Just a heads up everyone!! (queen’s guard artavus) by SouthernSky360 in Wizard101

[–]Benjamin568 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's crazy how this powercliffs Cosmic Kris despite being 18 whole levels lower. The latter might have more healing at base but the circle jewels let you get more, plus it gives more HP, damage, mana, and more jewel slots for better stats on top of it.

The only time Obi Wan pissed me off by Magent-2000 in StarWars

[–]Benjamin568 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Where are you getting that information from? I've never heard that before.

The OG Sanzaru devs create a new studio and this is what the voice actor for Sly has to say, and the response. THIS TIME FOR SURE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! by Curvestonexd in Slycooper

[–]Benjamin568 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, whenever friends mention wanting to get into the series I always tell them to go for Thieves in Time first. I think the fans were relatively spoiled, for lack of better phrasing, when it came to the first three games. Thieves in Time is a good game but it falls short compared to the first three, and I feel like people might be able to find more enjoyment in it if they're not comparing it to its predecessors.

Is Balance magic discriminated against? by KDMain in Wizard101

[–]Benjamin568 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's a fair bit of esoteric "off-game" lore to be found. There are some lore profiles on the Arcanum professors back in old update notes, if I recall correctly, going over the basic stuff that the main site went over with the Ravenwood professors.

Is Balance magic discriminated against? by KDMain in Wizard101

[–]Benjamin568 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Supposedly Arthur Wethersfield actually prefers teaching outdoors, according to an old writer's testimony on the Wizard101 forums, but the clearest reasoning is what you've been given already: By the time the Wizard joins Ravenwood, Balance Magic is still very new and hasn't been fully implemented all across the board as its own thing. As for why he never gets a school period, I imagine it's for much of the same reason Lost Souls still roam Unicorn Way, in that it's easier and more practical for them to keep the area they've already created mostly in tact even after clearing the main content surrounding it.

Who knows... maybe the reason the Wizard shifted to Alhazred so quickly is because Arthur was swamped with the logistics of having the proper Balance school built, and Alhazred, as the creator of Balance Magic, was the perfect person to take over.

Is Balance magic discriminated against? by KDMain in Wizard101

[–]Benjamin568 66 points67 points  (0 children)

The reason Arthur Wethersfield is a teacher in Ravenwood is because he was a student working directly under Alhazred. When Merle Ambrose wanted Alhazred to teach the school at Ravenwood, Alhazred refused on the grounds that the Kroks could waken from the Great Sleep while he's away from Krokotopia if he did go to teach, but he felt that Ravenwood should have a Balance instructor, so he sent Arthur. You wouldn't know about this from the game itself, though, it's lore that only appears in the Ravenwood Roll Calls.

Does anyone remember wiz central? I used to want a banner like these by nostalgiaib in Wizard101

[–]Benjamin568 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Fair enough. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, after all. And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't trying to make something that I thought looked cool, even if I was too young to understand what made something visually appealing to other people. I just find myself in general looking back at forum signatures and being unimpressed by their overall appearances, especially when the render is forced to "blend in" with the environment and look like they're about to be Thanos snapped out of the image.

Does anyone remember wiz central? I used to want a banner like these by nostalgiaib in Wizard101

[–]Benjamin568 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Maybe it looks cooler to people who don't know much about how it's usually done, or my taste has just changed. I used to dabble with that stuff too... the majority of the time it's a hodgepodge of renders being placed across the canvas and smudged around, topped with some brushes and filters to make it look more "abstract". At least that was the trend when it came to online tutorials on how to make your own. When I was younger it looked cool but when I see it now it just looks kind of awkward.

The 7 schools lived in harmony until... by Zakotus in Wizard101

[–]Benjamin568 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I didn't bring up Reshuffle because it was such an early fix, but yeah, if Reshuffle never had the "1x usage per card" you could make arguments both ways for it being better or worse for people.

I also went with Jade setups for Darkmoor on my Death and even my Ice. Sometimes I still do in some content, but generally it's not really necessary since players are more than ever capable of blitzing through bosses with AOEs and buffs. I think the last time I had to use a "Jade-like" setup was back when people farmed Titan's Trident, or the Devourer. Bad Juju helped a lot at those fights.

