Fighting Mavra Flamewing with a Death wizard

[Zarin64]

By the time we, Death wizards, make it to the Dragonspyre, we have some very good ability to kill enemies and survive their back strikes. We have our Wraiths, blades, traps, high power pip chance (making a bladed 2nd turn Wraith a very real possibility) and some decent boost to our damage. All this, however, does not help if we cannot hit hard enough to steal back more than what they are doing to us.

This is exactly the situation with the Dragonspyre defense teacher, Mavra Flamewing. Her two Protection Pox minions cast such huge numbers of shields (this is all they do - shields and spirit armor) that there is a real possibility not to ever have a change of casting a full-damage life-stealing spell. Meanwhile, Mavra is a Storm boss with a good power pip chance, seemingly some boost to Storm accuracy and very hard-hitting spells, including Stormzilla (which, with a blade and a trap, can easily deal over 1000 damage in a single hit).

So, what approach did I use to win this fight? I completely changed the composition of my deck to include the following:
1. Volcanic Shield + Tower Shield - 4 of each.
2. Sprite - 3.
3. Animate - 1 (my pet, Ianthine Spectre, provided one, but I would have included it otherwise)
4. Deathblade - 3
5. Poison - 3
6. Reshuffle - 1 (can get it on an amulet if you did not train it in the Colossus Boulevard. Level 45 required).
7. Satyr - 1 (I wore Meowiarty's Satyrical Choker for a 990 healing points one). However, mythical has pointed out that Sacrifice would work as well or even better than Satyr and I must agree. It takes only two pips (I had 70+% power pip chance by then so it is extremely rare to not have at least one power pip for it) rather than four, and the pain can be mitigated by good Death resist (I could bring it to 48% with my equipment while my Death damage boost was "only" 22%), giving you a very strong healing spell. If you include Sacrifice(s), you can replace the amulet with Satyr with the one granting Reshuffle, potentially freeing you one training point.

In addition, my wand (sword) provided 5 Major Wrath (0-pip 95 Life damage attack).

This deck does the following things:

1. Kills the two Protection Pox minions with Bladed Poison. I first choose the one with fewer spirit shields (one Poison is enough for it - Balance suffers boost from spirit schools), then finish off the other one with one or two Bladed Poisons and potentially 1-2 Major Wrath hits.
2. Keeps at least 2 shields up at all times to make sure I don't die in a couple of hard hits.
3. Animates at some very healthy pip/power pip count. I did it for 8 or 10 pips (don't remember exactly), but could afford to wait more for even a Death Incarnate. Lesser minions will keel over and die once Mavra switches to them. Make sure you have decent health, enough shields up and more in hand before losing all your pips!
4. Throws a Sprite or three mid-battle to make sure I don't die to a single hit. Sprites are also good for eating up regular pips and getting you closer to a perfect Animate.
5. Reshuffles to keep putting up more shields and start Poisoning Mavra herself. By the time it happens she has an insane amount of Tower and Spirit shields and a few Spirit Armors, so my minion really needs all help there is breaking those. Extremely important in order to let its Vampires heal it back (Mavra has Tempest; in addition, she will eventually switch her attention to the minion).
6. Throws Satyr in dire situations (I did have a bad one, and my Satyr fizzled not once, but twice in a row! Fortunately, my minion diverted Mavra and I ended up healing myself just in time). Satyr immediately gets Mavra's attention back to you, but you can handle it with shields and 1000+ health.

I felt that I could do without Tower Shield, using just Volcanic Shields, but the above gives a general idea. Make sure that you actively kill the Protection Pox by yourself and do not delegate this task to your minion. Only you can control the flow of the fight, so do it!

Be prepared for an extremely long fight - I gained 309 XP after it!

Bonus section for those who have played competitive Magic: The Gathering:
Mavra is the epitome of a Control deck (thanks to her two minions and hard-hitting "finishers"). Regular Death decks are close to a classic aggro (or even a ******* black if you go with stuff like Empower and Dark Pact) with a touch of control via life-steal. As usual, Control easily beats aggro, and there are no combo deck in Wizard101. In order to reliably beat a Control deck, we need a Rock - a slow-grinding graveyard abusing deck. Reshuffle plays this role of graveyard abuse. Poisons and the minion are the slow grinders.

[mythical]

I still think death gets a better deal by using sacrifice to heal rather than satyr.
I remember struggling with Mavra when I was in DS, its a tough battle to solo
Take an earthquake TC - to remove all the shields - instead of a minion?

[Zarin64]

Take an earthquake TC - to remove all the shields - instead of a minion?

I thought about that but it won't work: earthquake will eat almost all of your pips (the majority of which will be power pips!) and you'll need two or three turns to regain them for the killing spell (unless you heavily blade, including TC, and then use Vampire the turn after Earthquake to kill the minions - might or might not work depending on their choice of shields). That is enough time for Protection Poxes to erect another defensive wall. If I couldn't kill even one at the very beginning of battle, with turn 2 Bladed Wraith, it will be even tougher after losing so many pips.

The battle was actually very easy after switching to the Volcanic Shield/Poison deck. It just took a while to finish (and yes, one hairy situation with my Satyr from the amulet fizzling twice in a row - how often do you see that, though?), but there was no point of time where I didn't know what to do and felt completely defenseless.

As for using Sacrifice vs. Satyr: it is a very good idea, even without death shields in the deck. It didn't occur to me at the time, but it's so good I'm going to update the guide. In fact, I can currently raise my Death resist to 48%, which makes it totally worthwhile.

Thanks!

