HEY YOU! If you planned on Subscribing because of this or any of my other Wizard101 guides, PLEASE DON'T. I won't be making any further Wizard101 guides in the future, and while wiz content will still persist in the form of stream highlights/the VERY occasional scripted video, I don't want this channel to be a wiz-exclusive channel anymore as its ceased being fulfilling for me. Thanks and appreciate it
@@ethanvonachen7711yep. My wiz interest also usually lasts a month or two about twice a year. Sometimes only once a year. I’ll blast through an entire arc a few weeks. (Granted my main wizard is a storm) my first one was balance and honestly while I know it struggles with balance bosses. I’m usually able to survive long enough to set up all the necessary blades/traps to blast the boss with a hydra/chimera.
Its so beautiful how my childhood game is still filled with people that love this game as much as i do!! The second i get a pc again im going FULL HAM on this game!!
One gripe I had watching this back: I belittled Ice's tankiness too much. Big health/resistance is useful, and often times can let teammates port back to you and save the team a reset
Wanted to mention legion shield and shadow sentinel are genuinely really useful for endgame content, but it isn't enough. Problem is that schools like Life and Death are receiving special treatment (they should be nowhere near as tanky as us, since they already have alternative ways of staying alive) and spells like Taunt and Frozen Armor need a rework.
Speaking from experience, resistance means nothing if you can't kill enemies. I got stuck in Zafaria because I couldn't kill the mobs before them killing me. Deleted him and I'm never using ice again lol.
@@Zeroshiki I know people say it as a meme but genuinely: If trash mobs are outlasting you that's a skill issue, not an Ice issue. And to be fair it's not just you, I've met a lot of people post Avalon who don't know what enchants are, use bad gear, and fill their deck with like 20+ cards.
as a balance solo whose about to hit level 101 i am excited to hear that things might speed up at 108. you wouldnt believe how many times ive failed to solo a boss, finally joined team up and the boss was dead within 5 minutes.
As someone who is also soloing balance it does!!! My balance is 148 and ive really enjoyed the challenge as a solo player! Nested fury helps a ton especially when dealing with balance bosses!
I swear that the Devs have a personal vendetta against Ice... They nerfed the school into the ground during the major spell audit a couple years ago due to complaints that Abominable Weaver was too OP in PVP. As a side effect of this audit, our rank 7 and rank 8 Aoes (Frost Giant and Snow Angel) somehow got even WEAKER, when they were already trash to begin with. The whole school's identity as the tank has been made irrelevant due to pierce and the fact that other "tanky" schools (Life, Balance, and Death) have wayyyyyyy more utility. I feel like there should be a stat in the game that directly counters pierce. We have defense for damage and crit block for crit rating but nothing for pierce, which in my opinion is pretty stupid. The whole school just needs a complete overhaul. It's really sad because I really like the overall aesthetic of the school, and I know a lot of other people do too.
i know this is a bit late but ice had to get nerfs back in the day because they did tons of damage while being near impossible to die, i do agree with pierce being a big issue to ice tankiness might be interesting to give them some form of pierce resistence as a new stat type or maybe make there gear give so much more extra health that it makes pierce not that effective against them.
A good way to rework ice is to make it where the can asorb the damage other players get allowing no damage on any one but them making it more 'tank' like
As a fire main, Fire Dragon gets slept on a bit too much here since the DOT damage isn't the main reason to cast it. It helps immensly with taking out bosses/enemies that might barely survive the initial hit, while a storm would just be out of luck a fire just has to survive for 1 more turn. Additionally while traps are usually pointless the setup for FD is for the first hit, and the DOT still gets buffed by all the blades plus damage percent. Sorry this is long just felt like sharing!
It's not that fire dragon is bad, because it isn't it's an insane amount of damage per pip no matter how you slice it. Fire's problem is that they have 0 good aoe hits for hitting, even bull takes a damage nerf because of the stupid detonate effect
Storm user here, people are usually weary of me until they realize how nice I am. Sad how a bunch of bad people can make the rest look bad. If anyone needs help drop a friend code by the way 😊.
As a storm user even back in the day they were rude idk why. My first wizard was myth until I saw tempest from a Storm wizard friend. Been a storm ever since and never had any problems getting friends tho.
Yeah I try to win people over by using weakness on bosses or thermic shield on allies at first. Let them know I'm not just here to steal the spotlight.
My friend and I are a Life/Death duo (she's Life) and she does just as much if not more damage than me!! With the amount of death enemies I've come across she is a real life saver!! (Pun intended!!! hehehehe >:)) That may be because we are addicted to stacking traps and blades to see how high our numbers can get.....
@@thunderclanwarrior1253honestly after I acquired krulu I felt unstoppable on my death. Whereas when I play life I feel I’m not always useful in teams after arc 2 like he mentioned
I was a diehard W101 fan between like 2010-2012 and occasionally I watch these kinds of videos to just see what's going on in the game all these years later. I have to say this video has really tempted me to come back to it!! As a kid I never really thought about schools/combat in this complex/strategic of a way and it seems like so much fun :') If the first arc is ever made completely free I'll probably come back and this video will definitely serve as reference for choosing my first build.
As a death and myth main, your analysis is pretty spot on. Death is absolutely disgusting: I managed to solo the secret boss in Mount Olympus at level 70. Twice. For reference, that's a boss from a level 90 quest. As a myth, I am indeed often ignored in favor of the storm guy and some do question why I chose the 'bad' school. My answer: It's funny as heck when i summon three minions to do my work for me. I ignored monstrology until i played myth. I have no regrets grinding for animus. Is it efficient, throwing minions at everything? No, no not really. Is it funny? Yes, yes it is.
Man you really nailed the description for the myth school perfectly imo. The part on monstrology is really huge for myth. Even if its very pricey to get into gold wise in its initial investment costs I highly recommend it! As a person that likes coming up with creative and some really silly ways to get pass battles when soloing, the extra minions you get for being myth while using monstrology is huge! Especially when you start gaining access to late game minions such as the fractural treeminder who'll mass weaken enemies for you and spam heals combined with a feral briar that'll spam plagues and a mass feint! Their are even some arc 4 enemies that are way more broken as such as the buddy bot who will just spam aoe stuns on enemies and aoe stun shields on allies while constantly breaking all shields or buffs in general on enemies due to their habit of spamming pierce, shatter, and earthquake. Not to mention that allot of minion blades stack with player blades for some reason. Like theirs been instances that my regular 35% myth blade will stack with a minion placed 35% mythblade despite them being the exact same card! So yea I highly recommend it!
@@AstralAnubes I feel like that would be both brokenly overpowered and very problematic depending on how KI implemented that. If they only cast like occasionally helpful spells like Blaze does in the stone key boss in sunken city then it would be fine But if they still acted like regular minions with their usual spells but couldn't be targeted and knocked out then I can see that being way to strong and way to problematic for a number of reasons.
@@lordshenhai5321 yea I get it would probably need some time to implement I just wish myth had a actual mechanic to it that isn’t useless I really liked myth it was my first wizard as a kid, but now it feels like it has no identity that’s useful
As a new balance main who started with storm because I took the test as a kid, I can say that the fun is all about the aesthetic and different numbers and abilities. I may not be the best at anything but not knowing which damage type I’m going to hit someone with or watching all the damage types and buffs in effect is the most satisfying (spectral blast, hydra, chimera, etc). I can also buff any other wizard to watch this cool spells get bigger and bigger numbers, there’s not a situation I can’t deal with if I prepare properly. Versatility is outmatched and you can treat every fight different if you want. My biggest gripe with storm was the gameplay loop being basically the same.
Balance forever. Great Damage and health combined with strong spells. Sandstorm and Nova are great AoEs that you get early, and once you hit lvl 28 you get access to both Judgement and Feint, its a breeze from there
Good summary. I am a Balance main, so the idea of "soloing" is anathema. Two fires is a lot of fun. I've been running 2 accounts at once, and my Balance turns my Life, Storm and Fire wizards into killing machines. My Death wizard plays well with anyone. For fighting the Rat at the end of Polaris, I always send in my Life wizard.
