Fire Deckathalon Event, thru May 17th

[AluraMist]

From the Wizard101 website: https://www.wizard101.com/game/news/may-2021

Fire Deckathalon Event!

"Get fired up! Now through Monday, May 17th, battle your way through the Fire Deckathalon tower to test your TC-slinging skills, rise up the leaderboard ranks, and win exclusive prizes like the Fire Class Pet!"

See the Announcement here: https://www.wizard101.com/game/fire-deckathalon-event

Also see additional information here: Basic:Fire Deckathalon

[KingNothing]

I really hate to be a complainer and I honestly have not done much Deckathalon in the past, but I'm kind of getting into it some. Would it be possible to use our little brains and imaginations just a little on spell selection from our enemy? In case you do not know, jump into the fire deckathalon right now and here is what you'll get; heck hound, heck hound, heck hound, heck hound, heck hound, heck hound, heck hound, heck hound and oh yes!, heck hound. Yes, I've seen fire dwarf, screen, traps, a fire bird or two and a few brimestone's here and there, but the overwhelming majority of spells is heck hound. I've had as many of 5 around me. Most were small - 1 and 2 pip, but jimminy christmas can we please tap the breaks on heck hound?

[richardDkht]

I really hate to be a complainer and I honestly have not done much Deckathalon in the past, but I'm kind of getting into it some. Would it be possible to use our little brains and imaginations just a little on spell selection from our enemy? In case you do not know, jump into the fire deckathalon right now and here is what you'll get; heck hound, heck hound, heck hound, heck hound, heck hound, heck hound, heck hound, heck hound and oh yes!, heck hound. Yes, I've seen fire dwarf, screen, traps, a fire bird or two and a few brimestone's here and there, but the overwhelming majority of spells is heck hound. I've had as many of 5 around me. Most were small - 1 and 2 pip, but jimminy christmas can we please tap the breaks on heck hound?

floors 9 and 10 mostly use other spells ( phoenix, brimstone, elephant, dragon, djinn). There are occasional hounds but much less. Also there are those xPIP traps that may endanger you even if you have a shield.

[KingNothing]

floors 9 and 10 mostly use other spells ( phoenix, brimstone, elephant, dragon, djinn). There are occasional hounds but much less. Also there are those xPIP traps that may endanger you even if you have a shield.

Good to know. Thank you.

Something tells me I may never make it that high up. I'll need ALOT of luck and ALOT of pet heals. So far I'm proving to not be too good at this. I'm impatient and I'm certain that spells doom in this event. If I'd slow down, have a semi-plan and stick to it I would probably do much better.

[Bailey Jade]

I really hate to be a complainer and I honestly have not done much Deckathalon in the past, but I'm kind of getting into it some. Would it be possible to use our little brains and imaginations just a little on spell selection from our enemy? In case you do not know, jump into the fire deckathalon right now and here is what you'll get; heck hound, heck hound, heck hound, heck hound, heck hound, heck hound, heck hound, heck hound and oh yes!, heck hound. Yes, I've seen fire dwarf, screen, traps, a fire bird or two and a few brimestone's here and there, but the overwhelming majority of spells is heck hound. I've had as many of 5 around me. Most were small - 1 and 2 pip, but jimminy christmas can we please tap the breaks on heck hound?

Oh my gosh! I was just going to say the Heck Hound casting is just way too much. I was in 6.2 and started off with 2 yellow pips and 2 white and I got hit with 2 heck hounds which did more damage in what I had for health. It is a little excessive and I think I had mention this once before.

[richardDkht]

Oh my gosh! I was just going to say the Heck Hound casting is just way too much. I was in 6.2 and started off with 2 yellow pips and 2 white and I got hit with 2 heck hounds which did more damage in what I had for health. It is a little excessive and I think I had mention this once before.

Don't know if it has been fixed, but in the past events HH had a bug where it would use ghost pips from previous rounds. So you'd be seeing them casting a 5 pips trap or a brimstone, for example, and have one pip left next round, and then they'd cast a 3x 400 hound right after (which would be around 7 pips with their boost).

Same bug happened on most Xpip spells, and it may have been related to those bugs where the Xpip would not use all available pips.

Bailey: if you have 2 PP and 2 normal pips, then you are on round 2 or 3 (because at most you start with 1 pp+1 or 2 variable pips, depending on deck). To avoid such issues, use weakness/plague and the damamge will be reduced to close to 0 with the right deck (at least need some 120 fire def in total although anything around 90+ can work if you are a good planner).

Simple strategy on those floors is, the more they accumulate pips, the more you stack debuffs; but once you have a virulent plague and a weakness on them, they need a lot of pips to even do any damage.

[KingNothing]

Oh my gosh! I was just going to say the Heck Hound casting is just way too much. I was in 6.2 and started off with 2 yellow pips and 2 white and I got hit with 2 heck hounds which did more damage in what I had for health. It is a little excessive and I think I had mention this once before.