[Zarin64]

Just realized one thing: Sacrifice is a double-edged sword because the damage from it eats your own blades. Thus you are not always free to use it - unlike Satyr. Sacrifices must be used proactively, at some still healthy enough life total, before you start blading; Satyr can be used at any time after suffering a big hit, blades or no blades.
In this particular combat, though, you don't keep blades for long: you immediately use them for your Poisons. You are not going to suddenly find yourself threatened - thanks to Volcanic Shields, which have an added benefit of minimizing the impact of Mavra's Heck Hound (she does use one) beside all her Storm spells. So the restrictions on using Sacrifice are something to keep in mind rather than big strategy-altering problems.

Still - I keep just one Satyr (and item card is more powerful - 990 vs. 860) for emergencies, while the deck would need at least a couple of Sacrifices for a similar effect (some also add Death shields and/or Legend Shields if they train Life). And diluting your deck is often worse than losing four power pips once (actually two, as you would have to Pixie/Sacrifice for two of them).

I'm not sure whether I'm going to update the guide - probably not. Again, diluting the main message with smaller details seems worse than not providing them.

[Clouds Of Sorrow]

I still think death gets a better deal by using sacrifice to heal rather than satyr.
I remember struggling with Mavra when I was in DS, its a tough battle to solo
Take an earthquake TC - to remove all the shields - instead of a minion?

wrong. Sacrifice takes 250 for 700. so your really just healing 465. Sacrifice is only useful if you have a shield.

tc earthquakes?? Ever heard of poison?? just stick 2 on a pox and drain. minion is helpful too. I soloed this boss the first time. xD

[Zarin64]

Sacrifice takes 250 for 700. so your really just healing 465. Sacrifice is only useful if you have a shield.

Even though I'm on the same side as you in "Satyr vs. Sacrifice" discussion, remember that you can make Sacrifice better with gear. You still want as much "+x% to Death damage" as possible, but you can manipulate the Death resist to make that hit manageable. You can further modify Sacrifice by wearing gear with boosts to incoming/outgoing healing (though this benefits Satyr as well). When I switch to my most aggressive deck (with Empower) I put on 48% Death resist while still maintaining +22% Death damage. This brings my Sacrifice damage down to 158 (119 with Weakness on me).

Even looking at it in the absence of any gear boosts: Sacrifice costs you 4 pips while Satyr costs 8 (well, not exactly, but with the Death's power pips chance it is almost always true). A learned Sacrifice, (700 - 250=450) * (8/4=2) = 900 is better than a learned Satyr(=860), but worse than the Satyr item card(=990). However, the greatest cost of Sacrifice is not even the pip efficiency - it is the side effects like the inability to use it an any point (blades!), tempo loss (who has time to do it twice in a row to get the same effect?) and increased deck inconsistency due to the higher number of "utility" spells.

Ultimately, the choice between Sacrifice and Satyr is dictated by the play style. I can see arguments both ways.

[Clouds Of Sorrow]

Even though I'm on the same side as you in "Satyr vs. Sacrifice" discussion, remember that you can make Sacrifice better with gear. You still want as much "+x% to Death damage" as possible, but you can manipulate the Death resist to make that hit manageable. You can further modify Sacrifice by wearing gear with boosts to incoming/outgoing healing (though this benefits Satyr as well). When I switch to my most aggressive deck (with Empower) I put on 48% Death resist while still maintaining +22% Death damage. This brings my Sacrifice damage down to 158 (119 with Weakness on me).

Even looking at it in the absence of any gear boosts: Sacrifice costs you 4 pips while Satyr costs 8 (well, not exactly, but with the Death's power pips chance it is almost always true). A learned Sacrifice, (700 - 250=450) * (8/4=2) = 900 is better than a learned Satyr(=860), but worse than the Satyr item card(=990). However, the greatest cost of Sacrifice is not even the pip efficiency - it is the side effects like the inability to use it an any point (blades!), tempo loss (who has time to do it twice in a row to get the same effect?) and increased deck inconsistency due to the higher number of "utility" spells.

Ultimately, the choice between Sacrifice and Satyr is dictated by the play style. I can see arguments both ways.

I didnt train life. I am balance mastery w availing hands. sacrifice is my option for removing traps. my heal boosts are 55% lol

[Zarin64]

I didnt train life. I am balance mastery w availing hands. sacrifice is my option for removing traps. my heal boosts are 55% lol

That's a good approach if you have a mastery amulet. Since I'm still crown-less (we have a sub, even though we do plan to switch to buying areas as we go), I'll have to farm some tough bosses for the mastery amulet drops. However, I didn't even have to train Life to use Satyr - Meowiarty's Satyrical Choker is easily available from the Bazaar.
Once I get my hands on a mastery amulet I'll start planning for the next wizard (or will do a happy dance if it is a fitting one).
As for breaking traps and weaknesses with Sacrifice... that can also be Empower depending on your play style. Not Dark Pact, though - I liked it initially until I realized that it is made fully and completely useless by a single Weakness. You need +33% blade to negate -25% weakness, and Dark Pact is somewhat below that. Only Balance blade has the same problem, the rest of the blades can safely stay when you use a different school's 0-pip wand spell

By the way, you must be talking about Helping Hands - Availing Hands is available on amulets only, so no room for balance mastery. Or did you mean TC:Availing Hands?

[God's Grace]

Wow, this will help a lot of people! Nice guide(:

[Gorman RavenHunter]

LOVE!!!!! that you made a reference to MTG! Personally, for my death, I just focused on killing the minions, Shattering the shields off Mavra (800 gold in the bazaar) and then just a usual boss fight.