AAR: spellbinder vs warlock

[Meme Turtle]

I want to try out one of the ray builds, but I do not know, which one is better in terms of damage and survivability: spellbinder or warlock. If anyone has tried these classes, could you give me some feedback on their potency?

[Azunai]

if you're just going to focus on AAR, you can also add mage hunter (arc+inq) to the list. which is actually a pretty strong platform for a ray build. you have to stand still to channel your laser beam anyway, so you might as well stand still in an inquisitors seal and enjoy the flat damage absorb. and you have death sentence (modifier on word of pain) that lowers aether resistance and possibly also the (aether transmuted) storm box as a secondary aether/lightning spell

spellbinder is also a decent choice. spectral wrath has that aether damage debuff and if you stack enough cooldown reduction, you can probably have an almost full uptime "rotation" of mirror + mark of torment, which should make you a lot tougher, specially in "boss fights". not much else, though. don't know if harbinger of souls is worth picking over reckless power. if you have a good chunk of aether% from gear, you might even switch to star pact as the exclusive skill later on for the cooldown reduction (to get closer to fully mirror > mark of torment coverage)

i think warlock is the obvious choice if you want to play with the transmuted chaos/vitality ray. between maivens sphere, possession and aspect of the guardian, you have lots of %absorb and a decent chunk of physical resistance. and you're going for chaos+vit damage, so you can easily pump sigil of consumption to a decent damage level to cull groups of weaker minions and for the the life steal healing

[Burusagi]

I struggled with this choice, too.

In the end I picked up Warlock because of how awesome it looks thematically (with the transmuter on AAR that turns it into Chaos/Vit actually giving it a red effect).

:D

[kbot]

Warlock has a harder time getting decent hit points for ultimate but is more survivable, overall, I think (beat AOM ultimate with a warlock and have played with an elite level spellbinder) due to damage absorbtion and life steal. Damage is actually hard to say but I think spellbinder works out a bit better than (having access to -rr aether as part of the mastery). I'm going to make a few general comments about AAR that should help this overall make sense from a survivvability standpoint.

Basically, AAR has a difficult time with the following: taking a hit (and bouncing back), doing damage on the move, & energy consumption. AAR characters need to find answers to those.

Taking a hit: Spellbinder has more hit points (spectral binding) but no strong self heal (warlocks can get blood dreeg and drop sigil). Spectral wrath is nice but I prefer possession's damage absorbtion more. You can do some time dilation+ shenanigans with mark of torment, and that's awesome, but it will cost a lot of dps to go that way. Overall I like lock.

Damage on the move: Well it's devestation vs. sigil and procs from pox (like linking bat or someting but I guess binders can use ill omen). I'm not a huge fan of devestation's long cool down and it doesn't heal you so I go lock and juice sigil.

Energy consumption it's pretty much gear on both and from arcanist side.

I guess some other things worth mentioning:

There is more gear support for warlocks just because they are a pre-expansion combination. That doesn't mean there isn't support for aar spellbinders, there totally is, it's just more common with drops to see it warlock oriented.

If you have a blood orb the last patch was really nice. A spell binder works with lightning, fire, and aether. A warlock just chaos and vitality with the orb converting fire and it's always easier to focus on fewer damage types.

hope that helps.

[Burusagi]

Put Dryad on Sigil and you have a very potent offensive AND defensive ability.

[Meme Turtle]

Thank you all. For now I have settled with spellbinder as a fun hybrid between caster and summoner. Skeletons help in early game a lot, and if AAR does not work as good I can later respec into traditional summoner or melee build.

[Legion]

Can't believe nobody suggested Sorcerer. There's lots of support for Arc/Fire.