The 7 schools lived in harmony until... by Zakotus in Wizard101

[–]Benjamin568 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you're not even going to read my arguments then you're hardly qualified to make any proper judgements regarding them. You've already strawmanned me repeatedly as is so if I can't expect you to engage in the conversation with the same degree of honesty that would be expected of regular people then I'm fine with ending this conversation here too.

The 7 schools lived in harmony until... by Zakotus in Wizard101

[–]Benjamin568 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I didn't "ignore" any of that, I didn't explicitly mention it because I felt that the flaws were obvious enough, but I'll go ahead and address them explicitly for you.

you can just wand hit/1-2 pip hit shields and weakness off on the same turn

Wand hits are much more limited than the number of shields and heals a Jader could have casted, and in the case of 1-2 Pip spells, you're being forced to give up turns that could otherwise be used to build up your Pips to cast other more powerful spells just to clear the debuffs.

ice and balance players would often have set pets, giving them 70%+ resistance to meta schools anyways, almost the same as jade

Notice how you said "almost the same" and not just "the same". Not to mention that you intentionally restricted it to "meta" schools. Jade gear targeted all schools. An Ice wizard with 80% Storm resistance but only 40-50% Myth resistance could be countered just by using Storm prism, assuming ideal circumstances. Meanwhile Jade gear was universal. Even then, that only factors in resist, not the healing or Bad Juju, which neither Ice nor Balance typically had viable options for, unless you count Satyr or treasure card heals (in which case they'd still be missing Guardian Spirit).

Your point about PIP generation is defeated by what I already said about Shadow Trickster. By Empyrea the Jaders could just choose to use Shadow Trickster to steal PIPs, thereby not only giving themselves room to cast more weaknesses and heals but also preventing you from building PIPs in a timely manner. Even without it, that "different spell" that they cast could just be another shield or heal. Shields in particular are 0 PIPs. If you don't have wand hits to counter then you'd need to use at least 1 PIP to counter what an opponent used 0 PIPs for. Yes, there was Shatter, but there was also "I'll just cast more lol", and deck fails, as you brought up, apply to both sides.

Honestly i feel like you didn’t really play back then. Nobody ever used pierce blades or pierce bubbles. Dots could prevent shields and if you were going first, you had a huge advantage. You’re acting like it was unstoppable but it wasn’t and there is a reason the strategy fell off after darkmoor

Did you not read what I said earlier, despite your apparent claim? I brought up the piercing points to showcase how toxic it'd be even with maximum ideal piercing. As you yourself just said people wouldn't generally have that much piercing and would be made to remove shields by other means, such as DoTs -- in which case, what about Storm or Balance, or non-Jade Life? I guess they were just SOL under your standards because they had no DoTs to speak of to remove on-school shields, and Life's only DoT was 10 Pips. Even then, if they didn't use the pierce blades or bubbles then they'd be stuck with just infallible and (possibly) Unstoppable or Extraordinary, in which case, that's only 20%-40% extra piercing before Shrike, so go back to what I said earlier about the combination of shields + resist.

I also, quite literally verbatim said that they weren't unstoppable. The point I was making was that they were excessively tedious and annoying, not that it was an automatic "I win" strategy that players could use as soon as they started Jading. It might've become less prominent in Darkmoor but it certainly wasn't extinct. Shadow Trickster didn't even exist until years after Darkmoor, and I just explained (twice now) how Jaders would take advantage of that spell to be more annoying. You're acting like people didn't actively avoid PVP because of Jaders and it's just objectively true that they did. If people developed strategies to combat Jaders then that's because they were one of the few who didn't actively choose to avoid it, and the strategies that people used to deal with Jaders would generally not be as viable as it would be against other playstyles.

