Balance Gear Recommendations?
Question from Garrett:
Thanks, man!
In most MMOs, poor gear can be compensated with good strategy/timing/skill. And actually, after you get really nice raid-level gear, you can play a little sloppy and still be ok depending on the situation.
In Wizard101, I've found that wearing NO gear can be compensated the same way. So, if you're good with strategy, then you don't really need the best gear out there. If you're not so good, better gear definitely makes things easier, and that's almost always to the tune of more health. It's my number one stat.
After soloing Angus with no clothes on, I can honestly say the things I miss most are Health and Power Pip. So, if you have to choose, those stats are where I'd go . . . unless you're casting outside of your class, then power pip is meaningless. (You really shouldn't be casting outside of your class for damage after Krokotopia.)
Mana is pretty insignificant outside of levels 1-10 . . . most rings come with it bundled with health, so . . . not a worry.
Universal shielding is super nice at high levels if you can get a hold of it, but I wouldn't trade health for universal shielding unless it was a high enough universal shielding and I was taking a lot of damage. For example, say you have a piece of gear with 4% universal shielding alone and you're wondering if that's better than a piece of gear with health alone. You have to figure how much damage you're actually blocking with the universal shielding during a typical fight. Say you take two hits for 400 points of damage each, a 4% universal shielding rating would only block a total of 32 hitpoints of damage . . . you're better throwing down an elemental or spirit shield. Now if you can bump that up to 20-30% universal shielding, that might be a different story. (part of the reason old school crowns gear was so hot.)
You are a balance wizard, so until you get Judgement, your spell damage is average. +damage rating is nice, but not nearly as nice as taking the extra round to blade and trap stack when needed, and because of that, I highly recommend that if you're looking at amulets or pets, go with some gear that has a blade or trap card. Blade cards are definitely > than trap cards . . . especially if you're using "AoE" spells like sandstorm. If you can get your hands on a dragonblade casting balance pet, then you're doing really well!
To recap, here's my order of importance with stats:
1- Health and power pip
2- Blade and trap card gear
3- Damage
4- Universal shielding
5- Class specific shielding (unless you're a death wizard, then move this up to the number three slot)
6- Mana
After a while, when you get up near the Celestia range, you'll find that some of these shift position a bit and you'll start seeing gear with +healing incoming and outgoing and +crit block and +to crit. Pay attention to the amount of power pip percentage your character has because if you go over 90% power pip, then you'll be cheating yourself out of some other stats you could be mixing into your gear profile like these because at this point damage and crit rating will edge over power pip. If you have a pet with spritely (which is highly recommended) and play with healers, then +healing incoming gear will overtake shielding.
*insert small rant: KI seems to have forgotten that death shielding is uber important for death wizards and with some of this new high level gear criting death with no death crit block and with no death shielding, it can make using sacrifice and empower extremely painful*
Hope that helps and thanks for reading. :) Be sure to check the comments for the discussion that's bound to happen.
Happy Dueling!
hey friendly, sorry to bother you, but its a question about gear, soloing, etc... and i thought, who'd be better to ask than the great soloing necromancer himself? (besides ditto monster, but he's fire)
anyways, i recently made a balance wizard, and i normally role with fire wizards, so playing him will take some getting use to. on my fire, i can solo some things, but i want my balance to be a soloing machine, and i'm not really good at picking the right gear for my wizards, and i usually go with the crowns gear that gives you loads of health, but... i asked people which gear i should go with, and they said go with the gear that increases your damage, but i tried going with that, and it didnt turn out so well, i'm thinking of just sticking with the gear that gives you a lot of health. do you have any ideas? thank you for listening.
P.S.- i love your blog, read your post every day ;)
Thanks, man!
In most MMOs, poor gear can be compensated with good strategy/timing/skill. And actually, after you get really nice raid-level gear, you can play a little sloppy and still be ok depending on the situation.
In Wizard101, I've found that wearing NO gear can be compensated the same way. So, if you're good with strategy, then you don't really need the best gear out there. If you're not so good, better gear definitely makes things easier, and that's almost always to the tune of more health. It's my number one stat.
