I was wondering if it was wise to Choose the nemesis of your First school as your secondary school. Like pairing Life with Death, or Storm with Myth, you know? Any thoughts on good school pairings would be very appreciated; I've always struggled with this. Thanks, Megan Myth Weaver
Well, to be honest, in Wizard101, it's not that great of an idea to full on train a secondary school (unless you have a Mastery Amulet). It's far more useful to train certain schools until you reach certain spells, such as training Ice up to Tower Shield and Death up to Feint, rather than training up all of their spells. It's all up to you though, if you want to have a full on secondary school and play in your own way, that's completely fine.
That being said, the best pairings would probably just be ones with opposite schools, such as Fire to Ice, Life to Death, and Storm to Myth. They're best able to counter their own schools when faced against them. Though Fire and Ice and Life and Death are probably better pairings overall, as they're far easier to be able to support one another through means of sharable spells like Elemental/Spirit Blade.
So, let's debunk some common myths as it regards to investing in secondary schools.
Unless you're Pvping, (E.G; training for Earthquake) or something, it's never wise to train an entire school up to it's last spell.
Training as a weaker wizard makes your school even stronger - It doesn't.
Train for DoT's to remove shields - Inexperienced advice.
Train the school opposite to your school (You suggested this).
Now, onto some much more useful assistance. The key here is to pull from multiple schools to make your own/main school much more stronger. The spells the other schools have to offer should aid in this process.
As a , there's couple things I recommend you do:
- Train up to Tower Shield - Great universal shield that can be incredibly useful in sticky situations!
- Head to for Feint. - Very important you do this as struggles with a damage output problem. The spell helps to bridge that gap.
- Learn the Spiritual Blades from Niles, the Tree in Krokotopia. The traps are optional.
- You'll come across this new school once you're in Celestia. The school offers damage enchanting spells you can use on your hits to increase it's original damage just before attacking. Very useful, hence, I recommend training all the damage enchanting spells (Strong, Tough, Monstrous etc.)
- This is another school that specifies in aura spells. These can be useful too, so, be sure to pick up, Fortify, Amplify, Berserk and Mend as a . Ignore the rest.
Going opposite school can definitely help you fight your same-school bosses in the earliest parts of this game. The problem is, after you hit about level 55 or so it becomes really inefficient to use the second school's spells. You'll need a mastery amulet, and finding gear to boost your off-school damage can be difficult.
This is something to keep that in mind when you're considering where to use your training points.
Most experienced wizards will suggest training schools only for certain, universally useful spells. The two most popular are Death up to Feint, and Ice up to Tower Shield. Some people will do Life up to Satyr. The point is to get the Feint, the Tower Shield, and/or the Satyr healing spell - not to use any of the damage spells from those schools.
I tend to take a little different approach, and use the second school to fill in gaps that my primary has. For example, on my Storm I get Satyr because she has such low health; but on a Life wizard I'd go with a school that has an AoE (Attack on Everyone) spell because Life doesn't get one until level 58. Later I'd get Feint for Life and Storm, both.
I never bother to train Tower shields, even though some wizards never leave home without them.
There's a lot of personal preference when it comes to choice of second school. But, in general, the second school is not very useful to be a damage option after the first part of the game. You want to look at where you're going to need the most help later on:
Why be like everyone else by training Ice up to Tower Shield and Death to Feint? I'm also a Life, and I can say I would never need Tower Shield. The amount of heals we have is enough, not to mention the Death/Myth shields we get, then I train the storm Ice/Fire shields spell as it only takes 3 points instead of Ice's 5. So you're only indefensible against Storm, and Balance which doesn't have a unique shield, although you can train the Storm shield from Sabrina in the Fairgrounds, meaning you save 1 training point by not training Tower Shield.
Feint is not really useful when in battle, as it would take two turns to put it on each enemy, and that's only if you're soloing. Train the Spirit Blade from Niles the Balance Tree instead as Feint will cost 7 training points. For PVP just get Feint TC's.
