Introduction
Wizard101 has 7 schools of magic: Fire, Ice, Storm, Life, Death, Myth, and Balance. Each one has various areas of focus, and has positives, and negatives, and plays very differently from the other schools.
Pros: Many DoT spells, many AoE Spells, High Damage, High Critical
Cons: Low Health, Low Resist, Low Accuracy in the beginning, low block.
Fire’s main focus is Damage over time spells. Since DoTs attack over multiple rounds, instead of one, they deal quite a bit of damage when added up all together, making Fire the second strongest school in Wizard101. They also receive a variety of Area of Effect spells (The most of any school), and some even in the form of a DoT AoeE. However, Fire also has the second lowest health, and resist, meaning they can easily be defeated, if they’re not careful. In the beginning, accuracy is an issue, but later on, once they get some gear with accuracy, it shouldn’t be too big of an issue. They also have the second highest critical in
later levels, but also low block. Overall, Fire is a great offensive school, but can suffer on the defensive side.
Pros: Very high Health, Very High Resist, Very High Critical Block, Stuns
Cons: Low Damage, Low Critical
Ice is the tank of Wizard101; they have the highest health, and resist, making it difficult for them to die. They also have very high critical block, greatly helping against enemies with higher critical, like Fire or Storm. They learn various defensive spells, such as a universal shield, and absorbs, and also get numerous stuns (The second most of any school). However, they have extremely low damage output, and low critical. Their accuracy also isn’t the greatest. In the beginning, it’s average, but later on, they get little accuracy from gear, and with their just ok accuracy, you could be fizzling more often than you’d like. These make Ice a great defensive school, but it’s typically hard for them to deal a lot of damage.
Pros: Extremely high damage, Extremely high critical
Cons: No DoTs, Low accuracy in the beginning, Low health and resist
Storm is the “Kill or be Killed” school. Their damage, both on gear, and their spell cards are insanely high, and add in critical, and they’re extremely dangerous to others. However, there Health is terrible, and they have the lowest resist out of all of the schools. When first starting out, they also have to deal with fizzling the most, but once reaching higher levels, their accuracy from their gear more than makes up for that. They also have a variety of ‘luck’ spells, like Wild Bolt which deals 10, 100, or 1,000 damage, and Insane Bolt, which deals 1,000 to an enemy, or 10,000 to yourself. Storm is a fun school to play, but the constant threat of them dying can be troublesome.
Pros: Healing Spells, Good health and resist, Good Accuracy, good block, High Pip Percent
Cons: Low Damage, very few AoEs, one DoT (Received very late in-game)
Life, as you can assume, is the healing school/class/whatever you want to call it of Wizard101. Most of their spells are heals, and come in a variety of ways; regular heals that heal one person, Heals over time, that heal over a few rounds, AOE heals that heal the whole team, etc. Their stats are mostly defensive; they have good health, resist, and pip percent, and actually have decent attack (Which helps make up for the low damage of their spell cards). They get very little accuracy, but it isn’t that needed, since they boot 90% base accuracy on their spell cards. However, in the offensive department, they don’t have much to show. Their card damage is the second/third lowest (Behind Ice, tied somewhat with Death). They also receive the fewest attack spells, and notably, few AoEs (Their first is received at 58), and only one DoT (At 88). If you enjoy keeping others alive, and supporting others, then you may like this class, but if you want to attack a lot, another class may suit you more.
Pros: Health-Stealing, Multitude of Traps, can weaken all opponents, High Pip Percent
Cons: Few AoEs, takes a while to deal a lot of damage
Death’s main gimmick are drains; spells that deal damage, and heal the wizard half of the damage dealt. This makes them a great solo school, since they can heal and deal damage at the same time. However, drains aren’t very strong, and to be very effective, there must be many blades/traps used (Which works, since Death has tons of traps). They also have anti-healing spells, such as Doom and Gloom and Infection, that weaken the strength of heals, and debuffs, that weaken the strength of the next attacking spell for all enemies. Death is somewhat tanky, with their Good Health/Resist, and their drains, and they can be pretty annoying (To enemies) with their multitude of debuffs. However, since Drains deal little damage, Death wizards usually take more time to win a fight. But they can reliably win most fights, which is a very nice quality.
Pros: Minions, Double Hits, Stuns, Great accuracy
Cons: Mediocre defenses, few AoEs
Myth is one of the more “interesting” schools of Wizard101. Their main focus is minions, which are allies that are not controlled by you, or an other person. So in a sense, they’re a summon-able friend that can help you in a fight. They receive a variety of minions, some that focus on attacking, others that taunt the enemy, etc. Myth also receives “Double Hits” which are spells that attack twice in one turn, the first of which is usually weaker than the second. This allows them to easily get around a single shield, where most other schools would have issues. They also have a Stun effect on many of their spells, and they have the ability to remove shields with Shatter/Earthquake, and Charms with Earthquake. Their biggest weakness, however, is their lack of a high level AOE. Their last trained AoeE is earthquake (Level 48), which isn’t much stronger than Humongofrog, an AoE they receive in the 20s. Neither are that strong, so they seriously lack in the AoE department in higher worlds, where enemies have tons of health. Myth has pretty good stats; they’re comparable to fire, but with a bit more defense, and less offense.
Pros: Variety of ways to attack, and has a great variety of spells, High Pip Percent
Cons: No Balance Prism makes it hard to fight Balance enemies
Balance, is a very balanced (Get it?) class. They’re balanced between defense and offense, buffing and debuffing. Their stats are also pretty evened out, they have a decent amount of everything (Except Accuracy) . For spells, they have Shields to every school (Except Balance, ironically), a single target debuff (Weakness) that weakens the next attack spell for an enemy. They have some heals, in the form of Heals over Time, and they have a good mix of single target and AoE attack spells. However, the most unique thing about Balance, is the form in which a lot of their attack spells deal damage. Instead of all of their spells dealing plain Balance damage, some of them deal damage from the Elemental Schools (Fire, Ice, Storm), or from the Spiritual Schools (Life, Death, Myth). For example, Spectral blast, can either deal Fire, Ice, or Storm Damage (Ice dealing the least, Storm the most). An interesting thing to note, though, is that the spell still uses Balance Damage (The stat), and it still has the typical 85% Balance accuracy, no matter which type of damage was used. This allows Balance to attack in a variety of ways, and forms, making them very versatile. However, Balance has one big drawback; they don’t have a prism. While every other school has a prism, which turns their attacking spells into the opposite (Like Fire to Ice), which are great for fighting enemies of their own school, Balance has none. And since most Balance enemies have Balance resist, they have to rely on their single target spells that deal elemental or spiritual damage for Balance mobs, making things go much slower. If you can overcome that one con, though, Balance is a really fun school to play, and can be quite powerful.
Conclusion
Each school is unique, and fun to play. So no matter which one you choose, you should have tons of fun with it. And, since you can have multiple wizards, try playing with all of the schools that seem appealing to you! Have fun wizarding in the world of Wizard101!
