How to deal BIG damage

My Friend Alric RavenSinger was nice enough to give me a shout out on his blog, The Raven’s Vault.  Thanks Alric, love ya dear heart!  He mentioned Mercenaries for Hire, and the fact that was I honored enough to be asked to become a member.  He also mentioned tips and tricks

and I believe one that he might be referring to is how to set up for one hit kills, which are SO SO much fun for the “hammer”,  and just as much for the “buffer”!  You can always tell when someone is new to a one hit kill.  You usually get a WOW as the first thing they say when it happens.

Most of us know that using our school blade and trap makes for a bigger hit, and if you used any TP (Training Points) at Niles the Balance Tree for tri-blades and traps, and use those also you get an even bigger boost.  And don't forget your "bubble", or global, or Aura or whatever you may want to call it!  For us pyromaniacs it's called Wyldfire.

If you have a Death wiz (or Necromancer) with you they can boost your hits with a couple of cards also, that work for any school's damage spells.  They are traps, so they go on your target.  The first one is called "Curse", it adds 20% more damage to your hit.  The other card that the death school can use is "Feint".  Now when I first heard about this card I thought it was a HORRIBLE card!  It puts a trap that adds 70% damage to the target, BUT it also puts a 30% damage trap on YOU!.  I thought why the heck would I want to damage myself?  BUT if you time the placement of this trap just right you can take no damage, because the enemy has not had to chance to hit it, or very low damage because they use a low damage spell.  So NOW I see the sheer beauty of this spell.  A 70% boost ... lets see if a card hits for 625 points, with no other buffs ... a feint adds 437 points of damage ... to make one hit 1062 points, enough to take out MOST mobs, even in DragonSpyre.

The "classic" buffer in game is a Sorcerer, or Balance wiz.  Those tri blades and traps you used a TP on? They get for free, after all they are balance school spells.  Their "school" blades, Balance blade and Blade Storm, can boost any schools hit.  They have a +30% trap, called "Hex", this is a trap that all schools can use.

So imagine this, you are a fire wiz, getting ready to use Helephant, which has a base damage of 625.  You have the following blades on you -- school blade for 35% boost, tri blade for a 35% boost, balance blade for a 25% boost, bladestorm for a 20% boost -- all of those "stack", meaning they all will fire when you use your spell, provided you don't fizzle ;)  So that means that 625 hit point Helephant now does 1708 damage.  And this calculation does NOT take into effect any gear boost you may have.  For example my Pyro gets a gear boost of 37%, and that would be the first calculation, mathematically speaking, so I would hit for 2306 damage, BEFORE any traps are added.  And none of these are using a bubble to boost the hit. :D  So you can see how just using blades alone can boost a hit.

Now for the traps ... and how they go off all depends on how they were laid down in the first place ... LIFO style (Last In, First Out) ... so we have the following set on the enemy -- in order -- Hex, Feint, Curse, Tri Trap, and school trap.  So our damage gets boosted to 9555 for one hit.  Still no bubble or any treasure cards.

So you can see, that with the right set up MASSIVE amounts of damage can be done.

Like this :

And yes thats 116K of damage. WOOT!

Soon we will talk about small decks and some other tips and tricks I have up my sleeves.

Until then ...

See ya 'round the Spiral

My Wizards ...

If you read my friend SorceressMikali's comment you may be just a little confused.  So I think I might have some explaining to do.  Pull up a chair, settle in, and let's talk a spell.  Comfy?  Good ... here we go then.

Well if you read my first post you know I have a Pyromancer, or a fire wizard.  It took me a little over 2 months of playing to hit Grand Master on her.  And when you outfit a Pyromancer the cheapest colors to use are pink, red, and black.  I dont care much for pink, especially when its HOT pink, so I used red and black.  And this is what I looked like:

  

Not too bad, although I think the armor looks like fishnet and  not scale armor. ;)

Most people who play this game use different avatars (or toons if you must) to represent themselves.  Not I, I liked the look of the first wiz I made, and I also liked the name.  So all of my wizards are Cassandra DragonHeart, and they all have the same grey hair, and brown eyes, and facial features.  

Then I started on my Life wiz or Theurgist as the game calls it.  Working on this wiz the "Unholy trio" was formed.  The Trio consists of myself, SorceressMiklai on her Ice wiz Sabrina FrostShard, and Animegrl on her Fire wiz Autumn FireBlade.  The three of us met at the Tri~Harvest event I spoke of before.  We had a blast saving the Spiral.  So many good times, laughing until we were crying, arguments about silly things, circular conversations, and leveling, always leveling.  Having questing buddies is Awesome.  I was the first of us to hit Grand Master, but they were not far behind!  And this is what my Life Grand looked like.

