Well. We are limited right now because the character level cap is 100. Once it gets lifted to 150 or 200, we will be able to play with more spells from the outset. I'm thinking once the level cap is 150 you will be able to use about 4-6 spells for your character.

I've been eyeballing numbers while leveling my feca and am still getting roughly 80% of my exp as spell exp. Only lev 19 on the feca so far since it's so hard to find a gobbal in sevamor. I'll have to start on warchiefs soon I guess.

Max level just means eventually you will have more Spell XP (and more spells at 100 each), but that doesn't mean you'll be able to level more from the start without falling behind in terms of effective damage against monsters of your level.

Support spells (which used to have 100 level as well) are an indicator of a flaw in the overall design. Essentially, they were "fixed" to level like Dofus spells (a step-back in "innovation" which Ankama have ignore/refuse to apply to the rest of the system). I think part of the flaw is simply "100 spell levels" which cause a huge gap between a levelled, and an unlevelled spell. Of course, that's fed by "200 character levels" (of grind).

This post has been edited by GoldfishGod: 8 Feb 2010, 21:32

I think it does make the game mundane a bit if you think about it. Fighting the same way for 200 levels is not fun to me, its a strategic type of game and I should be able to use all my skills with decent power depending on the situation. I think Wakfu is like chess which is why I like it so much, in Dofus you can allocate points in to a few skills or lvl them all up a bit. Im used to being more versatile with my character and as of now I feel like Wakfu is pretty stagnant when it comes to character/skill development. Just my 2.....

I absolutely agree. In Dofus you could max more and more spells as you developed your character. When I was around 175 with my Iop I still saved points to spend etc. And in total you had about 10-11 spells that you frequently used. In Wakfu there's like... 3. It gets a bit boring mashing the same monsters with the same combo over, and over, and over again.

Now, don't get me wrong here. I really like Wakfu, and I really liked Dofus - but I don't want a dofus 2. I'd just be happy with some tweaks on the spell system in order to get some more fun out of it.

Cheers! /Hop-San

This post has been edited by Whyisallthenickstaken: 9 Feb 2010, 13:24

I agree but I don't think the system is as bad as it sounds now. To me, it looks like the current system would work like this:

level 1-100:
3 elemental spells, 2 support spells (this is what we know so far)

level 101-150:
5 elemental spells, 3 support spells (hypothetical)

level 151-200:
7-? elemental spells, 4 support spells (hypothetical)


I think that is a reasonable view, or at least the bottom line (we could have even more versatility depending on how much exp is needed to level and how much of that is allocated to spells past level 100). I also factored in using only about half your characters points for support (non-elemental) spells so if you would want to, you could have more support spells.

In the end you will have at least 11 spells which sounds pretty good actually.

What do you mean with 2 support spells at lvl 1-100? Every class comes with a bunch of spells in the support branch, so I don't really follow your line of thought there. And 3 elemental spells? You have 5x3 elemental skills starting at lvl 1 right? Can you clarify a bit please

Well, every 50 levels you get 150 Character points you are allowed to spend. You can spend these in support skills or other attributes. I took the assumption that you would spend roughly half those character points on support skills. I also generalized that a support skill would be useful at level 3/4. At level 100, you would have 2 of these support skills at useful levels although you might have more depending on your class build as some support skills are useful at low level (some are even useful at level 0 such as the Feca's unmoveable shield or the Sram's invisibility). Even though you might have more support skills in reality I wanted to make a bottom line on what would be the minimum amount of useful support skills you would be using in combat by level 100 (or 150/200).

When I say you would have 2-3 element skills I meant you would have them at their "useful" or "max" level. This level would be 90-100 but I would rather stick at 100 as the jump from 99 to 100 for a lot of elemental skills is a big leap (some skills apply their "state" effect at level ++ only at elemental spell level 100).

Ah, I don't mean to split hairs, but.... 5 characteristic points per level times 50 levels = 250 spell points?

