Sorcerer vs. Spiritmaster, which caster DPS should I be?

August 12, 2009

Sorcerer vs. Spiritmaster, which caster DPS should I be?

Alright, well, its time we had the logical follow up to Middea’s well written article on the healing classes. Although I was tempted to play a healer from my past experience in WoW, I decided that I wanted a bit of a change and to continue with my more recent DPS role. With that said, I’m going to initially try a mage out.

The logical question now is, sorcerer or spiritmaster? Which do I choose?

So far, I’ve played a sorcerer in the North American Aion betas and I’ve really enjoyed the class. Even with its wide range of crowd control abilities for slowing and rooting mobs, as well as hard hitting spells to destroy them before they  reach you, I’ve still managed to get myself killed far too many times. Having extremely low health isn’t really a good thing for someone who plays as recklessly as I do at times. Despite this, I like the class design and play style.

From what I’ve read, the low HP of mages in Aion also makes them fairly weak and easy targets in PvP. I can’t really backup this statement yet since the only PvP I experienced in the beta was a couple of Elyos who were just outside one of the Asmodian towns ganking us while we were questing. At the time, I didn’t stand a chance and I wasn’t interested in focusing on the PvP elements of the game, so after a few quick attempts at getting revenge I decided to run and hide.

As far as which class to choose at level 10, I’ve currently decided to remain as a sorcerer.

Spiritmasters have their summoned elemental spirits for support. Having the pet out at all times is essentially a must if you want to kill mobs efficiently, and managing the pet’s attacks is also important for increasing your damage done. One potential drawback of the spirits is that they do not fly with you, they remain on the ground (with the exception of the Energy of Fire summons). I’m sure highly effective players will have their spirit on the ground hitting specific targets and manage their pet well while they are in the air focusing on either the same target or potentially others. I know for a fact that this is more than I can personally handle, especially in a fast-paced PvP environment. However, if you like to have a pet and managing it’s attacks, then this may be the class for you.

The other noteworthy aspects of the spiritmaster class are its ability to remove buffs, the debuffs it has and the dots and direct damage spells available. With a potential to reduce the strength, combat speed, lower resistances and decrease the flight time of targets, a spiritmaster will be very important to have around for group PvP as well as in a PvE environment. Although they do have many of the early spells that sorcerers do for damage, most of your time as a spiritmaster will most likely be spent applying debuffs, removing buffs and placing dots on targets while focusing on your pet instead of using damaging spells with a longer cast time.

The sorcerer, on the other hand, is pretty much the opposite end of the caster DPS spectrum. Without a pet, a sorcerer’s focus is on casting their damaging spells. These range from dots to direct damage nukes and AoE spells, and also vary from frost to fire. Basically, the focus here is to do as much damage as possible with the spells available to you. If you like casting and doing high amounts of damage, the sorcerer is probably a better choice for you. However, you will have to keep track of the cooldowns on your spells in order to optimize your casting rotation while playing keep away with the enemy. Slowing and rooting effects are available to both of the mage classes and are important to each.

A spiritmaster is very much a utility class, however, they do have an important role to play. If you like having a pet and multitasking watching buffs and debuffs while doing a little damage, then this is the class for you. If you prefer to focus more on damage, high single target DPS and the ability to AoE mobs,  then you should consider a sorcerer instead.

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