Arena Tip #6

Beguile and multi-strike spells

Death wizards have a spell called beguile which typically will force you to cast your spell on yourself or on your team mates.

Beguile only works when used with multi-strike spells. To me this seems to be a change from what it used to be. Whether this is old or new it appears to be the case for arena battles.

Vale

p.s. KI, the list of arena bugs/frustrations is growing:
1) Zombie Bug (coming back from dead is not cool)
2) Extreme point losses from a single battle (use chess USCF rating formula for this)
3) Minus one rating bug (can't confirm if this has in fact been fixed or not)
4) Extreme low point gain from winning battle (related to #2 again use USCF rating formula?)
5) Consistently drawing second cast against higher ranked teams (higher rated teams should be given second cast just as in chess where higher ranked player typically plays black against underdog)
6) Matching noobs against warlord/commander level grand masters if noob is commander rank. (This never has a good ending for the noob no matter what their rank is. The noob never has the pips, deck, clothes, spells, or hitting power to compete against a full grand master)
7) Warlord grand masters playing down in an effort to level up their noob buddy. (I'll write more about this shortly - by doing so WL, work the system to get their friends arena gear with almost no effort of their own)

Arena Zombie Bug Still Active After PVP Fix

As a friend and I got to witness first hand last night the Zombie bug is still alive and well along with dead wizards and their pips.

Depsite saying "defeated" and having their head wobble uncontrollably, a wizard we had defeated came back from the dead 1 full turn later with all her original pips plus new pips for her "turn" while dead.

Let's hope this bug is actually fixable.

Valerian

PVP Bug to be fixed tonight... is it THE BUG?

Wizard101 the game will be offline during an extended maintenance period of 3am to 6am Central US Time on Thursday August 27th 2009. During this time, players will be unable to log in to the game, and players who are in the game will be prompted to log out. This maintenance allows us to repair a PvP bug. Thank you for your patience while we continue to improve the game for all of our players.

Arena Tip #5

Keep a reshuffle in your treasure cards just in case your duel goes on and you run out of cards.

Codes

According to the Wizard101 main site the only active code right now at this very moment is the one that gives the storm snake. If i recall it's "magic" without the quotes. All other codes are either not active or are one-time codes that you have to buy and bought codes work only once for a single person.

Anyone looking for a pet code will have to buy one from the store. A list of the pet/crown cards and the stores that sell them are available on the main Wizard101 site.

** p.s. ** K.I. please fix the arena zombie bug!

Vale

The OTHER Arena Bug

Last night I got to see first hand what is commonly referred to by arena goers as "THE Arena Bug" in Wizard101.

My friends and I were enjoying a nice battle against a group of Warlords when we did a spellwave leaving only two alive followed by doom and gloom, sealing their fate or so we thought. With their healer and another dead and the last two with only a few hundred health left our victory was assured right? WRONG.

No less than 3 times we killed their healer and EVERY round he came back, pips intact ready to heal his team mates. After spending our pips round after round trying to kill a dead player we succeeded with each round only to see him return and cast Rebirth and Dryad multiple times until our spells did nothing due to the plethora of shields. Round after heart breaking round we had to watch helplessly while he came back from the dead time after time healing and re-healing many times over dead players. Worse was watching him wait a round while "dead" gathering power pips while we could do nothing.

Eventually we lost the battle simply because we could not kill a dead wizard. Not only do I feel bad for my team mates, who would have been almost to their wings had we earned the points we deserved from what was otherwise a resounding victory but I feel bad for the team who won by "arena bug". I know they felt embarrassed.

If there ever was a need to "adjust" arena points for unfair point allocation, this would be the shining example.

Not only is there an issue with the percentage spell casting of late (for death in particular) but that the latest update either did not address the zombie Arena Bug or simply made it worse.

I'm extremely disappointed for my friends, who even as underdogs, deserved that win. I am determined to keep posting regularly about this issue until it is fixed.

Valerian

Arena Fizzles Part II (K.I. - Fix This!)

I kept track of fizzles the other day in arena. My death noob fizzled on Vampire (an 85% spell) 4 times out of 9 casts (65% actual performance). He also tried to heal himself with a 90% treasure life spell which fizzled no less than 3 times IN A ROW before it finally cast. (1 out of 4 casts is 25% not 90%)

On my ice wizard I fizzled twice on Frost Giant (an 80% spell) out of about 6 casts which would seem to be passable IF my clothes didn't give me an additional 6% accuracy. So that's a 66% performance for an adjusted 86% spell.

I did however cast a 70% Triton 3 times without a single fizzle (100% actual performance).

When you're casting death spells and you're holding your breath because you're expecting them to fizzle... there's something seriously wrong.

I'm asking KingsIsle to fix the spell percent performance. At this point the higher the percent spell the more likely it is to fizzle in arena. Either that or actually adjust the numbers on the cards so that they reflect reality.

Valerian

Arena Fizzles

Lately a VERY noticeable phenomenon has been happening in arena... the fizzling of 80-100% spells. In one single battle yesterday three 85% death spells fizzled just for ME! And others of team mates spells in that same range failed as well. Out of a cast of 6 of those spells total I experienced a fizzle ratio of 50%. I know I'm not the only one to notice as other players had their high percentage school spells fizzling as well. This is even with the enhanced accuracy that comes from clothing items etc which would have had the actual accuracy of the spell to over 90% base.

When, the other day I saw a shield fizzle without the aid of any kind of minus or additional charm I had to wonder how many others are seeing this as well?

However I'd venture to say that low chance spells such as fire and storm (i know because my storm noob has had virtually 100% success with triton, kracken and shark) and others (including wild bolt) have been working remarkably well.

