Tier lists are always a hot topic for discussion among the PvP community for Wizard101. We’ve seen them posted on all variations of social media from twitter to youtube videos and always with their own hot take or twist. I myself have even posted on twitter to try and throw my own spin on a PvP tier list for the current season. We’ve seen every school be on top at one point or another. Now its time to further define what schools are on top and why.
What Determines a School’s Tier
These PvP tier lists are drawn up from a multitude of factors. Stats, Spell quality, and how well they deal with ward talents as well as their counter matchups are all important details. Every change, no matter how small, can have a huge impact on what schools manage to do well. New spells, treasure cards, pet talents or spellements could also have a major impact on each school’s tier. Below are the “Tier ratings” and what they mean for any one school:
Tier 1
Top tier school, near unbeatable/very easy to win with.
Tier 1.5
Very good school, easy to play, but within reason.
Tier 2
Mid tier school, requires a little more thinking to play properly.
Tier 2.5
Low-mid tier school, takes a combination of luck/skill to win consistently.
Tier 3
Very hard to win, needs near-perfect draws.
Tier 3.5
Lowest of the low, very difficult to succeed with, may need a miracle.
How “definitive” is this Tier list?
It’s important to remember, things can change throughout a season. This is by no means 100% accurate. This is simply my own opinion on how good each school could be based on what we know about the recent update or whats popular for each school. So take this with a grain of salt. Just because one school is listed LAST does not mean you can’t win or even do well on that school. PvP does ultimately come down to a combination of luck and skill.
Previous Tier List
I may have missed Season 9, but you can still see my Season 8 PvP tier list from last June. As a very brief overview of what Season 9’s tier list might have looked like:
Life and Balance were above all others by a pretty wide margin with the best trap counters and ability to stabilize with no clear cut weaknesses. Every other school suffered from one or more matchups that required jumping through hoops that sometimes were too tight to squeeze through.
Season 10
Season 9 showed us the a clear divide from the top tier schools and then everyone else. We watched the Life and Balance schools nearly dominate the top pages of the leaderboards, with roughly 73% of the first 3 pages being one of those two schools.
This Season’s PvP Meta
Since my last tier list, there have been quite a few changes made. The biggest factor is by far the increased cost to shadow enhanced spells in advanced combat. These spells now require two shadow pips to cast, slowing down matches significantly. Players now play more for gambits, which has led to increased stacking strategies and two schools being overly dominant. Slower schools benefitted to a slower shadow pip growth and offensive schools lost their ability to shrike and threaten a shadow enhanced hit.
The second notable change is to Centaur and Immolate. Both spells had their utility changed to remove traps in exchange for your own hanging effects. However, even with these two spells trapstacking is still a huge problem in this current meta.
As it stands right now, Storm players have to lean more heavily on their Scion gambit (4x blades) for a kill. A lot of players in the arena right now are still trap stacking, so packing and using Centaur to set it up in one turn is very good right now. Just keep in mind, the blade counters are more universally usable and more common right now. Spells like Banshee are good even if the opponent isn’t leveraging the hanging effects it provides.
Healing Storm is still decent as well, possibly giving you better odds against schools like Ice, Balance, and even Life. Just be ready to deal with Gearhead and Skeletal Pirate.
Cons
Storm suffered the most from the change to shadow enhanced spells. Requiring two means you can no longer cast Shrike and use Rusalka’s Wrath as a finisher. This is true for all schools, but for storm specifically, losing that sequence makes the matchups against any defensive schools or even offensive ones with high resist much harder to win.
Aside from that, their stats are still suffering and the blade counters are still much stronger and more pip efficient than anything available for Storm. Storm players should be aware they need to play very close to perfectly to have a real chance at the higher ranks. Their best matchup is pretty much only Fire. Furthermore, there just isn’t that many of them in queue right now.
Final Thoughts
Fire and Storm both need some help right now. It’s hard to pin point exactly what the school needs. Players could point fingers at the stats, their spells not doing enough damage, or utility not being good enough. For me, I am leaning more towards the lack of good low pip chip hits. Compare Storm to Death, Ice, or even Balance.
Death has Banshee, a spell that does good damage for 3 pips while also having very strong utility attached to it. Same goes for Snowman for Ice and Scorpion for Balance. These spells all have a purpose aside from damage. Storm Shark does good damage if you meet the condition, but that condition is temporary. Having it in hand at the exact time is tricky. Lightning bats doesn’t make sense to pack because Kraken gives you a better hanging effect and can remove two DOTs instead of only one.