We hit Mali together, and it was a bittersweet moment, the Trio was done ...

What to do now?  Hmm ... I am a Merc, and everyone loves a good balance wiz, or Sorcerer ... so that was my next project.  A Grand Master Sorcerer.  I hit Grand on her just one week ago, the 15th of August.

And somewhere in the middle of all of this I started to do PvP, or Player versus Player, a form of direct dueling with other people instead of working the storyline.  My PvP partner is  The EarthWeavers on his death wiz, Vanessa EarthWeaver.   This lead to a brainstorm ... if I was going to PvP on a regular basis I needed to NOT look like the school I was in, it might fool the other side for those few seconds that they have a chance to change cards in a deck.  So first I farmed up all new Grand gear, and that in itself took some doing, silly Yeva SpiderKeeper and her charstriders!  Ended up with 2 queen spiders trying to get one pair of shoes!  So I had my new gear, designed my new look -- after asking advice of some friends, including Alric RavenSinger  and The EarthWeavers.  So my PvP gear eventually ended up looking like this:

 

Sort of hard to tell what school, at first glance I might be death or ice, white and black.  And I really like the top hat ;)

Well, farming for extra gear so you have TWO sets of each is tedious to say the least, and Kraysys was being very mean in giving me ONE hat, much less TWO, and so the idea was born -- each of my Grands would wear the same thing, they already look the same, so now they all dress the same.  So if I happen to be on your friends list, you may just have to dig a little deeper to see which of my wiz you have, cause each Cass is just a little bit different!

See ya 'round the Spiral!

I bet you are wondering who I am and why did I start a blog about Wizard101?

I had some friends playing the game, and they said “try it, think you will like it.”  I have never played a MMORGP before.  I like strategy games, like the “Age of” games, and games like “Dungeon Siege” which are basically bash ‘em ups.

So I sat down one evening and downloaded it and started answering Ambrose’s questions about my playing style and what I think is the most powerful things in the world, my favorite animal, and even jewel.  Ended up being a “Pyromancer.”  

Hmmm … is that me?  

Ended up playing for hours, by the time I was done I couldn’t keep my eyes open, my jaw hurt from yawning so much, and I was level 7.  And oh yeah, I was a pyro at heart. I didn’t care much for the fire cat, or those silly fire elves … but man did I fall in love with heckhound.

I struggled, as I think we all do, with figuring our just how the game works, what spells to use when, which wand to us  Hey I am a Pyro, means I should outfit myself with all fire!  WRONG!  What a waste of traps and blades when you use a wand attack!  Oh boy was I mad at myself.  Then I noticed that fire mobs would use ice shields, so I couldn’t get my prism on them. So how do I get rid of that pesky shield?  I know -- ice wand!  Then it hit me, I was finally figuring out this game.

Time went on, found myself playing for HOURS each night, addicted I was, and I had it BAD!  LOL

I was flying solo all the way through Krok and into MarleyBone.  Each world was different, unique -- things to master, to learn, to grow from.  Started making some friends.  Ran into this guy named Blaze NightBreeze somewhere in MarleyBone, he sensed the “fire” I had to get my wizard leveled up -- I WANTED a  Grand so BAD!  He offered to switch to his Grand to help me ... we ended up spending hours together exploring the Spiral.  He gave me my first glimpse of DragonSpyre, warning me not to stray from the sidewalk as the mobs were fierce up here. 

Then I discovered Wizard101 Central when looking for game tips.  What a wonderful resource I thought.  I joined, posted for some help, posted some thoughts -- do NOT port to me without asking please!  Found another obsession ;)  Checking the threads to find out what I didn't know, which was a whole lot.

Then I ran across a post by Christo DeathGiver -- something called Mercenaries  for Hire was going to have an event called the “Tri~Harvest”.  I wasn’t quiet up to level yet, needed to be level 45, but I was so close!  I worked even harder, if that's possible, and was level 45 when the “Tri” came up.  The Mercs helped me through my quest, putting me at the front of the line so I could finish my quest.  What nice people I was thinking to myself.  And I went to the other places the event was going on.  I think I spent 20 hours there over the weekend.  Made SO many good friends, had such a good time.  My family thought I was nuts, laughing at my computer screen, rushing through things that HAD to be done around the house so I could back into the game.

That weekend was a turning point, both in my “wiz” life and in real life.  Made so many very good friends, and in time I was asked to become one of those “Mercs”,  one of those people I SO admired for helping many many others get their gear.

So now, as I travel around the Spiral I still help others, but now its a calling and a career ;)

So, if you ever see a Cassandra DragonHeart stop and say ‘Hi”, cause a Cass, is a Cass, is a Cass.

See ya ‘round the Spiral!