So my Storm, Abigail Wildsong, is almost level 45, and in DS. And I have to say I am having trouble playing her. She was pretty overpowering throughout the game--she easily defeated most enemies solo--but now she is getting hammered by bosses with 4,500 + health. My previous wizards, Myth, Death, and Life are all in ZF, so I am not inexperienced in the game. I had some trouble with Myth, because she was my first, but good advice here helped me get her good gear and better play style. Death and Life were, quite honestly, a breeze to solo with. No problems. I started this Storm wizard because I had "power envy" and wanted to play a school that hit hard. She does. Oh, and she's currently got 25% resist from gear and pet, so she's not getting killed that way. But she is getting killed, and after three successful forays through DS, I am not used to it!
Mistakes I may have made:
Training Death to Feint instead of any life spells (she doesn't have enough training points left for anything right now--she also trained Ice to Tower)
Using crowns gear for extra health instead of other gear for accuracy. She's got no accuracy boost. I now have to carry Sniper and Keen Eyes in my side deck, and use them almost every turn, so there's no room for anything else.
Oh, and I can't figure out the best way to use Supercharge, the spell I got in GH. It seems like it's not really for soloists, because it prolongs the battle quite a bit.
Any advice on level 45 gear or play style appreciated. Thanks in advance.
I might have a few tips. First off, ignore Supercharge unless your in a fight against a very high health boss. Retrain your points and train Life up to Satyr. Use gear for Damage and Accuracy. Make use of Triton and Kraken, use Blades and Traps when building Pips. Never Prism after a Myth Shield has been cast.
That is exactly why I returned to my roots as storm. The power envy.
My biggest recommendation is that you keep your deck small and to the point. Carry the spells that you actually need for random encounters, tempest, a few krakens, and blades. Add the shields to block attacks from the monsters that you are fighting.
Best thing you can do is shield yourself. Make blading yourself and feinting the last thing on your to do list. Shield yourself first. Everything just tickles when you have shields up.
And honestly, in my opinion, unless you have the Life mastery amulet, healing spells other than pixie seem really expensive and inefficient. But they DO save your life. Since you do not have healing spells, I strongly suggest you buy some Satyr and other healing treasure cards.
I actually do not use Supercharge. I love having it. But I just don't use it. You can do a +25% blade for 0 pips. But it will take 3 pips (2 power pips) for a +30% blade. I suppose you could use it in conjunction with Feint for one ultra heavy hit to guarrantee a 1 hit knock out. (Assuming you are not in any danger of dying.)
Obviously you understand the concept of massive damage within the storm school, but you might be a bit TOO offensive. Because I myself am storm, I'll provide you with some tips.
-Training points. Obviously feint isn't necessary if you already can do high damage. buy back your training points and train life to sprite and ice to tower. You'll have 3 left over training points that i would save until later in the game when Astral spells become open (sun spells, amplify, vengeance, etc.)
-Defenses and gear. since you are storm, universal resistance and health won't get you very far, I'd recommend buying some gear in the bazaar that gives health, acc. and damage for storm, as well as a good storm wand. However, as you have stated, you easily were getting clobbered by high health bosses. Make sure you always have a shield out to prevent such a fate.
-Deck construction. For normal enemy battles i would have Tempest, storm blades, Tower shields, Heals, a few single hit spells, and TC enchants (TC amplify is optional but not necessary). Later at 48 you will pick up Storm lord and a Stormzilla pet, both of which will be useful. For bosses i would have Shields specifically against their hits, Tritons , Stormzillas, Heals, Blades, and of course, a friend to support you (have Storm prisms if boss is storm). Supercharge is unnecessary and will only leave you open to constant attacks.
I hope that you are able to actually progress deeper into the storyline with these tips in mind, and I hope to see an exceptional diviner out of Abigail.
