Wizard101 PvP Highlight: 90 Death vs. 90 Fire

It has only been a few weeks now since I started dueling, and I'm still only doing practice, but I've had some interesting matches. There was one in particular, just yesterday, in fact, that took forty-five minutes and was quite exciting. Fortunately, I was going first.

I was fighting a Fire character with a Life Mastery Amulet. As with most Fire students, she had high damage output and critical, while maintaining decent resistance. With her amulet, finishing her off would be tough. Fire has quite a bag of tricks. First, there's the DoT (Damage over Time) spells. They range from two pips to nine pips, and come in all forms, from cheap 2-pip Fire Elves, to AoE (Area of Effect - usually meaning that it hits all enemies) 9-pip volcanoes! They've got hit-heals, -90% weaknesses, self hits, and a number of other things. This one also had Satyr and Feint.

Starting Off

We both began fairly quietly, building pips and all. However, she threw a Feint. Normally, I'll use self-hits to combat these, but I didn't have one handy. Instead, I used a Feint myself. If you didn't know, the 30% placed on yourself is technically a Feint, so it is used instead of the 70% piece.

The Gloves Come Off

Not long after that, the damage boosts got big. She put up her aura that increases damage by 25% as well as a Fireblade. Having cast the Feint, I was able to use an Avenging Fossil before she had a chance to shield, and do about 1500 damage. One quick Satyr would negate that, however.

I realized that, to kill her, I would need her down in a health range that allowed for a big finish. Doing that meant a slower and quieter process of getting there. I needed to create a mentality that I wasn't posing a major threat as far as damage was concerned, but that I planned on slowly killing her off. I did so with DoT spells of my own - Poisons and Bone Dragons. Not large hits, but, compiled, they do a decent amount of damage.

Healing Galore

I noticed that she had quite a few Satyrs... and a healing pet. These allowed her to get past my poisons and find a comfortable health range. This made things difficult. Fortunately, I'd packed some Infections. So had she. The both of us used them frequently on each other, but they were normally knocked off by Unicorn on our pets. She had to Satyr through some of them, but I kept only two Satyrs and many Pixies to keep up with Infections. I used those.

Combating Hits

I had a variety of ways to avoid getting hit. I liked Bad Juju, which did a couple hundred damage for a -90% damage weakness, but cost 3 pips. I also had Tower Shields, and a couple of Volcanic Shields, which came in handy.

The important part was timing them right. Being in first, this wasn't as much of a challenge, but still tough. Some of her hits suffered the damage reduction, while I guessed wrong with others, and she "wanded" them off. 

A Minion's Assistance

When you summon a minion, you invest pips in it. The hope is that you'll get more pips worth of spells out of it than what you invested. I decided to summon a 6-pip Death minion with Animate. These are awfully useful, casting Weakness, as well as Deathtrap and Deathblade, plus Fire Elves and Death spells from Ghoul to Vampire. Although this Fire enemy didn't shield much, she did have heals. However, these extra damaging spells and weaknesses really helped.

As an investment, I wanted to protect mine, so I would occasionally use a Tower Shield on the minion instead of me. As she got more pips, I would use Bad Juju to prevent a big AoE from taking out the minion. She was smart, though, and if she had to hit through a Juju, she used Efreet or something like that. When she finally did Fire Dragon, she did so right through another Juju, leaving the minion mostly alive.

Combating Weaknesses

Weaknesses can be a big problem for me. I keep my damage output fairly low to begin with, so weakness or a -90% weakness from Efreet are no good. Fortunately, to combat that, I keep a high resistance, and use a lot of self-hit spells, like Sacrifice and Bad Juju. These will clean traps off of me, or remove the weaknesses. They also either prevent her from using a big hit or help me get through my Infections.

Minion Down!

After a couple of AoEs and a Fire Elf, my minion was nearing dead. My health as low as well. If I did do something this next round, she (my minion) would die. Fortunately, I packed two treasure cards - a Reshuffle and a Rebirth. I used that Rebirth, and fully healed the minion, adding Absorbs to both of us, and boosting my health.

A Foiled Plan

I made a plan to stack my regular Feint and potent Feint, and follow it up with an Avenging Fossil. Because she had no shields and had no packed Immolate, it'd be tough for her to defend against. I waited for a turn where my minion was not using an attack, and prepared the Feint.

However, she was smart. She realized I was running low on self-hits, and used Efreet. With my 70% Feint and a Deathtrap in place, I was forced to use my Sacrifice instead of Avenging Fossil to remove the -90% charm. What was worse was that my minion was throwing a Vampire that would eat both traps. Though the Vampire did do over 800 damage, I was now lacking any sort of setup.

Stealing an Advantage

I decided to use my 80% Feint and cast Dr. Von's Monster. Not only would it decrease her healing just a bit, but it'd also hit her and heal me. With everything in place, my hit was successful. She was now buried in Weaknesses and was beginning to run low on health. The 1600 damage from this spell brought her down to around 400, and healed me up to around 4000. My minion followed with a Vampire that nearly killed her.

However, her pet activated, burning the Infections, and she used a Satyr. She said she had to go, at which point I noted her level of skill, especially having gone second against a Death's variety of tricks.

An Abrupt End

I was feeling better and better about my standing, especially with my Reshuffle still around. However, though I had the pip advantage, health advantage, and still had my minion, I wouldn't get a chance to see. She ran out of cards, and the battle concluded. After a friendly post-match chat, and forty-five minutes of good ol' fighting, we both returned to the Arena.

Conclusion

I think that practice PvP, based on this, can still be extremely competitive. I've fought some 1v1 matches in the past in ranked, and haven't encountered people like this. Furthermore, some people are a little more ill-mannered there. That's why I think Pirate101 PvP should stay practice-only, but that's another topic. So, have you ever had any epic matches like this?

Thanks for reading, and see you in the Spiral!