I'll agree that the spell-leveling system could use a bit of revamping. As mentioned, there is the opportunity to level five or six spells simultaneously -- but this does place a pretty wide gap between your character's level and the power of their spells.

As with hybrid builds in Dofus --- sure, you can 'branch out' in different directions, and succeed to a certain extent because versatility and flexibility are helpful. We don't want our characters to be "one-trick ponies", right? Yet, the current system of spell-leveling in Wakfu enforces this to an extent -- simply because versatility in Wakfu comes at a much higher price than it does in Dofus. There's a much greater difference in power between the "one-trick ponies" and those characters who wish to level twice as many spells as the former.

I know, I know... Wakfu isn't Dofus, and vice-versa. I appreciate many of the things that the games do not have in common. The weakness of Wakfu 'hybrids', however, is not one of them -- versatility should be encouraged, not punished.

(Note: When I refer to any Wakfu characters as "hybrids", I am not necessarily meaning the use of two or three elements; I am rather meaning characters who level 4-6 spells equally, instead of just 2 or 3. I don't have the terminology to describe this phenomenon accurately.)

Let's call it "spread levelling" (levelling 4+ elemental spells together) and "focused levelling" (levelling 1-3 elemental spells together).

I think the idea that you'll be able to level more spells once you've maxed out the first 1-3 is a bit, er, dull. It's still a lot of character levels just to level those first spells.. and the end pay off is ~7 spells by level 200 (most of them are simple damage variants). But even after you've got a few level 100 spells... your unlevelled spells are all the way back at ~0 (i.e. very very sub-par for the monsters you will be fighting).

As to support spells, most of them are useful even at level 0 (and not that much powerful at level 4). Relative numbers e.g. x% of health, -X% damage rather than absolute numbers, e.g. +X health, +X damage.

This post has been edited by GoldfishGod: 9 Feb 2010, 23:15

I'll add an example actually. Here is what I would think a Feca's character development would look like based on my hypothetical assumptions above (about the levels 101-200).

At level 100 my Feca would have:
Earthen Grasp (lev 100)
sandstorm (lev 100)
regen armor (lev 100)
guardian glyph (lev4)
feca armor (lev4)

at level 150:
Earthen Grasp (lev 100)
sandstorm (lev 100)
regen armor (lev 100)
Terrestrial Transfer (100)
Earth Blade (100)
guardian glyph (lev4)
feca armor (lev4)
rebound (lev4)

at level 200:
Earthen Grasp (lev 100)
sandstorm (lev 100)
regen armor (lev 100)
Terrestrial Transfer (100)
Earth Blade (100)
Breaking Wave (100)
Protective Wellspring (100)
guardian glyph (lev4)
feca armor (lev4)
rebound (lev4)
paralyzing glyph (lev4)

Well, I think this is a pretty heated topic, and this forum was needing one.

Firstly, I am sorry my post will lack statistical and numerical exactness, currently my ISP is not doing very well so I cannot log on Wakfu to get the exact bits, but let me talk about what i have uncovered about the skill XP distribution system and such:

It seems everyone know already that the more skills you use, the more diluted their level become. But why is that exactly? I guess no one can describe all the system for sure, but so far I noticed you have a 'total spell level', based on the sum of all your current spells. This spell level is used to calculate the spell experience gain from fights, and it is pretty much similar to character experience calculations.

In this way, comparing someone leveling two spells to someone leveling only one could result on the following: while the first one had a lvl 60 spell, the other one would have about two level 40 spells (remember, the numbers are just for the sake of example). It is 60 against 40/40 and not 60 against 30/30 because while the total spell level grows in both, making it harder to improve them, the second case spell's are in a lower level, hence costing less xp to advance. If both cases are focused on a single elemental line, this would mean the total elemental level would be 60 against 80, and since most skills have a linear growth (i.e. one lvl increases base dmg, the next critical damage and so on) the second case would have a more 'total bonus'.

