Elemental spirits' abilities

[gamer2k]

Is there a place on the web I can take a look at the elementals' attacks and spell? No luck so far.

[ErzPaladin]

(depends on fetish-level)

Air --> haste, Ball Lightning (the higher ones)
Earth --> armor, pretify
Water --> recovery, spellfocus strip armor II
Fire --> Flame Thrower, Fire Ball

Most of the ppl tend to Earth, cause they hit pretty hard with their regular attack and in addition do AP dmg, too. And the higher ones have such a "protection stance"-skill, which can be handy, too.

On lvl 5 or 6 fetishes I'd also tend to Air Elemental for Haste II or III, cause you can overcast the Haste-spell and buff your entire party with it. The elemental will take dmg upon overcasting and might die, but this is still better than a free-broken elemental in most of the cases. (just an idea)

The Air elemental also has a single-target attack spell, but don't ask me about the name or details. It's not Lightning Thrust or Chain Lightning, if I remember correctly.

Fire Elementals are good, too. Most likely due to their fire-based dmg dealing spells. But doesn't do AP dmg, I think.

Worst are Water Elementals imho. They've the weakest offensive potential and recover doesn't really replace medikits (not to mention medikits are cheaper). As Shaman you need offensive potential and that's the main role of the elementals. So, the Water Elementals doesn't fullfill that really good.
Only (Spellfocus) Strip Armor II is pretty interesting, if you've no armor-stripping mage in your team.

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Aside from this I play mage and as mage I don't use recover HP. Why? Cause it's a wasted slot. If Recover HP would recover a fix HP amount, then that skill might be useful, but it only heals the last incoming dmg. Let's say you take ongoing bleeding- or burning-dmg like ---> 20 initial dmg plus -5 HP dmg for 2 rounds, then that spell only heals the 5 HP bleeding/burning dmg, but not the 20 HP dmg from the original attack. That spell is simply horribly designed.
If Recover HP would heal 25 HP each cast, then that would be some other topic. But that's also the border, where it could become too strong (too less a gamble).

I explain this, cause that's why some people use a water elemental. Strip Armor II outshines this by far, even though on the first look it does seem the opposite way around.

[gamer2k]

I downloaded the Battle arena from the workshop to checkout the elementals.

Cure Wound is just a small thing for the digital games. IIRC magical healing in the pnp game is expensive to cast for mages and shamans.

[ErzPaladin]

I can only say, that summoning is best in Dragonfall. You may call Summoning Shamans in Dragonfall as maybe the strongest class overall, due to the creator symbol totem. That way you can bind two lvl 6 Summons to your main char and smash everything with full AP on the summons. And due to Dragonfall you should've enough nuyen to do so.

I'm not saying that you can't play Shaman in SR Hongkong, but your nuyen are much tighter there. Gobbet has the control spirit-skill later on, which makes your main char as summoner lesser important. Gobbet can even steal the summon-control from enemy conjurers and turn their summons against the enemy.
In theory you don't need to become Full-Shaman for supporting her. You could just skill the Dove-totem for "2 rounds"-control to support Gobbet. That is an investment of 6 karma - that's nothing.