Spirit Casters' Guide
by June
Being a user of blight and spirit magic is a misunderstood and often dangerous profession. Spirit magic is exceptionally powerful, but you will end up soaking up a lot damage yourself. You will have limited evasion and armor available to you, so melee monsters will have no trouble bashing you quite effectively. Although you will be able to evade a good number of spells from mage monsters, they are able to evade you as well, making your advantage rather moot.
General Strategy
There are two keys to being a Spiritist or Bloodmage - damage and drains. Simply put, spirit magic users are able to dish out the most amount of damage per level. Flame and Energy spells themselves might have a higher damage if you just read the spell description, but those damage types are affected by armor. Spirit damage is not. Spirit damage is classified as ethereal damage, which can only be reduced by spirit resistances/wards and ethereal armor. Practically nothing has ethereal armor at all, let alone comparable to its physical armor. Because you have very limited armor capabilities, part of your strategy will be to blast away your enemy's health before he does the same to you.
Part two to your battle strategy revolves around your other key skill - your drain spells. Spirit magic does not have a wide variety of spells, but the spells the school does offer are very potent. Aside from spirit bolt and improved spirit bolt, you also get 2 versions of drains. Your most useful drain is (improved) theft of life. This spell is slightly more powerful than your primary bolt spell, and it returns to you 75% of the damage done. You get a new drain at level 5 and every 10 levels thereafter. The cooldown on these spells is 30 seconds, so once you have your first 3 spells, you will be able to cast a chain of drains, healing yourself for a substantial amount of health and almost be able to cast your first spell again as you finish your last spell.
Your other drain spells are less effective (in my opinion) but still worth learning. These spells are called ethereal leech and ethereal paroxysm. You learn leech at level 10 and paroxysm at 15, and then gain a more powerful version every 20 levels. Instead of giving you a percentage of the damage done outright, these two spells are drains over time. They do initial damage comparable to your drain spells, but you do not receive any healing from that damage. Instead, the spell causes recurring damage every 5 seconds or so. You get 100% of that recurring damage back in healing, and as your spirit skill increases and you learn more powerful versions of these spells, the healing over time effect will increase. In the long run, the leech/paroxysm spells have about the same healing potency, but leech/paroxysm cause more actual damage to your enemy. Despite this, I find them far less useful than the theft spells because it takes too long to recover when you are only getting 10-20 points every 5 seconds. A big heal from a theft spell will save your life more often than a small incremental heal. Incidentally, the difference between leech and paroxysm is that paroxysm has a small area of effect. Be very careful when using paroxysm around groups of monsters, or you might have 3 monsters very upset with you instead of just 1. Of course, if you do get swarmed by a group of monsters, setting up recurring damage on all of them will heal you substantially.
Along with your spell drains, you will also acquire two additional draining abilities - siphon and area siphon. You will learn siphon before you get your first draining spell, and your siphons will likely be more powerful than your drain spells for some time. Additionally, the combat delay in using your siphon abilities is dramatically less than casting a spell. The drawback of these abilities is the long recharge time - 5 minutes. These abilities are great in a pinch, but you can't rely on them. I only use them in utter emergencies. Obviously, the difference between the two is that area siphon is an area of effect ability, draining health from the target and anything close to it. This can result in a massive heal if you happen to be fighting several monsters at once. Also, Bloodmages get abilities similar to leech/paroxysm as they level. I use these very rarely, mostly in boss monster fights.
There are 2 additional spirit spells you should be aware of, as they have their uses. As I mentioned earlier, ethereal damage can only be reduced by wards, resistances, and ethereal armor. While no Spirit Ward spell exists, you do learn Spirit Resistance at level 5 and Soul Shield at 15. These spells will help protect you whenever fighting a spiritist enemy. Additionally, Bloodmages will find these two spells useful, which I will detail later.
As a Spiritist or Bloodmage, you will also learn blight magic as you level. In general, I don't use blight magic while hunting alone. Blight magic in general reduces an enemy's physical stats, such as armor, physical resistances, strength, dexterity, and health. Obviously, reducing a target's armor or crush resistance will not help you at all if you are casting ethereal damage spells. These are wonderfully helpful if you are hunting in a group, however, and I keep a special bank of hotkeys solely for group hunting. I also find the other stat reducing spells not so useful in solo hunting. It is true that sapping a target's strength with blight magic will reduce the damage you will soak up, but my strategy functions around damage and drains. I would rather use the delay it takes to cast a strength sapping spell on another spirit bolt or drain, as I believe it ends the battle more quickly.