I still remember my old original wizard 101 thing, I got ice, and I've always been a fan of the "vibe" of ice magic in any kind of media, seeing how far it's fallen hurts
@@mcchillin7580 well the videos not wrong though. i play ice, fire, and death all to 150 during 150's release, and honestly some things like snow angel have use in areas for sure, like in 4v4/3v3 pvp (super annoying dot. i loved spamming it to break a lot of dumb shields before i would cat mass feint/feint for our main dmg dealer's attacks). but in pve its absolutely poop since itll consume the unspecific school traps. actually, ice pve in general is kinda... poopy. solo isdoable, but certain bosses especially azteca was a fucking even longer more tedious experience in comparison to my fire or death. which i dont mind. but there's a deeper more community driven reason why ice is dookey. ive struggled to be on queues for certain fights where if people see you're ice, they're not nice, and would literally dip even though they've been waiting for 10 minutes by themselves ebcause theyd rather have literally any other support school but ice. sometimes id join ones where there'd be 2 others and one would leave like half the time. lvl 130 gear grrinding was hell for me on my ice and was literally the reason why i grabbed and boosted a fire toon during that time so that at least a hard hitter would be present/id use as everage for people to join my teams.
@@viablos455 my last playthrough was ice. Had 90 damage and nearly 50 resist in Azteca and I’ve still never died on that character. Ice is easily one of the best solo schools in game.
@@mcchillin7580 well i think maybe its becuase of the recent changes that its a lot less painful. i dont know exactly when you played through azteca but i played before the latest nerfs /changes to the game. they nerfed the world several times and i played through it in 2015. back then, many of the bosses had roughly 17k-20k health. this was also before many of the spell changes, such as efreet doing 780 dmg now in comparison to 980. they even nerfed the golden key boss ixac a bit too. the crit system was wayyy different back then as well. fast forward for the 130 release, it was easier on my fire than my ice becuase of some of the changes. i had full waterworks alongside 10% resi, unicorn, and sprietly on my pet at the time. that pet saved me a lot lol
@@mcchillin7580 its good that its not a pain in the butt anymore and that ice solo isnt as egregious though. but up until th past years it was definitely a pain
Wow, this is some perfect timing. I just started watching Wizard101 videos since I was interested where the game went after I stopped playing (I played like 8 years ago when I was 11 or smth) and I wanted to give the game a try but I wasnt sure which school to pick. I was literally watching one of your videos when I wanted to check out which school would suit me and this video popped up in my recommended feed. Thats some timing right there
I think something that could help ice standout again is adding some spell (that only they can learn) that in some way or form prevents AOEs for x amount of rounds or like an intercept which could make the AOE hit do more damage but it turns it into a single hit on the ice
you can get balance to over 200% outgoing/over 70% resist and train pigsie making them a better support than life IMO. you can also get sharpen on your pet making early game easier and around level 90 another sharpen/balance blade on your amulet(jewel of the apiary in bazaar) this made my balance so much fun in the gear grinds because I didn't have to worry about whats happening in the fight i literally just cast bladestorm 4 times and if the fight wasnt over healed or cast my other balanceblades on a hitter. and yes I did make a max life and min maxed the life to 220% outgoing and similar resist and id go with my balance to support/heal any day of the week. great video pointing out all the pros and cons death op, storm is king.
I'm glad you brought up a PSA for storms to be nicer. I would have chosen storm when I was a kid, right after my very first fire wizard, but all the storm players were so mean!!! Ruined it for me at the time, haha!
that's so sad!!! I wonder how that came to be! I chose storm bc I took the little quiz, and it matched and it was the one that appealed to me most. too many people try to play outside the game like a god with a puppet, instead of just playing the game.
With balance, the first problem is very true, but the second problem you can cope into seeing it as a unique way to fight bosses. I'm around level 60 right now, and I have a special deck with all different hitting spells for balance bosses. It's honestly pretty fun even though I can't just judgement one shot them, especially if you can get some special spellement upgrades to certain spells.
So, by the time this video came out, a vast majority of my Wizards are in Avalon. My Death got through the entire game while my Fire just completed Empyrea. I'm interested to see just how far I can get as every school in 2024.
My first school was ice too. And I've dropped the game for nearly 12 years and now I've come back. And still ice. kinda nostalgia or something. Then my playmates just felt astonished about my school. Now I've been in Marleybone.Should I restart?😅
Same boat here. Played over a decade ago as an ice wizard and wanted to get back into the game. I'd like to pick ice for nostalgia, but may pick something else as a lot has change. How has your play through been so far as an ice wizard?
@@chadcj1 Not too difficult, I can manage to handle most of the mission battles, but still need some help when it comes to some dungeons. And certainly it's not as comfortable as death. You need to pay attention to your HP and the damge of Ice is not so excellent.😂 I've just finished Marleybone and is going to Mooshoo.
When I first started playing the game it was storm all the way. Now coming back to it after some time I still love playing as a storm wizard. They just hold a special place in my heart.
For a first wiz it's pretty hard to look over the lack of an aoe till 48 on death and 58 on life. If that is your first school the questing will be a drag especially without the arch mastery pip rating
This is where my math nerd comes out. At 23:27 you said other schools get a 70% buff, but blades are multiplicative in their buffs, so it's more like an 82% buff for most schools. Compared to the multiplied Bladestorm plus Balance Blade, totalling at a 50% buff from blades. It's still a big difference, but the numbers weren't quite right.
intriguing to see how low you've put fire as a fire main since like 2009 i've always found it to be a fun solo leveling class the DOTs are only really used as "failsafes," in case the initial nuke of damage somehow doesn't kill when you've got your sharpened blades and toughened spells auras are handy too i haven't been able to play much since finishing khrysalis but i'm sure if you made it to that point with the tools available to you then, all the fancy fixins introduced since will only make you more and more powerful
One thing you forgot to mention for Life is that, unlike death, they can just hatch a Kookaburra for the 4 pip aoe Leafstorm, making it significantly easier for life wizards to get an aoe before level 48, especially if this is their first ever wizard
I've been soloing on Balance as my first wizard and lord does it start to test your patience sometimes, ESPECIALLY on irritating balance bosses. Spectral Blast has come in clutch, especially stacking elemental blade and balance blade for it. It also doesn't consume all your blades like Hydra does in one go, so you have a decent chance of making use of the extra blades. That said it *is* heavily RNG dependent and I've had more than a couple times where I got unlucky with an Ice roll that would've killed with Storm or Fire. Hydra's non-damage spellment is also surprisingly useful on Balance bosses, especially ones that like to use Elemental/Spirit shield as it gives you 3 -35% shields which have saved me more than once, very strong for soloing. Would I recommend Balance for soloing? God no, but it has its moments where it's legitimately fun to work through an encounter (though some fights may be, very slow and a double reshuffle in your deck may be necessary)
I like this video straight from the start on breaking down how ice is towards a team when other tanks can do but much better. One thing i can say they can do is legion shield which is good in certain instances
Frozen armor is underrated. I quest with my fire brother put a frozen armor on him and i tank the rest by myself while he clears without worrying about dying.
