I read something somewhere on the boards which sorta confused me. It sounded like Balance wizards can use their Power Pips for non-Balance spells. Is this so? And, generally, what "special considerations" do Balance wizards get, if any?
More generally, I guess, besides Health differences and some spell choice, what's the difference between wizards of different schools? Is this information somewhere I can read?
Balance wizards can use their power pips and have them count double for Spectral Blast and Hydra, which are balance spells that do non-balance damage. That's kind of in place of getting a prism, as the rest of the classes do.
Balance wizards can't use power pips for spells outside their school, but the balance school spells do include some elemental attacks. They get credit for power pips and any balance damage boosts from gear, but the damage type they do is fire, ice, and/or storm. Perks for balance wizards include shields and buffs for all the other schools, a damage type for which there is no specific shield (more important in PvP than PvE), and a lot of useful support spells to weaken enemies and aid friends.
The different schools can end up having very different fighting styles because of their different strengths and weaknesses. If you want to know what personality fits well with each school, you can read the big book inside each school's classroom in Ravenwood (and the Balance classroom in Krokotopia).
Here's my unscientific summary: Like to help others and be needed? Life school. Love to take risks, live dangerously, and sometimes get huge results? Storm. Rather fight and win fast than spend time thinking? Fire. Have a lot of patience and like to be reliable? Ice. Like to learn and practice a wide variety of skills? Balance. Like to be self-sufficient in a fight but also have a flare for the dramatic? Myth. I don't know what traits suit Death school; it offers quick kills like fire, great buffs for friends like balance, and a variety of minions like myth.
I don't know what traits suit Death school; it offers quick kills like fire, great buffs for friends like balance, and a variety of minions like myth.
The 'death schools' in these types of games generally represent the anti-social soloer types.
As for playstyle, it also follows the trend of 'death magic' from other games, and focuses on life steals and debuffs.
The damage of the school's spells are fairly weak, but have second highest accuracy. They make up lack of damage by stacking lots of debuffs. In comparison to the attack power of other classes, without debuffs they are similar to life/ice school spells. With debuffs, they follow closely behind lightning/fire. As for overall battle 'speed', they are right in the middle. They typically kill quicker than life/ice, but since they have to take time to stack debuffs and have no AoE spells, they are slower than lightning/fire.
The typical play style of a death school wizard is stacking debuffs on a single target, one shot killing said target with a life steal attack spell, and healing back all the damage taken while stacking the debuffs. Rinse and repeat until all enemies are dead.
