Spirit Masters: Holy Shit!

[Griphus]

So, just to see what they are like, I leveled a SM to 12 with Noel yesterday.

They are absolutely freaking nuts. Unless something changes significantly as they level up, I can't believe how un-popular they are. We pretty much tore through anything we wanted to - fast! Especially with the freaking awesome 10 minute DP buff for their spirit they just tear through stuff.

[Valetta]

10 minutes is INSANELY long for that buff to last. We tore through mobs in seconds for that whole 10 minutes. It was super fun and an amazing amount of experience.

It made me want to convince Timothy to play a Spirit Master.

[Xine]

Hush! Quiet you.

We're going to have just enough to fill the guilds needs, but we don't need a new FotM. Especially when it's in-between beta and release.

SM's will be the top and easy PvE leveling Char. But semi-limited in raids and PvP, and I believe those are the major reasons people aren't flocking to them.
I'm pretty sure

[Descartes]

I guess Xine is going SM then. ;)

[Griphus]

I guess Xine is going SM then. ;)

I thought he just rerolled the Father class...

[Delsius]

ummmmmmm my main is going to be a SM

[Acorn]

When you first get the DP buff it's ridiculous. It evens out a bit a little later, but is still very very good. The class really tears through the first 20 levels, and it doesn't show too many signs of slowing down pve wise after that. However it is missing any form of burst. For every mob, even the small ones, I still have to lay on all the dots and watch it melt.

I did a little pvp and and was able to kite some asmo to death, which was fun. I did some duels too and it worked out pretty well. By all accounts though the SM is a very solid class while leveling. Most of the issues people have are related to endgame content, and scaling. (and pets that don't fly).

As long as people have realistic expectations of the class I think they'll be fine. It's not about the dps, it's about the control & utility. It's not about big numbers, but laying on the pain and watching someone melt. Your arch-nemesis will always be the Cleric, due to their ability to dispel almost your entire offense.

[Arclite]

yeah but clerics hate temps from what ive seen. i got "mistakenly" teleported to asmo, and just stun locked a cleric to death... was funny

[Xaeon]

There is a good chance that SM will be my alt after Templar gets fully pimped. I have not even tried it yet but it really really reminds me on Summoner that I loved in FFXI.

[Kismet]

Your arch-nemesis will always be the Cleric, due to their ability to dispel almost your entire offense.

And inability to do any DPS in return... WOOOO! :D

[Caerrai]

Timo, That's what i tried to say in all my posts about SM. So VERY incredibly fun to level. And fast. You grind like there is no tomorrow. When you have the DP buff on it turns your pet into something roughly in all blues for your level. Thus when your low level its amazing.

I experienced slow down on my SM @ 25. Where mobs were getting an extra 1-2 hits in on my summon before death. This might not seem like much, but it ends up being an extra 500'ish damage. It throws a kink into how fast you level. It actually ended up feeling quite significant. You get your Earth 2 summon at 28, and that guy works until 40 to my knowledge. @ 40 however, from what i've heard from Korean/CN Sm's is that it becomes much harder than it's worth to solo.

Like it was said, love the class. Just don't like it's endgame worth. I think if they even tweaked some CD's. Making AoE fear 3m instead of 5. The damage transferance 5m instead of 10m. Increase pet commands to 35 yrds. etc. Don't even really care about the flying pet.

[Lycurgus]

I agree, the SM is an awesome class, but is underrated so much. What Caerrai says is true to the best of my knowledge. The endgame worth of the SM just doesn't compare to most other classes, but that's just for the time being, hopefully the SM will get some much needed love in a future patch.

[Amoch]

They only need to do one thing IMO to help us in end game, stacking dots, maybe not infinitely so but more than one should be able to be applied to one target as long as the dots come from different SM's.

[Griphus]

They only need to do one thing IMO to help us in end game, stacking dots, maybe not infinitely so but more than one should be able to be applied to one target as long as the dots come from different SM's.

I know one of the things they changed from vanilla WoW to the first expansion is how DoT's and HoT's worked. It used to be that only one HoT would sit on a tank. Made it really annoying.

[Amoch]

Yeah i remember that. Hopefully they will change this so i can actually help hurt people if there is another SM any where near me.

