turn putting ice to be the contender for first place of pvp schools.
Balance is a school that operates outside the general rules of PvP. The nature of their attacks, buffing, and debuffing are both a hindrance and an amazing strength.
The reasons Balance comes in under Ice in this comparison are simple. Lower health Minions, inability to wand off weakness without losing blades, lack of an attack field compounded because their field is more than 2 pips, and lack of any innate DoT attacks. If you look at the tournament Hall of Fame listings, you'll notice far more Balance than Ice. I think Balance in the Arena had a heyday, and since then everyone has learned the weaknesses of the school making it much harder to win tournaments with one now. This is not to say that Balance is a slack school in PvP. Quite opposite, very dangerous.
What Balance lacks in traditional PvP dominance traits, they make up for by being unique. Balance has the only X-Pip single attack spell in the game. This spell is also impossible to defend with any shield that is not Tower shield. This means that a persons main deck usually only has 4x chances to block the attack, and only at a rate of 50%. Very dangerous.
Balance also has several minions, all of which are well suited for PvP. One of the most effective PvP minions in the game, Mander, has only one drawback of being a low health minion. Minions casting attacks coupled with the low amount of Tower shields to block Balance spells is an effective quicksand for opponents.
Another unique aspect of Balance which effects PvP is they have a Healing spell. It's 500 Health for 3 pips, and with only the Malistaire Dagger it boosts almost 30%. Since Balance does not have to waste Power Pips casting this spell, it works far outside the normal realms of healing per pip and makes for an incredibly resilient school.
Balances attack spells, outside of Judgment, all do a medium amount of damage. Balance has no Stuns or DoT attacks, but many of their attacks are just very hard to defend in general. This is offset by an impaired ability to boost. Since Balance Blades are not school specific you cannot wand off Weakness without removing the blades. Weakness is more effective against Balance wizards than almost any other school.
All in all Balance is a very solid PvP school, but I feel that their drawbacks make it harder to win from second than the previously listed schools.
Quote: Originally Posted by Valdus Wildthorn View Post Balance uses everyone's bubble which is what I think you're missing here. It's just up to him to keep his opponents bubble down, and any other bubble up. For me, I have Ice bubble in my hand and an assortment of bubbles in my side deck. Truthfully I don't use a Fire bubble because the minion doesn't do enough damage to warrant it, and with a Fire Wiz and their ability to get rid of my shielding it just doesn't make any sense for me to carry them. It would mean getting rid of other schools bubbles and leaves me open to the higher damage from Fire.
I'll play under Ice and Storm bubbles for awhile, but I will always try and take down a Fire or Myth. This was brought up in the comments and is also notable about Balances dueling strength. They're the only school that gets boost from other schools bubbles, which is a unique asset. Balance imo has gotten weaker since CL with more schools getting dots and higher dmg to negate thier shielding ability and non useable rank 8 spell. Also with the recent introduction of the unbalance spell. The well known and much complained judgement spell is not as dangerous either as it used to be. It has become easier to defend against and with added amount of hp to each school with CL gear the chances of surviving a boosted judgement has also become higher. Minion play is not as strong as it used to and a few other things i don't need to get into right now. Balance was once the wildcard of pvp and pve but has now been put a good deal down the list by ice, fire and myth.
Death
Death is a median school in PvP since they have some of the tools, and some great tools, that make for PvP dominance. They are, however, hindered by the lowest attack numbers in the game and subject to tempo swing via shielding since their only DoT spell costs 4 pips to cast.
Minions. They have huge minions, the biggest in the game, and they have the most minion options of any school in the game. They can summon a total of 14 different minions depending on their pip amount, with as much as 1400 health for the top minion. The fact that these minions can cast spells such as Weakness, Tower, and Health Steal Spells makes them really hard to kill if you let them wind up. The downside is that they only get 100 health per pip and attack averages are far greater than that, not including if the enemy has an attack bubble up. This means that for hard to defend schools, it's quite possible to take a big minion down for less than it took to cast. That said, a good player knows how to care for their minion and it can be quite a task to take down a big one.
Death also comes equipped with a built in healing spell, good for themselves or others, a DoT attack, and most of their attacks return health to them. This makes for an extremely resilient and hard to defend school.