After soloing Angus with no clothes on, I can honestly say the things I miss most are Health and Power Pip. So, if you have to choose, those stats are where I'd go . . . unless you're casting outside of your class, then power pip is meaningless. (You really shouldn't be casting outside of your class for damage after Krokotopia.)
Mana is pretty insignificant outside of levels 1-10 . . . most rings come with it bundled with health, so . . . not a worry.
Universal shielding is super nice at high levels if you can get a hold of it, but I wouldn't trade health for universal shielding unless it was a high enough universal shielding and I was taking a lot of damage. For example, say you have a piece of gear with 4% universal shielding alone and you're wondering if that's better than a piece of gear with health alone. You have to figure how much damage you're actually blocking with the universal shielding during a typical fight. Say you take two hits for 400 points of damage each, a 4% universal shielding rating would only block a total of 32 hitpoints of damage . . . you're better throwing down an elemental or spirit shield. Now if you can bump that up to 20-30% universal shielding, that might be a different story. (part of the reason old school crowns gear was so hot.)
You are a balance wizard, so until you get Judgement, your spell damage is average. +damage rating is nice, but not nearly as nice as taking the extra round to blade and trap stack when needed, and because of that, I highly recommend that if you're looking at amulets or pets, go with some gear that has a blade or trap card. Blade cards are definitely > than trap cards . . . especially if you're using "AoE" spells like sandstorm. If you can get your hands on a dragonblade casting balance pet, then you're doing really well!
To recap, here's my order of importance with stats:
1- Health and power pip
2- Blade and trap card gear
3- Damage
4- Universal shielding
5- Class specific shielding (unless you're a death wizard, then move this up to the number three slot)
6- Mana
After a while, when you get up near the Celestia range, you'll find that some of these shift position a bit and you'll start seeing gear with +healing incoming and outgoing and +crit block and +to crit. Pay attention to the amount of power pip percentage your character has because if you go over 90% power pip, then you'll be cheating yourself out of some other stats you could be mixing into your gear profile like these because at this point damage and crit rating will edge over power pip. If you have a pet with spritely (which is highly recommended) and play with healers, then +healing incoming gear will overtake shielding.
*insert small rant: KI seems to have forgotten that death shielding is uber important for death wizards and with some of this new high level gear criting death with no death crit block and with no death shielding, it can make using sacrifice and empower extremely painful*
Hope that helps and thanks for reading. :) Be sure to check the comments for the discussion that's bound to happen.
Happy Dueling!
TUESDAY, MARCH 1, 2011
Beckett's (#30) Came in the Mail WOOT!
And now the traditional mag shot . . . except without me in the shot . . . I'm still sick and really not feeling up to showing my face today.
The Celestia's Chiefs of Cheatin' was a fun article to write, and getting screenshots of all the badguys at just the right moment was an interesting challenge. Procyon was a particularly awesome screenshot. It was right at the moment he was casting a minotaur spell, right before the minotaur appears. All my other screenshots of him were cutting off the top of his head for some reason.
I also loved going back through the history of cheating bosses at the beginning of the article as well. Remembering how it all unfolded was definately a trip down memory lane.
I hope you guys like the article. :)
The free in-game item you get from the magazine this time is . . . not my favorite, but getting free cosmetic clothing is better than nothing. ;-) Maybe I'll throw the no-stat Celestia robes on Angus and give him a new look. hehe. (I wish I had a say in what you guys would get for a free game item, but unfortunately I'm just the writer.)
. . .
As it turns out, I never took a shot of the previous article from issue #29 either . . . so here you go:
When I was writing the Gardening article, it was completely embargoed information. I was probably the first person outside of KingsIsle to know about gardening coming to the spiral. Of course, when you're writing an article that's two to three months out from hitting the shelves, it's really hard to "scoop" something. By the time the magazine hit the shelves, gardening had been out for a few weeks and was even on the test realm.
It's a little hard to write articles like these blind . . . I mean, when I was writing about Gardening I hadn't even seen screenshots of the plants let alone played it, but thankfully the people at KingsIsle are totally awesome with answering my questions and clearing up my misconceptions. Articles like those that are cutting edge definitely require a lot of trust and communication.
We worked it out, and I think the article did a pretty bang up job of explaining how gardening works if you ask me.
