PvP suffers from this as well generally. for awhile there was a “cosplay” meta where higher defense schools would play Storm better than Storm itself lol
honestly, I like the school pip system, it's unique and interesting, and gives access to some spells that can compliment your wizard quite nicely and maybe counter bosses that counter your original school. But I defo do find issue with allowing the unique quest spells on other wizards, it cheapens the fact that you're subbing into another school by allowing full spec into them, it's rather tragic to be honest.
@@marcus716 it can a bit I reckon, but I think if you were to make it a bit weaker in comparison to the real class you would be able to make it work, like lower values and lack of such things as the real blade cards and traps. With how much some bosses cheat, and the inability to apply a blade prism, it can be nigh impossible to get through some content outside of your school without using teamups, which is unreliable in it's own way.
Great explanation. However, I might be in the minority here in thinking this actually makes the Wiz experience more unique. Before, it felt as if though Treasure Cards or secondary schools were practically useless. The new update if anything, made it better for solo players enjoying PVE. Past couple months I’ve been loving replaying the game on a new Myth and playing with my Balance homie.
If they continue to go this route - KI needs to take out the "what kind of wizard are you ..???????" out of the beginning game scene. It doesn't' make sense to do that, and then once you play the GAME, you can cast all 7 class magic. So what's the point?? I'm an old timer on this game and very angry about the direction of W101 game play in terms of school identity. One more thing, stop calling the game Wizard101, but call it Spellement101, it's more fitting :) :) :)
😂😂😂 damn I found other games to play such as Roblox and other anime games never looked back at w101 I even forgot I had it on my computer similar to Pokemon go on my phone 😂😂😂😂
I think a much better idea for arch mastery would have been to allow you to only choose one other school or school pip to choose in combat, and that for this school you need to train like you did with your home school, meaning doing quests and progression, rather then just spending a training point. This will allow much more content to be added, make your choice more impactful and unique, and allow years and years of progression to be added, so that instead of mastery of 7 schools at once, we over the time get more powerful with a second school, and then maybe can begin a third years down the line. This might need an overhaul of the school systems and quests, so that we can begin earlier rather then at the current max level, maybe like a major and minor system colleges have but here with magic school. With the new spell weaving system this could go very well. I'm not opposed to mastery of other schools, I think some of my ideas actually adds more variety and identities to the game, better then only being limited to one identity ,and definetly better then the removal of all identify with the current archmastery alongside the gear setups.
I think this is something that improves the gameplay experience and build identity and people are only mad because it's different. I think it's a positive change
I honestly think the only thing keeping school identity barely alive, IF AT ALL, is the fact that even if you can train other school spells you can never do as much as that school can with those spells specifically. If you're level 170 and have the Aeon gear, that sort of changes because of the dual school thing with that gear (Myth and Ice for instance). Otherwise I really do think you're right, school identity is pretty much 6 feet under at this point. I've been playing this game off and on since I was 6-7 roughly, so watching it die hurts
I think they killed the school identity because this game has been around a long time so they feel its not a big deal to change the game and kill the magic.
Not sure if anyone will see this but I am a semi new returnee from childhood. Only at the beginning of celestia on a storm(to make farming gardening stuff easy to set up) but I’ve seen so much about wiz becoming super difficult PvE in the late game. Keeping in mind that Wiz is- not as active as it used to be, I think it’s partially necessary for most schools to have access to rounded and strong stats to make the game fun to enjoy in a solo setting, not just in a team
the meta stat for under 50 is now a life wizard who trains meteor strike and gets a pet with fire blade. you got the best low level 4 pip AOE, the good stats of life, and can cast unicorn whenever you want.
In the tutorial where Diego teaches you about wards blades and over times, he mentions that power pips only count for your own school. So how can you cast a different school's 8 pip spell without an archmastry amulet?
That tutorial is outdated. Power pips only count towards your own school but school pips count for their school. You start getting archmastery rating at level 50 but can get it much earlier through archmastery jewels in the jewel shop.
@@KaiserNoah Now I understand. Thanks for the explanation in the video and here in the comments. Content creators like you have kept the game alive for almost 16 years, keep up the great work!!! I think this is a good chance for pve. I can't speak on pvp, since I haven't tried it.
I think the only way they could fix this/make it better is if you could only train school specific spells for one school and none of the others. With things like arch magic, this really makes picking your school feel useless and I hope that KI can change this
I’m going through this right now. I just got the quest to get the Spinysuar for my life wizard but now I can just train it and it’s annoying. It’s a useless quest and people from other schools don’t have to do this quest. I hate this update
My last replay on a myth awhile ago I think did it for me. It was during the time of the dual pip thing. was like lvl 120. Researching that sewer gear and I came to this very similar realization, Especially during the farming process. Schools just didnt matter, I felt like I had no Identity. Everyone around me had the same or similar stats, and I realized the game ahead of me consists of the same stuff, mindless blading and hitting and no actual thinking until the occasional boss with a cheat. There is no flexing your unique spells anymore. You're class isnt special, everyone else can do exactly what you do with treasure cards. Only thing I would look forward to is my new highest score on damage, instead of working my way through enchantments and shields like a wizard should. everybody just a canon now with a long reload. Kind of disappointing. I've always come back after a few years but its been awhile now and I dont see myself coming back to it
How do you suppose it should work? Enforcing a school identity would make certain schools almost impossible to solo with (and yes, that is bad). And every time a world has fights were just blading and hitting does not work, people complain that it's too hard. Wizard101 is no and will never be a competetive hardcore game. There are a lot of casuals playing this game and you simply can't tell someone on a ice wizard that they can't hit, need to tank 20 rounds until the enemy is dead and that they should just grind another 100 hours until they have a storm wizard to hit. That's dumb and just not fun. While KI certainly could highlight the schools' specialties a bit more, just forcing everyone to play that way is dumb. The current way allows for way more variation if you want to. If you don't want to and just run around, blade and hit because it works that's on you, not the game.
I still wish to be a casual player, even to this day. I almost wanted to dual school, but when I reached Khrysalis for the first time, my secondary school(sure, it was Ice, but still) wasn’t dealing as much damage as my main school(Death, it was). I can see how dual schooling isn’t recommended, but I don’t know.
ik this vid is old but man this really annoys tf outta me. this is one of the core strengths of w101 and why people got so attached to it. many mmos (and rpgs honestly) just give up and let all players become flawless jack of all trade types that can do anything at any time, with classes being setdressing. w101 in my eyes at least was able to put it's foot down and say "no, you are a life wizard, you don't deserve ifrit or whatever". that exclusive feeling makes other classes feel really unique and fun to watch because they can do things you can't. i think rpgs being afraid to tell the player they can't do something is a sign of lazy design. they clearly don't want to balance the game around multiple classes anymore
Well it may be boring constantly having to read or comment about Ratbeard. The issues you describe here and other problems with the game in the last five or so years always comes back to that developers tenure as lead and the backward steps since he took over. Sure there have been some very good minor quality-of-life updates over the years he has overseen, but realistically that is his sole contribution to adding something positive to wizard 101… I'll even bet none of the ideas that improve things in the game were his. To be fair, I like that there is less school identity. Personally playing in non-perfect teams, usually less than a full battle circle, having the ability to play different roles on different schools can be very handy. Even with the latest off school spells available, I can't see my ice playing as for example storm even though I could. It's the sort of thing I would choose when the right occasion occurs. One thing I wish they would change about school identity is the nonsense Fire From Above overtime version from the spell audit, back to the original single hit and triple trap. Does any fire use that spell in PVE now? Makes me sad because that used to be such a beast of a spell, also filled you with dread when it was coming towards you. Now it's pretty much a joke of a spell, nothing to worry about.
I haven't made it that far on my fire wiz, but FFA sounds awesome at face value. I am in Dragonspyre and still use heck hound sometimes against single bosses, but usually I will immolate instead to save time. I am assuming Fire Dragon is still better? I don't have it yet so idk
They have to go back into having armor sets that focus on their strengths. That would help alot, but this far into the game that would seem like a step back for the majority of the schools
Yeah schools identity is pretty much dead and could be highlighted some more. However, enforcing those identities is just not fun. Doing so would result in life doing almost no damage and mainly heal, ice doing almost no damage and just be tanky, balance just support etc. Soloing the game (which is what a lot of people do) would be pretty much impossible and everyone would run around with a fire/storm wizard. That'd be incredibly boring. Also: there are a lot of people playing this game that simply don't have the time to create and level several wizards. By having archmastery people can vary their playstyle regardless what school they chose (which maybe was a couple of years ago) and have fun. Those who don't like it can still play the way their school is intended. The current system's definitely not perfect, but I don't think it was better before.
Yoshi-P knows that all jobs must do DPS or else his bosses will pretty much be impossible. Nobody would play a Thaumaturge unless it became a Black Mage if Ice Wizards were only tanks.
i hopped on w101 a few weeks ago for the first time in ages. I had played on and mostly off since just before celestia was even released. I was quite surprised to see that I could train the class exclusive spells, along with a myriad of other unique-looking spells i hadn't seen before. That and reskinned versions of other class spells. The whole thing felt very weird. I thought it was cool to just have access to certain reskinned spells via TC or pets or gear... not to be able to permanently train them. This is one change I hope they revert. Maybe take notes from world of warcraft and introduce stat-squishing when a new world launches. I.e. gear from previous worlds are diminished compared to the world you're currently in. so that the highest tier gear from the previous world is equal or worse than the basic gear in the new world.