Poison, the Death DoT spell. This is a great spell, allowing Death wizards to remove shields and openly Wraith. There are drawbacks though. For one, Death has the lowest damage output of any school in the game, which means they must blade up to be effective. Casting a DoT generally wastes blades you had up for an attack, so they have to double up on every blade they use in hard opponent situations, if they ever hope to get a solid hit in. Coupled with the fact that this DoT takes 4 pips to cast, which inhibits the amount of large attacks that can be used in combination after the initial cast, it means that a single shield can cause a large tempo swing for Death Wizards.
I think the largest drawback to Death wizards is that their Bubble is pip expensive, and situational. Deaths low attack numbers and the huge resist of Arena Gear means that they don't generally get a ton of health from their life-steal spells like they do against non-resist opponents. This means they must frequently use healing spells to maintain their health level and their bubble severely inhibits that. In short, it costs 2 pip slots to cast and it cuts both ways.
The bubble and low attack numbers work together to create problems for Death in PvP. Having low attack numbers and being easily inhibited by shields means that it's nearly impossible for Death to kill a full geared wizard without swamping them in infection or having Doom and Gloom up. The problem here is that dominant schools generally have a cheaper bubble cost to cast, so they can easily overwrite the Death bubble. The biggest help in offsetting this issue is the minions, since they help to generate more damage which evens up the heal/damage ratio more. The problem with that is that even a high health minion is very hard to keep alive from second position against a good duelist.
Death has the tools to make them competitive in the Arena, even well enough to win multiple tournaments here on Central. They do have some drawbacks that give them a disadvantage against more pvp-centric schools though. I think it's important to understand that even though death is not ranked at the top of this list, the amount of difference between schools is not gigantic. It is still a very dangerous PvP school in the right hands. Addition of Skeleton dragon currently being the biggest dot in the game was a nice boost for death. Not being able to enchant thier life drain spells is well negated by thier ability to enchant thier now 2 very strong dot spells. The big increase in % of power pips where many death players now has close to or over 100% chance to gain a power pip also argument thier ability to play a minion deck with animation and get a "very hard to deal with" high hp minion. Overall death has gone up a bit in utility but ranking wise remain about the same(up for debate still).
Storm is probably the school most victimized by the current problems in PvP. They have a useful toolkit in front of them, but it is mainly rendered obsolete by the going second issue, 4 stun shields for every stun, and the healing vs damage offset.
Storm has a single cheap DoT spell in Storm Elf. It's not a trainable card, which means that they can only carry a limited amount. The mutate card to actually make this card is extremely expensive, and presents another hurdle that must be overcome if Storm Wizards hope to be viable in the Arena. They have other DoT spells in the form of Pet cards but these are generally X-Pip or 5 Pip minimum. This severely impedes the ability to combo with shields down, and keeps them from having a Resist pet, which Storm needs more than anyone.
Storms most effective combo from Second position is Storm Lord(700 damage + Stun) followed by Triton during the stun round. With Darkwind up this combo is enough to put most schools on the ropes. Currently, however, we are all getting 4 Stun shields every time we are stunned. This means that if the combo doesn't kill the opponent, they must cast Storm Lord 4 more times before they ever have a chance to try again. Coupled with the fact that Storm Lord is Storms cheapest AoE attack to remove minions with, most players never even get the chance to combo with the stun, since their opponent already received stun blocks from a Minion kill earlier in the game.
Since Storm lacks the ability to DoT regularly, and they lack a Minion that removes shields, they are very prone to be inhibited by shields that other schools are not. This means that even though Storm is extremely dangerous from First position, they are always fighting a losing battle from Second position. When your bread and butter is damage output, and you cast all of your damage into 70% shields, you lose. Simple as that.
All of that said, Storm is the only school with damage output high enough to overcome the Healing vs Damage ratio, which makes them incredibly dangerous from First, and nothing to scoff at from Second. Besides their regularly boosted damage, they have the absolute highest damage per pip spell in the game in WildBolt. Sadly, some people resort to spamming this spell out of frustration or lack of skill, which greatly degrades the level of play in the Arena. It is, however, an undeniable asset to the school of Storm. Storm is the only school that can spend all 14 pips attacking and still hit you with 1000 damage the next round if they get a power pip.
One advantage that Storm gets, which I think is undervalued, is that their low pip spells do enough damage to chip heavily at an opponents HP while still managing pips well enough for healing. Kraken does 520-580 for 4 pips, which means that it can be cast every other turn with a reasonable power pip percentage.
