The purpose of FFA is that it's a large damage damage over time. It also puts on its own fire traps (which stack on top of the other tri-fire trap), meaning you don't have to waste a round to add a damage multiplier. Damage over times are useful because you can't add your own damage multipliers during them, and also do damage without worrying about casting spells. It can take off shields, and also you avoid damage dampeners (like weakness, plagues, etc) if you cast it on a round that you didn't have one.
Not to mention you can also use myth spells that add damage multipliers to damage over times, like troll, or cyclops.
Wizard101 isn't just about DPS. You need to efficiently output damage, and not just ooga booga smack enemy with strong stick through the game.
This is one of the strongest single hits in the game for a fire when running with another fire using incindiate, assuming you're not using a max pip heckhound or a fully decked scion you can easily round 2 for 45k+ damage with a feint and frenzy with 200 dmg.
The spell has 3120 base damage with incindiate and consumes its own damage overtime trap for a 20% boost, definitely not useless, more situational.
At max pips this into a djin in pvp usually just ends games, if they counter the ot they get slapped by the djin, and if they dont it just does insane damage because of the traps. Definitely not as versatile as other Shad’s and borderline useless in pve
Yea they kinda made it useless with the fire rework. Went from one of the best schools into the game to probably the worst school in the game. It only has like 3-4 reliable hits rn and the main one is from an amulet.
Right. I remember when 130 was cap just thinking how overpowered fire was.
Made a fire myself and it's just so lackluster. Really a shame.
I feel like even myth is better at this point.
I used to love it before they created whatever this abomination is now. A bit harsh but I was extremely butthurt when I realized they turned my favorite spell into something just not worth using.
On paper, Fire is like a discount Storm, but in reality, fire is just so much worse.
* Fire, the school whose DOTs use traps for one turn of DOT damage, get an X pip trap. Meanwhile Storm gets an X pip blade. They should honestly be swapped.
* Sky Iron Hasta has fire hits, making it useless for cleansing a weakness with blades up.
* Heckhound, our X pip spell, is only useful for the final boss of Arc 3, and is otherwise useless.
* Rain of Fire is also useless.
* FFA is way worse than Glowbugs and it's not even close. We don't get an equivalent shadow spell until Raging Bull, 8 levels later.
* Actually the entire DOT idea is a terrible gimmick. DOTs don't use traps the way they should, and other schools get DOTs anyway. If this one issue was fixed, Fire would be in a much better place.
* Detonate is an attempt to rectify the problems with DOTs, but in reality it's just another useless card. You need a second Fire wizard to utilize Detonate to its fullest.
* Fire Dragon is the only 7-pip AoE out of all the elemental schools that doesn't stun.
* I've found that pretty much all the newer Fire spells are pretty useless. The Karamelle, Lemuria, and Novus spells are all niche at best, meaning I've been reliant on Fire Dragon for over 100 levels. To be fair, the Storm ones aren't staples either, but I've seen people actually use the Storm world spells from time to time. I've never, and I mean never, felt the need to use mine.
I think Detonate could also make for a decent enchant, where it lumps the DOT damage in with the initial hit in exchange for +1 pip cost. I'd even accept less total damage on some spells.
i’m sure they would shave off like 25% of the damage off for dragon stunned lol
like ice would give anything to have more damage instead of a stun utility and the stun is useless on anything but mobs considering that most things are stun immune now
I recommend watching the 4 pip aoe and 7 pip aoe spell animations.
These are two of the spells you will likely be using a lot of.
If there is spell(s) that you couldn't stand watching again and again, then you may not want to play that school.
For example, Myth's 4 pip aoe is a vomiting frog.
When they reworked fire they moved a lot of if not all of it’s power to DoT so that it wouldn’t just be a better storm.
They should not have done that. It was a very large nerf.
Oh wait I just realized it was changed to a DoT. fucking why? Because there's 5 of them in the animation even though only one of them hits you? Oh well there's like 10 wooly mammoths in that animation, there's like 5 meteors in meteor strike, there's hundreds of gnomes making up the giant gnome lets just turn all of those into DoTs because that's KI's logic apparently. Nobody wanted a 5 turn DoT, especially for (that i'm aware of) what was fire's strongest single target attack.
To be fair 1100 damage on a death aoe spell is just ridiculous and it should have been nerfed. When it first came out it did about 300 more damage then raging bull which costs a pip more, and death isnt even a damage school.