Any advice on level 45 gear or play style appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Tabby/Abby
Hey Tabby. First, gear recommendations... I would recommend that you visit the bazaar and combine your crowns gear with gear available there. For instance, if you have crowns boots with resist and health, you could pick up the Mantle of Thunder and Shadowmark's Tornado Tunic. They would both give you additional health, accuracy, and damage boost. In fact, those two items alone give you +320 health, +12% storm accuracy, and +25% storm damage. If you're headed that route, I'd also suggest picking up both the Tunic of Typhoons and Shroud of the Sylph specifically for fighting storm bosses (giving high storm resist rather than health). There are lots of tweaks to make, obviously, but a pet can help, etc. Not being certain as to your gear, I'll hold off on more specific recommendations in that area for now.
Regarding your deck, I recommend a myth wand and the Katzenstein's Necklace amulet (for 1 +35% darkwind spell) in conjunction with a deck of chivalry arranged like so (adjusted for the trained spells you mentioned):
4 Tower Shields 4 Pixies 2 Krakens 2 Lightning Bats 1 Lightning Strike 4 Water Elementals 3 Storm Prisms 3 Storm Sharks 1 Storm Trap 3 Stormblades 1 Stormzilla 1 Supercharge 1 Tempest 2 Thunder Snake 1 Triton 1 Windstorm 1 Feint 4 Shields with most comprehensive coverage of the Enemy being fought
With good gear damage boost, you can pretty easily use bats and sharks with an occasional blade to kill most enemies at or around 1000 health. This kind of deck should be able to be used for most battles but may require some fine tuning or treasure cards for specific battles. I found that the key to soloing storm was to use the water elemental. If you can, cast him on the first round (then discard the rest). If you can't, focus on damage reduction and blades until you can. Once he is cast, you want to still focus on damage reduction until he taunts (heal if necessary, but try to avoid it if possible because it increases your threat level) while targeting the weakest enemy. It may take several rounds before he finally casts a taunt, but I assure you... he is generally very on top of it and often casts sprites and elemental shields on you, as well as the odd storm trap or spirit armor.
A word on your friend, the water elemental: He does cast a LOT of sprites and elemental shields on himself, and that's overall good. It means that once he casts a taunt, he's going to not only draw fire (including those pesky weakness spells), but he's going to generally stay alive for a lot of rounds (he has a base health of 700 and with 2 or 3 sprites can heal through a lot of attacks). Bottom line, if the battle can't be decided in a few rounds, he is MORE than worth 3 pips.
I realize that there are a lot of low rank spells in that deck, but remember, with a +25% gear damage boost snake does an average damage of 156, bats does 331, and shark does 506. Being so low in pips, you can easily use snake and bats to clear shields or weakness and finish off low level enemies the following round with shark. With a Blade and trap, shark will do an average damage of 818. If you have the water elemental running while you are taking care of one enemy, a single taunt will draw fire from the remaining enemy (or boss). When you are down to the final boss and the elemental has his attention, you can now take the time to blade, feint, trap, and generally dig deep so that you can unload a heavily boosted triton on them.
Final note here... you can do things like buy treasure cards at the library and put 1 elemental blade and one elemental trap in your side deck for that extra "umph" when going for a large health boss. Small boosts make a HUGE difference as the number of boosts increase. Also, while the strategy I mentioned for the water elemental is optimal, understand that you have to balance it against how the duel is progressing. If you have a chance to take out a little enemy, then do it. It reduces the volume of casts and pips being used against you each round and is therefore worth attracting the attention.
Hopefully, this all makes sense. If you have any questions or need further explanation, let me know. Happy hunting!
Thanks, everyone, for advice and tips! There is some overlap here, and I am going to keep in mind that training Feint may not have been a great idea--but hold off on buying back my points till I try out some of the new ideas. gtarhannon: Thanks as always for great and highly specific advice. I know you are a fan of minions, and (except in PvP) I haven't made optimal use of them. I will get out Norman (Stormin' Norman, the Water Elemental) again and see if we can learn to work together. He is kind of self-involved, but maybe I can overlook that if his selfish antics really help me stay alive. :-) Your deck set-up didn't mention Cleanse Charm, however--I find this to be pretty essential in DS, but I waste a lot of spaces on them. And of course when you get 2 on you, it's not worth it to waste 2 turns taking them off. So maybe you think it's better to count on additional damage and just forget the Cleanse? I do get one Storm Shark card from my pet, so maybe I will put in one Cleanse and 2 sharks...well I guess I can fool around with that. I am not used to using these lower ranked spells, but it's true that my power pip chance is not optimal, and will be less so with more Storm-specific gear. But I can't really see any way around it, given the accuracy issue. So I will give those a try too. I'd like to free up my side deck for more than accuracy boosts.