Insane men i played the game in 2010 so many fucking ours. I love my Lion and my garden gnome til today haha. Crazy that the game is still played by people
just got my fire to lvl 170 and as much as I like the new Phantasmania spell, I still see myself using fire dragon as I lowkey really like the DOT and the feeling that I know with the dot the mobs are going to be dead next around anyways and i don't have to worry about casting another spell. However i will admit at first getting used to the dot was painful
I love how the first thing was about Ice Class because every time I come back to wizard101 it's like they make it gets worse each time and that's my first wizard slot so it has the most progression. She sucks but it's not worth going back. 😭
I recently tried soloing arc 1 with all wizards, and I must say that your analysis for Fire is kinda fair in the fact that they do require a bit more set-up; however, aside from the 4 Nirinis, I have had little to no trouble breezing through all of arc 1. I'm currently at the Petrov fight in DragonSpyre, and -- up to this point -- Fire's dots (as well as Meteor Strike) have been super useful for me. Sure, the first hit of a dot (well, just Fire Elf and Scald really) doesn't do much for things like Fire Trap, Hex, and Feint; however, the first hit of Fire Elf clears Tower Shield and Fire Shield and sometimes Ice Shield (if you tried Prism against a Fire Enemy who was able to get that shield out before your Prism) pretty effectively. Do 2 of these 3 things come from Ice enemies? Yes. But how many Ice enemies do you fight in arc 1? More than you'd think, actually. And spending the extra time to "overtrap" an enemy, especially when you get a deck that allows you to have 4 of the same Cards at once, Fire's dots become all the more useful in solo pve content and becomes even scarier against Single Enemies with the inclusion of Heck Hound. 3 rounds spent trapping into Heck Hound, especially when you have something like the Sky Iron Hasta (which adds on an additional 10 school damage for all schools + an extra pip) AND you have an Archmastery Jewel equipped? Now you have 6-7 pips minimum when you cast a Heck Hound and the damage is significant. And while the dots are going around, you can spend time healing yourself and setting up for an even stronger attack in the mean time, and additional Fire Traps to the same enemy won't get swallowed up by your dot. Meteor Strike is also the perfect aoe for Fire to have throughout arc 1. Because, now, you combine this knowledge of how your dots work and spend the next 2-3 rounds setting up for Meteor Strike (if necessary; sometimes, a simple Fireblade into Fire Elf against the boss's minion works wonders together with Heck Hound) and you can one-shot the minion while also delivering the final blow to the boss if it manages to stay alive. Does this method take a little bit longer than clearing pve content with Storm? Sure, but Fire has slightly higher accuracy than Storm and the Cumulative Damage it can gain from one dot alone can oftentimes make soloing this school through pve content a bit faster than soloing with Storm, especially before a Storm reaches Level 28. I also think Fire Dragon is a better aoe than you give it credit for, especially if the Fire Wizard spends a couple rounds adding fire traps to the boss of the fights you encounter later on (which you oftentimes will need to spend 2 and sometimes 3 rounds for set-ups if you don't have a jewel socketed onto a deck to give you yet another pip at the start of fights). I know my Storm definitely liked having Fire Dragon over Tempest more when fighting Storm or Myth mobs/bosses from DragonSpyre and beyond. As for the rest of your analyses, I think they are pretty accurate (at least up to my knowledge, especially since you also understand the early game solo Myth struggle). I will definitely be looking into grinding out Mount Olympus on my Death after viewing this video, too. My Death needs better gear from it than it currently has anyway (hasta and Senator's Toga), and I'd love to see if I can get a Deer Knight Jewel from it.
Ice would have been better as a team tank if they didn’t disregard the use of shadow sentinel but since nearly every boss is a blade and/or trap stack boss fight there’s no point in using it
An alternate fix to Death's early-game lack of AoE is to hatch with a Gloomy Eye which gives 1 Deathblade item card at Baby and a Colossal Frog at Ancient! (which, admittedly, can get expensive for an early-game character especially if you have no alts with enough gold, being able to blade stack so early though isn't really necessary until around mid-Marleybone imo) or if you want to shell out the crowns for packs you could try to get the Brainy Assistant (Which has 1 Colossal Frog at baby and 1 at Ancient) from the Terror's Hoard pack during Halloween (or whenever the pack resurfaces in the store out-of-season). Alternately if you're REALLY hurting for Deer Knight
I first played wizard101 when I was 9 years old back in 2009, got addicted and played until 2nd age pvp ended, I think it was around 2015-16ish (could be wrong). I remember when darkmoor first came out and malistare gear with Morgan amulet was the best, max level was 100 at the time…. Now I’m 24 and searched wiz and found this video, a lot has changed. When I played death wasn’t the best school in the game and in pvp the best way to play them was to jade gear and spam bad juju. All the memories. Damn time really flies.
You can actually get the professors hoard packs for free considering they are in weekly event scrolls fairly often. Not only that but the professors hoard pack has a guaranteed chance to drop AT LEAST one piece of gear (meaning you could potentially get 2-3 if you're lucky) and from my testing its usually geared towards the school you open it on. so if you open it on a fire wiz, you have a higher chance of getting the fire hat. To top it off it doesnt matter what level you open the pack on (if you're going for the helm specifically) either because the main purpose is the utility from the spell it gives and it can be used on any school. Professors hoard pack is the only pack i can genuinely recommend spending crowns on if you have them.
As a Storm player who recently picked the game back up, I’m glad I used Crown Rerolls in Waterworks. Got me the Life Mastery Amulet and it saves me so often
You should have saved the crowns, the arch mastery system hits as soon as lvl 50 (lvl 1 if you have the gold for gems) and you can switch the school pip at any time including mid round. Which effectively means you can have free power pips for life if you need them
ice is my personal fav. the damage on high levels is so good and the health and resist makes it the easiest to solo. i get the gripes that people have with it cause we all have preferences but it’s my fav! granted i only PvE (i also think their gear and colors are pretty sick)
Disagree a bit about Fire, at least through arc 2 ( I'm at darkmoor on mine right now.) With Life archmastery it's easy to heal to full HP after casting an overtime AOE without using up potions. Which makes long instances easier.
This is true for me since they added the archmastery jewels every since I could use the jewel on my new ice character I’ve been mainly using reindeer knight and it has been the main spell I’m using for now and I’m just got too mooshu all solo and hope I can continue on my solo journey
I know this is kinda old, but I just gotta toss my two cents in before the new spells make it a bit more irrelevant. For balance, id say you missed the fact that they actually have more buffs than other schools because of how many types of dmg they can do. People only look at balance dmg and forget that balance players can stack universal blades and traps onto element/spiritual blades and traps. Thats potentially a team universal blade, universal blade, and element/spirit blade ontop of an element/spirit trap, universal trap, and feint, and that's before you get to enchanting your hits and each of those blades and traps if you wanted to really ramp the dmg up or stacking feints to boost each hit of your hydra or to spam spectral blast. The only downside if who wants to sit there and overbuff, which is why i heavily recommend ICE players pickup balance as a school. Its like going from dmg hell to dmg heaven while keeping most of the tankyness and picking some decent healing too.
Another fix for the lack of AoE for schools like Death and Life is a pet. For my Life wizard I used Kookaburra, that gives you Leafstorm at Adult, wich is not that hard to make.
I remember back in the day death was seen as the weakest. people only looked at the numbers on the card. Back when lvl 70 was the cap me at max and a friend at level 43 were being made fun of by a myth and storm we challenged them to a duel at their castle. They suffered a long and painful death. Told the lvl 43 he'll be the hitter ill buff and debuff and keep him alive he panicked when i used doom and gloom and i told him just heal with vampire. kill the storm first and let them waste time panic healing while in doom and gloom. my friend killed the storm twice and I death minoitaured the myth to death.
For balance, a gryphon pet is almost a MUST HAVE for the feint, balance blade, and 7pip aoe hydra. It saved me SO MUCH questing and with balance bosses since the hydra was high damage
I have mentioned this before, but I think the only way to make Ice viable in a team setting is to further emphasize on their tank aspects. As you accurately identified, Ice does not soak damage very well from the team and has no means to prevent AoE damage and effects, making them essentially useless. However, one good way to remedy this is to use mechanics that are already present in the game as an Ice-specific feature: team damage mitigation. Similar to the Shadow Sentinel, Ice should be able to be a nuisance to the enemy team in accessing the rest of Ice's allies. The percentage may vary, but this would be a good step in the right direction, solidifying Ice's role in the game. To make it more balanced, Ice may choose to spread the damage transfer shield, similar to targetable AoEs. If they choose one person, but neglect others, then the resistance is higher on that one ally, and conversely much less if all allies are designated protectees.
I have 3 wizards. When I grew up as a kid my first instict was to pick the fire school. I consider myself a fire main but I also started a death. They’re both LVL 80+ but my last wizard, storm, is LVL 34. I’ll be honest this games fun but I just hate doing the whole story again 😭. After Mooshu it feels like a drag.
