Feints ruin the wizard experience most of us came to know when first joining wizard101 many, many years ago. It's part of the reason the game feels repetitive. Imagine you're any school that isn't storm. Blade the storm or fire, feint boss, hit. Use any other spell and people will be upset. Say you're wasting time. Don't get me wrong, i'm always on my storm level 150 178 damage 780 critical, feels good. Though i know what it's like to also be ice, myth, death in those situations. All the spells like legion shield, reshuffle, rebirth in some instances, over time spells are never used because of this blade feint hit state of mind. Imagine spending money and time being an ice up to level 90 only to be told not to use your spells and just blade 1 person and defeat a boss in 2 or 3 rounds. It wasn't really a boss battle then.. it was a repetitive rinse and repeat battle. There was no excitement or real teamwork on shielding each other, healing, showcasing each other's spells. When is the last time you saw someone use frost giant without anyone thinking "ah here comes this spell..". The current game system has created this outlook that we need to rinse and repeat battles without having to use strategy, showcasing spells we learned and love to look at, the work put into these animations is pretty much gone cause you will find many articles online telling you which spells are useless to use or put inside your deck and it's true. I know some bosses were created with the intention of using the feint spells so an entire revision would be needed to the higher level dungeons of the game. A feint is 70% or more sometimes. Maybe lessen the bosses that need feint down by anywhere from 35-55%. Yes, i know most have come to love fast 1 hit, blade the storm or fire battles but it's also the reason boss battles arent really boss battles. This definitely won't be a popular opinion. I have many more ideas cause i want to return the game to the community it once was. Everybody wanted to showcase their spells and have fun, young and old players enjoying the idea of a wizard world and questing to stop the at the time malistaire. Now its not the same because certain spells or what i would call errors. Well i wrote this kind of sloppy cause the idea hit me and i hopped online to write it really quickly. Please read this with an open mind and think of all your time as different schools you've played to understand. Thanks for reading!
You speak about something we call Alpha striking strategy (stacking boost and one shot anything)
Some people will defend that way of play cuz that can be useful in some situation like speed running or farming dungeons ( after the 20th run of the graveyard you love the max wizard who crush anything in 10 min)
And at same time what the point of playing differents schools if that always to stack blade one feint and BOOM 50-150 000 dmg and the paralysing effect is a real pain ( no one move there is a feint only the storm can play now)
Actually spellwrighting bring a clever way to bring back school identity with side effect synergy and alternative to more flat damage on the initial spell
i think an interesting update to feint would be a random boost (add 15% 35% or 70% on you and on your adversary in team battle/ no change for solo play)
or like pixie (all school get 400 on self only but life get 420 on anyone) death keep the 70%/30% other schools get 50%/50%
Feint is not the problem on itself, thats a single target trap and not so hard to get rid of it especially with the cleanse trap that can trigger strong side effect like send it to the caster or boost damages of your spell. that's just all school can get it and not enough foes poison the feint play ideal at low and medium lvl
For my part i agree feint need some adjustment but don't want to see it removed from the game.
Feint has been in the game since it was released (there has never been a time without it).
The majority of bosses beyond the first two arcs have anti-feint cheats, specifically to require wizards to develop strategies without feint.
While the majority players prefer to run through battles/quests as quickly as possible, the new social enhancements should help you find an adventure group that prefers a similar play style as yourself if you want to group with like-minded players.
Can't agree straight up removing the spell, however I think replacing the spell in Hardcore mode would be excellent. I do agree with most of your points and I think it would be better to not have this buff in Hardcore mode.
An idea is to change the trap on the enemy to a trap, so that only death spells can use it. The trap on self would still be , and maybe a slightly higher percentage (+35? +40?). There is already a version of Feint with this effect and I do think it is balanced compared to the current Feint.
On the contrary, I believe this is actually an extremely popular opinion.
One relatively popular suggestion I have seen is to turn feint into a +50/+50 on both the caster and target. My extra spin on this would be to make it unable to be affected by potent trap, or at least find a way to limit the stacking as a +50 trap is strong enough.
Although if feint is changed, I do think spells like supercharge and backdraft will be necessary to change as well.
The issue does not sorely rest with Feint spells. Against those bosses with anti-Feint cheats, the battles still play out very similarly. Instead of Feinting, everyone just spams Blades on the hitter. If there's an anti-Blade cheat, then they spam non-Feint Traps instead. The problem is that there is an overabundance of damage multipliers and they work so well with one another that there is no reason to use any other strategy. Feint isn't the sole culprit.
I agree with your sentiment, but perhaps not your solution.
I think that there needs to be more viable strategies when it comes to playing the game. Having this alpha-strike process be an option, but not the best option (perhaps even by a long shot) to me is the key.
I think the solution is designing new and interesting fights, like they have been in some of the side content. Make a boss that takes triple dot damage, or kills off it's minions whenever someone heals, or make it so it's immune to AOE damage etc.
I think that there are a lot of options, but yes, Alpha-strike as the "only" option needs to go.
I think the much bigger problem is that KI makes the drop rates so low. If we need to beat a boss 100s or even 1000s of times to get the drop we want, there isn't going to be much patience for anything but the fastest possible strategy. The game would be a lot more fun without this excessive grind but that's what KI has chosen to make it. Until the drop rates are raised many-fold, please don't get rid of our feints, KI.
Please do not remove feints from the game. As a player with less money for packs and little time/mental energy to farm(which is repetitive), feints are my fighting chance. Some bosses are barely scratched by my balance spells and feints are what get me through. They also speed up boring fights so you can get back to the story. If you don't like feints then just don't use them. If you think they make the game redundant and less challenging then change up your own strategy. Don't remove a whole spell from the game, especially one the little guys might need. And I argue that when using faints shortens battle, it cuts the monotony of dueling back and forth.
And its not like feints don't come with a price. Strong bosses already critical, blade and trap so that extra 30% is enough to take you out when low on health. Honestly feints are kind of risky and if the damage to self was higher I couldn't use it.
The issue does not sorely rest with Feint spells. Against those bosses with anti-Feint cheats, the battles still play out very similarly. Instead of Feinting, everyone just spams Blades on the hitter. If there's an anti-Blade cheat, then they spam non-Feint Traps instead. The problem is that there is an overabundance of damage multipliers and they work so well with one another that there is no reason to use any other strategy. Feint isn't the sole culprit.
So true and why I wish there was an update that limited the amount of buffs/debuffs that can be had at one time on one character, forcing them to get rid of some blades if they want to blade again.
I've had this idea for a while but never got to around balancing the spells, but what it KI did a buff overfull?
Each type of buff would sum the values before becoming a multiplier. Most games balance multiple buffs by damage category and summing those, however in Wizard101 all are considered separate categories but what if we segregate the buffs.
For example, these categories are summed before being multiplied by each other:
Caster Base Stats
Charms
Outgoing Auras Stats
Globals
Incoming Aura Stats
Wards
Target Base Stats
With the following subcategories being multiplied by each other as well:
trap, so that only death spells can use it. The trap on self would still be 
, and maybe a slightly higher percentage (+35? +40?). There is already a 
version of Feint with this effect and I do think it is balanced compared to the current Feint.