Again, the free in-game item was kind of a /boggle with issue #29, and again . . . wasn't my favorite. /shrug
Either way, it's been great adding another couple of articles under my belt. I haven't yet begun to write the next article, but I imagine in about a week, life will become very busy for me. :)
Happy Dueling!
The Celestia's Chiefs of Cheatin' was a fun article to write, and getting screenshots of all the badguys at just the right moment was an interesting challenge. Procyon was a particularly awesome screenshot. It was right at the moment he was casting a minotaur spell, right before the minotaur appears. All my other screenshots of him were cutting off the top of his head for some reason.
I also loved going back through the history of cheating bosses at the beginning of the article as well. Remembering how it all unfolded was definately a trip down memory lane.
I hope you guys like the article. :)
The free in-game item you get from the magazine this time is . . . not my favorite, but getting free cosmetic clothing is better than nothing. ;-) Maybe I'll throw the no-stat Celestia robes on Angus and give him a new look. hehe. (I wish I had a say in what you guys would get for a free game item, but unfortunately I'm just the writer.)
. . .
As it turns out, I never took a shot of the previous article from issue #29 either . . . so here you go:
When I was writing the Gardening article, it was completely embargoed information. I was probably the first person outside of KingsIsle to know about gardening coming to the spiral. Of course, when you're writing an article that's two to three months out from hitting the shelves, it's really hard to "scoop" something. By the time the magazine hit the shelves, gardening had been out for a few weeks and was even on the test realm.
It's a little hard to write articles like these blind . . . I mean, when I was writing about Gardening I hadn't even seen screenshots of the plants let alone played it, but thankfully the people at KingsIsle are totally awesome with answering my questions and clearing up my misconceptions. Articles like those that are cutting edge definitely require a lot of trust and communication.
We worked it out, and I think the article did a pretty bang up job of explaining how gardening works if you ask me.
Again, the free in-game item was kind of a /boggle with issue #29, and again . . . wasn't my favorite. /shrug
Either way, it's been great adding another couple of articles under my belt. I haven't yet begun to write the next article, but I imagine in about a week, life will become very busy for me. :)
Happy Dueling!
Angus's Server of Choice? Gardening Tips?
Question from Nitasu987:
If someone runs into my battle, it's no big deal, but his friends list is pretty much closed. He usually hangs out on the Unicorn server (he is a UNICORNpants after all), plays early early in the morning, and basically tries to avoid contact with other wizards . . . if you happen to see him, SURE, run in and say hi. :)
Tips for gardening?! Hmm, well I wrote this up a little while ago; although, I gotta say that the new placement of the circles has me a little thrown off.
I had a cool system for growing plants in a circle, and now KI has gone and removed the "snap to" feature from gardening. All I used to have to do was run into the middle and put my mouse over the snap dragon in the middle. Now you just hover your mouse anywhere to cast with no "snapping." I was tending to my frozen fly trap garden this morning and totally missed one of my plants because of this new method! GRR!
I wish they'd make "snap to plant" a toggle option for gardening instead of just removing it. meh. I'll get used to it. /rant off
Pink Dandelions will take you a long way in the early ranks of gardening. Spending any amount of time farming bosses in Krokotopia will yield a number of them. If you can shift to Silver Trumpet Vine to level up at rank 4, then you've hit gold. I'm sold on leveling up gardening with crown plants. It just goes so much faster.
I avoid growing more plants than my energy can handle, and I clump them all together in a nice circle. Uber wife is under the impression that you can skip the middle gardening spells and save yourself some money, and she's pretty much right. I've only used the medium-sized plant circle for situational reasons, like three or four plants near each other with an odd similar like.
The main thing I tried to do is try to get as many liked things to surround my plants as possible so I get that elder harvest faster! I've heard of some people planting stinkweed near their garden to slow everything down so they "maximize their rewards" as it were, but I'm not a proponent of that. The elder harvest is the harvest you want!
I'm working on a spreadsheet for gardening like I have for the pets and housing items that I may add in the future.
For you, Nitasu, at rank three, Rye Bread Bushes, Helephant Ears, and Baby Carrots are your best bet for the "free" plants for leveling (or at least the ones with the most exp rewards).
