July 6, 2012 June 6, 2021
Tips for Wizard101
PvP Beginners
When you are just starting out in PvP, matches can seem a little overwhelming. Success all gets down to how you construct your deck, and that can be confusing when you’re not sure which spells are best suited to your wizard. Some cards are must-haves. Some moves are fatal. And winning, no matter how prepared you are, is rarely an easy task. So it helps to have some idea of how to organize your deck and avoid the small missteps that can throw off a battle. What follows is a list of basic moves to make…and mistakes to avoid…when beginning PvP.
1. Manage your health and your opponent’s.
Some people get so focused on hits, that they forget to pay attention to their health. Make sure that you are watching your health at all times, and are taking steps to keep it at a reasonable level. Your deck should include plenty of shields (for a variety of schools), along with heals, so that you can manage your health and stay in the fight. Also, pay close attention to your opponents health. To the extent that you can, you want to limit their ability to heal out of trouble. Infection is a must, as it will allow you to weaken their efforts to gain health. Time your infections and hits well, and you can give your opponent more problems than they can handle.
2. Don’t hit into shields
An opponent shields…you can’t remove it…so you cast your hit anyway: this will generate very little damage and waste pips. Shields are an inevitable part of PvP, so before any match, make sure your deck includes a method for dealing with them. School-specific wand hits can do this as well low pip hits from minions. There are many ways to remove shields, so think carefully about how to set up and land your hits. From first position, shields are easier to manage. From second, you may very well hit shields, but proper deck construction will still give you options for establishing your attacks.
3. Build pips
It’s a simple suggestion, but vitally important. If you build just enough pips to use your big hit then use it, you’ll have no way to follow up effectively. Building extra pips before launching your offense allows you to perform combo hits and it leaves you with options in case heals or other defensive moves are necessary. Use zero pip spells (like shields, weakness, etc.) frequently to keep your pip count high. And use 1 to 2 pip spells to burn off white pips and generate gold ones. Just think of pips as the fuel for your offense. The more you have, the greater your damage potential.
4. Don’t use off-school hits
Power pips (yellow pips that have a value of 2) only count towards spells from your primary school. This means that off-school hits will treat your power pips the same as white ones (that is, as if they have a value of 1). It’s a costly waste of momentum that can prevent you from building and sustaining an attack during a match. Use hits from your primary school in order to maximize your fire power. (The exception: mastery amulets allow you to use power pips from the school of that amulet.)
5. Anticipate your opponent’s hits
Not only is it important to build and manage your pips, you also have to watch the pips of your opponent. If you quickly determine their school, you can then count their pips and know when their attack spells are potentially active. Counting pips is a great way to anticipate what’s coming and respond ahead of time. It takes practice, but the more you battle, the easier it gets to interpret the other sides pip-count.
6. Use your minion? kill theirs
Minions can be a potent weapon to use in battle. Each one is different, but they can heal, break shields, give shields, inflict damage, donate pips they have, in short, a great way to annoy your opponent. Put at least a few in your deck and bring them out often. They can be so effective, in fact, that you want to kill minions summoned by your opponent. Don’t let their minion stay in the fight and throw off your rhythm use yours, kill theirs; many fights will go to the wizard who most effectively used their minions.
7. Equip useful gear and pets
Before a match, look carefully at the stats for each item of your gear. Choosing the right gear can be a complex and difficult process?but when you are new to arena, it’s okay to just visit the bazaar and buy the best items available for your level. (Items in the crown shop and from packs may also offer improved stats.) Any improvement over your current gear is good but in PvP, resist is an important number; do your best to wear gear that boost this as high as you can get it. Also, pets with useful cards and talents can make an enormous difference in a match.
8. Boost your hits
Just casting a hit is not enough to seal the deal in a PvP match; first, you have to set the hit up. As mentioned, this involves removing shields, but it also means boosting your attack’s damage as much as possible. Blades, bubbles, enchantments (like monstrous, gargantuan, etc.) are all great ways to enhance your spells and increase their fire power. Traps, on the other hand, should be avoided, at least when you are starting out. These are generally ineffective, since opponents will quickly shield over them. This wastes a round you could have spent using other spells…and they take up precious space in your deck. Avoid traps, choose other boosts instead.
9. Spend training points wisely
Some cards are must-haves, to such an extent that misspent training points can seriously harm your chances in arena. One example: it is impossible to win consistently without reshuffle. You may not run out of cards every match, but as you rank up, reshuffling becomes a necessity. If you have no training points available, you can either use treasure versions of these spells or visit Mr. Lincoln in Golem Court to retrain.
10. Practice good sportsmanship
Until you get a feel for your deck, and develop a sense of which strategies work best for you, PvP can be a frustrating experience. Just know that if you express anger in a match or insult your opponents you will develop a reputation as a sore loser. Whether you win or lose, good sportsmanship will let people know that you are mature enough to handle the ups and downs of PvP. When a match ends, just say GG (good game) and you can’t go wrong. Also, especially when starting out, it is helpful to view losses as a learning tool…they let you know where your weak points are and give you a chance to make important changes to your deck. It sounds weird, but losing is a great way to become a solid player. We all start somewhere, so there is no shame in defeat. Try some matches, tinker with your deck after each one and with time, the battles get easier. More than anything, just go into PvP determined to have fun. Enjoy it- practice good sportsmanship- and you’ll already have a mental edge on most of your opponents.