I have to wonder if KingsIsle tweaked spell accuracy settings in arena and if so they are NO WHERE NEAR what is written on the card as far as actual accuracy. I know about randomization, and probability calculations etc, being a developer who does significant work in statistical analysis and probability. What I can say for certain is that high accuracy spells in arena no longer reflect their stated accuracy. At this point in time the higher accuracy spells are actually much lower than their stated rate.

I'll gather some data on this and I'd like for those of you arena goers to also track the number of fizzles per times cast for your specific hitting spells.

Thanks,
Valerian

Arena Tip #4

When up against Warlords who think it's fun to equip treasure pets as a way of keeping you guessing on their school and thereby having an advantage for the first hit.

You will notice their names which sometimes give you a hint. Or their health...

For full warlord gear and reasonably equipped athame, ring etc...
Storm will be about 1540
Fire will be about 2200-2500
Myth 2300-2600
Balance 2300-2600
Ice 2700-2800

I reserve the right to adjust these numbers. They'll never be 100 percent predictive but Ice is usually a giveaway and storm are fairly easy to predict.

Arena Tip #3

Buff up...
Instead of always hitting immediately when you have an attack card. Put blades and traps on or put up a dome at least. If you're fighting a Myth wizard who has earthquake, you may want to rely more on traps then on blades.

The idea is to get maximum bang for the pips you have. This requires you put some blades in your deck and shield yourself adequately to keep yourself alive.

Arena Tip #2

* note: This is an old post and many things have changed including pets giving balance blades or available treasure ones.  Also note in the comments how you can tell a wizard's school from the battle orders menu now *

Keep tower shields handy... tower shields are your ONLY defense against Balance wizards using Judgement spell. If you are unsure who a Balance wizard is in the arena you can tell either by:
a) the saving up of tons of pips (not always certain)
b) the balance blade (crossed swords)
c) or if they in a single cast put three shields up.

However in any case the advice still stands... If your opponent has 6 or 7 pips you know you need a tower shield asap.

Tower shields also reduce death heart spells by half and any other school spell by half so they're all around good one to carry.

Since balance wizards already have a distinct advantage in the arena both in shields and pure spell hit strength with Judgement you would be well advised to carry some tower shield with you if you expect to survive long in arena.

Arena Basics, Tip #1

A friend of mine asked me to post tips on Arena battling. In honor of that request I'm going to disclose some interesting things that will help anyone improve at arena. I'm going to start small and work up to better and better tips as time goes on. If you do use them and they work for you let me know.

Arena Basic #1
- When battling 2 to 4 pvp -
Equip a sword or wand that is the same school as the person you're battling with and have your friend do the same. So if you are death and your friend is ice... then the ice wizard should use a death sword or wand and you should use an ice sword or wand. This allows you to remove an opponents shield with a minor strike so that your friend doesn't have to use up their blade with a minor strike.

My advice about lonely wizards

I'm readjusting this post a little:

I had one of those lonely times on the game the other day when I wanted company and all my friends were busy. In times like that when things just don't go your way friend-wise and it's lonely, there's not much to be done but to try not to let it get to you, come back another day and hope for better.

Vale

Cure for lonely wizards?

While loneliness is something even wizards with a lot of friends feel from time to time, some wizards are more lonely than others. While nothing I can say will change how you feel, I want to share some things that should help one at least gain a few friends or perhaps help keep the ones that a wizard has.

While I'm not always the best of friends to my friends I hope this advice may do some good. (And I'm hoping for comments here so help me out with any good ideas)

1) Help more than you are helped

2) Whether asking to help or asking for help... Don't hassle. Ask and then let it go.

3) Be honest. If you put someone else off due to helping another friend don't try to make excuses or hide it. Just find a nice way to tell them you're helping a friend and miss them.

4) Don't say bad things about a friend to another person. They will worry that you may say bad things about them when you're not around. Not to mention that sometimes texts can be sent to the wrong person and you may offend your friend in an effort to try to make someone else feel better.

5) Don't be crude or use bad language. We wizards come from all walks of life and some have had their fill of yuck and won't want to be around it while they're getting away from real life.

6) (This last one we all have trouble with from time to time) Don't get too desperate. Desperate drives people away so just be cool.

New Wizard Social Networking Site

You can join myself and other wizards on http://diaryofawizard.ning.com/

This site basically has all of the functionality of MySpace but for Wizards only! It is moderated and set up by my friend Fallon Shadowblade. It provides a safe way for wizards to connect online without having to let relative strangers into your personal facebook account. (nice for me as my family tends to post personal and potentially embarrassing stuff ... like random family gathering snapshots of people stuffing their face. ew! ...) I'm sure none of you have that problem though!

Anyway, it has an awesome set of groups, allows you to keep up with blogs (like mine), your buddies, your music, videos, email, and start your own blogs right from one single site. I highly recommend it.

However if you are young you should get your parent's permission before signing up of course!

This is an amazing tool for Wizards to connect and I would love it if each of you added me as a friend on there when you do get in. Even if my friend list on the game isn't big enough I want to be connected to all of you who find some value in what I write.

Thanks!

Valerian Nightbringer

Group Chat for Arena and Instances

Group-chat is a feature of Wizard101 that is underapperciated. Group chat shines when you are in arena discussing your next move with your team. Group chat is also helpful in an instance when you need to keep your group with you or give instructions to team members.

Once you have joined a group your chat messages go to the group automatically. Your chat will appear in blue letters in group mode. Regular chat will appear in white. To change from regular bubble chat to Group and back you hit the Enter key (like you do when creating a new chat line) and clicking with the mouse either the "single-happy-face" icon for standard bubble chat, or the "double-happy-face" icon for group chat. Using these icons you can switch back and forth fairly easily.

Once you're done the activitiy you will likely want to leave the group.

Happy dueling,
Valerian