The Complete Destruction of each Schools Identity.
When Wizard101 was created, each school had it's own identity. What I truly believed happened is that the founders and creators had their own vision planned in their head, and as life went on and people came and went, everybody sprinkled their own ideas of what THEY wanted for the game, but all of their ideas did not coexist peacefully.
Storm was meant to be the high damage hitting School Fire is also a high damage hitting school but their main niche was over-times Ice is a low damage school with high health and shielding as their niche
Death was a mid damage, mid health and a bit on the tankier side with draining as their niche Myth was a high damage school whose niche was summoning minions to aid them in combat Life was a low damage, tanky school whose niche was healing
Balance was meant to be a complete combination of every school. Mid damage, mid tankiness, mid everything with their own utility and universal capabilites of supporting and fighting alongside EVERY school.
What each school has become today is not what this vision is, and each update is making it worse.
The Wizard101 developers seemed to have forgotten that their order of most to least damage was originally intended to be Storm > Fire > Myth > Balance > Death > Life > Ice.
Fire now gets higher base damage on their gear than storm, while storm has higher base damage on their cards and higher critical. They're not even a huge problem, this was an okay change.
Myth on the other hand, who is supposed to be on the same level as a hitter as fire and storm, CONSISTENTLY has their lethality gutted each update. Their 1v1 potential in pvp is great, and their PVE used to be bearable too, but this Mystic Colossus update was terrible. Why is it storm (whose a hitting school) has, FOUR learnable hit all spells (Tempest, Storm Lord, Sirens, Glowbugs) which all varied in damage and ALL were useful, fire has SIX (Meteor, Scald, Fire Dragon, Rain of Fire, Sun Serpent, Raging Bull), okay that's cool, they're on almost the same level as storm. Now let's look at Myth. Myth gets Humungofrog and Earthquake. Humungofrog can at a high end deal 325 damage, which was on the same level as their peers with Meteor and Tempest. Myth began falling off at Earthquake which does 310 damage (15 less damage than a frog), while their peers received Storm Lord and Fire Dragon. While Myth was receiving useful single hit spells, it got to the point of geez, when will we get another hit all? FINALLY at level ONE HUNDRED (57 levels after you get Earthquake), they finally get Mystic Colossus, which does 880 base damage. FINALLY! A USEFUL hit all spell for Myth!...
Now in an update to nerf shadow spells, they tackled the problematic ones such as Weaver which were needed, but then they went after Myth. Their 880 hit all shadow spell now turned into 450, with the cool new buff of removing ONE shield before it hits! Woohoo!! That fresh utility totally made up for the 50% decrease in damage! For reference, the second hit of Minotaur does 445 damage, Mystic Colossus does FIVE MORE DAMAGE than a minotaur.
Then on new gear, they began PACKING myth with resists and health, which is logical theoretically if you want to start making them tankier, but MYTH WAS NOT DESIGNED TO BE A TANK. They provide no ally support spells in a meta where 2v2 is irrelevent and they're unnecessary for PVE. They were created with being a damage school in mind and the new balance team does NOT understand that. Their shadow changes were awful.
Glowbugs?? GLOWBUGS?? Glowbugs was in no way an issue, and the enfeeble wasn't an issue either. Nobody was using it in PVP and it was a solely PVE spell, but that wasn't even the worst issue.
FFA.. the damage reduction... was needed. But the removal of the fuel is stupid if you're not gonna tweak the scion, which requires 6 traps. The Raging Bull was a good change.
But these are just the hitters.
Let's talk about ice real quick. Ice mind you, is supposed to be the WEAKEST school in terms of damage. Is there any reason that Abominable Weaver (a 5 pip shadow spell) was doing base 1130 damage, while Death's Winged Sorrow (a 6 PIP SHADOW SPELL) was doing at MAX 1030 base damage. Weaver got a 75% shield while Winged Sorrow had a 30% weakness.
Hungry Caterpillar made the most sense, it did more damage than ice but less damage than Death? Hungry Cat at max damage did 1150, while Death was doing 1030. Lifes biggest issue is that they've focused TOO MUCH on their niche. We get it, THEY CAN HEAL. Every school has a Scion that can do 2k+ base damage while life gets an 11 pip heal. Their shadow pip hit all does 460 base damage (over 3 rounds without an initial hit), which is completely USELESS for pvp AND pve. They get one hit all (Forest Lord) at level 58 which takes a total of 20 years to complete animating, but oh! They have alternatives! Kookaburra has a 4 pip hit all that does 195 damage... Ratatoksr can do 700 damage.... for the small price of over $200 to even have a chance to get one spell in one pack... but OH! They have a hit all Spinysaur on their dragoons amulet!..... that you receive at max level after intense and grind heaving farming after you most likely craft it. Congratz! Life gets a hit all when you complete the game!