Life isn’t as favorable of a matchup as it could be and I think part of that is due to the inability to efficiently counter HOTs. Even with HOT counters within their arc 1 spellements, the spells intended to answer them are too expensive. We do not have a cheap answer to them. Triton’s effect is very good but cost too many pips. Giving this utility to Storm Shark instead could vastly change that matchup for the better
Same as Storm, the shadow pip increase hurt this schools offense. Having better stats gives them an edge over Storm, in addition to having a trap gambit they can still rely on. When it comes to their stats, they have the most flexible stats to run a secondary school getting as high as 48-50 pierce for both their main school and their secondary. In addition to this, Helephant can punch through shields for their other school of choice.
Fire does still have options open for how you choose to play the school. Almost any strategy can work, but will require a combination of luck and skill no matter which route you take.
Cons
Most fires in the arena now are making attempts to “mimic the Myth school” by trapstacking into a kill. This does work, but is far from ideal. By doing so, the school is just copying another except with worse stats and less ways to buff. Life is nearly impossible to beat at the moment and the queue is flooded with them. At least Myth has a plan B with intent to kill with their Jinn. Fire has not such luxury. Their best bet is to spam enough fuels and pray the opponent deck fails Centaur and Naturalism. The odds of this are incredibly low, don’t count on it.
Final Thoughts
Fire absolutely needs help with the quality of their spells. Their main hanging effect, DOTs are just super vulnerable and always at risk of getting removed via Kraken or Earthwalker. Playing around these spells from schools that aren’t Storm or Life are fairly easy long as you can pay attention to the pips they have available.
Even if you do manage to get the condition for an OT gambit such as Bernie Notice (Fire’s scion gambit), its just underwhelming. Not many players are even scared or feel compelled to prevent it. If they do counter the overtimes, if the DOT had any kind of high investment of pips/resources, they become wasted. A second look at DOTs as a hanging effect feels needed.
Stats. They don’t say “Resist is king” for no reason. This is a huge benefit still for the school, and its even better against the players actively trying to dual into another school for damage. With their pierce being lower as a result, Ice just gets extra points for their resist combined with Brace.
Other than stats, Ice also still has some of the best spellements in the game for debuffing their opponents. Dualing into Death gives them Vampire as well in addition to Snowman and Frost Beetle so the options are there. Also, the increased cost on shadow hits helps Ice to stay alive longer as they no longer have to worry about those hits as frequently as before.
Cons
Ice did see a negative impact from the shad change. Abominable Weaver got much worse. The negative change was offset by the fact it hurt offensive schools more, but that doesn’t stop Ice from also being affected. Casting this in a trade of shadow enhanced hits usually resulted in a favorable trade. This is no longer the case as most schools have more time to setup a bigger hit that even a hit + shield like Abominable can not stop.
Also, most schools have started adapting to using their shadow pips on shrike much more quickly and so that extra 50% pierce on any school just fully negates your extra resist.
Final Thoughts
Ice overall isn’t in the worst spot, but I would hope some more efficient ways to setup their gambits can be provided. Spells like Centaur and Fire Elf do things for nearly every school on the wheel with Ice being the one exception. Banshee could be used to setup their Jinn in one turn, but it is much easier to remove a single weakness then it is to counter DOTs or blades.
Trapstack is a popular strategy from multiple schools and Death conveniently has a solid game plan for that. Their go-to is setting up Macabre Jinn with a mix of Oni’s Naturalism, Centaur, and tri-blades. In addition, most are using and taking full advantage of the “Willcast Nile’s Omen” pet talent for extra trap counters.
Because of their high damage on pins, they can also reasonably run other school gambits. In addition to Death’s jinn gambit, Storm scion is a great alternative hit. Only issue is needing to shrike in order to fully utilize it.
Cons
Despite an excess number of trap counters that Death players can pack, their chances against any good Myths are slim. It is a counter matchup that you are supposed to lose. However, out of all the counter matchups, none come close to how badly favored Myth is vs. Death. Because of the popularity of Myth in queue right now, this slanted their way down to the middle ground of this tier list.
Death also struggles right now to properly counter the Life school. They are favored vs them, but the matches take a very long time to finish and could even go to time.
Final Thoughts
Given the high quality of Death’s spell library at the moment, there isn’t much this school really needs to succeed. If you play well, you will win on this school. Grim Reader, even with a cost of two shadow pips is still very strong. It’s gambit conditions are all very doable and can very easily have an entire strategy dedicated to them. If it weren’t for how insanely good Myth and Balance are against Death, this school would be higher on this tier list no questions asked.
To those complaining about the strength of Vampire, there are solid answers to this that any school can use. Glacial Wall is the most popular, but Delusion works too and not just for Myth. Snowman is also very good for this even providing some defense. The most important note is if Vampire is your main concern, then don’t counter the infections until they use Vampire to convert them.