Kevin Battleblood has a good series of gardening guides going over on his blog, that are an interesting read. If you're interested in Wizard101 Gardening, you'll find some interest there for sure. (Note: Some of his older information involves floating plants, which I believe no longer works.)
I'm sure my readers will have lots of tips as well. :)
Thanks for the note and questions!
Happy Dueling!
Heya Friendly! I've got a few questions (No duh) Ok so i was wondering, what realm do you usually play on as Angus??? I have a lv 36 Death guy ( Cole ShadowThorn) and maybe we could fight some bosses sometime. and also, do you have any tips for gardening? I'm rank 3 and i have a moderately sized garden.YO Nitasu! Thanks for the note and thanks for the kind offer to play Cole side-by-side with Angus. Angus is kind of a loaner (and a rebel) since I'm trying to solo this whole gosh darn thing without none no clothes on.
Thx a lot
- Nitasu987
If someone runs into my battle, it's no big deal, but his friends list is pretty much closed. He usually hangs out on the Unicorn server (he is a UNICORNpants after all), plays early early in the morning, and basically tries to avoid contact with other wizards . . . if you happen to see him, SURE, run in and say hi. :)
Tips for gardening?! Hmm, well I wrote this up a little while ago; although, I gotta say that the new placement of the circles has me a little thrown off.
I had a cool system for growing plants in a circle, and now KI has gone and removed the "snap to" feature from gardening. All I used to have to do was run into the middle and put my mouse over the snap dragon in the middle. Now you just hover your mouse anywhere to cast with no "snapping." I was tending to my frozen fly trap garden this morning and totally missed one of my plants because of this new method! GRR!
I wish they'd make "snap to plant" a toggle option for gardening instead of just removing it. meh. I'll get used to it. /rant off
Pink Dandelions will take you a long way in the early ranks of gardening. Spending any amount of time farming bosses in Krokotopia will yield a number of them. If you can shift to Silver Trumpet Vine to level up at rank 4, then you've hit gold. I'm sold on leveling up gardening with crown plants. It just goes so much faster.
I avoid growing more plants than my energy can handle, and I clump them all together in a nice circle. Uber wife is under the impression that you can skip the middle gardening spells and save yourself some money, and she's pretty much right. I've only used the medium-sized plant circle for situational reasons, like three or four plants near each other with an odd similar like.
The main thing I tried to do is try to get as many liked things to surround my plants as possible so I get that elder harvest faster! I've heard of some people planting stinkweed near their garden to slow everything down so they "maximize their rewards" as it were, but I'm not a proponent of that. The elder harvest is the harvest you want!
I'm working on a spreadsheet for gardening like I have for the pets and housing items that I may add in the future.
For you, Nitasu, at rank three, Rye Bread Bushes, Helephant Ears, and Baby Carrots are your best bet for the "free" plants for leveling (or at least the ones with the most exp rewards).
Kevin Battleblood has a good series of gardening guides going over on his blog, that are an interesting read. If you're interested in Wizard101 Gardening, you'll find some interest there for sure. (Note: Some of his older information involves floating plants, which I believe no longer works.)
I'm sure my readers will have lots of tips as well. :)
Thanks for the note and questions!
Happy Dueling!
Amber and Kyle Get their Level 58 Spells!
Well, yesterday wasn't all bad. Yeah, I spent most of the day sleeping after going to the doctor and getting a prescription for this head cold. It's nasty. This was me yesterday:
But, something to turn my frown upside down was that uber wife had plans to finish off Amber's level 58 spell quest. After switching out a deck with some converts and a dracon polymorph or two in it and after escaping out a couple times until she was going first in the battle (simple genius there, right?), she finally was undergoing her fight with Gristletusk, a 13k hitpoint life boss.
Note that previously we had completed this fight with a group because it *was* the only level 58 spell quest that could be done with a group. That all seems to have changed now as we couldn't port the other Boom Kids (Kyle and Myrna) to help Amber out.
After a few rounds of fire attacks and a prismed Centaur spell, Gristletusk fell in defeat.
WOOT amber!
After that it was just a quick run over to Mooshu and Amber was soon hanging out with her own personally wookie.