People blame KI for these changes but the dev team was absorbed by gamigo, am I wrong? Can we truly blame devs or is it the guys in the suits telling the devs what to do? And we already know gamigo is a place games to to be monetized into oblivion
We have had confirmation that a lot of changes like this come from ratbeard, not from gamigo. Not sure about this one but given that he is lead designer for stuff like this im willing to bet it was his decision. Maybe some of the new influx of packs could be blamed on gamigo but this stuff? dont think so.
@@KaiserNoah this is like how alot of shows have good first seasons and it goes to trash out of nowhere They have this golden game that has lasted the test of nearly 20 years It was great but declining more and more A fundamental part of school identity and each school being special for whatever they specialize in like ice and tanking Out the window Sad honestly
@@violetkalico The changing of wizard city's graphics happened in July of 2018. The character models were changed in July of 2020. Gamigo acquired Kingsisle in January of 2021. As easy as it is to blame things you dont like on gamigo, believe it or not they don't have a hand in every bad feature of the game.
KI devs will never get a job if the game had to shut down. They just randomly add stuff with only money on their mind and they can't even code properly there's like 50 glitches every update
A lot of games nowadays let money get in the way of creating quality content, so I'm sure KI devs would do just fine in finding a new job if the game shut down. They'd fit right in with the rest of the industry.
"KI devs will never get a job" Nah, they can always get a job at fast food joints as a cash register clerk but don't let them cook because they'll always mess up the orders and give you the Diablo roast beef at Arby's instead of your French Dip because they think spicy beef is more valuable. Meanwhile, FFXIV devs have job security because Yoshi-P won't let a Reaper do jump attacks or let a Pictomancer cast Black Mage spells. ;p
The game is finally ruined once and for all. Also, Archmastery was a horrible idea to begin with because all it has done was ruin school identity to a major extent with this being the final nail in the coffin. The game is simply too far gone as it has swayed completely from an effective MMO game. It shouldn't even be called an MMO because the principles of one is completely erased from it.
I know it’s mostly bad and I agree but let’s not forget the damage on the card itself will still make that much of a difference. Albeit the difference should be bigger to make sense of the schools but the unique identity of every school is still there just muddled and twisted and a bit more blurry. Expect life school, nearly totally erased
i mean the card damages being different kinda proves my point further since storm's damage on cards is so much higher than most other schools. Not as much of a point using the other cards if you can simply use storm's.
I actually kind of like that anyone can hit effectively and you can build your wizard however you want. That being said, I do wish that there was a greater emphasis on reinforcing the unique play styles and specialties of each individual school to go along with that direction. Claiming that everything is just about blading up and using 7-pip AOEs nowadays feels like a limited mindset. Could my life wizard, for instance, just blow through everything with nothing but blades and forest lord? Sure, and I do when I'm just trying to power through the main questline for progression's sake. But it's not as fun to do that and nobody's forcing me to play "optimally," so sometimes I prefer to play my own way. My grinding deck is just like everyone else's grinding deck, but my fun deck is a mix of life and fire which focuses on the unique aspects of both - healing over time and damage over time.
i quit ages ago, i had the same thought process back when they introduced mastery amulets, but i was definitely in the minority since everyone seemed to love that addition. checking back now and it's just way worse. diversity is one of the most important things to me in an MMO and it hurts to see how they've destroyed my childhood game.
I'm mixed on this. I agree that it kills the school identity but from what I remember it was still possible at one point to get at least some of the "exclusive" spells from Grady if I remember correctly or even spellments when that got added, however it was considerably more difficult to get them. I feel like part of why they did this is that the social aspect of most MMORPGs these days is dead and most people unless they have friends that play; just solo everything they can. I've personally always double schooled as well mainly to be able to bypass resistance, with the one exception so far being my Myth that I paired with Life that way I could either hit or support depending on if I was in a group or not and what schools/roles the rest of the group was which I found to be very helpful in harder areas in smaller groups.
I remember back in the day when lvl cap was 110 storm and fire WAS THE only schools you needed to farm bosses literally this update in every sense of the word changed everything forevermore I mean when I did titans trident we needed either fire or storm mostly fire because of the tick spell hound for Darkmoor it was either storm or fire mostly storm because back then fire could NEVER surpass storm in terms of damage output back then I sound old back in my day being a max meant something or maxing out a school meant something now it don't.
I've been having similar thoughts, it's a real bummer, because I don't really see how they can bring school identity back at all. Maybe that's what KI wants though.
There is school identity, a storm is frail and ice is still low on damage, even wearing the best gear for dual schooling, the storm still can hit hard and ice can take a hit for example.
Ice can easily get 200+ damage saying they're low on it is insane. Storm is definitely more frail than others but I have always gone on record saying storm is my least favorite school.
I think they need to tone down the damage from dual schooling as well, like if you want to dual school with storm or something you can only have up to half of the damage cap so you're still drastically weaker than a proper storm or something of that nature anyway
Slowly this is happening to Pirate101, they copy and paste Tartarus from this game and made it into pirate101. It's probably coming out in april but there's power becoming universal.
I would counter they are opening up several different possibilities. As someone who mains on another MMO, Guild Wars 2, this is exactly what they have done there over the past several years. Get away from the class specific tank/healer/Damage to allow other classes/options to fill each role. There will always be the meta class for a specific role but this give some interesting options. Gear will still limit some of the choices.
I agree school identity in Wiz is "dead," but I personally thought it never really existed past Arc 1. Once you get past this arc its a Blade AoE meta and always had been, the "exclusive spells," were rarely used unless they had some sort of damage upgrade. Identity in Wiz was generally the stats and always had been the stats. It also preferred outright damage 9 times out of 10 because its the fastest way to deal with enemies which does not favor Fires identity of DoT. Recent updates have done more good than harm because now the creativity to do whatever you desire is there with very minimal limits other than your stats not being at the same level as the main school. You can argue that most wont use this and this is because of course they would rather go pure damage with Blade AoE, but to those who want a different experience they now have that opportunity (also I'd like to point out archmastery is a much better alternative than what we had before being the school masteries that can be argued as pay to have fun). Wizard101 has always been a stats based game, IMO true identity in classes lies within Pirate101 as this game focuses more on the powers as of current time.
For long time, all the schools 7th pip spells aoe were learnable at level 100, except for Scarecrow, so they made these changes and made them easier to dual schooling.
I agree with everything you're saying, like sure being able to add a little twist to ur gameplay every now and then with diff spells is cool and all, but completely transforming into a whole other school along with having all of its unique op spells is a whole other level. Like what's the difference in any of the schools now, why would I choose one over another when I can be whatever I want in any? Imo, the whole reason why there are different schools/classes in a game in the first place is to have a new unique experience that you gotta learn to work with, and that's what's fun about it, not just to mold it into whatever you want with no limitations.
I think it opens more ways to play the game. People talk about the meta a bunch, but if you can get a friend or two, you can really experiment with neat builds for a time. Wizzies is an MMO, no need to be optimal if another strat is fun. The Ice doing Storm spells as an example seems pretty funny to me. My friend is a Death who is exclusively support, and I'm sure he's happy about these changes so he can get some Life spells. Schools aren't impactful as they were way back in the day, but that's okay. We're all older, anyway. We can get more creative than being super optimal to find something fun or even just plain funny.
Thats fair. I think the problem is that just because we CAN get more creative doesn't mean we will. Nowadays most ppl play this game in the exact same way and it makes the game pretty stale IMO. Some of the funnest times ive had in this game have been playing with my friends and actively going away from the modern standards of the game.
So why have schools why not just have universal spells every uses? It defeats the purpose of the game and you’re like it’s okay no big deal, lol I glad im far away from this game if people like you are only left.
Tiny bit random, but could I request a vidwo on ranking the main dungeons in the game? like how fun they are, how good the gear is, how iconic they are, etc
This is definitely showing I was questing for zeus gear as a death and my comp had 2 storms n balance Somehow I was the hitter in that fight bc both storms has bad pets and they were pip failing too but i found it crazy that i was ship spamming the whole time when im someone who likes to support and blade
At least and im saying at least! Remove the damn unique school spells obtainable for different schools. Like why the fuck do we even have solo quests for our spells
Hey Noah. This is UpandComing. A few weeks back (April 28th, 2024), my account got terminated because it violated UA-cam Guidelines. This is probably the last time I will comment on this channel (because it won't be the same if I resubscribe). Thank you for all the content over the last 5 years. I love to watch your videos because of your personality and the fact that you're an awesome fellow who speaks his mind. Just thought I should let you know. I wish you luck with your channel.
As someone who's played this game since 2009 I have never seen such idiotic, incompetent, lousy so called game developers in my LIFE. These people couldn't get another job if Wiz shut down to save their life. Clueless!!
