Wizard Bootcamp: If I Had a “Hammer”

[ValdusWildheart]

Wizard Bootcamp: If I Had a “Hammer”

If at first you don't succeed, get a bigger hammer. – Alan Lewis

Congratulations. You’ve been designated the team hammer. You can do whatever you want, just as long as you spam some hits, right? No. You still have team obligations. Help your team help you.

Before the Battle:

• Gear up for balanced stats. Seasoned wizards typically couldn’t care less what a hammer’s critical rating is. You don’t need an insane damage boost (any decent damage is fine). Stats that do matter include block, accuracy, and pips. Nice to have is an incoming heal boost. Try to balance out all your stats.
  
  • Critical Block – Nothing is worse than having your hammer fully set and then seeing him die from an unblocked critical hit. Craft block boots. Farm for a block wand. This stat is easy to boost. (This is especially important for storm as their low health can be easily wiped out with a single critical hit). By all means, feed your Hades wand to your pet (in addition to stats, a block wand will often give you an off-school hit to clear weakness or tower shields without using the blades your hardworking team is stacking on you).
  • Accuracy and Pips – Waiting an extra turn can be a big problem (especially in Darkmoor). It’s annoying in other circumstances. No one will be impressed with your critical if they have to wait thru a row of white pips for you to eventually hit. Especially if you then fizzle.
  
  
• Pre-enchant some backup hits with TC Gargantuan. If you’re storm, Tempest is a great option. Keep your “go to” all-enemy and one single hit in (King Art is generally good except for myth, medusa is better – it hits hard but not as long as waiting for 10-pip spell). This enables you (i) draw your hit instead of making your team wait for you to fish around for round after round or (ii) finish off the battle if you come up a bit shorter than expected. See Discarding (The Needle in the Haystack)
• Get into the battle circle for 1st round and in 4th place. Let the team know you should be 4^th place and when it’s time to “go” they need to go. Except in specific circumstances, you want to be in the battle for the 1^st round to get your pips going and be available to receive blades. Fourth place allows 3 additional blades to be placed on you on the “hit round.” See Engage! Getting Into the Battle Ring.
• Know your blade/trap/feint counts. Don’t make your team buff you forever if you can hit and end the battle. In addition, let your team know ahead of time what you need (e.g., I need 8 blades to defeat Morganthe. I need 5 blades plus a steal to kill Shane). That way the team can coordinate blades and traps/feints to make sure they aren’t duplicating and can boost the hit efficiently. Conversely, don’t hit prematurely and hope for an unblocked critical. Having to wait to regenerate pips and have your team scramble for additional buffs, heals, etc. while the enemy is blasting you is irritating at best and can be devastating. See Magical Math.
• Let your team know if you plan to hit twice. Generally I find two-hitting a bad practice (i.e., kill the minions, then kill the boss in two different hits). A couple of feints on the boss will allow you to use all the blades already played for minions to also take out the boss with just one more turn. In limited cases there may be a good reason to hit twice. If so, then your team will need to know as they will need to double up their blades to set you up a second time.

During the Battle:

• Use unique zero-pip buffs:
  
  • Don’t burn your pips. Every power pip you burn on a tri-blade means an additional turn of waiting for a hit. Let your team do those buffs while you use school blades & school auras
  • Carry buffs for yourself others aren’t as likely to have. For example if you have a Shango’s or Morthante amulet, a school beast pet or armament, and school aura, you can get 3 buffs on yourself with no pips that others won’t likely have. This frees up others to use tri-blades or even your own school/sharpened blades without duplicating blades.
  • Carry some of your own 0-pip utility spell treasure cards: Cleanse charm and pierce. (Add in an emergency TC tower, fairy, and reshuffle for good measure).
  
  
• Don’t use Damage Over Time spells with trapped enemies. I’ve seen snow angel hit stacked feints more times than I can count. Frost giant in that case is much better as the traps only take advantage of the upfront damage. Fire wizards, you’re kind of stuck. Consider using dragon instead of rain of fire. It’s less pips and you can follow up with a meteor if needed for additional damage with the saved pips.

Always:

• Be nice to your team. Support is often harder than hitting as you have to adapt to the other in support roles as well as unexpected issues in the battle (OMG, we’re stunned, the storm wizard is nearly dead, and we’re starting a new cheat round, and I've discarded all my heals!). Keeping Plan A (buffs), Plan B (emergency heals), and Plan C (figure something out!!! NOW!!!) all in play can be a challenge. So, if you pull off a nice hit, tell your team "Thank you" once in a while!

Other Wizard Bootcamp posts you may enjoy:

• Magical Math
• Engage! Getting into the Battle Ring
• The Supporting Cast
  
• Zen and the Art of Healing
  
• Discarding (The Needle in the Haystack)

[Sierra SeaSong]

I love it, thanks for posting this!

[Sabrina The Witch]

I'm loving these Wizard Bootcamps, keep up the great work!

[Temp]

Cool guide, might help some new people out.