[Acorn]

Dot stacking is one of those blessing/curse type deals. It's not just the SM dots that don't stack, it's everything that doesn't stack. This game doesn't allow for WAR AOE Whharggrbl, or focus fire Dot Parades; our tools are mostly single target and very precise. Even CC feels about right because it's not over the top, and more importantly it's all single target. And the TTK for players seems nicely tuned as well.

With that being said, I would still support dot stacking if they want to introduce it, but it needs to be done very carefully because it represent a serious shift in power. It does feel very much like vanilla wow though, when you'd have a 40 man raid and 1 or two warlocks. (Dude, I'm gonna use COA, you can use the other dots. ) And then the rest of raid laughed as the dots got pushed off the limited debuff space and it ultimately didn't matter.

As a side note, one of the culprits of WAR's poor mass battle performance was it's buff/debuff reporting. You get beat on for 5 seconds and you have 20 dots/debuffs/procs on you. Compounded by large size it was a ton of information. Some people would just lag right out if they clicked on a keep door during a big siege because the all the new information it was trying to cram down your pipe.

Long story short I prefer the simple if not harsh methods AION uses to limit buffs/dots. Obviously it hurts a dot based class much much more than others, and that really needs to be taken into consideration, but I feel there are solutions to this problem that don't involve dot stacking.

[Xine]

This game is going to have a number of problems similar to vanilla WoW and BC wow to some degree. IE - shortage of tanks and healers. Having only 1 class that can main tank and 1 that can main heal leaves you with 6 classes to fill 4 spots assuming population is even. And it won't be. You know there is going to be more DPS than anything.

[Grimholtt]

It's looking like there are a shitload of Sorcerers. I put that was going to play that, but if it's over filled, I'll go with a Chanter because I really enjoyed that as well. I'll roll a sorcerer later just to make stuff go boom in my off time.

[Griphus]

This game is going to have a number of problems similar to vanilla WoW and BC wow to some degree. IE - shortage of tanks and healers. Having only 1 class that can main tank and 1 that can main heal leaves you with 6 classes to fill 4 spots assuming population is even. And it won't be. You know there is going to be more DPS than anything.

I don't disagree - but at least they don't have raid bosses that require 5 tanks (that I know of).

[Acorn]

It does seem a bit simplistic that they would have one main tank class and one main heal class. On the bright side, anyone wishing to fill those rolls will have no questions as to which class they should choose. The real test will be to see how well non-standard groups can fare. Can you run 2 chanters for heals in end-game instances? no idea. There is always the "public opinion" of exactly how you should run your team, and then on the other hand there is what is actually possible.

We may find at first we will need very strong teams with pure classes filling roles, and then as gear progresses we may find new configurations that open up to us. It will up to us to see how individual skill & gear stack up vs class choice.

[Fuel]

There's allways CC for mobs to lighten the load in a non-standard group.

[Caerrai]

I should say further. Dot stacking again for SM is a large issue... My much larger issue with them was pet scaling post 40 and long CD short Duration DP pets (Not the buff the actuall Tempest and Magma Pets). I felt when i was playing that my pet damage was a significant contribution to my damage, especially DP buffed , which you can almost continually cycle once you have it going. Later levels pet scaling just needs to be looked at, and again, extended range on pet commands(Group PvP purposes).

[JoePro]

Anyone seen the vids on SMs playing fear soccer? Its pretty cool.

[Griphus]

It does seem a bit simplistic that they would have one main tank class and one main heal class. On the bright side, anyone wishing to fill those rolls will have no questions as to which class they should choose. The real test will be to see how well non-standard groups can fare. Can you run 2 chanters for heals in end-game instances? no idea. There is always the "public opinion" of exactly how you should run your team, and then on the other hand there is what is actually possible.

We may find at first we will need very strong teams with pure classes filling roles, and then as gear progresses we may find new configurations that open up to us. It will up to us to see how individual skill & gear stack up vs class choice.

Another parallel. Warriors were pretty much the only class that could realistically tank in vanilla WoW - especially in its early years.

Similarly, our 40 man raid configurations "softened up" significantly once we all started gearing up. I would hope that the same thing happens here to some extent.

I find that you and I are thinking very nearly the same thing quite a bit in this thread. :P