I think archmastery works only in specific situations. Im an ice that duals death. I can get more damage off of my ice spells still but now if I'm in a fight that hits harder than my 14K health and 80 resist (rare btw) then i can drain and get some of that health back. Dual schooling is cool but its really mostly a situational benefit in my experience. Im still better off just using my ice spells in most instances.
I think being able to use other school's spells is cool in concept, but I feel like there should be an advantage to being a specific school. Something that just occurred to me is maybe you can't reshuffle high power spells (rank 7+) unless they're from your school similar to how a lot of heals have been getting restricted. I do also feel like KI should consider enforcing school identity with stats rather than just with spell gimmicks. Sure Fire likes to use DoTs, but what STAT is it's main stat, like Ice with resist and Life with HP. Is it pierce? Crit? Or something entirely different?
That wss my exact thought when my brother told me about the new update. What's even the point of schools now other than which has the best natural stats.
every time i think i should get back into wizard101, i don't. I am an archmage conjurer and the game is just so hollow. They constantly change spells (like orthrus), the devs are assholes, and it's creeping into pirate101 too. Their overcomplication of combat is just too much - maybe I'm just old, but it's a lot to keep track of with the spell changes changing my strategy too. Plus, the updated graphics are UGLY AF. They're focusing on the wrong things and am quite certain they only do these changes because they don't know how to do anything else (literally admitted on a p101 roundtable no one knows how to solidly program on the team... while blaming the lack of content on the player base). It's sad to see everyone can access these spells. It defeats the point of playing and questing on different schools. If (when) this comes into Pirate101, it'll be game breaking.
I do agree with you but I kinda like this because I be kinda bored with my school since the enemies be dual schools i don’t see the problem with us being dual as well
Hey btw Noah are you going to continue the double storm walkthrough you had (with formal phantom). You were in part 1 khrysalis I believe almost finishing it. It was awesome guys.
Had no idea this change was made, clearly a very bad idea, and no clue who could be this stupid on the dev team..... not that they where smart to begin with
You already get 6 slots for making wizards. If players wanted to try playing the hit role they can make a storm or fire wizard. If they want to play support they can make a balance or life wizard. Blending together the roles removes the need to have any other wizards at all since you can just play off the one. Not a fan.
Yeah no shit. This is Wizard101, a game that is mainly targetting children and is played by people of all ages. You go try and tell a father who's working 8 hours a day and made a life wizard that he shouldn't hit or solo and should go grind another 100 hours to make a new wizard. Not everyone is a hardcore gamer and KI knows that.
although Kingsisle is taking a break with story after wallaru, I'm really hoping they can somehow switch up the challenges similar to the solo fights players had to do in the latest world. being able to devise strategies that didn't simply just require feint + blade was interesting and brings back the use of the single hit spells that became irrevelant in PvE due to the amount of 2v1 fights players are given in every world. Even though I mained death, which arguably made most of the game easier by providing drain aoes, Kingsisle should more so focus around every school's strengths and weaknesses rather than making them too similar to where there isn't any difference to whatever school players should use.
an opinion I have that I haven't seen many people share is that I think removing pvp gear and arena tickets from tourneys completely messed up the gap between pve and pvp. PvP used to be done with stats much outside what could be obtained in the normal game, as pvp gear was much better than pve gear. This allowed them to play with the balance much more while NOT AFFECTING PVE IN THE SLIGHTEST. the majority of problems people have with the game now is that pve is being balanced around pvp and I feel like that wouldn't be the case if there was still PvP gear you could grind in tournaments.
My ice was expected to hit for darkmoor because everyone else in my team had lower damage. I was very upset because ice isn’t a hitting school it’s a support school unlike storm, fire, death and myth
There's quite a few spells that can't be learned. That doesn't change the point of this video though. The major hits and tools people use to succeed can be learned. I imagine most people haven't used mana burn a single time.
No doubt there are a lot of things that take away from the individuality of each school but honestly I really enjoy it. Back then it felt like if you didn't have a fire, storm, myth then bosses would take an eternity to finish. Now, with things such as the Wallaru dmg jewels and easier access to high dmg gear for all schools, you no longer have to fret about killing mons or bosses. Plus I also like that we canonically are like gods so it's much more fitting for us to be able to tap into all the schools at this point. I'm well aware of the implications it has for PVP but honestly it's good to see that you don't have to be a select few schools to actually be what you want to play as.(As in identity). Being a Life hitter is really cool instead of always automatically being p[laced in the healer/jade/support role every single fight.
My Level 170 storm 8,872 HEALTH/ 32 RESIST ALL Storm DMG 200/ 53 ACC/ 810 CRIT/ 35 PIERCE Death DMG 203/ 26 ACC/ 738 CRIT/ 02 PIERCE I have ship of fools, Scarecrow, Bunyips, Glowbugs & tempest in my Deck among other cards. After I got to this point it actually made me not even want to finish leveling my 150 Death character. I was able to hit ship of fools boosted or scarecrow boosted and completely heal myself and turn around next round and finish the enemies off with a storm move if they weren't already dead. I could do a death/storm build on my death but I like having tempest that I can boost with an EPIC card on my storm. I can completely heal myself now and even kill enemies like a death wizard. My 170 Myth is so amazing I havent even bothered to dual school honestly. I spent 3 hours trying to pick a good secondary school but just couldn't really pick one. At this point life would be the only one worth it but only for healing because I like to use summons and monstrology a lot. So I could upgrade my outgoing healing and then heal my summons better and still be able to hit and kill enemies myself.
I also think there's a problem with supporting, in that Feint and Elemental/Spirit blades being trainable killed any idenity between the support schools(ice, life, balance). You can also get stupidly high health and resist as schools that can't normally or shouldn't normally be able to(like death and myth), jade being the perfect example as now any school being a massive tank is no big surprise. Every support school playing the exact same is another huge problem that's as old as Feint and ele/spirit blades being trainable and meta.
Being able to get those extremely high stats is insanely difficult to do while also having your other stats high. You would get blown out of the water in a PVP match if you have high health but not damage or pierce to back it up. Also stat caps make it to where jading isn't possible anymore which is an amazing change IMO
@@raphuellpvp is not the whole game, I fear. For the vast majority of players, it isn't even a game mode. PVP may be in a good spot but PVE currently could not be in a less fun state. MMOs live and die by their PVE experiences, and currently wiz does not have much of one(besides raids, which are completely inaccessible to the average player). I am glad that PVP is good, at least. It's one step in the right direction.
@@somedudeontheinterwebs45 The whole point of MMOs is to be challenging and to rely on a team to help you. The addition of raids and the newish Nightmare Dungeon has been magnificent and improved PVE a good amount IMO. Rebutting off your statement about raids being inaccessible to the average player, no they are not, not at all. Guilds have made guides that tell you the exact moves to make and exactly where to be at all times; the entire game has a good balance at the moment.
School identity has been destroyed by a desire to inject a classless skill (spell) system into a class-based game without understanding how to do so. Hell, even the OG developers had trouble with this, but they at least had the sense to actually balance the stats (look at the old crafting gear, school stat identity actually exists) and to not have it pervade every inch of the game. Dual schooling was always intended to be a thing, but power pips and the increasing pace of the game made it impossible to ever be useful. It's why they even made mastery amulets in the first place. That's why I don't mind the idea of school pips. The original intention isn't altered much by them. The school pip spells are what I really have a problem with. They fill a spot that could have easily been filled with the traditional enchant-mutates or (my idea) spellwrighting mutates. School pip spells also enforce an unhealthy structure to the game. I also don't mind the idea of Roshambo; the implementation of it is bad. The way that a school's spells follow the wheel is too rigid and disallows any creative liberty or cleverness (shameless plug: spellwrighting mutates). It needs a softer, looser ruleset, but not too loose, such as how MTG's color wheel has primary, secondary, and tertiary attributes to colors. Roshambo also doesn't alter the original vision too much. It's been present in the game in a softer form since Celestia. You can tell from Arc 2's enemy weaknesses. They have the same reverse, forward, and cross synergy weaknesses. Even the spells had obvious effects belonging to certain schools and other schools borrowing weaker versions of that effect. The OG devs had the right idea. Roshambo was present in the game without being so utterly pervasive and rigid in its experience, like we are experiencing now. The ideas behind school pips and roshambo aren't inherently dangerous to school identity. It's the way they are being thoughtlessly implemented that's hurting the game. Then there's the other things that they have to fix that the OG devs left them, like the issue of resist being an untouchable stat and pierce being a problematic "solution" to that problem. That just leads to all the frustration the community is feeling.
Fulll agree, I just reached novus on my main wiz and I hate how spells now just seem to be damage for all just diff type, everyone is playing samey and there doesnt seem to be any uniqueness with new spells. also there are so many schools and mechanics that they havent rly even tried fixing. I dont think there is an issue with all schools being able to hit for high damage but there definitely should be enough damage variety for it to keep it optimal for storm fire etc. to hit over ice life and so on.
