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Girl I totally feel your pain. I have had my balance wizard for over a decade and it was my first character maxed. It was a rough road, knowing nothing about the game and learning EVERYTHING I now know on my balance wizard. Lots of trial and error, and lots of dying in boss battles because of my subpar knowledge at the time. Hopefully I can pass some of what I've learned on to you so you don't struggle against balance bosses as much as I did.

First off, get sharpened blade and potent trap from the sun trainer in Azteca if you haven't already. It will save your life - trust me. It doubles the amount of blades in your arsenal, which is already a lot. You'll be able to have two balanceblades and two bladestorms rather than just one of each, and it makes a HUGE difference in your damage. It will also give you three more blades for Chimera and Hydra, as you can use that for elemental and spirit blades too.

Next, get infallible (either trained or a ton of TC) and an opossum pet (if possible, not a big deal if you can't). Also socket some pierce jewels if you can. The more pierce you can get, the better. This will help with those pesky Sabertooth shields and elemental shields. Infallible gives 15%, or 20% with the TC, pierce which helps with lessening the shield. Add the 10% dragonspear that you get at Epic on the opossum pet and that's another 10% off the shield. You can also get Spirit and Elemental Spears from Enya Firemoon in The Wild in Avalon. Those will give you an extra 6% pierce to each of the spirit and elemental schools respectively with those spells. Not counting any pierce you might have with gear (because you can get plenty more with gear - Hades gear has tons of pierce), you can easily get 31% pierce with trained infallible and and 36% pierce with the TC. There's also some dragonspear TCs if you want more pierce on top of that. Pierce will save you with those horrendous shields.

Once you've got pierce and lots of blades, time to work on the spells. When facing a balance boss with a non-balance minion, just use your favorite spell (my suggestion is Ra, but anything works) to get rid of the minion ASAP. If it's a balance minion, I'd suggest using Hydra and/or Spectral Blast to get rid of the minion. Once the minion's gone, you can focus on the balance boss. Use sharpened and regular balanceblade, bladestorm, and spirit blades. That gives you 6 blades per school. Use a spirit trap, both regular and potent. That's another 2 buffs per school. If they cast Sabertooth, do all the piercing stuff from the last paragraph (or just do it anyway if you want to be cautious - up to you). Then use an enchanted Chimera and you should be good to go! If it doesn't kill, follow up with a Spectral Blast for the final blow.

In regards to the prism idea, let me make it clear that I LOVE this idea. I really do. And I think prisms are totally necessary for balance. However, I honestly doubt that KI would ever put them in the game. Balance has plenty of spells that can counter balance bosses (e.g., Hydra, Chimera, Nested Fury) and adding in prisms would make those spells kind of useless. For example, why would I use Chimera when I could just use Sand Wurm with a prism? It's less pips, more damage, and easier to buff. Spells like Chimera would just never be used then. Balance wizards adapt, and adding prisms really eliminates that strength of ours.

Happy questing!

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Thank you for your advice! When I wrote that, I was doing the spell quest for Sabertooth... NOT fun. It took me 10 times to defeat the boss. I'm now level 120 and it has gotten easier. I still stand by what I said, though. I feel terrible for all the new Balance wizards! Balance is a wonderful school but BOY can the shields be annoying.

-Autumn 120 & Caroline 25