YOU DID FIRE DIRTY People barely use traps, i don’t think DoT is a disadvantage, because you wanna know what DoT DOES get around, that’s used all the time? shields
I think it’ll be AWESOME if Ice absorbed damage and took a percent of that and converted that to another percent that boosts damage. Like you get hit with a fat hit, you can potentially get a 30 percent blade depending on your health I guess
it'll still be there!! mine was!! and you can go through and look for those old treasure cards and pets that are no longer available in game ☺️ lots of people pick it up and drop it over the years.
as someone with 0 friends whos first lengthy school run was balance... i agree. i literally beat all my fights with 5 hp and thats with enchanted arm (just got to azteca recently), gear blades, and like 2 diff feints etc etc. Its a lil fun to see big numbers but man its so long and boring and rng based. I also already have 1in a mil so oh well
I wish there were more games like wizard101 out there, as I can only imagine what could be if some of the rough edges were polished. And when there are so many mmos with similar combat systems, I doubt it would be the end of the world if one went for the turn-based deck style especially if their execution was unique
One point as a balance main I’d like to mention: they’re HUGE fans of archmastery! Your balance blade buffs are lackluster, but you have the ability to buff whatever secondary you please with those balance blades and respective elemental/spirit blades. Want to buff yourself as a fire? Go for it! Death? Go for it! I’m doing a run where I have a myth mastery, use death archmastery, and I have so much flexibility and it really utilizes spirit blade efficiently.
This also drastically helps out by getting rid of a lot of the trouble with balance bosses, especially if you invest into a spirit school for boosted damage
its so funny that little kid me made such a great choice in playing a death wizard. my original motivation for picking death was just liking the black and white color scheme lol.
ngl this was me about storm! haven't finished the video yet but I never thought about myself as being like a buffed out character and that didn't even matter, purple was just my favorite color and I love thunderstorms 😅 I would've made any school work for that.
When talking about balance blade deficiency at 23:23 you mention that all other schools "can buff themselves by 70%" with their stackable blades while balance "can only buff themselves by a cumulative 45%". This is wrong and you shouldn't gloss over this since so many people don't understand the multiplicative power of stacking blades. While I understand you don't want to go into the details of how it's multiplication instead of addition every time, you shouldn't be saying it the wrong way. In truth having a school blade and balance tri-blade gives the wizard +82.25% school damage, and balance can give themselves +50% with their two blades. Meaning every other school gets a flat +32.25% dmg boost by spending one pip over two turns blading themselves. A bigger issue than what you suggest by offering the numbers 70% and 45%. This difference only increases as sharpen blade comes into play as balance is finally getting +35% while every other school is getting +45%. Overall great video :) I just get tired when people say things like "a tower shield and a sharpened blade cancel out to -5%" lol
Solo balance here it's hard when you hit karamelle and some bosses are so god damn hard borderline impossible and at some point I was asking for rng just to survive and till you get supernova it's still slow asf
20:44 oh I've done that "would you heal me" "nah bro that aint me" then he said something to the effect of life is suppose to heal or something, but he was dead and I wasn't going to live in the past. I had a monster to slay
I played death entirely with a death with a deckathalon deck, I’d say I have a different perspective of it. I completely destroyed the early game with Deer knight, feint, and death sereph tho I definitely suck in Azteca now lol. I’m at lvl 89 atm
Ouch…. Should have picked a different school for my first solo run but I have played my balance wizard for YEARS (lots of breaks from the game) and am finally on Avalon. Going to be interesting to see how I handle the challenge of balance bosses at a higher level. Especially when no one will help me through dungeons anymore.
another thing death can do that other wizards can't is launch their 7 pip aoes round 2 before level 95. using empower gives you 3 pips for 1 pip and if you get a power pip at the start of the next round you can scarecrow. so starting at level 38 you can spam scarecrow and blitz through the early to mid game
When I first played wizard101 as a kid when I was choosing my school I got balance. I like balance. It's a very nice school and I soloed most of the game with just my basic balance stuff. The only thing I did was did life as my second school in order to help me with health it worked well for me. After that I didn't have much of a problem then
I chose myth because i loved the minion gimmick. It was soo fun early on and in the later worlds it can still have its use. I use it for harder/longer boss fights or just to switch the pace up!
My take on this: make all the 7 pip aoes initially into raw damage aoe hits that do damage and nothing else like orthorus and then make the usual no pvp utility the first spellement path (stun for frost giant/storm lord, dot for fire dragon, drain for scarecrow) and make the other pvp utility the second spellement path
this is definitely for solo players, me and my friend play and we mostly play to enjoy the game. we never care how long we take to finish a fight because we are talking and vibing.
As a Fire main, you absolutely misrepresented them, dragon really isnt as bad as you said it was, and theres a ton of AOEs later in the game that can replace it, dragoon 4 pip drag, the new dual school AOEs, you only highlighted its early game gameplay and didnt even take into account late game
EXACTLY! Fire Dragon is a Top 3 Fire spell. And calling DOT a "bad gimmick"? Horrible take by him, DOT is extremely good for multiple reasons. He clearly has barely ever touched a Fire character.
Ice needs change to protect whole party from area spells of high lv enemies and bosses. Like damage reduction. Taking damage portion that allies would suffer etc.
HEY YOU! If you planned on Subscribing because of this or any of my other Wizard101 guides, PLEASE DON'T. I won't be making any further Wizard101 guides in the future, and while wiz content will still persist in the form of stream highlights/the VERY occasional scripted video, I don't want this channel to be a wiz-exclusive channel anymore as its ceased being fulfilling for me. Thanks and appreciate it
valid, my wiz interest only lasts like a month or 2 at a time once a year lol
@@ethanvonachen7711yep. My wiz interest also usually lasts a month or two about twice a year. Sometimes only once a year.
I’ll blast through an entire arc a few weeks. (Granted my main wizard is a storm) my first one was balance and honestly while I know it struggles with balance bosses.
I’m usually able to survive long enough to set up all the necessary blades/traps to blast the boss with a hydra/chimera.
Okay, won’t sub! GL.
What’s the best to worst school for raids?
if you ever do play again im addicted and would love to add you on all 6 of my wizs
Its so beautiful how my childhood game is still filled with people that love this game as much as i do!! The second i get a pc again im going FULL HAM on this game!!
Same! Wish pc wasnt so expensive tho! I remember playing wizard 101 another childhood memorie
@@warmonsterjpc is not my trouble i need membership
also a pc
@@warmonsterj you can play this game on a $300 laptop
@aorty6649 I'm getting mine on Thursday after 3 weeks if saving I'm so excited for my very first wizard which will be myth
@@aorty6649which is the greatest thing
One gripe I had watching this back: I belittled Ice's tankiness too much. Big health/resistance is useful, and often times can let teammates port back to you and save the team a reset
Wanted to mention legion shield and shadow sentinel are genuinely really useful for endgame content, but it isn't enough. Problem is that schools like Life and Death are receiving special treatment (they should be nowhere near as tanky as us, since they already have alternative ways of staying alive) and spells like Taunt and Frozen Armor need a rework.
@@rorinlyin Exactly, you hit the nail right on the head.
Especially when people even go as far as buying bazaar gear at early level just so they can survive certain bosses
Speaking from experience, resistance means nothing if you can't kill enemies. I got stuck in Zafaria because I couldn't kill the mobs before them killing me. Deleted him and I'm never using ice again lol.
@@Zeroshiki I know people say it as a meme but genuinely: If trash mobs are outlasting you that's a skill issue, not an Ice issue. And to be fair it's not just you, I've met a lot of people post Avalon who don't know what enchants are, use bad gear, and fill their deck with like 20+ cards.
as a balance solo whose about to hit level 101 i am excited to hear that things might speed up at 108. you wouldnt believe how many times ive failed to solo a boss, finally joined team up and the boss was dead within 5 minutes.