In short, Storm is dangerous in the Arena due to their massive attack power and deadly efficient combos, but they are impeded by current problems with the PvP system. For this reason they are ranked very low on the 1v1 list. Tbh too much has changed for storm in order to state specific statistics. There are so many different deck setups out there now with big spells, minion play, gargantuan lighting bats and kraken, storm elfs, new wild bolt and ect ect. I not faced too many storm warlord since CL and those i have faced have been as different as night and day to make conclusive comments.
Life
Life wizards in the Arena are immovable objects. A life wizard with 45% resist and a love of healing is pretty much unkillable. The problem is that they lack the damage spells to kill an opponent in full resist.. High level matches against a Life warlord can be described as painful at best.
The efficiency of heals for Life wizards are effectively doubled, since they can cast them with power pips. With a good Power Pip rate, a Life Wizard can cast Pixie almost every round. Coupled with the fact that their minion heals like it's going out of style.. It's nearly impossible to generate enough damage to take one out. Your only hope from second position is to do enough damage in a single hit to kill them. From first position you can probably find a 2 hit kill solution, and hope that they don't predict it and heal on the first hit.
If Life is nearly invincible in the arena, why is it ranked so low? The problem for Life wizards is that they can't generate enough damage to kill a full geared opponent. Their only hope for doing massive damage is Feint and Centaur, and we all know that if you go second there's no way you're going to Feint a good duelist without getting a tower dropped right over it. Life is also the only school in the game that doesn't get any benefit from a single DoT spell, none. Balance wizards can cast Fire Elf to remove towers.. There's no DoT for Life shields. The Life minion does cast Imp pretty regularly, if you can keep the poor 350hp bugger alive that long.
The only way Life can get an attack bubble is to get a brown spider pet which casts a damage bubble when its attack is used. This is a single time per reshuffle, and I'm pretty sure it's like a 5 pip spell. Almost useless in PvP. Life's innate bubble costs 3 pips and boosts healing for everyone by 50%. As you can see, costing 2 pip slots means it won't be winning any bubble wars, and boosting healing means it makes lifes inability to do more damage than an opponent can heal even worse.
What this means is that Life wizards simply can't close out a game from second against a good duelist. Many of these duels end when one person gets bored enough to quit.
It's not hard to rank up a Life wizard with very few losses, as long as you are willing to sit through 3 hour duels pretty regularly. For the simple problem of not being able to get through shields or do enough damage to kill full resist opponents, Life comes in last place on our list. Remains about the same with just an added Forest lord spell to kill minions and add ALOT more healing ability with the added new healing boosts and that life's healing per pip doubles compared to other schools as they heal with thier power pips.
4 PiP AoE Spells And Their Effect On PvP These spells win games against Minion players, and here's why.
Quote: Originally Posted by Alex Deathflame View Post Another reason why I see you placed Ice as high was Blizzard. From second position, I don't get the reasoning behind that. I was doing ranked the other night with my Myth wizard going second against a Fire wizard. He summoned a Fire minion, and I had a choice between Minotaur or Frog to kill it with. I usually never use Frog from second to kill minions, in risk of running into a shield. Usually I use Minotaur because is more efficient for only one more pip. That night, I was feeling lucky, so I chose Frog. What happened? I ran right into a well placed Tower Shield on the Fire minion. That minion stayed alive for quite a bit of turns before I was able to kill it. Needless to say, I lost that match because of that simple mistake. Same thing I see happening here. If you use blizzard from second position, you might run into a shield and now you wasted 4 pips and the minion is still alive. You will have to spend 4 more pips, for a total of 8 pips to kill a 3-4 pip minion. Counter productive no? There is an issue here with your technique. If you're going to use the 4-pip AOE spells, it's not about a 1-hit kill. Be prepared to cast it twice. It uses another pip slot that minotaur wouldn't, but it also delivers 250+ damage to your opponent each time they don't shield. They have to choose between saving minion or losing health. Most players that use this technique will either rely on winning the bubble war or adding tough to their cards. With Tough on the card and no blades or bubble you'll get about 300 damage to a full resist wizard and kill most minions in one shot. Toughed with a bubble up you'll kill most minions even if they have a tower on them.