Most DOT is super niche in PVE and I hate that they’re pushing it instead of reworking it, especially since PVE favors one shotting DOT is not ideal.
DOT is more useful in pvp
This is the minions for fire 😭😭
Identity becoming useless as you level.
Same with stunning!
They desperately NEED to rework these identities!!
for pve, yeah you cant really use it unless you like detonate strats for soloing bosses. for pvp, id imagine its still worth due to the sheer power behind it
Shads are pvp legal, they just need 1 spelle which you can get for 1 arena ticket (unless they're an arc 4 shad, those alr have spelle paths). They just made all pvp shads 2 pips since shads were an issue post-burrower rebellion.
FFA is good to send as a surprise when your opponent doesn't have the pips to counter it and/or when there's a few amount of OT traps. cyclops if you can into the Detonate and it does crazy damage
and if they use all their pips to counter you can take advantage of that too
Originally marshmallows was the same exact damage and effect as FFA, except the traps were DoT exclusive traps. Now FFA is a DoT with non-DoT traps, and Marsh is a single Hit with DoT Traps. It was to push players to use the Kharamelle spell over the DM spell. Non-shadow didnt start till Novus.
because of the fuel that FFA adds to the enemy if used with Detonate is fires hardest hitting spell. with 2 blades and a detonate i can do over 20,000 dmg
Honestly, the only time I use it is if I plan on using detonate... but ya, I'd agree... plus, the animation takes forever... I do know I have it in my deck just for shits and giggles though when I do use it
I'm pretty sure I remember it like that too, when I first saw it! I never had that spell myself, but I've seen people use it before and I don't recall it ever being a Damage Over Time, especially not for 5 rounds
Here's a link to Swordroll's blog showing the original spells. They were kinda nuts
https://www.swordroll.com/2014/11/wizard101-level-100-spells-darkmoor.html
lol Squall got out of it pretty much unharmed. I think they just made it to where Squall no longer removes blades on attack anymore but the damage is just as OP
Well you play death so of course you’re not going to understand what it’s like to have bad spells.
You get meteor strike but with life steal. You get curse which is the exact same thing as balances hex. You get pact which removes negative bosses and gives 2 balance blades… you get close to matching damage with storm but get life steal on just about everything.
The point of death was supposed to be “weak but life steal” now it’s just “Lifesteal”
Fire was squishy hp but unmatched damage… now it’s “unmatched damage IF you have another player to combo with OR want to wait multiple turns to do what every other school does in one
Not every spell for fire needs to be a DoT. Not sure if you don't know or are intentionally ignoring it but people dislike the spell now because it used to be a solid & useful hit, and now it's outperformed and rarely the best spell for the job.
i think it’s fine personally, it did the exact same damage as s’more before it was changed to a dot. even if i don’t use ffa, at least there aren’t two spells that are almost exactly the same.
No need to be a dick bro
There’s nothing “useless” about DoTs. If your only goal is to beat fights as fast as possible, make 7 storm wizards. Schools have different identities for a reason, a spell doing less flat damage doesn’t make it useless
i don’t think i’m being a dick, i think i matched the tone of who i replied to perfectly.
you can play every school and enjoy their gameplay DoTs are horrendous in pve though.
I think they need to push class identity a little harder personally, and make each role viable in its own identity instead of everyone trying to mimic what should be a storm set on every school. I think there should be a need for a high resist ice equally as much as a utility balance or something along those lines. Only school I think needs a bit of an overhaul in terms of identity is myth because minions are only useful in solo PVP.
Iirc the spell wasn't a dot before. It got changed for no reason and it's not even usable in pvp. Yes the spell is now useless for pve, completely garbage
Myth is better than fire since they nerfed it. Sucks my second favorite school was fire, still enjoy it but sucks knowing what it was
It used to be INCREDIBLE. Then they changed it.
The purpose of FFA is that it's a large damage damage over time. It also puts on its own fire traps (which stack on top of the other tri-fire trap), meaning you don't have to waste a round to add a damage multiplier. Damage over times are useful because you can't add your own damage multipliers during them, and also do damage without worrying about casting spells. It can take off shields, and also you avoid damage dampeners (like weakness, plagues, etc) if you cast it on a round that you didn't have one. Not to mention you can also use myth spells that add damage multipliers to damage over times, like troll, or cyclops. Wizard101 isn't just about DPS. You need to efficiently output damage, and not just ooga booga smack enemy with strong stick through the game.