As someone who is also soloing balance it does!!! My balance is 148 and ive really enjoyed the challenge as a solo player! Nested fury helps a ton especially when dealing with balance bosses!
realllll. a quick battle turns into like 20 minutes of setup which may or may not hit right (especially if they're balance too)
I assume with intro of archmastery school pips it might aid in that regard fighting balance monsters
I swear that the Devs have a personal vendetta against Ice... They nerfed the school into the ground during the major spell audit a couple years ago due to complaints that Abominable Weaver was too OP in PVP. As a side effect of this audit, our rank 7 and rank 8 Aoes (Frost Giant and Snow Angel) somehow got even WEAKER, when they were already trash to begin with. The whole school's identity as the tank has been made irrelevant due to pierce and the fact that other "tanky" schools (Life, Balance, and Death) have wayyyyyyy more utility. I feel like there should be a stat in the game that directly counters pierce. We have defense for damage and crit block for crit rating but nothing for pierce, which in my opinion is pretty stupid. The whole school just needs a complete overhaul. It's really sad because I really like the overall aesthetic of the school, and I know a lot of other people do too.
Nah ice always been like that.
I wish the devs would just pull a fortnite and do more to separate PVP from PVE. PVP balancing shouldn't negatively affect PVE
Same with Myth honestly tho Ice was great until nerf they just need to change it back. While Myth needs a entire overhaul
i know this is a bit late but ice had to get nerfs back in the day because they did tons of damage while being near impossible to die, i do agree with pierce being a big issue to ice tankiness might be interesting to give them some form of pierce resistence as a new stat type or maybe make there gear give so much more extra health that it makes pierce not that effective against them.
Not mentioned here but another huge problem is how pathetic their waterworks gear is.
A good way to rework ice is to make it where the can asorb the damage other players get allowing no damage on any one but them making it more 'tank' like
like shadow pip spell?
Agreee give ice an aura that absords 30-50% of dmg from all teamates
As a fire main, Fire Dragon gets slept on a bit too much here since the DOT damage isn't the main reason to cast it. It helps immensly with taking out bosses/enemies that might barely survive the initial hit, while a storm would just be out of luck a fire just has to survive for 1 more turn. Additionally while traps are usually pointless the setup for FD is for the first hit, and the DOT still gets buffed by all the blades plus damage percent. Sorry this is long just felt like sharing!
Fire dragon definitely don't get slept on
@@captainamericaandcaptainma3337 Here it does, he mentions it like it's the 2nd worst 7 pip aoe which it most certainly isnt
@@isaacpearson5676 ok I agree with you
Dragon has gotten me out of so many LOL. I also stack stuff, so it’s usually a one hit on basic bad huys
It's not that fire dragon is bad, because it isn't it's an insane amount of damage per pip no matter how you slice it. Fire's problem is that they have 0 good aoe hits for hitting, even bull takes a damage nerf because of the stupid detonate effect
Storm user here, people are usually weary of me until they realize how nice I am. Sad how a bunch of bad people can make the rest look bad. If anyone needs help drop a friend code by the way 😊.
As a storm user even back in the day they were rude idk why. My first wizard was myth until I saw tempest from a Storm wizard friend. Been a storm ever since and never had any problems getting friends tho.
Yeah I try to win people over by using weakness on bosses or thermic shield on allies at first. Let them know I'm not just here to steal the spotlight.
JOIN THE MYTH SCHOOL
I'm making it my second school, I'm a balance wizard.
fr bruh not him ranking storm above myth for soloing😢
Just made a myth and am loving it 🥰
Same I started playing and in a level 30 myth rn having a blast super fun school I won't take any more myth slander @@JennaRose957
I’m a balance main and myth is my second highest!!
I always appreciate seeing Life get some love. Nothing was ever going to top Death on the ranking so it's super great to see Life as the runner up!
My friend and I are a Life/Death duo (she's Life) and she does just as much if not more damage than me!! With the amount of death enemies I've come across she is a real life saver!!
(Pun intended!!! hehehehe >:))
That may be because we are addicted to stacking traps and blades to see how high our numbers can get.....
I know it's not all about damage I just meant that she is usually the one handling the fights while I help her buff >:)
@@thunderclanwarrior1253honestly after I acquired krulu I felt unstoppable on my death. Whereas when I play life I feel I’m not always useful in teams after arc 2 like he mentioned
I hope one day we'll get wizard 101 on consoles so much fun
Hehe
The time is now my friend
@@DVikingMan just saw the news my goodness time to relive my childhood!
people say balance isn't fun to solo because its challenging, but thats what makes it a really fun school to solo lmao
No it makes it frustrating.
@@elenalu5877 ok noob
@@draykos no. People have preferences and prefer to enjoy the game
personallly I found soloing on balance more fun and easier than on storm
my first main was a balance character, it was certainly frustrating and I would never do it again lol I hated soloing
I was a diehard W101 fan between like 2010-2012 and occasionally I watch these kinds of videos to just see what's going on in the game all these years later. I have to say this video has really tempted me to come back to it!! As a kid I never really thought about schools/combat in this complex/strategic of a way and it seems like so much fun :') If the first arc is ever made completely free I'll probably come back and this video will definitely serve as reference for choosing my first build.
it made me come back after many many years, surprisingly fun still
It’s free rn
As a death and myth main, your analysis is pretty spot on. Death is absolutely disgusting: I managed to solo the secret boss in Mount Olympus at level 70. Twice. For reference, that's a boss from a level 90 quest.
As a myth, I am indeed often ignored in favor of the storm guy and some do question why I chose the 'bad' school. My answer: It's funny as heck when i summon three minions to do my work for me. I ignored monstrology until i played myth. I have no regrets grinding for animus.
Is it efficient, throwing minions at everything? No, no not really.
Is it funny? Yes, yes it is.
Man you really nailed the description for the myth school perfectly imo.
The part on monstrology is really huge for myth. Even if its very pricey to get into gold wise in its initial investment costs I highly recommend it! As a person that likes coming up with creative and some really silly ways to get pass battles when soloing, the extra minions you get for being myth while using monstrology is huge!
Especially when you start gaining access to late game minions such as the fractural treeminder who'll mass weaken enemies for you and spam heals combined with a feral briar that'll spam plagues and a mass feint! Their are even some arc 4 enemies that are way more broken as such as the buddy bot who will just spam aoe stuns on enemies and aoe stun shields on allies while constantly breaking all shields or buffs in general on enemies due to their habit of spamming pierce, shatter, and earthquake. Not to mention that allot of minion blades stack with player blades for some reason. Like theirs been instances that my regular 35% myth blade will stack with a minion placed 35% mythblade despite them being the exact same card! So yea I highly recommend it!
I wish Myth could summon minions in a full battle. Having 4 teammates and a minion would make the myth school valuable in my opinion
@@AstralAnubes I feel like that would be both brokenly overpowered and very problematic depending on how KI implemented that. If they only cast like occasionally helpful spells like Blaze does in the stone key boss in sunken city then it would be fine
But if they still acted like regular minions with their usual spells but couldn't be targeted and knocked out then I can see that being way to strong and way to problematic for a number of reasons.
@@lordshenhai5321 yea I get it would probably need some time to implement I just wish myth had a actual mechanic to it that isn’t useless I really liked myth it was my first wizard as a kid, but now it feels like it has no identity that’s useful
As a new balance main who started with storm because I took the test as a kid, I can say that the fun is all about the aesthetic and different numbers and abilities. I may not be the best at anything but not knowing which damage type I’m going to hit someone with or watching all the damage types and buffs in effect is the most satisfying (spectral blast, hydra, chimera, etc). I can also buff any other wizard to watch this cool spells get bigger and bigger numbers, there’s not a situation I can’t deal with if I prepare properly. Versatility is outmatched and you can treat every fight different if you want. My biggest gripe with storm was the gameplay loop being basically the same.
Balance forever.
Great Damage and health combined with strong spells. Sandstorm and Nova are great AoEs that you get early, and once you hit lvl 28 you get access to both Judgement and Feint, its a breeze from there
Good summary. I am a Balance main, so the idea of "soloing" is anathema. Two fires is a lot of fun. I've been running 2 accounts at once, and my Balance turns my Life, Storm and Fire wizards into killing machines. My Death wizard plays well with anyone. For fighting the Rat at the end of Polaris, I always send in my Life wizard.
I still remember my old original wizard 101 thing, I got ice, and I've always been a fan of the "vibe" of ice magic in any kind of media, seeing how far it's fallen hurts
I honestly wouldn’t take this video seriously. As a long time player literally most of what this dude is saying is coming from the noob perspective.