Storm, fire, and myth all have enough variety in hitting. Their DPP is way higher and they can hit the damage stat cap and still have room for other attributes easier than any support school. Also hitting schools typically take fewer rounds to kill bosses
@@Jayfeather4x your entire comment was based on damage dealt and how there should be variety in spells. With the new update there is a quite a bit of variety in diff roshambos however those spells are only used for pvp/raids so I guess I can see where you’re coming from. The real question is why there should be a diff between schools in their 7 pip. If there was variety then ice and other support schools would be required to play with someone on a diff school
Join the club the fact that my death wiz can have 12K heath is in my opinion utterly foolish and pretty stupid considering that back in the day ice was the only ones with the highest heath back then but that got ruined and now I start seeing death wizards running around with storm damage it ain't funny it's shameful literally.
Whoever blames the developers is not right. Why? Because there’s this thing called the SDLC In this phase there’s 1. Identifying problem 2. Design System 3. Analysis System 4. Graphic Design 5. Software development 6. Testing 7. Implementation They all have their own roles at work, sometimes it’s not the devs who brings upon these ideas. Just because you’re a dev doesn’t mean you came up with all of these ideas. The SDLC I listed, you must go through 4 of the phases before finally putting it into game; which is step 5(where coding begins).
I mean I agree overall that not every developer deserves blame, but saying that none do is also incorrect. One of them (for most pve changes its ratbeard) came up with the idea, decided that it was worth implimenting and spent time implimenting it. It wasnt like the players or a higher-up wanted this change.
I absolutely hate that you can train those unique school spells. It sounds dumb, but even just those unique quests for those spells for those schools were so cool and felt special. Thats gone now and I hope they change it asap!
I personally still think school identity is a thing. In max-level activities such as raids and PVP, you have to be on a certain school and have a certain gear setup to hit stat maxes/caps. For example, in the Crying Sky Raid, you can't jade as a storm, fire, or myth because that is a recipe for disaster. Also yes school pips make it easier to use cards from other schools but I think they're trying to make max-level activities more complex and fun for players. If KI didn't do any of these updates there would also be people complaining about a lack of content; either way, people are going to talk. So I honestly enjoy the route they are going.
That's another issue: the majority of the player base doesn't do raids or even care enough to understand gambit features to do the challenge dungeons such as nightmare or pvp. There's also no incentive to even progress further than novus since the new gauntlet drops better gear and doesn't take as long or as difficult. They keep making ot more and more impossible for solo play which. How is someone supposed to do castle gobsmack solo? They can't. That's just one of many barriers that prevent people from having fun and playing
@@senorquack8012 it's possible to solo every dungeon in the game, it just requires some extreme strategy and specific gear. As for the majority of the player base that doesn't want to do the actual fun stuff in the game. Why? Why would you not want to enjoy the game to it's fullest, the problem with Wizard101 is the player base IMO.
@@raphuell if a game company releases a new feature, raid, dungeon, ect and the majority of the player base hates it or doesn't bother doing it cause its to difficult are the players the problem or the developers not knowing what the players actually like? And school identity doesn't exist for most schools either, the only school that has any identity that separates it from others is death with its absorb atks that self heal, every other school is just choose your favorite color. Grinding for gear is really annoying and for its difficult to do. I've had friends do darkmoor for weeks and weeks and never get any of the pieces they need, waterworks is the same. Remember dragoon? How it was to suppose to be the next best thing but it flopped harder than Moon spells cause of the difficult bosses and the amount of reagents needed to craft it.
@@senorquack8012 you clearly haven’t played any other MMO in your life, name me one MMO that isn’t extremely grindy and has bad drop rates for the best gear in the game. How many of those games are massively popular? If it was easy as shit to get gear it wouldn’t feel rewarding and no one would want to play the game. Also the raids and dungeons and stuff are meant to be difficult and they are meant to be team played. I think if anything they’re trying to get out of the being able to solo everything era because that’s just boring. The game isn’t going to cater to everyone’s play type also, it’s obvious this game is becoming more hardcore which IMO is better for it and I know many other people who will also agree. For school identity, there isn’t as much as there used to be but people still pick schools for specific reasons and schools still have a ton of different identity; Kingsisle is just trying to get out the trench of the “best” school talk and make it to where every school is a viable option.
Kingsisle is garbage 🤭 Edit: I’ve never seen a w101 UA-camr who keeps classic settings on. I like you already lowkey. The point you made about school identity is so true. As a life wizard first and always, everyone can heal now. Like not just a heal here and there but BE a healer. Tf is the point if half my spells are heals. 😭
Your right about that second chance chests are another way to get gear. I just suggested it because it really did make farming for gear useless. Instead of grinding the best gear, now it's all released into the world packs. I think they started this with lemuria but could be wrong. It's a interesting video idea because you could talk about it and how like Wallaru all the people who farmed nightmare for gear was a waste when they just release it in a pack.
Honestly, Noah.. I would love you to make videos on more popular games. You're literally the LEAST problematic Wizard101 UA-camr and you gave us insanely helpful guides over the years. You deserve more views and I honestly can't see any small UA-camr doing it with Wizard101.. especially with how KI is running this game to the ground. I promise you would easily blow up with your video style in any popular game. Consider Honkai Star Rail, it plays JUST like Wizard101 (turn-based gameplay) but it's way more popular.
@@jacobfried5904 Power pips & archmastery(also known as school) pips are two different things. Power pips are just stronger 2 pip versions of regular pips that help you with casting spells from your own school. Archmastery pips are pips that can be generated for other schools and it counts as 2 pips for your own main school and of school you generated a pip for. So if you generated a life archmastery and your say fire pip it would count as 2 pips life & fire spells. The same if your storm, if you generate a life pip as a storm, it counts as 2pips for life & storm spells.
They practically have, you can get around 200 dmg for other schools but you wont be hitting stat caps so its pointless to do so. You would lose if you went up against a Myth using gear for their school and you were a Death with storm stats. Secondary school cards are specifically being used for the roshambos
the only place where school identity kinda exists is PvP, because that’s the only thing the Devs really care about anymore. which i get, milk that cash cow for all it’s worth i guess, i just wish it didn’t come at the detriment of the rest of the game.
Doesn't this benefit completionists thought by allowing the player to obtain every element and skill for all the classes? I get classes have their own identity, but with this change you can get a true 100% file right?
I promise you no one has, or ever will, have a 100% save file in wiz. Its not a game that you really “100%” beyond doing every quest and getting good gear sets. You dont really do completionist runs of MMOS.
Disagree. Schools massively impact your entire experience playing the game and choosing one is supposed to mean something. Back in the day if you were ice you HAD to support because you weren't given the option to hit. A storm that supported was almost impossible because you couldn't get the stats to do so.
I’m convinced Kingsisle devlopers have never played this game before
right, and the worst thing is they DON'T CARE unless it is about MORE MONEY.
They do, like 5% of the game.
💯💯
I don’t think it’s their fault, they just do their job. It’s a design problem
i genuinely believe they have no idea what is actually going on
PvP suffers from this as well generally.
for awhile there was a “cosplay” meta where higher defense schools would play Storm better than Storm itself lol
Probbaly because y’all can learn storm spells now so you have naturally better defense cause of ice gear plus the damage from storm spells
honestly, I like the school pip system, it's unique and interesting, and gives access to some spells that can compliment your wizard quite nicely and maybe counter bosses that counter your original school. But I defo do find issue with allowing the unique quest spells on other wizards, it cheapens the fact that you're subbing into another school by allowing full spec into them, it's rather tragic to be honest.
I feel like it just blends all schools together which i don't like
@@marcus716 it can a bit I reckon, but I think if you were to make it a bit weaker in comparison to the real class you would be able to make it work, like lower values and lack of such things as the real blade cards and traps. With how much some bosses cheat, and the inability to apply a blade prism, it can be nigh impossible to get through some content outside of your school without using teamups, which is unreliable in it's own way.
The only school with school identity is life now
Life gangggg 😁😁
We thought you were dead?
My Wizard's demise in the Spiral was greatly exaggerated.
Great explanation. However, I might be in the minority here in thinking this actually makes the Wiz experience more unique. Before, it felt as if though Treasure Cards or secondary schools were practically useless. The new update if anything, made it better for solo players enjoying PVE. Past couple months I’ve been loving replaying the game on a new Myth and playing with my Balance homie.
If they continue to go this route - KI needs to take out the "what kind of wizard are you ..???????" out of the beginning game scene. It doesn't' make sense to do that, and then once you play the GAME, you can cast all 7 class magic. So what's the point?? I'm an old timer on this game and very angry about the direction of W101 game play in terms of school identity. One more thing, stop calling the game Wizard101, but call it Spellement101, it's more fitting :) :) :)
It's why I stopped playing once I finished lemuria. I picked up Final Fantasy 14 and never looked back
😂😂😂 damn I found other games to play such as Roblox and other anime games never looked back at w101 I even forgot I had it on my computer similar to Pokemon go on my phone 😂😂😂😂
I think a much better idea for arch mastery would have been to allow you to only choose one other school or school pip to choose in combat, and that for this school you need to train like you did with your home school, meaning doing quests and progression, rather then just spending a training point. This will allow much more content to be added, make your choice more impactful and unique, and allow years and years of progression to be added, so that instead of mastery of 7 schools at once, we over the time get more powerful with a second school, and then maybe can begin a third years down the line. This might need an overhaul of the school systems and quests, so that we can begin earlier rather then at the current max level, maybe like a major and minor system colleges have but here with magic school. With the new spell weaving system this could go very well. I'm not opposed to mastery of other schools, I think some of my ideas actually adds more variety and identities to the game, better then only being limited to one identity ,and definetly better then the removal of all identify with the current archmastery alongside the gear setups.