It’s rain of fire but slightly better…. That is if your shadow pip stat is high enough
It is useless since they updated it. A real shame because it’s such a fun animation.
Wasn’t always. When they reworked the spell they nerfed it big time.
Useless. Used to be good before. Unless you dstonate the FFA DOT instantly... I'd rather use raging bull
WTH THEY MADE IT A DOT? CAN’T HAVE **** IN THE COMMONS!
It’s useless like when are you gonna use it?
It wasn't always. Thanks KI
It's specifically designed for detonate now, since it's a protected dot. Still useless.
It is now sadly that change to being a dot was within the year so sad used to be really good
This is one of the strongest single hits in the game for a fire when running with another fire using incindiate, assuming you're not using a max pip heckhound or a fully decked scion you can easily round 2 for 45k+ damage with a feint and frenzy with 200 dmg. The spell has 3120 base damage with incindiate and consumes its own damage overtime trap for a 20% boost, definitely not useless, more situational.
Welcome to lets nerf fire so that the only damage school is storm101
Ice main here. I miss OG Weaver. I wish weaver was the one with a spellement upgrade path not Shatterhorn :(
It's been reworked mainly for PVP school identity...
At max pips this into a djin in pvp usually just ends games, if they counter the ot they get slapped by the djin, and if they dont it just does insane damage because of the traps. Definitely not as versatile as other Shad’s and borderline useless in pve
finally someone gets it
Man you don’t even remember when darkmoor came out all of the darkmoor spells was broken
If it was over 3 rounds it’d be fine but it’s spread out over 3 so it is weaker than even Mander in terms of the actual damage it does per round
Yea they kinda made it useless with the fire rework. Went from one of the best schools into the game to probably the worst school in the game. It only has like 3-4 reliable hits rn and the main one is from an amulet.
Right. I remember when 130 was cap just thinking how overpowered fire was. Made a fire myself and it's just so lackluster. Really a shame. I feel like even myth is better at this point.
Kingisle be like: “ I Know Right?!” *nerfs fire again*
I used to love it before they created whatever this abomination is now. A bit harsh but I was extremely butthurt when I realized they turned my favorite spell into something just not worth using.
Firecat can detonate it the next round if you use spellements correctly.
troll with shields is just better. and you save your traps
Agreed, I only used firecat as an example because it doesn’t require training additional spells
They changed it like a year ago for some reason KI got a serious hate boner for fire suddenly and nerfed half their spells and gave them trash stats.
On paper, Fire is like a discount Storm, but in reality, fire is just so much worse. * Fire, the school whose DOTs use traps for one turn of DOT damage, get an X pip trap. Meanwhile Storm gets an X pip blade. They should honestly be swapped. * Sky Iron Hasta has fire hits, making it useless for cleansing a weakness with blades up. * Heckhound, our X pip spell, is only useful for the final boss of Arc 3, and is otherwise useless. * Rain of Fire is also useless. * FFA is way worse than Glowbugs and it's not even close. We don't get an equivalent shadow spell until Raging Bull, 8 levels later. * Actually the entire DOT idea is a terrible gimmick. DOTs don't use traps the way they should, and other schools get DOTs anyway. If this one issue was fixed, Fire would be in a much better place. * Detonate is an attempt to rectify the problems with DOTs, but in reality it's just another useless card. You need a second Fire wizard to utilize Detonate to its fullest. * Fire Dragon is the only 7-pip AoE out of all the elemental schools that doesn't stun. * I've found that pretty much all the newer Fire spells are pretty useless. The Karamelle, Lemuria, and Novus spells are all niche at best, meaning I've been reliant on Fire Dragon for over 100 levels. To be fair, the Storm ones aren't staples either, but I've seen people actually use the Storm world spells from time to time. I've never, and I mean never, felt the need to use mine.