If you spend 3 pip slots on Minotaur to kill a minion you've lost a pip. If you spend 4 on two frogs but also damage the wizard for 400hp in full resist, you've broken even at the very least. Coupled with infection, this is a good way to work opponents down for a combo.
You'll also see dominant duelists from every school doing this. Spartacus and ScottieDubs are two of the most prominent that pop into my mind. This was how Scottie beat me from second in the Fire Tournament. His minion removal was just so much more efficient than mine, I eventually went under.
It wasn't something I really considered viable either, until I found my head wobbling in a tournament match that I figured I had surely won.
Quote: Originally Posted by Alex JadeRider View Post I don't carry any meteor in main deck on my fire since I carry 3 dragon. I do carry 1 in treasure though. With my myth I carry at most 2 in main and like 3-5 in treasure. I would really only recommend in treasure to carry the 4 pip aoe as that is where they shine. Otherwise (at least with frog) you need a bubble or blade to kill a 400 hp minion(i.e. fire, ice, and all of balance except ice) I think that this is effective in Ranked PvP at levels below probably 1300, and depending on which school. The real problem with it is when you get a Hard player that is consistent with minions you will find yourself struggling to take their minion out efficiently.
Packing some in side deck is a great way to maintain this dominance for a period of time, probably going to win most Ranked matches for you. In a tournament however, it's quite likely that having so few of them will eventually put you in a position where you can't take an enemy minion out efficiently after the first reshuffle and a half. Keeping them in main deck is the only way to consistently know you have enough when you are facing a Minion Player.
Also notable that the damage per 4 pip AoE is not that important, as you will generally be casting it twice anyway. The first attack will most likely come into a shield, the second one is almost always enough to kill the minion if it's not shielded at the time. And if it is, you cast a third. The idea here is that you don't have to kill the minion for what it cost to cast, because you're delivering damage to your opponent also. Now they have to decide between shielding themselves, casting another minion, and healing off the 300-600 damage you just smacked them in the face with.
As far as not using Meteor on Fire, I used to subscribe to mainly Dragon also. From second position, however, it's quite likely that the dragon won't kill a shielded minion and the player will cast a heal like Sprite or Helping Hand to keep it alive during the Dot. Now you've spend 4 pip slots on an attack that didn't kill minion, depending on the shielding situation probably didn't deliver much damage to your opponent, and the minion is still hammering you. If it DID kill the minion, they can just cast another one for 4 pips and watch you wait until you get enough pips for another dragon, as they slowly win the pip war. This is the reality I was confronted with when dueling players who used the smaller AoE spells. Two Meteor strikes will kill a minion much more often than a dragon will, they'll deliver more damage to the opponent because they don't suffer double resist like Dragons DoT does and they take Gear Boost which dragons DoT does not. Now pre-enchanted gargantuan 4 pip aoe spells in your treasure cards will kill almost any unshielded minion. And yet again arguments the impact of going first.
That said, it's not the only way to play the game. In my experience it's the best way to combat minion schools, but if the way you play works for you then that's all there is to it. The basic idea here is to win consistently, doesn't matter how you do it if it works.
Wohuu i got all posts in. Now i know it's a tad long but it all sums up how arena is and the biggest flaws we as players are facing due to game design.
Which school is strongest can differ a lot whether you are looking at 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, or 4v4 and there aren't any charts in the game keeping track of which schools are winning the most under those classifications, and I do wish there were such leader charts if for nothing else than as a tool to balancing schools better in the game. I've seen schools that struggled have stuff taken away from them while schools that dominate be given stuff that further boosts their dominance, and without such charts this issue is likely to continue.
A good deal of your issues dealt with the problem of who gets to go first and who is at severe disadvantage of going last, an issue that needs fixed but Wizard101 never cares to do anything at all about no matter how many times players ask for it to be done (I'm of the mind that Wizard101 likes things to be unfair and highly stacked in favor of whatever side goes first).
A lot of the stuff you wrote I'm inclined to disagree with, but the underlying complaints seem largely valid.
Myth should not be able to drop stun protections with earthquake, in 4v4 play multiple myths working together expecially with fire can mass stun from the first turn on if they plan to do so, which means if they go first they can always win.
Which school is strongest can differ a lot whether you are looking at 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, or 4v4 and there aren't any charts in the game keeping track of which schools are winning the most under those classifications, and I do wish there were such leader charts if for nothing else than as a tool to balancing schools better in the game. I've seen schools that struggled have stuff taken away from them while schools that dominate be given stuff that further boosts their dominance, and without such charts this issue is likely to continue.