The Choice
Once you have 200 base spirit and 20 levels, it's time to make a decision - remain a Spiritist or switch to Bloodmage. If you continue as a Spiritist, you will basically gain more powerful versions of your spells and abilities as you level, not gaining anything new. On the other hand, you could switch to Bloodmage. The cost of switching is losing some of your abilities, most notably soul shock, the spiritist's stun ability, and the stinger abilty. You also slip from 10 points of blight and magic defense per level to 8 and 9, respectively. In exchange, you can learn the spell 'Blood Bolt' and you gain several unique abilities relating to your own blood. Blood Bolt itself might be reason enough to switch for some people. Blood Bolt is more powerful as a level 20 spell than improved spirit bolt II, a level 30 spell. The cost of power though is your own life! Every time you cast the spell, successfully landing or otherwise, you will suffer damage - around 10-15 points, but as far as I can tell, it varies depending on your power. Without a doubt, Blood Bolt is the most powerful mainstay attack at its level, and even 15 levels or so above. Additionally, Bloodmages gain more power per level than Spiritists.
Bloodmage abilities are vastly different from their Spiritist counterparts. Blood doll allows for a fast heal in battle, although you can only use it once per 5 minutes. Other skills I have used an really liked are Detoxify Self, which removes one negative effect you might have on you, Concentrate Blood, which adds 100 points to your health for 10 minutes (also has a 10 min cooldown, so you can use it as soon as it fades), and Blood Shield, which adds 1000 points to both your physical and ethereal armor until you are damaged once. Constrict Blood (reduces the target's maximum health by 11% for 1 minute) is also a useful skill in fights with monsters with large amounts of health. Bloodmages also learn drain over time abilities as they level, but again the cooldown timer is too long to make these truly useful. I personally find the Bloodmage skills to be far more useful than the Spiritist skills (except for soul shock, which I do miss) and worth the cost.
Combat
Basic combat as either a Spiritist or Bloodmage is fairly simple. Bear in mind that, unlike other magic classes, your repeating spell is your most powerful attack. The other abilities you have are around to save your life, not do massive damage. With that in mind, pick your target first, and then use a drain over time spell. Using Leech or Paroxysm is my preferred opening because it sets up your recurring heal immediately. This is especially important for Bloodmages, since the drain over time effect will negate the damage you take from Blood Bolt. Once you cast your first spell, your enemy will come tearing after you. If you are a Spiritist, I suggest using Soul Shock while he's on his way in to allow you an extra attack before you start soaking up damage. After that, it's time to open up with your repeating bolt. Depending on what you are fighting, you will want to queue up your first drain almost as soon as your target gets to you. Bear in mind that your drain spells (ie, not abilities) take some time to prepare, so don't wait until it's too late to cast them. It's better to cast them too soon than too late! I alternate between bolts and drains until the target is down, which fortunately shouldn't take too long, since I deal a great deal of damage quickly. Fighting Cleric-type creatures can take longer, but don't let their healing frustrate you. When they're healing, they can't hurt you and your bolts should be able to overpower their heals. Also, the longer the fight lasts, the more drains you can cast.
Unlike cleric-type classes, surviving a fight not only depends on timely heals, but also on your spirit statistic. To heal yourself, you need to be able to land your drains! That means that unlike some other classes, killing monsters dozens of levels above you just isn't an option. My experience is that you will start out only able to kill monsters a couple levels above you, and as you get more drains, the level gap increases substantially. It also won't hurt to invest in a Adventure: Spirit techniqued suit of armor and power jewelry, as well as spending a good number of your training credits at the spirit trainer (who lives north of Aughundell). You will also have to be a little more careful about where you do your hunting. Once you level past 40 or so, you will start encountering monsters with appreciable ethereal armor, most notably the inhabitants of the Western Deadlands. My advice is find something else to kill. Monsters that have good ethereal armor wreck your strategy because you can no longer blast them as effectively and your heals will lose some of their potency.
Multi-Classing
There's nothing wrong with being a pure Spiritist or Bloodmage. You can hold your own against pretty much any monster with nothing but your drains and repeating bolts. However, you might want to take a few levels in a second or third class to improve yourself.
Perhaps the best secondary class for Spirit-casters is Cleric. As a Spiritist or Bloodmage, you will be able to cast every spell a Cleric can cast - all 4 types of augmentations and all of the heal spells. There are only 6 classes that can cast all the Life and Augmentation spells, so consider yourself lucky. Unless you decide to keep your Cleric and Bloodmage/Spiritist levels about even, the heal spells will not play too big a role, but those Augmentation spells will certainly help, and it is nice to be able to resurrect your fallen comrades. Dispirit Foe (which slows down your enemy's combat speed by half) is a nice ability to be able to use too!
Another overlooked secondary class to pick up is Warrior. Before I took my 2 levels of Warrior, I ran around with Power-techniqued Essence tools as my weapons. Now I use a dagger because 2 levels of Warrior is enough to be able to use Parry. Parry grants you a chance to block an enemy's attack so long as you are carrying a melee weapon. You won't be blocking every single attack that comes your way, but it is nice to get a few free misses in now and again. Taking 2 levels of Warrior won't affect your Adventure Rating either, which is nice if you take a few secondary classes.
Best of luck! When you need spells, feel free to look me up in game!