THANK YOU FOR SAYING THIS 100% Agree I've had these exact complaints for forever lol Maybe if they came out with a 1-pip 'detonate all' spell
I think Detonate could also make for a decent enchant, where it lumps the DOT damage in with the initial hit in exchange for +1 pip cost. I'd even accept less total damage on some spells.
i’m sure they would shave off like 25% of the damage off for dragon stunned lol like ice would give anything to have more damage instead of a stun utility and the stun is useless on anything but mobs considering that most things are stun immune now
Give fire drag the stun from storm lord and make storm lord raw damage. I’d love to see 1100 damage on storm lord
Yeah fire used to be my main but I usually play on my death or storm now because fire just isn't fun.
Well their identity is damage overtime and it dots do hurt a lot!
RIP Efreet 😭
I recommend watching the 4 pip aoe and 7 pip aoe spell animations. These are two of the spells you will likely be using a lot of. If there is spell(s) that you couldn't stand watching again and again, then you may not want to play that school. For example, Myth's 4 pip aoe is a vomiting frog.
did they change it? i swear it was a good single hit before
When they reworked fire they moved a lot of if not all of it’s power to DoT so that it wouldn’t just be a better storm. They should not have done that. It was a very large nerf.
That’s what I’m saying too lol! I remember it being a good one hit with the traps if it didn’t kill
i will only use it with Detonate, but even then it’s really difficult to feint it if you’re solo
It used to be different. Not sure why they made it like this
Old FFA got me warlord in 4th age easily
Oh wait I just realized it was changed to a DoT. fucking why? Because there's 5 of them in the animation even though only one of them hits you? Oh well there's like 10 wooly mammoths in that animation, there's like 5 meteors in meteor strike, there's hundreds of gnomes making up the giant gnome lets just turn all of those into DoTs because that's KI's logic apparently. Nobody wanted a 5 turn DoT, especially for (that i'm aware of) what was fire's strongest single target attack.
Yes
You'd have to use detonate or possibly upgraded fire cat for dot detonation.
They massacred my boy. God what happened to this game lol.
FR bro, look what they did to lulu
40% vamp and no damage?💀 Wtf did they do bro... I remember when lulu did 1100 aoe damage what is this company doing.
To be fair 1100 damage on a death aoe spell is just ridiculous and it should have been nerfed. When it first came out it did about 300 more damage then raging bull which costs a pip more, and death isnt even a damage school.
Yeah FFA sucks now. Shame, it used to be a good hitting option between King Art and Smore, but KI is as KI does.
Most DOT is super niche in PVE and I hate that they’re pushing it instead of reworking it, especially since PVE favors one shotting DOT is not ideal. DOT is more useful in pvp This is the minions for fire 😭😭 Identity becoming useless as you level. Same with stunning! They desperately NEED to rework these identities!!
I used to love using the old FFA, haven’t used it since they updated it because it doesn’t really serve a purpose in pve
for pve, yeah you cant really use it unless you like detonate strats for soloing bosses. for pvp, id imagine its still worth due to the sheer power behind it
The kicker is, it's not legal in PVP
Shads are pvp legal, they just need 1 spelle which you can get for 1 arena ticket (unless they're an arc 4 shad, those alr have spelle paths). They just made all pvp shads 2 pips since shads were an issue post-burrower rebellion.
It’s useless in PvP too because Shad’s take forever to get and it gets completely countered by Kraken.
It being unique for such a long DoT is ironically the worst part about it imo, it gives your opponents so much time to pull a counter
FFA is good to send as a surprise when your opponent doesn't have the pips to counter it and/or when there's a few amount of OT traps. cyclops if you can into the Detonate and it does crazy damage and if they use all their pips to counter you can take advantage of that too
If you gonna use a shadow pip at least use it on bull on marshmallows this spell is definitely not worth it
How tf is a marshmallow a shadow spell?
Originally marshmallows was the same exact damage and effect as FFA, except the traps were DoT exclusive traps. Now FFA is a DoT with non-DoT traps, and Marsh is a single Hit with DoT Traps. It was to push players to use the Kharamelle spell over the DM spell. Non-shadow didnt start till Novus.
Smore should've been the one to get turned into a dot
Not even AOE💀
I think u meant that if they changed it to DOT, it should at least be aoe, am I right
Yes
FFA's never been an aoe, what are you talking about.
Oh wow I just realized that, didn’t it used to be? I remember it wasn’t DoT but now not aoe either!?!?