A good deal of your issues dealt with the problem of who gets to go first and who is at severe disadvantage of going last, an issue that needs fixed but Wizard101 never cares to do anything at all about no matter how many times players ask for it to be done (I'm of the mind that Wizard101 likes things to be unfair and highly stacked in favor of whatever side goes first).
A lot of the stuff you wrote I'm inclined to disagree with, but the underlying complaints seem largely valid.
Myth should not be able to drop stun protections with earthquake, in 4v4 play multiple myths working together expecially with fire can mass stun from the first turn on if they plan to do so, which means if they go first they can always win.
Yes there is of course a difference depending if it's 1vs1, 2vs2, 3vs3 or 4vs4. This post was mainly focused around 1vs1 and the general problems with arena and tournoment pvping. Storm and life gets a little higher value when it's not 1vs1 but Fire, myth and ice still remains at the top in any brackets.
And as a matter a fact there is leader boards as was shown in the OP. Central holds tournoments all the time and keep track of them aswell. Currently the place where any competetive pvp'r hangs out and as also in the OP you will again notice how over represented fire, myth and ice is as tournoment winners.
And yes the main and biggest issue of pvp is still the advantage of going first and have been since pvp came into the game.
It's ok if your disagree on some points but it doesn't really matter as everything posted are based on facts, correct calculation and well tested theories.
I agree on some items and some I do not. I am also from the so called old school back when wizard101 had arenas you just walked into and no ranking system. I have 3 legendary, 9 grands, and a host of smaller chars I enjoy using in lower level pvp. I have been in thousands of duels and have pretty much seen it all.
Before celestia I would say it is a tossup between fire and life as being most powerful. There is no possible way myth can keep up with fire even with minions when you throw spells like scald or dragon in. I almost never use helephant(or efreet now) and live off small burn attacks and minions. As for life, I am pure defense and healing and do not even use traps or blades. Yes the battles can take ages but eventually the opponent will get worn down and the newer dispel life spells pretty much mean they will never heal(in 1v1 at least). Balance has always been worthless unless the other player is a top top top player. Train tower, treasure towers, weakness, trained weakness, and weakness necklaces make judgement all but worthless. Any good player knows you wait to tower until they start blading and trapping.
Now with legendary Kingsisle has once again screwed up badly. Ice is clearly the dominant player in the game. They are the only school that gets resist coupled with crit hits and crit blocks. The rest of the schools have to decide if they want crits or resist or a weak mix of the 3. Add that to unreal health and the mass healing and spritely pets and ice is deadly. Of course angel and its shield breaking, minions, and stun do not hurt either. My legendary fire went second to an ice and I never and I mean never lose to ice after hundreds of versus ice duels and I got wiped. The only school I think that can compete with ice is life and in fact my legendary life regularly wipes out ice in duels that last about a week lol.
Right now as long as the other player has crit blocking balance is far and away the weakest school. I do not even carry RA in my deck and would, for one pip less, use nova with only a slightly weaker attack but that much needed weakness. I do know some very good balance wizards but they have a ton of experience and use gargantuan cards to up damage. Keep in mind I have 1 legendary and 2 grand balance so I have some experience with this school.
I wish sometimes Kingsisle would ask the pvp community before they make changes that highly affect dueling. We have had to deal with chain stuns, treasure bolts, level 48 pets on a level 5, low level polymorph treasure users, mass use of gargantuan treasures, and insane ridiculous critical damage. I for one miss the good old days before even level 48 spells(and the also ridiculous stun on storm lord) when skill and strategy counted over sheer dumb luck. Now it is win at all cost and the heck with honor or skill or fair play.
Lastly, please KI do something with arena gear. Ice does not need it anymore a 45% resist with full arena gear does no good if it has no critical block and the opponent hits with a 100% critical buff. If you do this though then you need warlord gear that is also level restrictive like level 48 and up and level 47 and down. IF you start putting critical buffs on warlord arena gear then low levels will be getting crits like crazy and that would be insane. Also, feel free to do something with the horrible point system where an adept warlord beats a grand storm and gets 2 points but if he loses he loses 26 points. Duh. Maybe put in a level restriction with an adept getting a max of say level 40.
