Monday, March 15, 2010

Should I base my secondary class around elemental blade?

Question from Ashley:
Hi Hi,
i am a bit confused about elemental blades and traps , i am an ice wiz, should i take fire and storm in order to use those blades and traps along side with my school? or i just forget them and take death for feint and life for health,,and if i did not take fire and storm as a seond and third school, those will go round my head like a merry go round, plz help thx

Oh yeah, those blades can be kind of spin-y around you, huh? Well, for ice wizards it's just kind of a necessary evil unfortunately. The trade off for high hitpoints and defense with ice wizards is that their base damage is low, and they don't get their own blade clear until level 38 . . . so you have to kind of compensate for that, and those elemental blades are awesome for helping compensate!

Also, it's true that feint is probably the coolest trap out there. You really can't beat 70% damage increase for one pip, and that, again, is really awesome for ice wizards. The problem is that you have to spend all those points in the death tree to get to it (7 training points), and at the early levels you'd probably fare better casting lightning bats spells for damage than a ghoul.

The Elemental traps and blades on the other hand don't require you to spend any other training points in the balance school to get them. Elemental Trap (25% damage for one pip) is available at level 15. Elemental Blade (+35% damage for one pip) is available at level 25.

Also keep in mind the versatility of elemental traps and blades. When you are playing with other people, you can toss out one of those traps on a bad guy and you've not only boosted your main attack, but the attacks of storm and fire as well for your group mates.

By the end of your journey, I think you'll want all the blades and traps you can use in your spellbook, so I'm going to recommend getting feint, elemental trap, AND the elemental blade. You'll want that power in your deck. Should you base your secondary class choice around it? Meh, not really. Just focus on making your main school shine. That's my 2 cents.

Unfortunately, the spinning is just something you'll have to live with.

Happy Dueling!

6 comments:

M.W.S said...

Hmm, maybe instead of fient a hex instead... Go all the way to hex for balance and stop. And get ice some satyr good for pvp...

M.W.S said...

I mean feint lol... I joined a chat here w/ my mic dude: http://tinychat.com/wizard101info

Heather said...

I completely agree with Friendly. I have run quite a few Ice wizards, Ice is my second favorite to Storm...lol, and Death as a second to Ice so I could hurry up and get feint ASAP. It makes such a HUGE difference in battle having that spell.
Take Life to Satyr as a third and you can heal your friends as well as yourself (with all that health you got in the end those little pixies just don't do it...lol.)
I had a friend who did Ice before me and they tried to base their schools around those Elemental Blades...well, it made for a really WEAK Ice wiz...ugh!
But with Feint you can do some serious damage at those higher levels...given you set up all the other traps and blades right too...and get that 35% Ice Trap Amulet...SWEET!
I would also advise people that Ice starts out weak and slow, but do it right and it ends up being a really awesome and strong school. I don't think people give Ice enough credit and it gets a bad wrap for the low base attacks, but do it right and it's both strong and great for soloing!

Sierra Starsong said...

@MWS - Unfortunately Hex is a Balance-only spell you get for finishing Krokotopia, Ice students get Frostbite there instead.

I started out Ice with a Fire secondary, thought the opposites were a neat idea, but I hardly used the fire spells so I went to Mr. Lincoln and retrained those points as Death up to Feint (Ghoul's nice at low levels), then Balance up to Weakness and the Elemental Blade/Trap and Reshuffle. Our Ice Minion uses a lot of fire and storm spells so I cast Elemental Blades on him a lot through Marleybone.

Once you've used the ice portion of an Elemental Trap, you can get double duty by putting up an Ice Prism to hit the fire trap. That lets you boost two spells with it instead of one. (It's one of my favorite tricks.)

Tim Goree said...

If the extra blades and traps really bug you, you could mitigate that a bit by using a wand that is one of the other schools. It's a good idea to use a wand that is a different school from your main anyway so that you can get rid of tower shields without wasting school blades and traps that you may have down already. So, if you are ice, use a fire or storm wand, then you will eventually use 2 out of the 3 elemental blades/traps. Plus a little boost on your wand ain't a bad thing in certain situations either!

Tesh said...

I've been happy with my Balance/Death wizard. Sure, my elemental attacks aren't reliably of a given type, but Feint and Hex make up for it... and when the RNG stars line up and an elemental blade *does* hit, well, that's a happy day.