I'm stuck at 7.2. Don't see a way around it unless my pet heals every round. This morning I had 3-5 hounds around me varying from 46 to 220 damage. At one point I thought luck had smiled on me when the elf fizzled twice. Then I got hit with an 8 pip hound + a blade doing over 550 damage. I can't get shields down fast enough to tamper them.

[richardDkht]

I'm stuck at 7.2. Don't see a way around it unless my pet heals every round. This morning I had 3-5 hounds around me varying from 46 to 220 damage. At one point I thought luck had smiled on me when the elf fizzled twice. Then I got hit with an 8 pip hound + a blade doing over 550 damage. I can't get shields down fast enough to tamper them.

what deck are you using? and what gems in it?

also do you have uncommon cards like icezilla, snow shark, snow birds, blue phoenix, frost demon available?

[KingNothing]

what deck are you using? and what gems in it?
also do you have uncommon cards like icezilla, snow shark, snow birds, blue phoenix, frost demon available?

Using Deck 5, but only because I cannot craft Deck 6 yet. I ran out of runes. I'm about 75% of the way there. I have a health jewel in it (120).

No, those cards are not readily available. I've managed to get a few Icezilla's here and there and some Frost Demons. That's about it though. I'm going to keep my eyes open though and get them as they are available and just hold'em until the next Fire DK.

[richardDkht]

Using Deck 5, but only because I cannot craft Deck 6 yet. I ran out of runes. I'm about 75% of the way there. I have a health jewel in it (120).

No, those cards are not readily available. I've managed to get a few Icezilla's here and there and some Frost Demons. That's about it though. I'm going to keep my eyes open though and get them as they are available and just hold'em until the next Fire DK.

ok.

I'd suggest to make a few runs with other wizards to get runes and craft a lvl 6 at least, but it's doable - although a little difficult - with a lvl 5 as well.

Here is a deck built earlier to test floor 7. You can replace frost demon with a colossus, or a mammoth, but i try to avoid 9 and 10-pips spells because PP dont' appear so often on this floor and I already found myself with a full 8 pips in the past.

It's a deck 6, but used it with a low level wizard, so it only has a +10 gem inside that brings it to 100 and a +5 health gem. So your deck 5 is actually better with the extra health because i'm battling with 805 HP where you can have 870. But yes, the 25 extra absorb does help.

Also the pet I used has only unicorn, spritely and guardian wall. Unicorn and spritely both casted once and guardian wall didn't happen at all.



And here is the same deck after finishing the run:



You can remove some of the extra cards, they are there in case something goes wrong (and to avoid discarding the full deck to find the single card you have inside - if you do put singles, make sure you got a reshuffle). Maybe have a couple extra heals, helping hands seems a good trade here.

Strategy is easy: you are quite free for the first stage, BUT must make sure you reach the next one with full health. What I do is that I summon a minion first or second round (first round if i can't weaken second if i can), then i'll heal and protect myself.
When minion start hitting the enemy will target them instead of you, you can then easily build up and prepare to kill.

Second stage, you need a virulent plague first round. Specially if you have little resist. (If you don't find it, put a weakness on second guy and pray they don't do a double brimstone).
Then stack weaknesses or replace if they hit already. Also may need to heal - prefer to use heal on time rather than instant ones, because then you are able to withstand small dots for the next three rounds. Again, i've put scraps of what i had on hand, but helping hands to regenerate are the cards to go for.
When your health is low they tend to chain hounds without waiting for pips, which is good because they don't do damage and may trigger heals. But keep an eye for when they have 3 or more pips.

As soon as possible summon minion and cast balefrost.

Balefrost makes the minion able to solo the floor, as long as it stays alive. Which is not your target, what you want is to put up three blades (balance, ice and a steal or one from the minion itself, but can also add different ones like dragonblade etc..) and then cast that blizzard. It will do a lot of damage and with the damage already done by the minion one of them will fall. Make sure your health is still ok or you have shields on you or weakness on them, because minion could kill very fast now and heals on time won't have time to bring you back to max (that why you see a fairy in the deck).

Most important, at the end of the fight heal before going to last area.

The guy in the last stage uses phoenix and brimstone every now and then, so you may want a shield there when he got 5 pips or more, weakness will be less effective.

Beside that, shields are there mostly for the minion (including the frost armor that I did not use in the end). For myself weaknesses and plagues are to be enough. You are trying to keep minion alive while he takes attention from one of them, but don't sacrifice yourself, there is an extra one to resummon if needed. Note that if you do resummon, you will take all attention, so in that case let the minion do the killing.

If you see minion with a shark and a blade , I suggest to use a feint to end it fast. But make sure you are not the target and/or you got a shield on or can put it up next. If you put fortify in, it will reduce damage by 5% (they have 15% pierce), which, roughly, brings it down to that extra 25 resist that you are missing with your deck on big hits and allows shields to work more efficiently.

for the rest, the triage is there in case something very big happens unexpectedly, frost bird is a finisher in case you make a mistake in damage calculation, and the rest should be self-explanatory.
You can add a dispel or two, but those are to be used only when you see the enemy with pips that passes his turn (means he gonna hit for sure next round). else you risk to waste them on a trap or a steal blade.