Welcome to the Wizard101 Message Boards

Welcome to W101 and CCGs.

Probably the most common errors in deck design are having too many cards in the deck and too many different cards in the deck. These both add to the randomness of play rather than manage it. Keep it simple, straightforward, having only what you need to execute your strategy.

Another common flaw is overlooking casting costs; have proper proportions of each. What is proper? You should be able to cast something of value every turn (with few exceptions; passing should be an absolute rarity) which increases your deck's effectiveness at every turn--meaning, your casting should, for the most part, "ramp up" the longer the duel continues rather than plateau too early, which will happen if you have all 'cheap' cards. If you have too many expensive cards, you won't be effective while you wait to afford the expensive spell and when you can eventually cast it, it may not be the best card for the current situation.

An example using two pips, two turns, middle values to compute damage:

- Casting two Ice Beetles (cost: 1, dmg: 65-105) yields 85*2=170 dmg
- Casting one Ice Trap (cost: 0, +30% dmg ) and one Snow Serpent (cost: 2, dmg: 155-195) yields 175*130%=~227 dmg, 57 more dmg for the same amount of mana and time.
-- Additionally, the 0-2 cost route affords you more options than the 1-1 route (options are important, for you can adapt to many situations immediatey--have the right card at the right time):
--- For a more defensive position, you could cast a shield or a stun and still do 175 dmg with the Serpent (5 more dmg than two Beetles).
--- If your opponent is also Ice, you could cast your Ice Prism first, not only eliminating your opponent's ice resist, but giving a dmg boost to your converted ice dmg (many foes have 50% resist on their school's dmg type).
--- For playing the tank during team play, you can cast your taunts.
--- Pick off foes low on life with your 0-cost wand attacks (Alicane's Flame Staff gives eight cards which deal 55 fire dmg); you don't want an ice dmg wand because you don't want to waste your traps/blades on low-dmg attacks). Additionally, wands that have only five or six cards work a little better. If you have a wand that has 1-cost cards, ditch it.
--- You have an additional opportunity of gaining a Power Pip, having 3 mana (or 4 mana if you got a Power Pip on the first turn) on turn two, enabling you to cast an even higher dmg spell, which makes the +30% dmg Ice Trap even more valuable.

A note on Power Pips: At level 15, you have a 14% chance of gaining a Power Pip (more if you have gear that adds to that value); which means, your non-primary school's spells effectively cost 14% more, double that if you use a Power Pip to cast, say, a fire spell due to using a Power Pip for one mana rather than two. This becomes very important a little later when 1 in 4, 1 in 3, and eventually half of your Pips are Power Pips.

This inevitably leads to questioning "dual class", a common error in this game: no-where does one pick a secondary class in W101; you are free to train in any other skill regardless of school. You want to train for these additional skills for the skill itself, because it fits a specific role or serves a particular purpose in your deck.

Fire Elf is an excellent value (260 dmg for two pips) and it can serve the additional purpose of pulling aggro on a foe targeting your teammate who doesn't have as much health. Personally, I don't see any other functional purpose for the remaining Fire skills.

The Balance school has a lot of skills that augment any school.

I think Death would work well with Ice (both thematically and functionally) in that you could heal a little whilst still dealing damage (and maintaining aggro); the high hp Ice has gives you more breathing room, making Life's healing skills potentially overkill.

Not to discount Life, that is, since Ice with Life's heals would make for quite the nearly-indestructible Juggernaut; if you play defensively, this would be a great way to go.