@@mcchillin7580 well the videos not wrong though. i play ice, fire, and death all to 150 during 150's release, and honestly some things like snow angel have use in areas for sure, like in 4v4/3v3 pvp (super annoying dot. i loved spamming it to break a lot of dumb shields before i would cat mass feint/feint for our main dmg dealer's attacks). but in pve its absolutely poop since itll consume the unspecific school traps. actually, ice pve in general is kinda... poopy. solo isdoable, but certain bosses especially azteca was a fucking even longer more tedious experience in comparison to my fire or death. which i dont mind.
but there's a deeper more community driven reason why ice is dookey. ive struggled to be on queues for certain fights where if people see you're ice, they're not nice, and would literally dip even though they've been waiting for 10 minutes by themselves ebcause theyd rather have literally any other support school but ice. sometimes id join ones where there'd be 2 others and one would leave like half the time. lvl 130 gear grrinding was hell for me on my ice and was literally the reason why i grabbed and boosted a fire toon during that time so that at least a hard hitter would be present/id use as everage for people to join my teams.
@@viablos455 my last playthrough was ice. Had 90 damage and nearly 50 resist in Azteca and I’ve still never died on that character. Ice is easily one of the best solo schools in game.
@@mcchillin7580 well i think maybe its becuase of the recent changes that its a lot less painful. i dont know exactly when you played through azteca but i played before the latest nerfs /changes to the game. they nerfed the world several times and i played through it in 2015. back then, many of the bosses had roughly 17k-20k health. this was also before many of the spell changes, such as efreet doing 780 dmg now in comparison to 980. they even nerfed the golden key boss ixac a bit too. the crit system was wayyy different back then as well. fast forward for the 130 release, it was easier on my fire than my ice becuase of some of the changes. i had full waterworks alongside 10% resi, unicorn, and sprietly on my pet at the time. that pet saved me a lot lol
@@mcchillin7580 its good that its not a pain in the butt anymore and that ice solo isnt as egregious though. but up until th past years it was definitely a pain
Wow, this is some perfect timing. I just started watching Wizard101 videos since I was interested where the game went after I stopped playing (I played like 8 years ago when I was 11 or smth) and I wanted to give the game a try but I wasnt sure which school to pick. I was literally watching one of your videos when I wanted to check out which school would suit me and this video popped up in my recommended feed. Thats some timing right there
What school are you choosing?
oh death for sure @@rsoul9158
@@rsoul9158 sorry for the late reply but I went with Death :)
I think something that could help ice standout again is adding some spell (that only they can learn) that in some way or form prevents AOEs for x amount of rounds or like an intercept which could make the AOE hit do more damage but it turns it into a single hit on the ice
Your video just further makes my ice playthrough of crushing the game feel all the sweeter to continue.
you can get balance to over 200% outgoing/over 70% resist and train pigsie making them a better support than life IMO. you can also get sharpen on your pet making early game easier and around level 90 another sharpen/balance blade on your amulet(jewel of the apiary in bazaar) this made my balance so much fun in the gear grinds because I didn't have to worry about whats happening in the fight i literally just cast bladestorm 4 times and if the fight wasnt over healed or cast my other balanceblades on a hitter. and yes I did make a max life and min maxed the life to 220% outgoing and similar resist and id go with my balance to support/heal any day of the week. great video pointing out all the pros and cons death op, storm is king.
Hold up! This game is still around and alive?
I'm glad you brought up a PSA for storms to be nicer. I would have chosen storm when I was a kid, right after my very first fire wizard, but all the storm players were so mean!!! Ruined it for me at the time, haha!
that's so sad!!! I wonder how that came to be! I chose storm bc I took the little quiz, and it matched and it was the one that appealed to me most. too many people try to play outside the game like a god with a puppet, instead of just playing the game.
With balance, the first problem is very true, but the second problem you can cope into seeing it as a unique way to fight bosses. I'm around level 60 right now, and I have a special deck with all different hitting spells for balance bosses. It's honestly pretty fun even though I can't just judgement one shot them, especially if you can get some special spellement upgrades to certain spells.
babe wake up new class guide just dropped
So, by the time this video came out, a vast majority of my Wizards are in Avalon. My Death got through the entire game while my Fire just completed Empyrea. I'm interested to see just how far I can get as every school in 2024.
You should choose whatever class the personality test gives you
My first school was ice too. And I've dropped the game for nearly 12 years and now I've come back. And still ice. kinda nostalgia or something. Then my playmates just felt astonished about my school. Now I've been in Marleybone.Should I restart?😅
Same boat here. Played over a decade ago as an ice wizard and wanted to get back into the game. I'd like to pick ice for nostalgia, but may pick something else as a lot has change. How has your play through been so far as an ice wizard?
@@chadcj1 Not too difficult, I can manage to handle most of the mission battles, but still need some help when it comes to some dungeons. And certainly it's not as comfortable as death. You need to pay attention to your HP and the damge of Ice is not so excellent.😂 I've just finished Marleybone and is going to Mooshoo.
When I first started playing the game it was storm all the way. Now coming back to it after some time I still love playing as a storm wizard. They just hold a special place in my heart.
For a first wiz it's pretty hard to look over the lack of an aoe till 48 on death and 58 on life. If that is your first school the questing will be a drag especially without the arch mastery pip rating
Every school gets their 7-pip aoe at lvl 48 nowadays.
This is where my math nerd comes out. At 23:27 you said other schools get a 70% buff, but blades are multiplicative in their buffs, so it's more like an 82% buff for most schools. Compared to the multiplied Bladestorm plus Balance Blade, totalling at a 50% buff from blades. It's still a big difference, but the numbers weren't quite right.
Failed High school algebra 3 times!!
Ooooo baby I’ve been waiting for another ranking of this in the year, nice to know how these will play out since I’m doing four schools
intriguing to see how low you've put fire
as a fire main since like 2009 i've always found it to be a fun solo leveling class
the DOTs are only really used as "failsafes," in case the initial nuke of damage somehow doesn't kill when you've got your sharpened blades and toughened spells
auras are handy too
i haven't been able to play much since finishing khrysalis but i'm sure if you made it to that point with the tools available to you then, all the fancy fixins introduced since will only make you more and more powerful
When i played as a kid, Storm was my instalock. Nice to see them still be solid after all these years
One thing you forgot to mention for Life is that, unlike death, they can just hatch a Kookaburra for the 4 pip aoe Leafstorm, making it significantly easier for life wizards to get an aoe before level 48, especially if this is their first ever wizard
I've been soloing on Balance as my first wizard and lord does it start to test your patience sometimes, ESPECIALLY on irritating balance bosses. Spectral Blast has come in clutch, especially stacking elemental blade and balance blade for it. It also doesn't consume all your blades like Hydra does in one go, so you have a decent chance of making use of the extra blades. That said it *is* heavily RNG dependent and I've had more than a couple times where I got unlucky with an Ice roll that would've killed with Storm or Fire. Hydra's non-damage spellment is also surprisingly useful on Balance bosses, especially ones that like to use Elemental/Spirit shield as it gives you 3 -35% shields which have saved me more than once, very strong for soloing. Would I recommend Balance for soloing? God no, but it has its moments where it's legitimately fun to work through an encounter (though some fights may be, very slow and a double reshuffle in your deck may be necessary)
I like this video straight from the start on breaking down how ice is towards a team when other tanks can do but much better. One thing i can say they can do is legion shield which is good in certain instances
Frozen armor is underrated. I quest with my fire brother put a frozen armor on him and i tank the rest by myself while he clears without worrying about dying.
Why yes I would love to hear the meta of a game I haven't touched in 15 years.
Really nice in depth video. Thanks!
great video. learned something new about myth being able to summon more than one monstrology minion and agree with all of your other opinions too.