I think this is something that improves the gameplay experience and build identity and people are only mad because it's different. I think it's a positive change
I honestly think the only thing keeping school identity barely alive, IF AT ALL, is the fact that even if you can train other school spells you can never do as much as that school can with those spells specifically. If you're level 170 and have the Aeon gear, that sort of changes because of the dual school thing with that gear (Myth and Ice for instance). Otherwise I really do think you're right, school identity is pretty much 6 feet under at this point. I've been playing this game off and on since I was 6-7 roughly, so watching it die hurts
I think they killed the school identity because this game has been around a long time so they feel its not a big deal to change the game and kill the magic.
Not sure if anyone will see this but I am a semi new returnee from childhood. Only at the beginning of celestia on a storm(to make farming gardening stuff easy to set up) but I’ve seen so much about wiz becoming super difficult PvE in the late game. Keeping in mind that Wiz is- not as active as it used to be, I think it’s partially necessary for most schools to have access to rounded and strong stats to make the game fun to enjoy in a solo setting, not just in a team
I promise you every school is able to solo the game without having 200+ damage.
@@KaiserNoah Thank you for responding!
the meta stat for under 50 is now a life wizard who trains meteor strike and gets a pet with fire blade. you got the best low level 4 pip AOE, the good stats of life, and can cast unicorn whenever you want.
finally Noah back with the S teir content also buff snow angel.
In the tutorial where Diego teaches you about wards blades and over times, he mentions that power pips only count for your own school. So how can you cast a different school's 8 pip spell without an archmastry amulet?
That tutorial is outdated. Power pips only count towards your own school but school pips count for their school. You start getting archmastery rating at level 50 but can get it much earlier through archmastery jewels in the jewel shop.
@@KaiserNoah Now I understand. Thanks for the explanation in the video and here in the comments. Content creators like you have kept the game alive for almost 16 years, keep up the great work!!! I think this is a good chance for pve. I can't speak on pvp, since I haven't tried it.
@@KaiserNoah Thank you very much for helping me understand the system :D
I think the only way they could fix this/make it better is if you could only train school specific spells for one school and none of the others. With things like arch magic, this really makes picking your school feel useless and I hope that KI can change this
I’m going through this right now. I just got the quest to get the Spinysuar for my life wizard but now I can just train it and it’s annoying. It’s a useless quest and people from other schools don’t have to do this quest. I hate this update
My last replay on a myth awhile ago I think did it for me. It was during the time of the dual pip thing. was like lvl 120. Researching that sewer gear and I came to this very similar realization, Especially during the farming process. Schools just didnt matter, I felt like I had no Identity. Everyone around me had the same or similar stats, and I realized the game ahead of me consists of the same stuff, mindless blading and hitting and no actual thinking until the occasional boss with a cheat. There is no flexing your unique spells anymore. You're class isnt special, everyone else can do exactly what you do with treasure cards. Only thing I would look forward to is my new highest score on damage, instead of working my way through enchantments and shields like a wizard should. everybody just a canon now with a long reload. Kind of disappointing. I've always come back after a few years but its been awhile now and I dont see myself coming back to it
How do you suppose it should work? Enforcing a school identity would make certain schools almost impossible to solo with (and yes, that is bad). And every time a world has fights were just blading and hitting does not work, people complain that it's too hard. Wizard101 is no and will never be a competetive hardcore game. There are a lot of casuals playing this game and you simply can't tell someone on a ice wizard that they can't hit, need to tank 20 rounds until the enemy is dead and that they should just grind another 100 hours until they have a storm wizard to hit. That's dumb and just not fun. While KI certainly could highlight the schools' specialties a bit more, just forcing everyone to play that way is dumb.
The current way allows for way more variation if you want to. If you don't want to and just run around, blade and hit because it works that's on you, not the game.
Ngl, Balance x Storm school combo is kinda OP and I love it
I'm storm x balance and I also love it.
OG 2007 dread lord death school only all other schools insta deleted. 4th grade me thought the hidden school was too sick
I still wish to be a casual player, even to this day. I almost wanted to dual school, but when I reached Khrysalis for the first time, my secondary school(sure, it was Ice, but still) wasn’t dealing as much damage as my main school(Death, it was). I can see how dual schooling isn’t recommended, but I don’t know.
At max level currently dual schools is extremely viable.
7 pip AOEs (minus scarecrow) have been available to train from the arcanum for quite a while now
At level 100. Thats not counting the fact that the other spells were definitely not.
ik this vid is old but man this really annoys tf outta me. this is one of the core strengths of w101 and why people got so attached to it. many mmos (and rpgs honestly) just give up and let all players become flawless jack of all trade types that can do anything at any time, with classes being setdressing. w101 in my eyes at least was able to put it's foot down and say "no, you are a life wizard, you don't deserve ifrit or whatever". that exclusive feeling makes other classes feel really unique and fun to watch because they can do things you can't.
i think rpgs being afraid to tell the player they can't do something is a sign of lazy design. they clearly don't want to balance the game around multiple classes anymore
i mean the video is only 5 months old. I dont even think there's been a game update since it was uploaded lmao
Well it may be boring constantly having to read or comment about Ratbeard. The issues you describe here and other problems with the game in the last five or so years always comes back to that developers tenure as lead and the backward steps since he took over. Sure there have been some very good minor quality-of-life updates over the years he has overseen, but realistically that is his sole contribution to adding something positive to wizard 101… I'll even bet none of the ideas that improve things in the game were his.
To be fair, I like that there is less school identity. Personally playing in non-perfect teams, usually less than a full battle circle, having the ability to play different roles on different schools can be very handy. Even with the latest off school spells available, I can't see my ice playing as for example storm even though I could. It's the sort of thing I would choose when the right occasion occurs.
One thing I wish they would change about school identity is the nonsense Fire From Above overtime version from the spell audit, back to the original single hit and triple trap. Does any fire use that spell in PVE now? Makes me sad because that used to be such a beast of a spell, also filled you with dread when it was coming towards you. Now it's pretty much a joke of a spell, nothing to worry about.
I haven't made it that far on my fire wiz, but FFA sounds awesome at face value. I am in Dragonspyre and still use heck hound sometimes against single bosses, but usually I will immolate instead to save time. I am assuming Fire Dragon is still better? I don't have it yet so idk
They have to go back into having armor sets that focus on their strengths.
That would help alot, but this far into the game that would seem like a step back for the majority of the schools
Here is an idea to improve school identity for fire and storm:
Make fire pure raw damage, and make storm pure critical damage.
Yeah schools identity is pretty much dead and could be highlighted some more. However, enforcing those identities is just not fun. Doing so would result in life doing almost no damage and mainly heal, ice doing almost no damage and just be tanky, balance just support etc. Soloing the game (which is what a lot of people do) would be pretty much impossible and everyone would run around with a fire/storm wizard. That'd be incredibly boring. Also: there are a lot of people playing this game that simply don't have the time to create and level several wizards. By having archmastery people can vary their playstyle regardless what school they chose (which maybe was a couple of years ago) and have fun. Those who don't like it can still play the way their school is intended.
The current system's definitely not perfect, but I don't think it was better before.
Yoshi-P knows that all jobs must do DPS or else his bosses will pretty much be impossible. Nobody would play a Thaumaturge unless it became a Black Mage if Ice Wizards were only tanks.
i hopped on w101 a few weeks ago for the first time in ages. I had played on and mostly off since just before celestia was even released. I was quite surprised to see that I could train the class exclusive spells, along with a myriad of other unique-looking spells i hadn't seen before. That and reskinned versions of other class spells. The whole thing felt very weird. I thought it was cool to just have access to certain reskinned spells via TC or pets or gear... not to be able to permanently train them. This is one change I hope they revert. Maybe take notes from world of warcraft and introduce stat-squishing when a new world launches. I.e. gear from previous worlds are diminished compared to the world you're currently in. so that the highest tier gear from the previous world is equal or worse than the basic gear in the new world.
People blame KI for these changes but the dev team was absorbed by gamigo, am I wrong?
Can we truly blame devs or is it the guys in the suits telling the devs what to do?
And we already know gamigo is a place games to to be monetized into oblivion
We have had confirmation that a lot of changes like this come from ratbeard, not from gamigo. Not sure about this one but given that he is lead designer for stuff like this im willing to bet it was his decision.
Maybe some of the new influx of packs could be blamed on gamigo but this stuff? dont think so.