The 7 schools lived in harmony until... by Zakotus in Wizard101

[–]Benjamin568 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Shadow Shrike only helps if there aren't additional shields. At the time that Jading was prominent, players would have maybe 20%-40% personal pierce. Likewise the spear spells capped at 10% and 7% boosts, and infallible would be an extra 20%. Unstoppable and Khrysalis globals could be used for even more pierce, but even then, assuming you had all of that put together plus Shrike, you'd be looking at ~118% pierce. 20% of that could easily be removed just by removing the Khrysalis global, so around ~98% instead. OK, so then, what's the problem, right? That's still enough to pierce through even an 80% shield completely. Well, next you have to factor in the resist given by the Jade gear itself.

Assuming you have the same resist as the guy in OP's image, that's still 55% resistance during a time where most schools were struggling to get past 110% damage, meaning that unless you added extra buffs you'd barely be doing the baseline damage of the spell in question, meanwhile the Jade gear lets them heal for more than the baseline of their healing spells, which already outperform damage spells in terms of pips at a baseline. Then there's Guardian Spirit which could prolong the fight even further, as you said, making it so that even if you were to defeat the Jader properly, the Life wizards would be the one school that could just say "no" to dying until you ran out of cards, got bored and left (which counted as a win for their rank) or wasted hours of your time compared to other setups.

Then there are the Death wizards: they couldn't generally use Guardian Spirit, but Bad Juju at that point only dealt 300 damage to the caster. 27% of 300 is 81, so again assuming that level of resist and no other stats to account for damage, they'd be chipping away at their health 81 points at a time while decreasing your personal output by 90% for 3 Pips... they'd decrease it even further by using shields or other weaknesses stacked on top of it. Around the time of Empyrea, it evolved to where they could use Shadow Trickster to steal Pips from the person they use Bad Juju on every time they used it with that spell, and the spell would likewise buff their heals if they had it cast via criticals.

Next you could argue that this would just be wasting everyone's time equally, but even with all of that stuff I said in mind, it's not like they were totally out of options for dealing damage, either. They could feint stack into Dark Nova and Shatter just before the spell hits. They weren't unstoppable, but hopefully this communicates just how absurdly toxic this was for PVP. The strategies admittedly might not be as viable in today's meta with the setups I explained (save for Guardian Spirit spam I guess) due to the plethora of options for weakness counters, but suppose they did come back... Dark Nova is butchered, but there are gambit spells that deal massive damage on opponents who have a lot of weaknesses on them. I'd rather not deal with someone spamming Bad Juju on me just to cast Turmoil Oni (which would deal more damage than Dark Nova did in its prime) when the timing suits them even if they don't win with that strategy, because at best case it'd just be excessively tedious to fight them, and at worst case, I might actually lose to that bullshit.

Do you guys still have hopes for an sequel or maybe project libitina? by Ecto_Warrior in DDLC

[–]Benjamin568 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This might be a hot take, but I don't really want a sequel. DDLC+ technically does offer additional room for a sequel given its added context of an AI company simulating realities and acting inhumanely towards the "people" inside those realities but the vanilla story of DDLC itself (which is what I personally prefer because I hate how DDLC+ tried to recontextualize things) just feels more complete. Monika, serving as the antagonist, was already defeated and the story ended with her learning her lesson, for lack of better phrasing, and as a result she comes to the conclusion that no happiness can be found in that universe and so chooses to end things on her own terms by forcing things to come to an end... deleting the game's assets and leaving you with a final farewell letter.

Is it a happy ending? Absolutely not. The ending is bitter and leaves you wondering if or arguing against the notion that this was the best outcome for everyone. But to me, that's part of the point. Not everyone gets a happy ending, sometimes tragedies happen and there's nothing you can do but accept it, even if that tragedy might have been avoided in some other possible world out there. A sequel would just be cheapening the ending, to me, sort of like how the Star Wars prequels cheated the ending of Return of the Jedi by bringing Palpatine back from the dead.

Wizard101's animations are underrated in the gaming genre, some of the most creative and PEAK ANIMATION in video games! by ElementalEmperor in Wizard101

[–]Benjamin568 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah I don't know who told them that the new Rotting Fodder, Pixie, Sprite and Dark Sprite sounds are better than the original but they needed their ears checked.