Insane men i played the game in 2010 so many fucking ours. I love my Lion and my garden gnome til today haha. Crazy that the game is still played by people
just got my fire to lvl 170 and as much as I like the new Phantasmania spell, I still see myself using fire dragon as I lowkey really like the DOT and the feeling that I know with the dot the mobs are going to be dead next around anyways and i don't have to worry about casting another spell. However i will admit at first getting used to the dot was painful
I love how the first thing was about Ice Class because every time I come back to wizard101 it's like they make it gets worse each time and that's my first wizard slot so it has the most progression. She sucks but it's not worth going back. 😭
Happy new year max. Love your content and hope to see your channel grow 🙏🏻
I recently tried soloing arc 1 with all wizards, and I must say that your analysis for Fire is kinda fair in the fact that they do require a bit more set-up; however, aside from the 4 Nirinis, I have had little to no trouble breezing through all of arc 1. I'm currently at the Petrov fight in DragonSpyre, and -- up to this point -- Fire's dots (as well as Meteor Strike) have been super useful for me.
Sure, the first hit of a dot (well, just Fire Elf and Scald really) doesn't do much for things like Fire Trap, Hex, and Feint; however, the first hit of Fire Elf clears Tower Shield and Fire Shield and sometimes Ice Shield (if you tried Prism against a Fire Enemy who was able to get that shield out before your Prism) pretty effectively. Do 2 of these 3 things come from Ice enemies? Yes. But how many Ice enemies do you fight in arc 1? More than you'd think, actually. And spending the extra time to "overtrap" an enemy, especially when you get a deck that allows you to have 4 of the same Cards at once, Fire's dots become all the more useful in solo pve content and becomes even scarier against Single Enemies with the inclusion of Heck Hound. 3 rounds spent trapping into Heck Hound, especially when you have something like the Sky Iron Hasta (which adds on an additional 10 school damage for all schools + an extra pip) AND you have an Archmastery Jewel equipped? Now you have 6-7 pips minimum when you cast a Heck Hound and the damage is significant. And while the dots are going around, you can spend time healing yourself and setting up for an even stronger attack in the mean time, and additional Fire Traps to the same enemy won't get swallowed up by your dot.
Meteor Strike is also the perfect aoe for Fire to have throughout arc 1. Because, now, you combine this knowledge of how your dots work and spend the next 2-3 rounds setting up for Meteor Strike (if necessary; sometimes, a simple Fireblade into Fire Elf against the boss's minion works wonders together with Heck Hound) and you can one-shot the minion while also delivering the final blow to the boss if it manages to stay alive. Does this method take a little bit longer than clearing pve content with Storm? Sure, but Fire has slightly higher accuracy than Storm and the Cumulative Damage it can gain from one dot alone can oftentimes make soloing this school through pve content a bit faster than soloing with Storm, especially before a Storm reaches Level 28.
I also think Fire Dragon is a better aoe than you give it credit for, especially if the Fire Wizard spends a couple rounds adding fire traps to the boss of the fights you encounter later on (which you oftentimes will need to spend 2 and sometimes 3 rounds for set-ups if you don't have a jewel socketed onto a deck to give you yet another pip at the start of fights). I know my Storm definitely liked having Fire Dragon over Tempest more when fighting Storm or Myth mobs/bosses from DragonSpyre and beyond.
As for the rest of your analyses, I think they are pretty accurate (at least up to my knowledge, especially since you also understand the early game solo Myth struggle). I will definitely be looking into grinding out Mount Olympus on my Death after viewing this video, too. My Death needs better gear from it than it currently has anyway (hasta and Senator's Toga), and I'd love to see if I can get a Deer Knight Jewel from it.
8:20 raging bull also has that detonate ability now, without the 200% bonus. It's a really useful combo with dragon when soloing
Ice would have been better as a team tank if they didn’t disregard the use of shadow sentinel but since nearly every boss is a blade and/or trap stack boss fight there’s no point in using it
An alternate fix to Death's early-game lack of AoE is to hatch with a Gloomy Eye which gives 1 Deathblade item card at Baby and a Colossal Frog at Ancient! (which, admittedly, can get expensive for an early-game character especially if you have no alts with enough gold, being able to blade stack so early though isn't really necessary until around mid-Marleybone imo) or if you want to shell out the crowns for packs you could try to get the Brainy Assistant (Which has 1 Colossal Frog at baby and 1 at Ancient) from the Terror's Hoard pack during Halloween (or whenever the pack resurfaces in the store out-of-season). Alternately if you're REALLY hurting for Deer Knight
Great video man! keep up the good work
The fire dot does get the bonus when a trap goes off from the first hit it does raise the dots damage that would happen. Same with damage %
Wrong about dragon on fire. A fire wizard with good damage/pierce can easily one hit to kill. As a max fire, I've done that plenty of times
Yep, he horribly downplayed Fire Dragon and DOT.
I first played wizard101 when I was 9 years old back in 2009, got addicted and played until 2nd age pvp ended, I think it was around 2015-16ish (could be wrong). I remember when darkmoor first came out and malistare gear with Morgan amulet was the best, max level was 100 at the time…. Now I’m 24 and searched wiz and found this video, a lot has changed. When I played death wasn’t the best school in the game and in pvp the best way to play them was to jade gear and spam bad juju. All the memories. Damn time really flies.
I’m with you! I’ve recently restarted a playthrough and man has it been fun!
You can actually get the professors hoard packs for free considering they are in weekly event scrolls fairly often. Not only that but the professors hoard pack has a guaranteed chance to drop AT LEAST one piece of gear (meaning you could potentially get 2-3 if you're lucky) and from my testing its usually geared towards the school you open it on. so if you open it on a fire wiz, you have a higher chance of getting the fire hat. To top it off it doesnt matter what level you open the pack on (if you're going for the helm specifically) either because the main purpose is the utility from the spell it gives and it can be used on any school. Professors hoard pack is the only pack i can genuinely recommend spending crowns on if you have them.
As a Storm player who recently picked the game back up, I’m glad I used Crown Rerolls in Waterworks. Got me the Life Mastery Amulet and it saves me so often
You should have saved the crowns, the arch mastery system hits as soon as lvl 50 (lvl 1 if you have the gold for gems) and you can switch the school pip at any time including mid round. Which effectively means you can have free power pips for life if you need them
Bro fr don’t use crowns tho I just got it because I was farming the armor and just got lucky
What are the amulets for?
ice is my personal fav. the damage on high levels is so good and the health and resist makes it the easiest to solo. i get the gripes that people have with it cause we all have preferences but it’s my fav! granted i only PvE (i also think their gear and colors are pretty sick)
Disagree a bit about Fire, at least through arc 2 ( I'm at darkmoor on mine right now.) With Life archmastery it's easy to heal to full HP after casting an overtime AOE without using up potions. Which makes long instances easier.
Reindeer knight hits pretty hard too
This is true for me since they added the archmastery jewels every since I could use the jewel on my new ice character I’ve been mainly using reindeer knight and it has been the main spell I’m using for now and I’m just got too mooshu all solo and hope I can continue on my solo journey
I know this is kinda old, but I just gotta toss my two cents in before the new spells make it a bit more irrelevant. For balance, id say you missed the fact that they actually have more buffs than other schools because of how many types of dmg they can do. People only look at balance dmg and forget that balance players can stack universal blades and traps onto element/spiritual blades and traps. Thats potentially a team universal blade, universal blade, and element/spirit blade ontop of an element/spirit trap, universal trap, and feint, and that's before you get to enchanting your hits and each of those blades and traps if you wanted to really ramp the dmg up or stacking feints to boost each hit of your hydra or to spam spectral blast. The only downside if who wants to sit there and overbuff, which is why i heavily recommend ICE players pickup balance as a school. Its like going from dmg hell to dmg heaven while keeping most of the tankyness and picking some decent healing too.
Another fix for the lack of AoE for schools like Death and Life is a pet.
For my Life wizard I used Kookaburra, that gives you Leafstorm at Adult, wich is not that hard to make.
Thanks for giving life the cred it deserves!
I remember back in the day death was seen as the weakest. people only looked at the numbers on the card. Back when lvl 70 was the cap me at max and a friend at level 43 were being made fun of by a myth and storm we challenged them to a duel at their castle. They suffered a long and painful death. Told the lvl 43 he'll be the hitter ill buff and debuff and keep him alive he panicked when i used doom and gloom and i told him just heal with vampire. kill the storm first and let them waste time panic healing while in doom and gloom. my friend killed the storm twice and I death minoitaured the myth to death.