@@KaiserNoah this is like how alot of shows have good first seasons and it goes to trash out of nowhere
They have this golden game that has lasted the test of nearly 20 years
It was great but declining more and more
A fundamental part of school identity and each school being special for whatever they specialize in like ice and tanking
Out the window
Sad honestly
It’s definitely the big mfs up top because as soon as they bought it out, the graphics changed and it got weird. I blame them.
@@violetkalico The changing of wizard city's graphics happened in July of 2018. The character models were changed in July of 2020. Gamigo acquired Kingsisle in January of 2021.
As easy as it is to blame things you dont like on gamigo, believe it or not they don't have a hand in every bad feature of the game.
KI devs will never get a job if the game had to shut down. They just randomly add stuff with only money on their mind and they can't even code properly there's like 50 glitches every update
This may be true, but their adding all spells trainable for all schools has nothing to do with getting money.
A lot of games nowadays let money get in the way of creating quality content, so I'm sure KI devs would do just fine in finding a new job if the game shut down. They'd fit right in with the rest of the industry.
"KI devs will never get a job"
Nah, they can always get a job at fast food joints as a cash register clerk but don't let them cook because they'll always mess up the orders and give you the Diablo roast beef at Arby's instead of your French Dip because they think spicy beef is more valuable.
Meanwhile, FFXIV devs have job security because Yoshi-P won't let a Reaper do jump attacks or let a Pictomancer cast Black Mage spells. ;p
The game is finally ruined once and for all. Also, Archmastery was a horrible idea to begin with because all it has done was ruin school identity to a major extent with this being the final nail in the coffin. The game is simply too far gone as it has swayed completely from an effective MMO game. It shouldn't even be called an MMO because the principles of one is completely erased from it.
Archmastery wasn't as bad since it allowed people to more effectively use other schools instead of the feint, satyr, sun schools meta.
@@xmoore5659 archmastery is horrible. It's one of the worst unnecessary features added to the game.
@@xmoore5659 basically your comment proved my point on how it results in ruining school identity. It's an atrocious feature for wizard 101.
Revert all updates to 2020
Arch mastery is fun but horrible for game balance
I know it’s mostly bad and I agree but let’s not forget the damage on the card itself will still make that much of a difference. Albeit the difference should be bigger to make sense of the schools but the unique identity of every school is still there just muddled and twisted and a bit more blurry. Expect life school, nearly totally erased
i mean the card damages being different kinda proves my point further since storm's damage on cards is so much higher than most other schools. Not as much of a point using the other cards if you can simply use storm's.
I actually kind of like that anyone can hit effectively and you can build your wizard however you want. That being said, I do wish that there was a greater emphasis on reinforcing the unique play styles and specialties of each individual school to go along with that direction. Claiming that everything is just about blading up and using 7-pip AOEs nowadays feels like a limited mindset. Could my life wizard, for instance, just blow through everything with nothing but blades and forest lord? Sure, and I do when I'm just trying to power through the main questline for progression's sake. But it's not as fun to do that and nobody's forcing me to play "optimally," so sometimes I prefer to play my own way. My grinding deck is just like everyone else's grinding deck, but my fun deck is a mix of life and fire which focuses on the unique aspects of both - healing over time and damage over time.
i quit ages ago, i had the same thought process back when they introduced mastery amulets, but i was definitely in the minority since everyone seemed to love that addition. checking back now and it's just way worse. diversity is one of the most important things to me in an MMO and it hurts to see how they've destroyed my childhood game.
Welcome back Noah
I'm mixed on this. I agree that it kills the school identity but from what I remember it was still possible at one point to get at least some of the "exclusive" spells from Grady if I remember correctly or even spellments when that got added, however it was considerably more difficult to get them. I feel like part of why they did this is that the social aspect of most MMORPGs these days is dead and most people unless they have friends that play; just solo everything they can. I've personally always double schooled as well mainly to be able to bypass resistance, with the one exception so far being my Myth that I paired with Life that way I could either hit or support depending on if I was in a group or not and what schools/roles the rest of the group was which I found to be very helpful in harder areas in smaller groups.
I remember back in the day when lvl cap was 110 storm and fire WAS THE only schools you needed to farm bosses literally this update in every sense of the word changed everything forevermore I mean when I did titans trident we needed either fire or storm mostly fire because of the tick spell hound for Darkmoor it was either storm or fire mostly storm because back then fire could NEVER surpass storm in terms of damage output back then I sound old back in my day being a max meant something or maxing out a school meant something now it don't.
I've been having similar thoughts, it's a real bummer, because I don't really see how they can bring school identity back at all. Maybe that's what KI wants though.
There is school identity, a storm is frail and ice is still low on damage, even wearing the best gear for dual schooling, the storm still can hit hard and ice can take a hit for example.
Ice can easily get 200+ damage saying they're low on it is insane. Storm is definitely more frail than others but I have always gone on record saying storm is my least favorite school.
I may not know how old wizard was but i just hit 75 on my very first wizard which ice i made it to avalon ice will be my first max
A new video, AWESOME! Hope you will start making more again
I think they need to tone down the damage from dual schooling as well, like if you want to dual school with storm or something you can only have up to half of the damage cap so you're still drastically weaker than a proper storm or something of that nature anyway
Slowly this is happening to Pirate101, they copy and paste Tartarus from this game and made it into pirate101. It's probably coming out in april but there's power becoming universal.
Woooo Balance On Top! 10:00
Good to see you again
I would counter they are opening up several different possibilities. As someone who mains on another MMO, Guild Wars 2, this is exactly what they have done there over the past several years. Get away from the class specific tank/healer/Damage to allow other classes/options to fill each role. There will always be the meta class for a specific role but this give some interesting options. Gear will still limit some of the choices.
I agree school identity in Wiz is "dead," but I personally thought it never really existed past Arc 1. Once you get past this arc its a Blade AoE meta and always had been, the "exclusive spells," were rarely used unless they had some sort of damage upgrade. Identity in Wiz was generally the stats and always had been the stats. It also preferred outright damage 9 times out of 10 because its the fastest way to deal with enemies which does not favor Fires identity of DoT. Recent updates have done more good than harm because now the creativity to do whatever you desire is there with very minimal limits other than your stats not being at the same level as the main school. You can argue that most wont use this and this is because of course they would rather go pure damage with Blade AoE, but to those who want a different experience they now have that opportunity (also I'd like to point out archmastery is a much better alternative than what we had before being the school masteries that can be argued as pay to have fun).
Wizard101 has always been a stats based game, IMO true identity in classes lies within Pirate101 as this game focuses more on the powers as of current time.
You’re definitely largely right, but I would argue that back in 2014 or so the blade aoe meta was still much less prevalent even in arc 2.
For long time, all the schools 7th pip spells aoe were learnable at level 100, except for Scarecrow, so they made these changes and made them easier to dual schooling.
True enough. But those were only made available in the arcanum which is level 105. Being made available THIS early definitely changes things.
I agree with everything you're saying, like sure being able to add a little twist to ur gameplay every now and then with diff spells is cool and all, but completely transforming into a whole other school along with having all of its unique op spells is a whole other level. Like what's the difference in any of the schools now, why would I choose one over another when I can be whatever I want in any? Imo, the whole reason why there are different schools/classes in a game in the first place is to have a new unique experience that you gotta learn to work with, and that's what's fun about it, not just to mold it into whatever you want with no limitations.
I think it opens more ways to play the game. People talk about the meta a bunch, but if you can get a friend or two, you can really experiment with neat builds for a time. Wizzies is an MMO, no need to be optimal if another strat is fun. The Ice doing Storm spells as an example seems pretty funny to me. My friend is a Death who is exclusively support, and I'm sure he's happy about these changes so he can get some Life spells.
Schools aren't impactful as they were way back in the day, but that's okay. We're all older, anyway. We can get more creative than being super optimal to find something fun or even just plain funny.
Thats fair. I think the problem is that just because we CAN get more creative doesn't mean we will. Nowadays most ppl play this game in the exact same way and it makes the game pretty stale IMO.
Some of the funnest times ive had in this game have been playing with my friends and actively going away from the modern standards of the game.
So why have schools why not just have universal spells every uses? It defeats the purpose of the game and you’re like it’s okay no big deal, lol I glad im far away from this game if people like you are only left.
That's fine with the standard spells and AOE spells, but having the specific spell quests that offered them be redundant feels off(besides Artorius)
Tiny bit random, but could I request a vidwo on ranking the main dungeons in the game? like how fun they are, how good the gear is, how iconic they are, etc
I think a fun experiment will be, making a life or life, the dual schooling storm or fire, really early, and just having a ton of health and damage
This is definitely showing I was questing for zeus gear as a death and my comp had 2 storms n balance
Somehow I was the hitter in that fight bc both storms has bad pets and they were pip failing too but i found it crazy that i was ship spamming the whole time when im someone who likes to support and blade
At least and im saying at least! Remove the damn unique school spells obtainable for different schools. Like why the fuck do we even have solo quests for our spells
Hey Noah. This is UpandComing.
A few weeks back (April 28th, 2024), my account got terminated because it violated UA-cam Guidelines. This is probably the last time I will comment on this channel (because it won't be the same if I resubscribe). Thank you for all the content over the last 5 years. I love to watch your videos because of your personality and the fact that you're an awesome fellow who speaks his mind. Just thought I should let you know.