GRRGRRGRROOOWWWMWMWMWMWMMMFFF!
Late last night I finally woke up and muddled around the house, but Uber wife pretty much demanded that I give Kyle's spell quest a go, so I did.
Kyle was up against Khai Tengri, a 7k fire boss with a 2k life minion. Easy, right? Dang, took me three tries! I should have used more strategy with my deck the first time through, but my I care button was broken due to being sick.
What finally won it for me was a series of storm minions until I could take out the life minion and then a Triton followed by a charged up Tempest. Here's a video of the last half and kyle getting his Leviathan spell.
WTG Boom Kids! All that's left is for Myrna to eek out another half a level and finish that level 58 spell quest. POWA!
Happy Dueling!
But, something to turn my frown upside down was that uber wife had plans to finish off Amber's level 58 spell quest. After switching out a deck with some converts and a dracon polymorph or two in it and after escaping out a couple times until she was going first in the battle (simple genius there, right?), she finally was undergoing her fight with Gristletusk, a 13k hitpoint life boss.
Note that previously we had completed this fight with a group because it *was* the only level 58 spell quest that could be done with a group. That all seems to have changed now as we couldn't port the other Boom Kids (Kyle and Myrna) to help Amber out.
After a few rounds of fire attacks and a prismed Centaur spell, Gristletusk fell in defeat.
WOOT amber!
After that it was just a quick run over to Mooshu and Amber was soon hanging out with her own personally wookie.
GRRGRRGRROOOWWWMWMWMWMWMMMFFF!
Late last night I finally woke up and muddled around the house, but Uber wife pretty much demanded that I give Kyle's spell quest a go, so I did.
Kyle was up against Khai Tengri, a 7k fire boss with a 2k life minion. Easy, right? Dang, took me three tries! I should have used more strategy with my deck the first time through, but my I care button was broken due to being sick.
What finally won it for me was a series of storm minions until I could take out the life minion and then a Triton followed by a charged up Tempest. Here's a video of the last half and kyle getting his Leviathan spell.
WTG Boom Kids! All that's left is for Myrna to eek out another half a level and finish that level 58 spell quest. POWA!
Happy Dueling!
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2011
Celestia Housing goes live!
That's right, go log in and start your downloads, kids!
Celestia housing is now out of the test realm and into the live game, along with all the other goodies that are a part of the patch message.
Enjoy those hand of doom packs! :)
Happy Dueling!
Celestia housing is now out of the test realm and into the live game, along with all the other goodies that are a part of the patch message.
Enjoy those hand of doom packs! :)
Happy Dueling!
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2011
Grendel Weed, Money, and Megasnacks?
Preguntas from Elijah Light thief:
1- Grendel Weed is the rare harvest from a Frost Flower. You can find it mostly in cold places or damp places in the game. Example, there's a Frost Flower node outside of the ice school. Personally, there's only one place I go for Frost Flower, but it's not a secret, so there are always one or two people here jumping servers looking for Frost Flower/Grendel Weed. Take the red teleport stone in Mirkholm Keep and run back to Herkir. This spot:
Here are a couple other tips/suggestions:
2- The general rule for farming money in Wizard101 is to try and pick a target you can easily kill over and over quickly. The go to mob for farming circa 2008 (and even now) was Oyotomi in Mooshu. Circa 2009 the way to farm was solo bosses (no minion) in Dragonspyre. Circa 2010 the go to mob was the Raven$ in Grizzleheim, and then the drops from the Raven$ kind of dried up a bit, and they became less popular. The "popular" place I find people farming in Celestia here in 2011 are the column bosses in Stormriven.
To me it's like that Column boss area is kind of like the new Kraken Pad. It's out in the open, so there are always people hanging out there and willing to join in. The bosses don't have a minion. You just kind of have to know the tricks to farming them since they are cheating bosses, and you could end up with a cool level 55 wand or two.
Outside of that, I'd say that what I like to do is pick a target that has something in their loot table that I want, like perhaps the Brain Coral or Turtle pet from Tempus Stormfist, and just hit that boss over and over until I get what I want. In the process I'll have made a lot of gold from selling drops I don't want at the Bazaar.
