What's a good secondary for Death Wizards?

Nice! Here's a question from one of my favorite people in game:

Have a question for ya, should be real easy for you.
I'm having trouble choosing a secondary school for my Death. All I can figure is Ice to Tower. Aside from that.. I'm blank. What do you think?

Hey, Shy! Long time, no interview!

Well, of course, opinions on this are like bellybuttons, everybody's got one. The moment you mention your recommendation for secondaries, everybody and their ninja pig are at your door telling you why their secondary choice is the bees knees. So, I'm sure you'll be hearing a lot of suggestions. I'm going to give you some paths for you to choose and why I like them.

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Pre-recommendations comment: I like that you're going up ice to tower. Good choice. You'll also be getting the volcanic shield when you do that, and that's a bonus.

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Recommendation 1: Life up to Legend Shield or Myth up to Ether Shield. Life up to Legend Shield costs fewer training points.

Logic behind recommendation 1: a few key Death spells damage you before giving some benefit. Those death shields can be very handy for protecting your self inflicted damage. And someday they may even help you solo malistaire. ;-)

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Recommendation 2: Balance

Logic behind recommendation 2: If you play your Death wizard with a lot of other people in a group, then I feel your role to be a support one. You can heal, you can debuff, and you can put out the big traps. If you like being a support player, balance is outstanding. Weakness is a perfect debuff compliment to your already outstanding curse spell. Powerplay can be a great aura for Death students because most will never use doom and gloom outside of pvp. Donate Power gives pips to the people who you are supporting. Hydra breaks all those nasty shields. And finally, don't forget to grab the blades and traps from Niles in Krokotopia (You'll want to do this even if you don't go up Balance for a secondary)

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Recommendation 3: Myth

Logic behind recommendation 3: You lack an AoE spell up to 48th. Humongofrog does more base damage than Blizzard or Sandstorm. If you like to pvp in groups, earthquake, as you well know, is astounding. Having the Death student cast earthquake instead of the people doing the real damage on the pvp team seems to be logical.

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Recommendation 4: Storm

Logic behind recommendation 4: Through the magic of Empower, you may cast any five pip spell on the second round when you're 30+ and armed with a staff that gives you an extra pip (you have to be 38 to even get empower). Out of all the five pip damage spells out there, Stormzilla is the biggest zap for the buck. That's a 650 to 730 base damage spell in two rounds (if you don't fizzle). That makes for brilliant farming potential and the noobie wow factor you're hunting for. Well, that I'm hunting for at least. ;-)

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So in the end it really comes down to what you want to do with your character. Do you want to pvp, do you want to pve, do you want to farm, do you want to solo, do you want to group, etc. You know what I'm saying. :-)

Good hearing from you again, shy!

Happy Dueling!