I wish you luck with your channel.
As someone who's played this game since 2009 I have never seen such idiotic, incompetent, lousy so called game developers in my LIFE. These people couldn't get another job if Wiz shut down to save their life. Clueless!!
I think archmastery works only in specific situations.
Im an ice that duals death. I can get more damage off of my ice spells still but now if I'm in a fight that hits harder than my 14K health and 80 resist (rare btw) then i can drain and get some of that health back.
Dual schooling is cool but its really mostly a situational benefit in my experience. Im still better off just using my ice spells in most instances.
I think being able to use other school's spells is cool in concept, but I feel like there should be an advantage to being a specific school. Something that just occurred to me is maybe you can't reshuffle high power spells (rank 7+) unless they're from your school similar to how a lot of heals have been getting restricted.
I do also feel like KI should consider enforcing school identity with stats rather than just with spell gimmicks. Sure Fire likes to use DoTs, but what STAT is it's main stat, like Ice with resist and Life with HP. Is it pierce? Crit? Or something entirely different?
I wonder why they are seemingly trying to get rid of school identity. Seems like a strange choice.
That wss my exact thought when my brother told me about the new update. What's even the point of schools now other than which has the best natural stats.
every time i think i should get back into wizard101, i don't. I am an archmage conjurer and the game is just so hollow. They constantly change spells (like orthrus), the devs are assholes, and it's creeping into pirate101 too. Their overcomplication of combat is just too much - maybe I'm just old, but it's a lot to keep track of with the spell changes changing my strategy too. Plus, the updated graphics are UGLY AF. They're focusing on the wrong things and am quite certain they only do these changes because they don't know how to do anything else (literally admitted on a p101 roundtable no one knows how to solidly program on the team... while blaming the lack of content on the player base). It's sad to see everyone can access these spells. It defeats the point of playing and questing on different schools. If (when) this comes into Pirate101, it'll be game breaking.
Dude I love your vids ❤ thanks for sharing your opinion I totally agree with this.
I do agree with you but I kinda like this because I be kinda bored with my school since the enemies be dual schools i don’t see the problem with us being dual as well
I think its kinda nice in a way. I finally created a storm wiz because of it. I always wanted to make a storm/death wiz and now i can effectively.
Hey btw Noah are you going to continue the double storm walkthrough you had (with formal phantom). You were in part 1 khrysalis I believe almost finishing it. It was awesome guys.
Maybe at some point. I know phantom was very burned out at that point and hasnt really gotten back into it yet.
Had no idea this change was made, clearly a very bad idea, and no clue who could be this stupid on the dev team..... not that they where smart to begin with
You already get 6 slots for making wizards. If players wanted to try playing the hit role they can make a storm or fire wizard. If they want to play support they can make a balance or life wizard. Blending together the roles removes the need to have any other wizards at all since you can just play off the one. Not a fan.
Yeah no shit. This is Wizard101, a game that is mainly targetting children and is played by people of all ages. You go try and tell a father who's working 8 hours a day and made a life wizard that he shouldn't hit or solo and should go grind another 100 hours to make a new wizard. Not everyone is a hardcore gamer and KI knows that.
Life is the only School with Identity as the best support school
Death wizards:
@@kraio-sfu ur point
although Kingsisle is taking a break with story after wallaru, I'm really hoping they can somehow switch up the challenges similar to the solo fights players had to do in the latest world. being able to devise strategies that didn't simply just require feint + blade was interesting and brings back the use of the single hit spells that became irrevelant in PvE due to the amount of 2v1 fights players are given in every world. Even though I mained death, which arguably made most of the game easier by providing drain aoes, Kingsisle should more so focus around every school's strengths and weaknesses rather than making them too similar to where there isn't any difference to whatever school players should use.
Now that your back can you continue the story and lore videos as someone who spams spacebar though story they were so awesome
The Legend has uploaded again
an opinion I have that I haven't seen many people share is that I think removing pvp gear and arena tickets from tourneys completely messed up the gap between pve and pvp. PvP used to be done with stats much outside what could be obtained in the normal game, as pvp gear was much better than pve gear. This allowed them to play with the balance much more while NOT AFFECTING PVE IN THE SLIGHTEST. the majority of problems people have with the game now is that pve is being balanced around pvp and I feel like that wouldn't be the case if there was still PvP gear you could grind in tournaments.
My ice was expected to hit for darkmoor because everyone else in my team had lower damage. I was very upset because ice isn’t a hitting school it’s a support school unlike storm, fire, death and myth
all schools still can not learn mana burn or super nova
There's quite a few spells that can't be learned. That doesn't change the point of this video though. The major hits and tools people use to succeed can be learned. I imagine most people haven't used mana burn a single time.
No doubt there are a lot of things that take away from the individuality of each school but honestly I really enjoy it. Back then it felt like if you didn't have a fire, storm, myth then bosses would take an eternity to finish. Now, with things such as the Wallaru dmg jewels and easier access to high dmg gear for all schools, you no longer have to fret about killing mons or bosses. Plus I also like that we canonically are like gods so it's much more fitting for us to be able to tap into all the schools at this point. I'm well aware of the implications it has for PVP but honestly it's good to see that you don't have to be a select few schools to actually be what you want to play as.(As in identity). Being a Life hitter is really cool instead of always automatically being p[laced in the healer/jade/support role every single fight.
The only thing I like about the update is I would have my ice, death and balance learn the eight pip healing spell from life for support
Yeah it makes me feel like leveling life as of recently was a mistake atp
@@128chris exactly
My Level 170 storm
8,872 HEALTH/ 32 RESIST ALL
Storm DMG 200/ 53 ACC/ 810 CRIT/ 35 PIERCE
Death DMG 203/ 26 ACC/ 738 CRIT/ 02 PIERCE
I have ship of fools, Scarecrow, Bunyips, Glowbugs & tempest in my Deck among other cards. After I got to this point it actually made me not even want to finish leveling my 150 Death character. I was able to hit ship of fools boosted or scarecrow boosted and completely heal myself and turn around next round and finish the enemies off with a storm move if they weren't already dead.
I could do a death/storm build on my death but I like having tempest that I can boost with an EPIC card on my storm. I can completely heal myself now and even kill enemies like a death wizard.
My 170 Myth is so amazing I havent even bothered to dual school honestly. I spent 3 hours trying to pick a good secondary school but just couldn't really pick one. At this point life would be the only one worth it but only for healing because I like to use summons and monstrology a lot. So I could upgrade my outgoing healing and then heal my summons better and still be able to hit and kill enemies myself.
I also think there's a problem with supporting, in that Feint and Elemental/Spirit blades being trainable killed any idenity between the support schools(ice, life, balance). You can also get stupidly high health and resist as schools that can't normally or shouldn't normally be able to(like death and myth), jade being the perfect example as now any school being a massive tank is no big surprise. Every support school playing the exact same is another huge problem that's as old as Feint and ele/spirit blades being trainable and meta.
Being able to get those extremely high stats is insanely difficult to do while also having your other stats high. You would get blown out of the water in a PVP match if you have high health but not damage or pierce to back it up. Also stat caps make it to where jading isn't possible anymore which is an amazing change IMO
@@raphuellpvp is not the whole game, I fear. For the vast majority of players, it isn't even a game mode. PVP may be in a good spot but PVE currently could not be in a less fun state. MMOs live and die by their PVE experiences, and currently wiz does not have much of one(besides raids, which are completely inaccessible to the average player).
I am glad that PVP is good, at least. It's one step in the right direction.
@@somedudeontheinterwebs45 The whole point of MMOs is to be challenging and to rely on a team to help you. The addition of raids and the newish Nightmare Dungeon has been magnificent and improved PVE a good amount IMO. Rebutting off your statement about raids being inaccessible to the average player, no they are not, not at all. Guilds have made guides that tell you the exact moves to make and exactly where to be at all times; the entire game has a good balance at the moment.
School identity has been destroyed by a desire to inject a classless skill (spell) system into a class-based game without understanding how to do so. Hell, even the OG developers had trouble with this, but they at least had the sense to actually balance the stats (look at the old crafting gear, school stat identity actually exists) and to not have it pervade every inch of the game.
Dual schooling was always intended to be a thing, but power pips and the increasing pace of the game made it impossible to ever be useful. It's why they even made mastery amulets in the first place. That's why I don't mind the idea of school pips. The original intention isn't altered much by them. The school pip spells are what I really have a problem with. They fill a spot that could have easily been filled with the traditional enchant-mutates or (my idea) spellwrighting mutates. School pip spells also enforce an unhealthy structure to the game.
I also don't mind the idea of Roshambo; the implementation of it is bad. The way that a school's spells follow the wheel is too rigid and disallows any creative liberty or cleverness (shameless plug: spellwrighting mutates). It needs a softer, looser ruleset, but not too loose, such as how MTG's color wheel has primary, secondary, and tertiary attributes to colors.