Last Friday I created another Feca to test again the one-spell build. I focused on the 'lame de fond' spell, which has a decent damage (55 at lvl 100), is AoE and inflicts congelátion+ (-2ap,-2mp for 1 turn). I played a little bit with him until he reached lvl 58, and had the following water spell lvls 6,2,2,1,85 (pretty close to 86), for a total of 96 total water lvl, all in water (spells start in 0, meaning other elements are not counting). This left me with +78% water damage and +39% defense (note this is without the equipments, any bonus you currently have such as protectors, equipment and consumable buffs affect the value displayed). Getting another level on 'lame de fond' is talking about as much time as getting a character level, and the tendency is to get harder. In this way, we could estimate the lvl 100 spell around character lvl 80.

Another character i had was a lvl 48 air Xelor, focused on summoning. His main spell was 'Sinistro', but i tried to level 'Fletrissement' and 'Sablier du Xelor', resulting in an 39,20,25,47,5, totalizing 136 of elemental level! 71% dmg 35% def are his air bonus, significantly lower than the Feca, even with so high elemental level!

Third case is an earth Feca focused solely on Earth Armor, which is the first skill. This means he ONLY has levels on that skill, and all others are 0 with 0 xp. He is at lvl 41 (close to 42) with 70,0,0,0,0 accounting 70 total elemental level. His bonus are (again, NO EQUIPS OR BUFFS INVOLVED) 66% damage and 33% defense.

My guess on elemental bonus here is that the character level influences it mostly, applied to the elemental levels. Again, i am not sure how that works exactly, but think for example that either you get +0,5% dmg 0,25% resist * the lvl proportion on each one, or you get a +x% based on the elemental level.

Also, for my opinion on the current spell system: currently, it sucks a lot. Instead of going for flexibility and a more relaxed way of character building, it can potentially ruin your life, and this is not a 'fallback', it is on the basis of the concept! A good thing for me is that, sorry to disagree with you mr. Goldfishgod, the duality of elemental and support skills make a sweet twist on character building, i think this is a positive point on the system. But see, I am in favor of the different leveling methods, not so much the current implementation. The problem with them right now is that it is mostly dividing damage/healing (spells that need crunchy numbers) with spells that do cool tricks and have and/or use absolute %, and this could be rethought.

My suggestion to help things get better: SPELL-SYNERGY! Those of you who have played Diablo II and remember how synergy increased gameplay when it was introduced can understand me. It is a simple concept: some spells influence on others! So simple it leaves all the hard work to balancing, of course, but hey: that's why betas are for! Consider for example if the chance to inflict congelátion on my 'lame du fond' spell was related to the level of my skill 'deferlant', how cool would that be? And more: its range could be connected to the 'teleport' support spell (ok, lame example, but you get my point), the possibilities are endless! It would be much cooler to level multiple skill on the influence they had on each other, and even cross-elemental synergy could be cool. I haven't read everything on the forums, so if someone had suggested this already, sorry, I am not trying to steal his idea, I am just dreaming about this!

Anyways, sorry for my bad English and stupid formatting I suck at forums and I am not a natural speaker. Also, please correct me if I am wrong in something here.

This post has been edited by [Knonaut]: 10 Feb 2010, 10:08

You aren't disagreeing with me... I didn't say they should use one system. I said Wakfu used to use one system for all spells (100 levels, level through usage), and then Ankama recognizing that a problem existed with that 100-level system, and reverted support spells to the Dofus system... yet did nothing to address the issue for Elemental spells (I assume, in the belief that "common use" spells would not find it a problem).

Well, that's what Mastery is... your total level for all spells of that element, grant a damage bonus to all spells of that element (and resistance to that element).

This post has been edited by GoldfishGod: 10 Feb 2010, 10:10

SecondWinter: Thank you very much for contributing. You're findings have been similair to mine and might explain the problem the initial poster of this thread had.