Trapstack is still a tier 1 strategy, even with Centaur being buffed to a quad counter. Life maybe your worst matchup, but every other school feels almost unlosable . Even Deaths playing for their Jinn with life counters to set it up, you can always just play for a shield gambit without trapping even once. Just a blade and a Reliquary do more than enough to nearly one-shot most schools.
Cons
Life being so prevalent of a school this season, has greatly reduced Myth’s playability and their win rates. Balance also has an easier time with extra copies of Righting the Scales over other schools. That said, Balance is still beatable if the Myth has Balance Ward on their pet. They can only counter the so many traps and cast Mana Burn so many times.
Final Thoughts
My one note here isn’t so much about Myth specifically as it is on just how good trapstack strategies are in general and not just for Myth. Ice and Fire can also setup their trap gambits with ease. Most schools rely on Righting the Scales or the life spells to counter and prepare a blade gambit to punish them, but this can be slow and very costly on their pips.
Even with most of burst heals banned, their HOTs are still very good in conjunction with their current outgoing. Even with their heals unprotected they go mostly unanswered as the only real options are spellemented Triton and Skeletal Pirate. Both of which are very costly in pips. It’s hard to build up enough damage output while also having the pips leftover to cast one of these answers if the Life simply casts Regenerate right after your big hit.
The only school with even a slight chance to beat a Life is Death. However, a good Life player will know exactly how to beat a death despite a deck with even upwards of 10-12 Threefold Fevers in it. This really is the easiest school to play at the moment and its not close.
Cons
I can’t stress this enough, the cons this school has are stretched so thin its almost not worth writing anything here. Despite how powerful Life is, this school’s biggest enemy is the timer. If playing this school, expect to run into a lot of players that simply don’t have the ability to answer heals properly and will give up early on and stall their own clock. This on its own is an issue and makes it very difficult to rank up as a Life if you spend too much time playing defensive.
Final Thoughts
Some discussions have been flying around on what to needs to happen to balance healing in PvP. We’ve seen suggested nerfs to HPP, their stats, or even just a complete change to how HOTs function. Regardless, something does need to be done. Healing in ranked as it stands right now, is just too efficient. Regenerate outheals full on shadow enhanced hits. The fact that all schools now need two shadow pips to even use one has pushed the defensive schools to the top.
According to more recent discussions from developers, it appears HPP has been declared to not be changing for now. Copy limits placed on heals as well as restricting them to once per shuffle is a high possibility. Worth noting, these are not locked, and subject to change at anytime.
Every school should have a reasonable chance. Hopefully by next season we’ll see a vastly different tier list ranking, as we badly need a change.
Despite all of the insane spells this school has, Mana Burn has shown itself once again as the backbone of this Balance’s offense. While the school is certainly very good, this greatly reduces creative strategies within Balance’s greater variety of spells. Most of the tools available to Balance almost feel way too strong for their effect. Spellemented Hydra, Loremaster, and Scorpion just to name a few are very good. However, I do feel these spells only seem too strong because of Mana Burn. This spell prevents players from being able to properly punish their other haymakers.
Cons
The change to shadow spells had a different impact on this school. The negative aspect and one flaw for Balance now is lack of bubble control. Gaze of Fate was their main source of controlling the global while also dealing a lot of damage all at once. This is much harder to do now with it costing two shadow pips. With that said, Life is certainly a worse matchup then it was before this change occurred.
Besides that, the change was actually very good for them overall. it hurt offensive schools more than defensive ones as they relied much more heavily on shadow enhanced hits. Balance could easily go an entire match without even using their shadow pips. The only matchup that got worse for them as a result of this is Life. They need to be able to cast their Mockenspiels in a timely manner with as many buffs as they can manage to get up. Not to mention, once again winning bubble vs Life is even harder than it already was. Even with 4 Dooms and 4 Balance of Power, Gaze of Fate was a needed spell for its damage and global change ability.
Final Thoughts
There are different issues players have with Balance right now. Whether it be Mana Burn being too strong, or Super Nova as the only way to interact with auras there is definitely something unbalanced about the Balance school. My main point against Mana Burn is how the spell was changed to deal less damage about 5 months before 5th age. However we received a massive increase in our stats, but had Solar Surge (the last PvP legal enchant) removed. When this happened, Mana Burn was untouched.
I maybe alone in this, but an indirect buff to the spell seems to have been overlooked. Balance is a top school and has been for a while, but now its starting to feel oppressive. Looking at any other tier list out there, almost all of them show Balance as number 1.
Conclusion
Important to remember, this is just one PvPer’s opinion at this moment in time. Things change, some schools may move around. Have your own thoughts? I’d love to hear other takes on what schools are at the top or even at the bottom!
Agree or Disagree with this tier list? Let us know in the comments!