It also seems that, extrapolating from some of the advice here, it may be useful to carry a couple of decks. I usually only have one (except on my Myth, who is doing some PvP), but for Storm 2 may be more useful, given that Storm guys hit so hard. I will test that out also.
Thanks again, all. Hopefully I can get Abigail back in the game now. :D
Your deck set-up didn't mention Cleanse Charm, however--I find this to be pretty essential in DS, but I waste a lot of spaces on them. And of course when you get 2 on you, it's not worth it to waste 2 turns taking them off. So maybe you think it's better to count on additional damage and just forget the Cleanse?
Personally, I only keep cleanse in my PvP deck. In PvE, I find that your minion will draw most of the weakness away from you once he taunts, and should you still have one or two, you can wand them off or just add an extra blade and power through it. The volume of low pip spells I have in the deck is specifically for removing shields and it can do that with weakness as well. :D
tabby714 wrote:
I do get one Storm Shark card from my pet, so maybe I will put in one Cleanse and 2 sharks...well I guess I can fool around with that. I am not used to using these lower ranked spells, but it's true that my power pip chance is not optimal, and will be less so with more Storm-specific gear. But I can't really see any way around it, given the accuracy issue. So I will give those a try too. I'd like to free up my side deck for more than accuracy boosts.
The best option for getting your power pip chance up at lower levels seems to be PvP. The athame and ring are two of the few things I would actually ever care about acquiring with arena tickets. If you're looking at crowns gear, then I typically find that the best option for me has been to get balanced stats (power pip, accuracy, resist, health, and typically a special spell card) for the hat and boots, and to get the best school specific robe I can find for my play style.
tabby714 wrote:
It also seems that, extrapolating from some of the advice here, it may be useful to carry a couple of decks. I usually only have one (except on my Myth, who is doing some PvP), but for Storm 2 may be more useful, given that Storm guys hit so hard. I will test that out also.
Personally, I always carry multiple decks on every wizard. I never know when I'll want to try out a new strategy and when I've already got one tweaked and working well, I prefer to leave it alone while I try out things on the new deck.
tabby714 wrote:
Thanks again, all. Hopefully I can get Abigail back in the game now. :D
Tabby/Abby
I'll keep my fingers crossed for you. By all means, let us know if there is anything else we can help with. :D
So my Storm, Abigail Wildsong, is almost level 45, and in DS. And I have to say I am having trouble playing her. She was pretty overpowering throughout the game--she easily defeated most enemies solo--but now she is getting hammered by bosses with 4,500 + health. My previous wizards, Myth, Death, and Life are all in ZF, so I am not inexperienced in the game. I had some trouble with Myth, because she was my first, but good advice here helped me get her good gear and better play style. Death and Life were, quite honestly, a breeze to solo with. No problems. I started this Storm wizard because I had "power envy" and wanted to play a school that hit hard. She does. Oh, and she's currently got 25% resist from gear and pet, so she's not getting killed that way. But she is getting killed, and after three successful forays through DS, I am not used to it!
Mistakes I may have made:
Training Death to Feint instead of any life spells (she doesn't have enough training points left for anything right now--she also trained Ice to Tower)
Using crowns gear for extra health instead of other gear for accuracy. She's got no accuracy boost. I now have to carry Sniper and Keen Eyes in my side deck, and use them almost every turn, so there's no room for anything else.
Oh, and I can't figure out the best way to use Supercharge, the spell I got in GH. It seems like it's not really for soloists, because it prolongs the battle quite a bit.
Any advice on level 45 gear or play style appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Tabby/Abby
she is right. i am also a storm wizard and i'm having a lot of trouble because i can't find anyone to help me on the quest for the last knowledge crystal in the crucible :(