And Death.. by far one of the worst schools in PVP and PVE currently, got hit MASSIVELY too. What was Deaths problem with having Khrulu do 800 damage? Khrulu wasn't a problem ANYWHERE.. The new Khrulu now does 100 more damage than Scarecrow.
Finally Balance. Balance has been in a sticky spot at the bottom of the PVP ladder and mid usefulness in PVE, but they got one of the HARDEST NERFS? Gaze of Fate was NOT an issue. It used to do 550 base damage per head, and it now does 250. The new Gaze of Fate now does less damage than ONE head on the old one.
What are you guys exactly doing????
Nerfing SOME shadow spells was necessary, but they completely nerfed all the spells that WERE NOT PROBLEMS.
You know what spells were problems?
PVP:
Abominable Weaver Fire From Above
PVE:
Possibly Glowbugs for doing so much damage with so little effort.
What got nerfed?
-Abominable Weaver -Fire From Above -Glowbugs -Rusulka -Raging Bull -Mystic Colossus -Call of Khrulu -Gaze of Fate -Hungry Caterpillar
Do you see that correlation of the IRRELEVENT spells getting nerfed HARDER than the actual problems?
Ice might take a hit in the PVP ladder but Fire is staying right on top.
Life, Death, Balance, and Storm were ALL struggling in the PVP meta and are now going to be sent to the bottom ladder even harder. Instead of making every school an equal playing field, you made 4 of them on the same level, then Ice vs Fire. Myth is at a weird in between.
Oh but on top of that add FOUR NEW spells that can be upgraded with Spellements (which cost money)
-A USEFUL fire spell (which fire did NOT need already being at the top of the ladder) -A USEFUL ice heal (which was cute but it truly did not need anything whilst being at the top) -A USELESS balance spell which is essentially a spectral blast with spirit schools. -A USELESS death spell. KI doesn't know what to do with death besides a drain, just add another drain! Nobody will care! Thank you.
Re: The Complete Destruction of each Schools Identity.
So I'm gonna start by saying that several complaints in this post are touched on in the most recent test realm update.
But I want to address what I think is the big issue that you might be missing.
Wizard101, with it's current balancing, is past the point of being able to continue with reasonable challenges. This is due to the immense power creep over time and the development team trying to solve a few issues that were incoming and potentially spelling the end of the wizard101 story.
Let's talk about the design problems and work out way to the newest problems.
When shadow enhanced spells were released, the design team must have been thinking "wow, these 10 pip spells sure are close to the 14 pip limit we have. How can we NOT hit that? And so shadow spells were born.
In addition, they wanted people to be able to use old spells for longer into the game rather than just replacing things like blizzard or dragon the moment a better spell came around. As a result, Sun spells (that came before shadow spells) were made part of the game. Sun spells were useful and made for unique pvp situations at first while also allowing later, more interesting, PvE challenges and puzzles.
All of this has crept up the power level in the game and designers aren't thinking about how sun spells play into the game balance as a whole. Ignoring Weaver, most of the shadow spells are fine, as long as their secondary effects were toned back, without sun spells.
Honestly, I think that both in terms of balancing and flavor rather than needing shadow they should've made shadow enhanced spells unenchantable. This would've fixed the balance issues.
Regardless the systems in place mean we are running out of distance we can go before there is no reason to make more game.
Fundamentally MOST damaging spells need nerfs for the mobs to not be ridiculous to fight and shadow is only a symptom of the real problem.
Re: The Complete Destruction of each Schools Identity.
Not taking away good points of the discussion; Distance you mean spells and number of pips, Shadow pips have simply become just the next logical extension of pips, unfortunately, they have no intrinsic value outside of shadow spells. so were now stuck with the meta. So any new spell over x pips must now use shadow pips, or simply be used to fill in our existing school spells. New shadow spells lost their "dangerous side" status because of this.
Re: The Complete Destruction of each Schools Identity.
When I talk about distance we can go I am mostly talking about content that can be created, and in so doing they will, inevitably, release a new spell or two.
The game had an inbuilt lifespan when it was released in 2008 defined by pip limits, at most.
Sun spells and shadow spells are clever ways around it, but what happens when the design space is sitting at 7 Shadow Power Pips and 7 Power Pips or something equally as obserd?
At this point the developers are dancing around the end of the game. Trying to put it off for just a little bit longer, which is honestly fine by me, but we can only go so much further.
Lots of spells, specifically sun spells, were introduced much earlier than was healthy for them. In retrospect, I think Astrals should've been released much later in the game and in stead of releasing new school spells having school specific Astrals to learn in the Arcanum. While it would make the game harder, it still leaves the game with lots of space to grow.
Who knows? Maybe we'll get a school specific enchant spell in the future.