Now I did train Storm as a secondary school for the damage, and I got a Storm Mastery too as my Lil Siren's pet has an AoE spell costing 7 pips which has been really useful up until now. But now I am level 58 I have Forest Storm, Lil' Sirens, and I have crafted gear which gives Tempest, and a few other AoE item cards. So for Life, it is probably good to train a high damage school until Level 58, then when free training point buyback comes around maybe don't retrain it. I'll probably just re-train storm up until Darkwind as that can be useful and I like to support my Storm friends in battle.
It just depends how your personal playing style is really. I just do what I like, but now I have all these AoE's I rarely use single-attack spells anymore.
Why be like everyone else by training Ice up to Tower Shield and Death to Feint? I'm also a Life, and I can say I would never need Tower Shield. The amount of heals we have is enough, not to mention the Death/Myth shields we get, then I train the storm Ice/Fire shields spell as it only takes 3 points instead of Ice's 5. So you're only indefensible against Storm, and Balance which doesn't have a unique shield, although you can train the Storm shield from Sabrina in the Fairgrounds, meaning you save 1 training point by not training Tower Shield.
Feint is not really useful when in battle, as it would take two turns to put it on each enemy, and that's only if you're soloing. Train the Spirit Blade from Niles the Balance Tree instead as Feint will cost 7 training points. For PVP just get Feint TC's.
Now I did train Storm as a secondary school for the damage, and I got a Storm Mastery too as my Lil Siren's pet has an AoE spell costing 7 pips which has been really useful up until now. But now I am level 58 I have Forest Storm, Lil' Sirens, and I have crafted gear which gives Tempest, and a few other AoE item cards. So for Life, it is probably good to train a high damage school until Level 58, then when free training point buyback comes around maybe don't retrain it. I'll probably just re-train storm up until Darkwind as that can be useful and I like to support my Storm friends in battle.
It just depends how your personal playing style is really. I just do what I like, but now I have all these AoE's I rarely use single-attack spells anymore.
Feint not useful in battle while soloing? Huh? Of course it's useful! Training secondary schools is a waste. You can't use the pips unless you have a mastery amulet and even then you don't even have the blades nor gear for it. No matter the school, you will always hit harder in you're primary school. It's best to go along with what everyone else does because first of all, this is not a trend, this is how the game is played and will help you in the game. When soloing, feint is more important than any other spell because it nearly doubles your damage, this is very helpful going against bosses.
You've got some great advice here especially from Star Edward and Freshta.
Just to throw in another scenario which is less popular and potentially 'bad' advice...follow this with caution
My first wiz was a life wizard teamed with another life wizard. Early on I loved fishing and got lucky when I caught a Li'l Siren pet. She gave the 7 pip siren cards and even though she was a terrible pet (1st gen) I adored her lol. We both bought storm mastery and through the game made life damage, storm damage, healer and crafted mixed gear sets. We trained every storm spell we could! It was so much fun being OP life wizards (for our level) and pretty decent fake storm wizards too It definitely made killing much quicker too!
When we got to the higher levels we regretted 'wasting' our training points but was it really a waste when we'd enjoyed them so much? Well, it cost us a lot to buy them back so we could focus on being powerful life wizards, but now there is a free training point buy back as a member benefit....so as long as that remains a benefit and as long as you have membership this route could be worth it for the FUN!
To be an awesome wizard follow the advice of Star Edward and Freshna as it's sound advice...and of course you can still enjoy the other school by making another wizard. However, if you are happy with the risks involved (possibly having to buy back points being the main one) it can be quite fun being a 'fake'. As a fake storm my life wiz had the benefit of high health and healing while also having decent stats to give a real storm a run for their money...but proceed with caution. It also means farming for multiple sets of gear and not always the things from the main guides.
Thomas Wildstaff, 92
for Earthquake) or something, it's never wise to train an entire school up to it's last spell.
as a weaker wizard makes your school even stronger -
for DoT's to remo
, there's couple things I recommend you do:
- Train 
- Learn the Spiritual Blades from Niles, the 
- This is another school that specifies in aura spells. These can be useful too, so, be sure to pick up, Fortify, Amplify, Berserk and Mend as a 