I am going to make some simple calculations (they are most likely more complex in-game but should be similair). Please critique.


The amount of experience you get per battle is determined by your character level vs. monster level vs. monster base exp amount.

battleExp = monsterBaseExp * (monsterLvl / charLvl)


The % of experience allocated to spell experience (not seperated per spell) in a battle is determined by your total spell level vs. character level with some type of unknown modifier (perhaps just a simple constant or something to do with monster level).

battleSpellExp = battleExp * (charLvl / totalSpellLevel * modifierA)


The experience allocated to spells is then distributed based on spell use. We cannot really find out what this is cause it is different for each spell (some get experience by how much damage/healing they do, how many times they were cast, etc.). We can ignore this formula by using 1-spell builds only for examples/data as this will not apply and all spell experience will go to 1 spell.

Seeing as we have some initial groundwork on the breakup of experience and spell experience perhaps we could do some data-digging and find out the mysterious modifierA or make the above formulas more accurate (perhaps individual spells levels are used in the equations?).

Please note that each spell gains levels just like a character. I'm using made up numbers here for this example: Leveling a spell to level 1 takes 1000 exp, to level it again to 2 would take 1200 exp, leveling again to 3 would take 1400 etc.

From these assumptions we can deduce that the initial poser was getting poor experience because his totalSpellLvl was very high (from leveling a multitude of spells early in his career) and overshadowed his charLvl leaving him with very low battleSpellExp per battle.

This also confirms the stories of people receiving higher battleSpellExp than battleExp as their totalSpellLvl was lower than it should be for his charLvl resulting in the battleExp being multiplied by something higher than 1.

This post has been edited by willoc: 10 Feb 2010, 19:33

You are oversimplifying Spell-Sinergy, or at least the concept i pointed. It is true that in this way there is a little bit of sinergy, but not even close to Diablo 2, for example. My suggestion goes really a lot content-wise and has deeper meaning.

Let me give a few more examples, then, back to Fecas:

• Deferlante: the spell starts costing 4 ap, and can have its ap cost reduced by leveling Renvoi de Sort (reaching a total of 2 ap cost when Renvoi is at lvl 5). The skill damage increases very low with levels, but the congelátion on a good rate.
• Lame de Fond: Still a ranged and area spell, but now the congelátion rate is based off a lot on Deferlante's lvl. Furthermore, its damaged can be boosted by leveling Lame de Terre, and its ranged could be increased by levelling up the teleport spell, just as Deferlante's APcost.
• Armure Regenerante: It could add a little bit of water healing using Source Protrectrice's lvl, and its duration could be based on the levels of both Bouclier Agressif and Bouclier Inamovible (summed up, for example).
• Ataque Orageuse: Critical hits would have huge boost linked to Choc Electrique, and the chance to cause immolation increases with Reflux.

Remember that those are not even proper suggestions, just examples to illustrate my point with no thought on ballancing whatsoever!

Now players would have lots of reasons to make different combinations of spells (both with single and mixed elements), for example:

• Frosty puncher: using renvói to make deferlant cost 2, then levelling it to cause lots of congelátion.
• Mobile group-damager: increasing teleport to get good mobility AND a better range for Lame de Fond, then giving priority to level it for its good damage. You will not freeze enemies too much, but you will run a lot and attack groups from far!
• Mobile group-freezer: same as before, but instead of just levelling Lame de Fond, give a good training on deferlante, so you changed your character flavor completely!
• Critical Feca: trying to get some good critical rate, then becoming a master at critical hits by levelling Choc Electrique over Ataque Orageuse!

Again, this is just to show the potential of an interesting sinergy design. I bet you all could have better ideas than mine, and that ballancing should be done, but would not this be a pretty cool solution to the actual elemental skill system?

