The extra pip on wands allowed the team that went last to drop a one less pip card on cards such as storm lord and frost giant that enabled the team that went last to turn the play around a bit. Going first a team had the choice of either increasing damage, shielding, or reducing pips and it was a hard choice where increasing damage and shielding often seemed the better choice. The team that went last often thought about decreasing damage in favor of an intial stun that helped to prevent early slaughter.
Without wild bolt as it was storm is hurt quite a bit and becomes less fun and less of an opponent as its blades and traps are now largely unuseable with wild bolt and the pip cost is too much even at two given such low damage potential. At the same time balance gets an attack all card that gives it storm and frost lord type damage to all without any defense against it and cause balance has a high base health (around 900 more health than a storm player and about ten percent more pip chance and more accuracy as well, I have both a grandmaster storm and a grandmaster balance and this is the case between the two even though my storm has a pretty perfect pet with all useful fighting talents and my balance has a lousy pet in such regards), anyway cause of the high health balance can afford to drop it in favor of equipment that drastically increases critical hits and critical blocking and with judgment and RA balance becomes about the strongest 1v1 and 4v4 attacker in the game and without any way to protect much against the attacks, expecially when balance has all types of shields at its disposal and targetting and damage reduction. Storm has two attack all cards, one with a stun and one with a per pip damage, while balance has three attack all cards now with one having reduce damage to all.
The two pip wand favored storm school the most I think and it was taken away, the origional wild bolt helped storm a lot and a lot where desperately needed and it was also taken away. Storm wasn't winning compared to balance and perhaps even against others such as strong ice players and storm was severely hurt by the addition of one pip dispel cards placed in the bazaar in bulk. Those who complained about storm the most were low level PvP players, the higher level players weren't that bothered by it.
Storm has become severely crippled and weakened compared to balance and balance won in the arena at least twice as often as storm was. The original test realm celestia put things more even and was much more fun to play cause things were harder and faster at the start, and all the changes were at the expense of storm players and at the benifit of balance players who are given ample time to shield up and no longer have to even deal with any fear of bolts.