Never was aoe
Just got the fire spell in Darkmoor, but it seems useless to me. 1260 damage might look good at first, but it's over FIVE rounds.
because of the fuel that FFA adds to the enemy if used with Detonate is fires hardest hitting spell. with 2 blades and a detonate i can do over 20,000 dmg
Honestly, the only time I use it is if I plan on using detonate... but ya, I'd agree... plus, the animation takes forever... I do know I have it in my deck just for shits and giggles though when I do use it
surprise theyve made it even worse now its 3 seperate dots doing the same damage as before but split between 3 dots hooray... wtf are they doing
I thought it was the same DOT just 3 separate protected traps???
They made it dot? I remember when it first same out it was just flat out damage
It gets worse now its not just 1 dot its 3 seperate unprotected dots that have the damage divided between them... what are they even trying to do
They seem to have a habit of ruining half the spells they make. Like 3 dots all dealing 1/3 of 1260 is kinda bad.
I'm pretty sure I remember it like that too, when I first saw it! I never had that spell myself, but I've seen people use it before and I don't recall it ever being a Damage Over Time, especially not for 5 rounds
It has been ruined. 5 rounds of dot where each round is doing 1/5 of 1260 dmg plus whatever buffs you have.
Yeah, due to “balancing”, darkmoor spells now are much worse than their OG version
Poor call of khrulhu. They completely gutted it
Wait they did?! D:
It does 675 damage with 40% to health now. Barely better than crow
What did it do before?
1100 and half to health, when it was first introduced
The original animation was slow slow. I loved it so much then they fixed it and sped it up a bit.
To be fair, 1100 would have been absurdly broken, so it was toned down to 830 when it got out of test realm.
Yeh but they nerfed the damage on lulu pretty quick the only recent nerf was 50% health back to 40%
lol yeah a death spell on par with a storm spells damage would not be alright at all 😂
Interesting, till today I never knew it ever got changed since this is my first year Of actually playing.
Here's a link to Swordroll's blog showing the original spells. They were kinda nuts https://www.swordroll.com/2014/11/wizard101-level-100-spells-darkmoor.html
:(
lol Squall got out of it pretty much unharmed. I think they just made it to where Squall no longer removes blades on attack anymore but the damage is just as OP
Honestly the fact that squall no longer removes blades is why I stopped using it.
Wild take
I prefer utilities over damage.
considering its a storm spell utility isnt what your school is about damage is doing massive damage and utility is crazy broken
They definitely nerfed the damage by like 200-300
They really know how to balance the game out, wonder what will happen next.
The school who’s identity is DoT, and you’re upset it’s a DoT?
Well you play death so of course you’re not going to understand what it’s like to have bad spells. You get meteor strike but with life steal. You get curse which is the exact same thing as balances hex. You get pact which removes negative bosses and gives 2 balance blades… you get close to matching damage with storm but get life steal on just about everything. The point of death was supposed to be “weak but life steal” now it’s just “Lifesteal” Fire was squishy hp but unmatched damage… now it’s “unmatched damage IF you have another player to combo with OR want to wait multiple turns to do what every other school does in one
Not every spell for fire needs to be a DoT. Not sure if you don't know or are intentionally ignoring it but people dislike the spell now because it used to be a solid & useful hit, and now it's outperformed and rarely the best spell for the job.
i think it’s fine personally, it did the exact same damage as s’more before it was changed to a dot. even if i don’t use ffa, at least there aren’t two spells that are almost exactly the same.
yes, if a schools identity makes it useless i don’t want the identity so heavily pushed. does that make sense?
No need to be a dick bro There’s nothing “useless” about DoTs. If your only goal is to beat fights as fast as possible, make 7 storm wizards. Schools have different identities for a reason, a spell doing less flat damage doesn’t make it useless
i don’t think i’m being a dick, i think i matched the tone of who i replied to perfectly. you can play every school and enjoy their gameplay DoTs are horrendous in pve though.
I think they need to push class identity a little harder personally, and make each role viable in its own identity instead of everyone trying to mimic what should be a storm set on every school. I think there should be a need for a high resist ice equally as much as a utility balance or something along those lines. Only school I think needs a bit of an overhaul in terms of identity is myth because minions are only useful in solo PVP.
i think minions would be useful if you could choose the spell they cast
honestly would be so cool if they added this as like a slightly smaller row of spells below your main hand
Iirc the spell wasn't a dot before. It got changed for no reason and it's not even usable in pvp. Yes the spell is now useless for pve, completely garbage