I agree on some items and some I do not. I am also from the so called old school back when wizard101 had arenas you just walked into and no ranking system. I have 3 legendary, 9 grands, and a host of smaller chars I enjoy using in lower level pvp. I have been in thousands of duels and have pretty much seen it all.
Before celestia I would say it is a tossup between fire and life as being most powerful. There is no possible way myth can keep up with fire even with minions when you throw spells like scald or dragon in. I almost never use helephant(or efreet now) and live off small burn attacks and minions. As for life, I am pure defense and healing and do not even use traps or blades. Yes the battles can take ages but eventually the opponent will get worn down and the newer dispel life spells pretty much mean they will never heal(in 1v1 at least). Balance has always been worthless unless the other player is a top top top player. Train tower, treasure towers, weakness, trained weakness, and weakness necklaces make judgement all but worthless. Any good player knows you wait to tower until they start blading and trapping.
Now with legendary Kingsisle has once again screwed up badly. Ice is clearly the dominant player in the game. They are the only school that gets resist coupled with crit hits and crit blocks. The rest of the schools have to decide if they want crits or resist or a weak mix of the 3. Add that to unreal health and the mass healing and spritely pets and ice is deadly. Of course angel and its shield breaking, minions, and stun do not hurt either. My legendary fire went second to an ice and I never and I mean never lose to ice after hundreds of versus ice duels and I got wiped. The only school I think that can compete with ice is life and in fact my legendary life regularly wipes out ice in duels that last about a week lol.
Right now as long as the other player has crit blocking balance is far and away the weakest school. I do not even carry RA in my deck and would, for one pip less, use nova with only a slightly weaker attack but that much needed weakness. I do know some very good balance wizards but they have a ton of experience and use gargantuan cards to up damage. Keep in mind I have 1 legendary and 2 grand balance so I have some experience with this school.
I wish sometimes Kingsisle would ask the pvp community before they make changes that highly affect dueling. We have had to deal with chain stuns, treasure bolts, level 48 pets on a level 5, low level polymorph treasure users, mass use of gargantuan treasures, and insane ridiculous critical damage. I for one miss the good old days before even level 48 spells(and the also ridiculous stun on storm lord) when skill and strategy counted over sheer dumb luck. Now it is win at all cost and the heck with honor or skill or fair play.
Lastly, please KI do something with arena gear. Ice does not need it anymore a 45% resist with full arena gear does no good if it has no critical block and the opponent hits with a 100% critical buff. If you do this though then you need warlord gear that is also level restrictive like level 48 and up and level 47 and down. IF you start putting critical buffs on warlord arena gear then low levels will be getting crits like crazy and that would be insane. Also, feel free to do something with the horrible point system where an adept warlord beats a grand storm and gets 2 points but if he loses he loses 26 points. Duh. Maybe put in a level restriction with an adept getting a max of say level 40.
wait, you openly state that ice is by far the strongest school cause it is so hard to kill them and they have good attacks, and then you state that you want better PvP gear in terms of defenses which will only serve to make ice even more difficult to kill and more dominanent (have you thought this out any?)
as to balance being the weakest of all the schools, I assure you that my balance wins 80 to 90% of the time even when going last, my only complaint as balance is that even with over a hundred points in life criticals with crafted gear I never seem to ever get critical heals and I can go match after match after match with 130 balance critical and the 20% critical attack bubble and never get criticals while at other times I get them a lot, the critical hits thing seems very eratically botched. My life wins most of the time but lacks quick attack all damage so that is a hindrence that makes it lose more often than my balance ever does. My storm is by far the weakest character in PvP that I have and likely loses half the time or more as a result of low health, being singled out for attack due to the low health and the perception of high damage, the use of storm shields, and the like.
Ice is tough as it takes awhile to kill but I'll take my balance over ice in a duel and I worry not about fire or myth. The only thing that worries me about myth is that with earthquake dropping stun shields chain stunning is entirely possible now when playing in 4v4 and likely in 3v3. The thing that worries me about fire is its use of smoke screen and its stun all spell, along with meteors. Fire is strong but seems to die easy.
I don't worry much about dragon or ice angel as spritely tends to keep me alive through them enough that I can cast additional healing if I want and a simple damage reduction on those attacks makes them very bareable.
I prever 4v4 matches as 1v1 always seems a bit lame to me.
