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What is Supernova?
Supernova is a 2 pip Balance spell which does 535 damage and removes an opponent’s aura for two pips. At 267 damage per pip, it’s one of the hardest hitting attacks in Wizard101.
Obviously, the W101 team didn’t put a spell this powerful into the game without some drawbacks. The first is that is has a very low base accuracy, 60%. It’s harder for Balance to get accuracy boosts than it is for schools like Storm and Fire, so that’s a pretty big drawback on its own. But the second drawback is even bigger: Your opponent must have an Aura on, or the spell won’t work at all.
So, at face value, this is a very well balanced spell. It does big damage and removes an aura, but it’s not a sure thing and your opponent can avoid it by avoiding auras. No problem, right? This author is not so sure, anymore.
What’s the problem?
The things that worry me about Supernova all sprout from the relationship of this spell to auras. As we’ve leveled, star spells have become more and more important to our wizards. One school having the ability to deny everyone else an entire section of magic creates an issue when that section of magic becomes important to the function of our wizards.
I’m going to present some common places where Supernova is already having a big effect on our decisions for top level PvP, you can judge for yourself it it is a problem.
Auras to Supplement Gear Drawbacks
Much of the high level gear in W101 has serious drawbacks, which is good to promote diversity, but in PvP it leaves our wizards with gaps in their stats that we have to fill in other ways. Most notably, the Hades Defensive gear gives almost no accuracy at all. Schools with low base-accuracy need to run Infallible almost constantly to offset the drawbacks from trying to use the “balanced” Hades gear.
Here Supernova starts to become an issue, because it is literally limiting gear selection for PvP. Since Balance players can punish us for using Auras, we’re forced to choose less effective gear against the other 6 schools, or deal with the fact that we will have greatly reduced accuracy any time we match a Balance player.
Since the Aura which gives accuracy (Infallible) also gives armor piercing, this is a huge offensive setback. Not only are we limited in gear selection, but vs one school in the spiral we are missing a big chunk of armor piercing.
Auras to Counter Auras
Sometimes Auras are the only reliable way to counter other Auras. For instance, even if you manage to get enough block to stop Hade’s gear users, they have the option to use Vengeance and boost their Critical Percentage by 20-30%. The best counter for this is Conviction… except any time you use it vs Balance they can take it down, punish you with high damage, and continue to use their Vengeance to work on your now-lowered Block.
The same idea applies to the relationship of Fortify and Infallible.
The Pet Effect
Supernova also has an impact on our pet-building decisions at high level. MayCast Auras are a popular choice for our pets, however this spell turns those talents into a drawback if we face a Balance player. Any time a player’s pet casts an Aura, it’s an opening for a Balance player to punish them.
Additionally, since the competitive gear at top level comes with drawbacks, and we can’t reliably work around those drawbacks with auras, many players are being forced to use their pets to boost low stats. Accuracy and Damage talents are becoming more common. Even Critical pet talents have been on the rise. Since players can’t rely on an Aura to boost stats for them, they are having to rely more heavily on their pets.
Tournament Issues
Nowhere in PvP has Supernova posed such an issue as it once did in the Lightning Round Tournaments. These tournaments give players boosted damage and armor piercing, which increases every turn. The problem? It initially gave them these stats by using an Aura.
Balance players could, quite literally, cast Supernova every single turn. If they were going first, they could take the opponent’s aura away before it could ever be used, giving themselves a huge damage and pierce advantage. From second they were still able to enjoy the big damage per pip that could be used every single turn.
Luckily, KI was able to address this problem by giving the damage through a Bubble rather than an Aura. Still, I think it goes to show that Supernova is not only restricting our decisions as players, it’s popping up on the Development end of things too.
The One-Way Street
One of the main reasons that this spell is so problematic is that only one class gets access to it. If everyone was able to punish opponent’s for using an aura, it would make much better sense to create gear and pets and decks that take this effect into account. But that’s not really the case, other wizards cannot consistently deny auras to their opponents.
So this compounds with the restrictiveness of the spell to create a bigger gap in abilities. It says “Balance players CAN use Auras, but you can’t.”
It should be noted that other schools can now access this spell as a TC through gardening. The TC also has boosted accuracy, which is helpful since you cannot enchant the TC like a Balance player to achieve greater accuracy. The drops, however, are not plentiful enough to sustain a PvP build that uses them regularly. Also, Balance players can hit 95% accuracy and 15% Armor Piercing using high-end accuracy enchantments, while the TC version is stuck at 80% accuracy and 0% Armor Piercing.
It should also be noted that Vengeance can partially be countered by using the Shadow Sentinel spell, but that this is an extremely restrictive Shadow Form which adds backlash for healing or attacking. On top of that, it only gives 80 Block Rating as opposed to Conviction’s 90. It is much less effective than Conviction as a counter, both in flexibility and in defensive benefit.
The Proof
A recent look at the Leaderboards for top level PvP showed that for Level 95 players, 60% of the board is dominated by two schools: Balance and Storm. Additionally, the Balance players, on average, had a higher rank than the Storm players.
28% of the Leaderboard at level 95, and the majority of the highest ranks, all belonged to Balance. In contrast, 40% of the Leaderboard held all of the other schools: Fire, Ice, Life, Death, and Myth. I think part of the reason Storm was as well represented as they are is because they do not need to rely on Auras for Armor Piercing and Critical Percentage to be effective.
I’m certainly not saying this is all due to Supernova, but I think when you pair it with Mana Burn for locking down pips, and the increased levels of Pierce available while Tower is still the only solid defense for Balance damage, and Loremaster with a high damage per pip PLUS two debuffs in a 4-pip package, and no one else getting such strong disruption tools at the low pip cost… Maybe we’re starting to see an issue.
