OK, this is the second "spirit has been weakened too much" post I've seen today. Please explain why spirit is no longer a viable strategy in group PvP.
Just because more people run WP doesn't make it impossible to win with spirit, it just makes it take longer. There are a lot of WP reduction charms out there (voodoo head, Nightmare, etc.). You may need to alter your strategy from "burst spirit" to "tank spirit", but it's doable. There are plenty of ongoing debuffs, cumulative armor/ward, and healing that are available to people that want to take the long view of spirit. It will also likely require a lot of focus. (Which goes back to another thread by Warassassin that would make cumulative focus a part of the game) I think the value of incorporating Deathknights to support the Inquisitors is also going to go up. I've always seen Inquisitors as the "Berserker of Spirit" and the Deathknight as the "Champion of Spirit". Basically, that the Inquisitor does more raw Spirit damage, but the DK can destroy the protection before dealing slightly less raw damage.
If those methods are employed, and winning is still unbalanced, a high-level spirit/shifting defense charm could be introduced to help negate the effect Erythic Flames and Release Karma are having.......ugh, why do I do this to my own class? I highly doubt something like that is required though. Just get creative.
Maybe we should move the topic or something seeing as it's now an entirely different discussion, but it isn't exactly a flamewar so I think it's still potentially productive.
Anyhow, spirit is inert right now because of a few reasons. With melee, Release Karma has singlehandedly broken the decision players had to make between absolute maximum damage and the safety against spirit users that some willpower and lowered damage would earn you. The charm combines the best non-class melee buff in the game with enough willpower to fend off two spirit attacks - this completely trivializes the strategic decision that people had to struggle with (and is often the reason so many people hated spirit decks, they were reluctant to water down their super offense just to fend off spirit damage.). This also helped keep pure damage in check a little bit, instead of being really really good it's now undeniably number one. The ideal willpower charms should be a tradeoff between damage and willpower - the strongest melee buff in Estiah is far from this.
Magic has slowly overtaken spirit because of things like Energy Wave, Erythic Flames, and Backdraft Flame - burst magic has scaled up, spirit damage has not. The last good spirit damage charm that has been added was Soul Harvest, and in that time damage has received so much more because giving good charms to spirit damage has been such a touchy thing since Dark Heirloom. (Which, IMO to remove the ongoing effect AND make it have to trigger a spirit attack before it takes effect completely neutered the core charm that would have made spirit damage competitive at this point in time.)
'Tank spirit' has always been an option but because pure damage and focus is just so much more effective compared to the awfully inadequate Mind Spike (Woeful's Inquisition is good for the focus but as a core method of focus a combo is a horrible thing to rely on) and the nothing else spirit users have to rely on for focus. Psychic Cry + Dark Heirloom was a potential balance for group spirit damage to, but because of the way DH works now (the one turn to trigger it would be four wasted turns of getting bursted down, which is probably going to be nearly half your HP) that no longer is viable. Even if a good spirit focus were added to the game, it's far too little too late.
This is mostly why I don't want an Inquisitor spirit charm for the next one - it would be a dreadful waste no matter how good the charm was because there are just so many other factors that have lead to it being a strategy that is more or less dead in the water.
Anyhow, as someone with T3 characters on all sides of this debate (burst magic, ongoing melee, tank, spirit damage) I think I'm pretty fit to judge these things.
(Maybe we should make another topic for general discussion of this?)
Nyoko - I didn't really start this, it went from a tangent on Summoners to a comment that I replied to that Goth made. And like I said, this hasn't turned into a flamewar and I think discussion of game balance is generally pretty productive especially when so many insightful players participate.