1. synergy
2. Diablo 2's synergy essentially grants a bonus to the spell level of the "other" skill. And with most Diablo 2 skills this just means a damage bonus. Wakfu essentially has 3 groups of 5 spells (i.e. each elemental group) synergising with each other, to grant a damage/heal bonus, but also a resist bonus. In the same way, Diablo 2 synergies only exist within the same skill-tree.
3. Wakfu lacks the "skill tree" system which makes Diablo synergy interesting (in terms of paying into a low-end skill to raise a high-end skill).

I'd say it's over-complicating a system, and making it harder to balance individual spells... for little benefit.

Generic effects like the Earth&Air/Fire&Water aptitudes give a clear option, and result. There are already functional benefits from having multiple spells which work together (e.g. Assault + Vortex, Frenzy + Flagellation, Homing Shot + Ricochet Beacon). There doesn't need to be a "forced" strategy by giving specific benefits for specific combos.

This post has been edited by GoldfishGod: 12 Feb 2010, 10:23

I was a frequent player of all Diablo Games and I liked the syngergy when it was implemented. However, I think that the actual combinations and bonuses avaiable in Wakfu are nice as they are now, I'd just like to see some modifications to the actual spell experience system. I would like to have the option to use more than 2 spells and still be quite optimized.

Oops, sorry about the typo, but as i said, i am not a native english speaker. We use "sinergia", and sometimes i forget about this little details.

I was proposing synergy as to illustrate a different way to explore mixing spells, sorry if i seemed a little one-sided on this point. Even so, i cannot help but think the problem is not directly with the experience system, as almost everyone has pointed out in this thread. If a player wants to level only one of his spells, at the cost of his character flexibility and consequently fun, the least you could expect is that he gets stronger than average at that point. A "ballance" in the spell experience distribution that goes against this is a bit unfair, and is rather punishing players who make this choice than making the game more fun for everyone.

The characters i have described in previous examples who use only one spell really do have a better output than the average builds using 2~3 spells, but have serious strategical limitations to certain kinds of enemies and fight. PvP against players with decent knowledge of the class skills also becomes rather difficult, because they can counter you with ease.

In this way, if you want to have a fun and variety in your character the system is already working pretty well. Why are we complaning, then? Because we always want to have the best of the two worlds. Just tweaking the experience calculations wont help a thing on this issue, there should be some replanning on the system design.

Goldfishgod stated before that the 100 lvl spell capacity is a major problem because it favors big gaps and a too long run for each spell to reach their maximum power. I really agree with him, everyone wants their main skill to be maxed out as fast as possible, but once you have a gap of 30 levels on a skill it becomes pretty hard to make it usefull on a fight. Levelling this outdated skill contributes very little to your main spell with the actual "synergy" aswell, and again the best short-term improvement is getting some more steps on the already powered spell.

I still think the way to go will be synergy, and still would love to see something on the likes of my suggestion, but i reckon i am being unrealistic on that. What if the skills were limited to 10 lvls, but instead of a short-run for maxing it, each skill level represents something as the actual lvl 0/10/20/30... Together with that, the elemental bonus could be more significant on the overall spell powers, not just limited to damage and resist %, but with a little more flavor such as elemental status % and inter-element bonus. Furthermore, if this synergic bonus were not chained to the exact elemental spell level sum, but instead to the elemental spell usage. This approach provides for more realistic solution without changing the actual system too much. Ballancing would still be an issue, of course, but it benefits both styles of character building.

Players that want to focus on one spell would need a lot more time for each individual level, but would still have a good linear growth with the elemental synergy. In case they decide to level other skills, their already high elemental mastery helps reducing the gap. For the multi-spell user, the benefit is pretty clear, since their skills will have a closer threshold and will keep boosting each other. Also, with a 10-lvl run, it might interesting to make more fundamental changes on a skill's particularities (i.e. at lvl 5 it costs 1 ap less). Again, this is not the suggestion forum and neither the right topic, but i enjoyed talking about it here. Sorry if i made any typos again or anything like that.