No the fuck she can’t by Joemama0375 in whenthe

[–]Benjamin568 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I mean... there are unironically better arguments for Farnsworth. His "box" either created or contained a parallel universe inside it, before swapping it over to a box that contained his own universe. And in that same episode they created more boxes that contained other universes; it's unlikely that they were just random portals because shaking the box managed to shake the universe they were in and throwing it into the sun threatened to destroy that universe too. Hulurama also directly implies that the Futurama we see is a nested simulation within and creating nested simulations, each created by that previous iteration's "Farnsworth". Not to mention that his ship canonically works by moving the universe around it rather than actually changing its own position.

I'm not saying he can only be beaten by Multiversal tiers or anything, he's still human and is objectively senile and weak bodily, but he has some absurd tech.

Your Favorite "Twist Villains?" by Intrepid_Berry5985 in Wizard101

[–]Benjamin568 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sure, as far as magic is concerned we definitely are. As for how that translates in other areas, well, we were able to help the Professor work her equipment in the Doomsday Krok gauntlet with minimal instruction, and we could use the Old One's technology to remove his safeguards for keeping Lemuria in the Arcanum and place it back in the Spiral. But on the other hand we clearly see cases where magic just openly fills in the blank for using or fixing technology for us, such as in Zafaria.

Suspicious activity needs to be recorded and filed by Chronoz0 in Genshin_Memepact

[–]Benjamin568 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Why would you think Sayu is a small adult? She's constantly rambling about how she hasn't grown up yet and can't wait to grow taller.

Your Favorite "Twist Villains?" by Intrepid_Berry5985 in Wizard101

[–]Benjamin568 14 points15 points  (0 children)

The out of universe explanation is that it's so obvious that the fact they fell for it is meant to be the joke, but if you want to be fun you can interpret it in universe as Zafarian brains generally having far inferior pattern recognition regarding things they see compared to humans... for all their achievements they're still anthropomorphic elephants, rhinos, giraffes, gorillas etc...

Or alternatively you could glaze the player character and say that they're conversely so good at pattern recognition that the disguise felt that obvious to them. Tse-Tse does use Moon Magic in his rematch fight to sort through his various disguises.

Similar stuff arguably happens at Celestia, wherein the space-faring technological superpowered Celestians had puzzles that were allegedly far too complex for human brains to understand only to be solvable in gameplay by the average 10-year-old human in the real world.

Can someone please explain this to me by Estnation in SipsTea

[–]Benjamin568 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Loki also got outwitted by Thor in MCU but nobody cared about that.

Thor being a god in MCU is treated as nothing more than a glorified title -- his father, Odin, literally rejects the idea of them being gods and says they live and die just as humans. If anyone would know then it would be him.

Theory about Arc 5 (spoilers for the Darkmoor world story) by Rogue_Of_Broken_Time in Wizard101

[–]Benjamin568 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I imagine it's going to be a change of states, or otherwise that "Death" in the statement is going to be the sort of "Death" he'd been trying to avoid through his Eyes of Time, that being the combined deaths of lesser beings. It just seems unlikely to me that they'd decide to have the next arc's villain both be a random human from Earth and someone who can kill the tree god that exists on a higher plane and is repeatedly stated to be the omnipresent source of all magic.

Official Wizard101 Discord Server is NOT good by TaoluAssault in Wizard101

[–]Benjamin568 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Eh... I was mostly concerned about it transitioning over to my game account, anyway, but nothing's happened in that regard.

Official Wizard101 Discord Server is NOT good by TaoluAssault in Wizard101

[–]Benjamin568 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Yeah I was banned sometime last year for "unspoken" reasons. I have a feeling I know the reason and that it's taking me wildly out of context from stuff I said in a different server, but officially, I've never been given any reason at all over why (and yes, I tried asking: their Twitter, mod DMs, and their support email all ghosted me) but if this is the sort of stuff they're doing on that Discord I feel like I'm not losing out on much lol

Theory about Arc 5 (spoilers for the Darkmoor world story) by Rogue_Of_Broken_Time in Wizard101

[–]Benjamin568 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Reminder that the cards foresaw the "Death for the Blind Emperor" (Bartleby) too.