I came back after a decade and picked balance, when I play solo it's hell but playing with a team its so good
For balance, a gryphon pet is almost a MUST HAVE for the feint, balance blade, and 7pip aoe hydra. It saved me SO MUCH questing and with balance bosses since the hydra was high damage
Imho introducing stun resistance and armor piercing sort of crippled ice a bit.
I have mentioned this before, but I think the only way to make Ice viable in a team setting is to further emphasize on their tank aspects. As you accurately identified, Ice does not soak damage very well from the team and has no means to prevent AoE damage and effects, making them essentially useless. However, one good way to remedy this is to use mechanics that are already present in the game as an Ice-specific feature: team damage mitigation. Similar to the Shadow Sentinel, Ice should be able to be a nuisance to the enemy team in accessing the rest of Ice's allies. The percentage may vary, but this would be a good step in the right direction, solidifying Ice's role in the game. To make it more balanced, Ice may choose to spread the damage transfer shield, similar to targetable AoEs. If they choose one person, but neglect others, then the resistance is higher on that one ally, and conversely much less if all allies are designated protectees.
Me a fire wizard who uses meteor and ffa religiously, idt most fire wizards use dots that often tbh
I have 3 wizards. When I grew up as a kid my first instict was to pick the fire school. I consider myself a fire main but I also started a death. They’re both LVL 80+ but my last wizard, storm, is LVL 34. I’ll be honest this games fun but I just hate doing the whole story again 😭. After Mooshu it feels like a drag.
Good video!
YOU DID FIRE DIRTY People barely use traps, i don’t think DoT is a disadvantage, because you wanna know what DoT DOES get around, that’s used all the time? shields
EXACTLY!
And many Fire spells are AOE that ALSO do DOT.
His take was just bad, "bad gimmick" my dick.
I think it’ll be AWESOME if Ice absorbed damage and took a percent of that and converted that to another percent that boosts damage.
Like you get hit with a fat hit, you can potentially get a 30 percent blade depending on your health I guess
Crazy. I am thinking about coming back to this game and my account is 14 years old
it'll still be there!! mine was!! and you can go through and look for those old treasure cards and pets that are no longer available in game ☺️ lots of people pick it up and drop it over the years.
as someone with 0 friends whos first lengthy school run was balance... i agree. i literally beat all my fights with 5 hp and thats with enchanted arm (just got to azteca recently), gear blades, and like 2 diff feints etc etc. Its a lil fun to see big numbers but man its so long and boring and rng based. I also already have 1in a mil so oh well
I wish there were more games like wizard101 out there, as I can only imagine what could be if some of the rough edges were polished. And when there are so many mmos with similar combat systems, I doubt it would be the end of the world if one went for the turn-based deck style especially if their execution was unique
One point as a balance main I’d like to mention: they’re HUGE fans of archmastery! Your balance blade buffs are lackluster, but you have the ability to buff whatever secondary you please with those balance blades and respective elemental/spirit blades. Want to buff yourself as a fire? Go for it! Death? Go for it! I’m doing a run where I have a myth mastery, use death archmastery, and I have so much flexibility and it really utilizes spirit blade efficiently.
This also drastically helps out by getting rid of a lot of the trouble with balance bosses, especially if you invest into a spirit school for boosted damage
I play a lot of soloing, my first wizard ever back in 2009 was Balance, and I struggled so hard. Krokotopia was the most painful world ever for me.
its so funny that little kid me made such a great choice in playing a death wizard. my original motivation for picking death was just liking the black and white color scheme lol.
ngl this was me about storm! haven't finished the video yet but I never thought about myself as being like a buffed out character and that didn't even matter, purple was just my favorite color and I love thunderstorms 😅 I would've made any school work for that.
I love playing a high level life wizard, my spells look sick. If you like the game, play any school you want. You'll figure a build out eventually.
When talking about balance blade deficiency at 23:23 you mention that all other schools "can buff themselves by 70%" with their stackable blades while balance "can only buff themselves by a cumulative 45%". This is wrong and you shouldn't gloss over this since so many people don't understand the multiplicative power of stacking blades.
While I understand you don't want to go into the details of how it's multiplication instead of addition every time, you shouldn't be saying it the wrong way. In truth having a school blade and balance tri-blade gives the wizard +82.25% school damage, and balance can give themselves +50% with their two blades. Meaning every other school gets a flat +32.25% dmg boost by spending one pip over two turns blading themselves. A bigger issue than what you suggest by offering the numbers 70% and 45%. This difference only increases as sharpen blade comes into play as balance is finally getting +35% while every other school is getting +45%.
Overall great video :) I just get tired when people say things like "a tower shield and a sharpened blade cancel out to -5%" lol
Solo balance here it's hard when you hit karamelle and some bosses are so god damn hard borderline impossible and at some point I was asking for rng just to survive and till you get supernova it's still slow asf
Thumbnail: Balance downvote
Me, a OG balance main: :(
(Balance was my first school and it was GREAT!!! ITS NOT COPIUM ITS NOT COPIUM!)
#BalanceBrosUnite
my first school too! just maxed it! balance 4 life
20:44 oh I've done that "would you heal me" "nah bro that aint me"
then he said something to the effect of life is suppose to heal or something, but he was dead and I wasn't going to live in the past. I had a monster to slay
I played death entirely with a death with a deckathalon deck, I’d say I have a different perspective of it. I completely destroyed the early game with Deer knight, feint, and death sereph tho I definitely suck in Azteca now lol. I’m at lvl 89 atm
When I was younger I played most with the life/death wizard lol
Subbed because of this video. Thanks for the info man! I havnt played this game since the lvl cap was 70 LMFAO
Insanely good editing. Great video!
Ouch…. Should have picked a different school for my first solo run but I have played my balance wizard for YEARS (lots of breaks from the game) and am finally on Avalon. Going to be interesting to see how I handle the challenge of balance bosses at a higher level. Especially when no one will help me through dungeons anymore.
another thing death can do that other wizards can't is launch their 7 pip aoes round 2 before level 95. using empower gives you 3 pips for 1 pip and if you get a power pip at the start of the next round you can scarecrow. so starting at level 38 you can spam scarecrow and blitz through the early to mid game
When I first played wizard101 as a kid when I was choosing my school I got balance. I like balance. It's a very nice school and I soloed most of the game with just my basic balance stuff. The only thing I did was did life as my second school in order to help me with health it worked well for me. After that I didn't have much of a problem then
In my defense, I started playing death when I was about twelve cause it looked cool
I chose myth because i loved the minion gimmick. It was soo fun early on and in the later worlds it can still have its use. I use it for harder/longer boss fights or just to switch the pace up!
My take on this: make all the 7 pip aoes initially into raw damage aoe hits that do damage and nothing else like orthorus and then make the usual no pvp utility the first spellement path (stun for frost giant/storm lord, dot for fire dragon, drain for scarecrow) and make the other pvp utility the second spellement path
this is definitely for solo players, me and my friend play and we mostly play to enjoy the game. we never care how long we take to finish a fight because we are talking and vibing.
As a Fire main, you absolutely misrepresented them, dragon really isnt as bad as you said it was, and theres a ton of AOEs later in the game that can replace it, dragoon 4 pip drag, the new dual school AOEs, you only highlighted its early game gameplay and didnt even take into account late game
EXACTLY!
Fire Dragon is a Top 3 Fire spell.
And calling DOT a "bad gimmick"?
Horrible take by him, DOT is extremely good for multiple reasons.
He clearly has barely ever touched a Fire character.
Ice was so good when they didn’t have the nerf. Top PVP player
Ice needs change to protect whole party from area spells of high lv enemies and bosses. Like damage reduction. Taking damage portion that allies would suffer etc.
Was thinking about getting back into this game. Is there still a good population of people playing after all these years?
Yes, really rather large. Never wanted for anybody to do anything with. Always plenty of people. Triply so when a new world releases.
Honestly ive been running fire wizards constantly since i was a kid and ive only recently been able to get a membership
Best Wiz content creator and it ain’t even close