A Concern regarding Moon School, Summons, and Monstrology
Preface: Hi, I just wanted to offer some feedback regarding the current moon spells. It's fantastic that Wizard101 received some card rebalancing recently. It shows care and consideration for the future of the game. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that the moon spells are getting left in the dust, which is really unfortunate since it is the school with the most unique and interesting mechanic--polymorphing. I don't believe it needs to be said, but it is extremely apparent that moon spells have been regarded as the worst astral spells by far, for good reason. Just look at your own forums.
I've seen many suggested tweaks--some that look like they compromise the identity of the moon school, but also some that sound like they would work well and seem relatively easy to implement. But the general consensus seems to be that while some moon spells may be okay at the levels they are obtained, they all quickly become a death wish as players level up due to a lack of one of the most important factors in progression-centered games: scaling.
The problem: Every other spell in the game scales with the wizard. As players find better gear, their damage output and effective HP reflect their improvement. Polymorphs however, are completely static at all levels. High level wizards using polymorphs might cut their max HP down to as little as 1/3 of their own, and decrease their damage substantially as they have to abandon their equipment stats. This makes polymorphing a straight up nerf at higher levels of play.
I understand that the ability to switch between elemental types is valuable, but polymorphs make moon the school with the highest risk. Not only is a wizard stuck in that form for 6 entire turns, but they become vulnerable to elemental damage boosts, as well as being forced to use a predetermined deck. Meanwhile with sun spells, the biggest risk you take is missing out on other enchantments when you enchant a spell. Sun spells are essentially amazing, unremovable charms that cost 0 pips and 0 turns, with minimum risk involved. So if anything, moon spells should be relatively strong, in order to compensate for the increased risk. Also, elemental mastery amulets exist, providing wizards a way to circumvent elemental weaknesses and counter moon school players. With how sun and moon are now... it's like if storm had both high damage and high accuracy, while fire had low damage and low accuracy... that also doesn't increase with a wizard's progression. Imagine taking off all your max level gear and then engaging an enemy that starts with 10000 hp and 7 power pips.
A solution: I think the most efficient way to resolve this problem would be to make the polymorphs' stats scale with the wizard's levels. A reasonable formula for this might look like:
(with different stat modifier values that would apply to max health, damage boost, Ppip chance, crit, block, etc)
I considered the that the reason for this not having been implemented yet might be related to the possibility that coding limitations force developers to make a new version of the polymorph creature for every stat adjustment made. In that case, maybe use the ranking system instead. For example, if level 50-55 wizards are expected to encounter rank 10 enemies, make a version of the polymorph for each rank, starting at the rank equivalent to the spell's minimum level requirement.
Also, perhaps the polymorphs could be made to last 4 turns, like star spells, as 6 turns is rather long. Or alternatively, many people have suggested that there be a 0-pip "end transformation early" spell that doesn't take a turn to cast.
I'm not so fond of the suggestions I've seen where a portion of the wizard's equipment stats are transferred to the polymorph. Since the identity of the moon school is to provide players with elemental versatility by adopting another creature's form, a fire wizard should not have an advantage over a myth wizard if both cast Polymorph Draconian. It would also be harder to implement anyways.
A note regarding Summoning and Monstrology: I'd like to also point out that myth's minions also suffer from this lack of scaling, though this is sort of remedied through monstrology. I say "sort of" because while monstrology gives all players a way to obtain relevant minions, given that they are farming anima from enemies at their level, they quickly become obsolete by the time you farm them enough to really be able to make use of them in your deck. In other words, it takes too many fights and too much time to collect enough animus to really make summoning minions an integral part of your deck.
For instance, I just got to Caliburn. If I wanted to use my wyrm summons for 10 fights, I would first have to grind for wyrm anima for 20. This number can be less if you have a group to farm animus with, but then you run into another problem. If you play with a group that would be down to just farm anima in the open world, you'd probably want to just play with each other in the first place rather than summoning minions, as each summon would take up a player's slot. So essentially in order to efficiently farm anima, you'd have to group up with people, but at the same time, utilizing monstrology or any sort of summoning mechanic is incompatible with group play. Also keep in mind that while farming for anima, you must use 'extract creature' enchants, which prevent wizards from using sun school spells and makes investing in monstrology even more difficult for solo players.
But okay, maybe farming for anima in a group and selling monstrology tcs could be profitable, right? As of now, absolutely not. The bazaar offers no help whatsoever. The grind would be understandable if players could purchase desired monstrology tcs from those more inclined or able to farm larger quantities of anima. But every monstrology card costs 10 or 20 anima + 500 gold to create, and what do they sell for? A whopping 500 gold. So selling monstrology tcs is basically a big "delete animus" and "waste your time" button, hence the absence of the bazaar's monstrology tc supply.
In Conclusion: Moon school spells are absurdly weak, arguably useless, especially at higher levels. Polymorphs have the highest risk factor in the game, so they should be decently stronger than the other astral schools, like how storm is relative its counterparts. Polymorphs' stats should scale with the wizard's level or rank equivalent, so they don't become obsolete as a wizard levels up. Polymorphs could be a bit less lengthy. 4 turns would fit the thematic, as the moon school 'puzzle' in Celestia has 4 moon phases. Summoning also needs a scaling-related rework, and monstrology needs to be made less grindy and/or monetarily profitable.
Anyways, please tell me what you think, and thanks for reading through this lengthy post. I hope this whole moon school issue gets resolved sooner rather than later. Hopefully summons and monstrology will get some attention as well, though their state is nowhere near as egregious as moon's is. Some of the forum complaints about these schools date back to like 2014 and earlier.