Roshambo also doesn't alter the original vision too much. It's been present in the game in a softer form since Celestia. You can tell from Arc 2's enemy weaknesses. They have the same reverse, forward, and cross synergy weaknesses. Even the spells had obvious effects belonging to certain schools and other schools borrowing weaker versions of that effect. The OG devs had the right idea. Roshambo was present in the game without being so utterly pervasive and rigid in its experience, like we are experiencing now.
The ideas behind school pips and roshambo aren't inherently dangerous to school identity. It's the way they are being thoughtlessly implemented that's hurting the game. Then there's the other things that they have to fix that the OG devs left them, like the issue of resist being an untouchable stat and pierce being a problematic "solution" to that problem. That just leads to all the frustration the community is feeling.
The legend is back
Next thing we know they're gonna throw in the grizzleheim spells into the trainers! Then all the support niches of each school will be gone as well!
Fulll agree, I just reached novus on my main wiz and I hate how spells now just seem to be damage for all just diff type, everyone is playing samey and there doesnt seem to be any uniqueness with new spells. also there are so many schools and mechanics that they havent rly even tried fixing. I dont think there is an issue with all schools being able to hit for high damage but there definitely should be enough damage variety for it to keep it optimal for storm fire etc. to hit over ice life and so on.
Storm, fire, and myth all have enough variety in hitting. Their DPP is way higher and they can hit the damage stat cap and still have room for other attributes easier than any support school. Also hitting schools typically take fewer rounds to kill bosses
@@raphuell Damage dealt does not correlate to variety and school uniqueness so Im not rly sure what your point is, yes hitting schools hit harder?
@@Jayfeather4x your entire comment was based on damage dealt and how there should be variety in spells. With the new update there is a quite a bit of variety in diff roshambos however those spells are only used for pvp/raids so I guess I can see where you’re coming from. The real question is why there should be a diff between schools in their 7 pip. If there was variety then ice and other support schools would be required to play with someone on a diff school
as a player who just started a month ago, I feel that my storm pick was kind of pointless now :(
Join the club the fact that my death wiz can have 12K heath is in my opinion utterly foolish and pretty stupid considering that back in the day ice was the only ones with the highest heath back then but that got ruined and now I start seeing death wizards running around with storm damage it ain't funny it's shameful literally.
Remember when the game first came out.. it was glorious
Wow you back
Fire death has been a fun solo with deer knight and detonates.
Whoever blames the developers is not right. Why? Because there’s this thing called the SDLC
In this phase there’s
1. Identifying problem
2. Design System
3. Analysis System
4. Graphic Design
5. Software development
6. Testing
7. Implementation
They all have their own roles at work, sometimes it’s not the devs who brings upon these ideas. Just because you’re a dev doesn’t mean you came up with all of these ideas. The SDLC I listed, you must go through 4 of the phases before finally putting it into game; which is step 5(where coding begins).
I mean I agree overall that not every developer deserves blame, but saying that none do is also incorrect. One of them (for most pve changes its ratbeard) came up with the idea, decided that it was worth implimenting and spent time implimenting it.
It wasnt like the players or a higher-up wanted this change.
I absolutely hate that you can train those unique school spells. It sounds dumb, but even just those unique quests for those spells for those schools were so cool and felt special. Thats gone now and I hope they change it asap!
looking good kaiser missed your videos man.
I personally still think school identity is a thing. In max-level activities such as raids and PVP, you have to be on a certain school and have a certain gear setup to hit stat maxes/caps. For example, in the Crying Sky Raid, you can't jade as a storm, fire, or myth because that is a recipe for disaster. Also yes school pips make it easier to use cards from other schools but I think they're trying to make max-level activities more complex and fun for players. If KI didn't do any of these updates there would also be people complaining about a lack of content; either way, people are going to talk. So I honestly enjoy the route they are going.
That's another issue: the majority of the player base doesn't do raids or even care enough to understand gambit features to do the challenge dungeons such as nightmare or pvp. There's also no incentive to even progress further than novus since the new gauntlet drops better gear and doesn't take as long or as difficult. They keep making ot more and more impossible for solo play which. How is someone supposed to do castle gobsmack solo? They can't. That's just one of many barriers that prevent people from having fun and playing
@@senorquack8012 it's possible to solo every dungeon in the game, it just requires some extreme strategy and specific gear. As for the majority of the player base that doesn't want to do the actual fun stuff in the game. Why? Why would you not want to enjoy the game to it's fullest, the problem with Wizard101 is the player base IMO.
@@raphuell if a game company releases a new feature, raid, dungeon, ect and the majority of the player base hates it or doesn't bother doing it cause its to difficult are the players the problem or the developers not knowing what the players actually like? And school identity doesn't exist for most schools either, the only school that has any identity that separates it from others is death with its absorb atks that self heal, every other school is just choose your favorite color. Grinding for gear is really annoying and for its difficult to do. I've had friends do darkmoor for weeks and weeks and never get any of the pieces they need, waterworks is the same. Remember dragoon? How it was to suppose to be the next best thing but it flopped harder than Moon spells cause of the difficult bosses and the amount of reagents needed to craft it.
@@senorquack8012 you clearly haven’t played any other MMO in your life, name me one MMO that isn’t extremely grindy and has bad drop rates for the best gear in the game. How many of those games are massively popular? If it was easy as shit to get gear it wouldn’t feel rewarding and no one would want to play the game. Also the raids and dungeons and stuff are meant to be difficult and they are meant to be team played. I think if anything they’re trying to get out of the being able to solo everything era because that’s just boring. The game isn’t going to cater to everyone’s play type also, it’s obvious this game is becoming more hardcore which IMO is better for it and I know many other people who will also agree. For school identity, there isn’t as much as there used to be but people still pick schools for specific reasons and schools still have a ton of different identity; Kingsisle is just trying to get out the trench of the “best” school talk and make it to where every school is a viable option.
Kingsisle is garbage 🤭
Edit: I’ve never seen a w101 UA-camr who keeps classic settings on. I like you already lowkey. The point you made about school identity is so true. As a life wizard first and always, everyone can heal now. Like not just a heal here and there but BE a healer. Tf is the point if half my spells are heals. 😭
YOOOOOO NEW KAISER NOAH VIDEO DROPPED
Hey man you should make a video called Why Farming For Gear Doesn't Matter Anymore. I would talk about the world packs like Wallaru World Pack
Did it ever matter though? Second chance chests have always been a thing and these packs are kinda just more focused second chance chests.
Your right about that second chance chests are another way to get gear. I just suggested it because it really did make farming for gear useless. Instead of grinding the best gear, now it's all released into the world packs. I think they started this with lemuria but could be wrong. It's a interesting video idea because you could talk about it and how like Wallaru all the people who farmed nightmare for gear was a waste when they just release it in a pack.
Another example is Aeon gear, all the people farmed for it to only be released into a world pack.
Honestly, Noah.. I would love you to make videos on more popular games.
You're literally the LEAST problematic Wizard101 UA-camr and you gave us insanely helpful guides over the years.
You deserve more views and I honestly can't see any small UA-camr doing it with Wizard101.. especially with how KI is running this game to the ground.
I promise you would easily blow up with your video style in any popular game.
Consider Honkai Star Rail, it plays JUST like Wizard101 (turn-based gameplay) but it's way more popular.
Ayy my man Noah is back
But can you cast another school's 8 pip spell without an archmastry amulet?
Yes?
@@KaiserNoah but I thought if u use a spell from a different school, power pips count as one pip?
@@jacobfried5904 Power pips & archmastery(also known as school) pips are two different things.
Power pips are just stronger 2 pip versions of regular pips that help you with casting spells from your own school.
Archmastery pips are pips that can be generated for other schools and it counts as 2 pips for your own main school and of school you generated a pip for. So if you generated a life archmastery and your say fire pip it would count as 2 pips life & fire spells. The same if your storm, if you generate a life pip as a storm, it counts as 2pips for life & storm spells.
@@lordshenhai5321 Hey I guess I never thanked you for that information. Thank you.
The only thing they could do, specifically for pvp, is restrict damage for the secondary school
They practically have, you can get around 200 dmg for other schools but you wont be hitting stat caps so its pointless to do so. You would lose if you went up against a Myth using gear for their school and you were a Death with storm stats. Secondary school cards are specifically being used for the roshambos
the only place where school identity kinda exists is PvP, because that’s the only thing the Devs really care about anymore. which i get, milk that cash cow for all it’s worth i guess, i just wish it didn’t come at the detriment of the rest of the game.
Doesn't this benefit completionists thought by allowing the player to obtain every element and skill for all the classes? I get classes have their own identity, but with this change you can get a true 100% file right?
I promise you no one has, or ever will, have a 100% save file in wiz. Its not a game that you really “100%” beyond doing every quest and getting good gear sets. You dont really do completionist runs of MMOS.
The schools have always been sidegrade flavor from the beginning anyways. This hardly changes much.
Disagree. Schools massively impact your entire experience playing the game and choosing one is supposed to mean something. Back in the day if you were ice you HAD to support because you weren't given the option to hit. A storm that supported was almost impossible because you couldn't get the stats to do so.
What realm is that? There is like nobody there lol
can't tell you for sure but usually i hang out on humungofrog.