3- Megasnacks? Three weeks ago I would have suggested the Prickly Bear Cactus, but it seems like the harvest of Mega-snacks was nerfed a bit right after the auto-harvest exploit was discovered by KingsIsle.
Basically you can get Megasnacks as a rare harvest from Baby Carrots, Pink Dandelions, and Prickly Bear Cactus. After the current patch goes live, you should also be able to get them from the Elder Harvest of Evil Magma Peas and Deadly Helephant Ears.
Hope that helps, Elijah! And as always, readers, if you have some good ideas for Elijah, please leave them in the comments! Thanks!
Happy Dueling!
1.Friendly do you know where to find Grendel weed?Hey! Thanks for reading, Elijah.
2. Do you know where you get gold the easiest in Celestia or any where in wizard 101?
3. How do you get mega snack packs besides crowns in wizard 101?
Thanks, Elijah light thief.
p.s. follower of your blog and your blog is awesome
1- Grendel Weed is the rare harvest from a Frost Flower. You can find it mostly in cold places or damp places in the game. Example, there's a Frost Flower node outside of the ice school. Personally, there's only one place I go for Frost Flower, but it's not a secret, so there are always one or two people here jumping servers looking for Frost Flower/Grendel Weed. Take the red teleport stone in Mirkholm Keep and run back to Herkir. This spot:
Here are a couple other tips/suggestions:
- Remember that those Frost Flowers can be transmuted into Grendelweed as well.
- Frost Flower is a Harvest from Evil Snow Peas.
- If you have the money to blow, sniping in the Bazaar is always an option.
- Always consult the reagent map guide when in doubt.
2- The general rule for farming money in Wizard101 is to try and pick a target you can easily kill over and over quickly. The go to mob for farming circa 2008 (and even now) was Oyotomi in Mooshu. Circa 2009 the way to farm was solo bosses (no minion) in Dragonspyre. Circa 2010 the go to mob was the Raven$ in Grizzleheim, and then the drops from the Raven$ kind of dried up a bit, and they became less popular. The "popular" place I find people farming in Celestia here in 2011 are the column bosses in Stormriven.
To me it's like that Column boss area is kind of like the new Kraken Pad. It's out in the open, so there are always people hanging out there and willing to join in. The bosses don't have a minion. You just kind of have to know the tricks to farming them since they are cheating bosses, and you could end up with a cool level 55 wand or two.
Outside of that, I'd say that what I like to do is pick a target that has something in their loot table that I want, like perhaps the Brain Coral or Turtle pet from Tempus Stormfist, and just hit that boss over and over until I get what I want. In the process I'll have made a lot of gold from selling drops I don't want at the Bazaar.
3- Megasnacks? Three weeks ago I would have suggested the Prickly Bear Cactus, but it seems like the harvest of Mega-snacks was nerfed a bit right after the auto-harvest exploit was discovered by KingsIsle.
Basically you can get Megasnacks as a rare harvest from Baby Carrots, Pink Dandelions, and Prickly Bear Cactus. After the current patch goes live, you should also be able to get them from the Elder Harvest of Evil Magma Peas and Deadly Helephant Ears.
Hope that helps, Elijah! And as always, readers, if you have some good ideas for Elijah, please leave them in the comments! Thanks!
Happy Dueling!
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2011
BOOM KIDS in Stormriven
That's right the trio of boom is now hanging out in Stormriven. Check 'em out here with Leland, gettin' their quest on.
(Totally the cover of their first CD release.)
They're all 55+ now and headed toward Legendary at a good pace. These silly Celestians don't stand a chance against the boom kids.
(Totally the remix cover of their first CD release.)
And to ensure the boom kids live up to their name, Uber wife crafted all their crit gear post haste!
BOOM!
KIDS!
Sing us out Spongebob!
Happy Dueling!
(Totally the cover of their first CD release.)
They're all 55+ now and headed toward Legendary at a good pace. These silly Celestians don't stand a chance against the boom kids.
(Totally the remix cover of their first CD release.)
And to ensure the boom kids live up to their name, Uber wife crafted all their crit gear post haste!
BOOM!
KIDS!
Sing us out Spongebob!
Happy Dueling!
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