I Have Questions About Spirit Mastery

[dwaynegand]

This is the final mastery I have yet to start a new character with. From what I have seen on Kerplunk Gaming, this is probably the least effective mastery raising intelligence to start off with. The guy focused primarily on the Liche King, but I think a better skill to invest in at the start is Life Drain due to its flat amount of damage, followed by Cascade for hitting more enemies. For enemies immune to vitality damage, Ternion Attack with Arcane Lore becomes necessary. Deathchill Aura and Ravages of Time are both mandatory for survival because Ternion Attack is most powerful at close range. Necrosis reduced vitality damage resistance. Later on, a point in Circle of Power can be good for a further buff to vitality damage as well as reduced recharge and energy costs, as well as faster cast speed. Unearthly Power is also good for increasing damage. Later on, depending on your second mastery, the points, except for one, can be respeced from Life Drain into something else. If wanted, Spirit Ward and Spirit Bane for increased defense and offense against the undead.

Here's a list of skills to get from each mastery to compliment Spirit choices:

Defense: Since the majority of the skills require a shield, respec Ternion Attack and Arcane Lore and pick up the shield attacks and their synergies, both active and passive. One point for Normal is good for Batter, Rend Armor, and Shield Charge, but Disruption is worth maxing for hitting more foes. Defensive Reaction and Colossus Form increase physical damage.

Dream: Lucid Dream for more damage in the fields of vitality, physical, and electrical burn, all of which are also affected by Unearthly Power. Dream spells inflict both physical and either vitality or electrical burn damage. Ternion Attack is still superior to Psionic Beam due to the shorter range, allowing enemies to get in range of your Deathchill Aura. Trance of Convalescence for survivability.

Earth: Earth Enchantment and Brimstone imbue your staff with fire and burning damage. Volativity increases the damage of fire, burning, and physical spells. Eruption for crowd control. Heat Shield, Stone Form, and Molten Rock for defensive purposes.

Hunting: Respec Ternion Attack and Arcane Lore for Wood Lore and Marsksmanship tree. Wood Lore gives more defensive ability and attack speed when using bows, spears, and throwing weapons. The Marksmanship tree is good for attack and damage from range. Later on, Study Prey and Flush Out for reduced resistances. A point in Herbal Remedy is good for improved health recovery and poison resistance. Since Necrosis also reduces bleeding resistance, skills that inflict bleeding damage become stronger.

Nature: Heart of the Oak for more speed and health. Sanctuary for survivability. Later on, the Call of the Wild tree for support.

Neidan: Consequences and Mutual Suffering for reduced damage. Weakest Chakra for vitality damage and reduced damage and resistances. The elemental damage spells can be useful for damage.

Rogue: Necrosis also reduces bleeding resistance, so skills such as Throwing Knife with Flurry, Poison Gas Bomb's Shrapnel, and Anatomy are all useful. Envenom Weapon and its synergies allows you to add poison damage to your staff and inflict status ailments.

Rune: Swap Ternion Attack and Arcane Lore for Rune Weapon as it increases vitality damage. Runeword Feather reduces strength requirements of weapons. Reckless Offense for dual wielding. Seal of Fate and Menhir Wall for both offense and defense, the two are used together in a powerful damage combo. Transmutation for more damage.

Storm: Squall and Obscured Visibility for more damage, crowd control, and debuffs. Eye of the Storm for more elemental damage. Storm Nimbus and its synergies for adding elemental damage to your staff attack.

Warfare: Swap Ternion Attack and Arcane Lore for the Dual Wield tree, Battle Rage, Crushing Blow, Battle Standard, Triumph, and Weapon Training. Later on, you can get Onslaught with Hamstring and Ardor. A point in War Horn is good for utility.

What else is worth picking up from Spirit? From the other masteries?

[NOD-HighConfessor]

For Rune+ Spirit (Shaman) went with throwing + shield at the very start of normal, Rune Weapon and Thunder Strike (right mouse). Aimed to get a point in Reckless Offense ASAP so I could max out Thunder Strike after and use duel throwing weapons. Which becomes a shotgun-like 10 projectiles. 5 per throwing weapon.

Menhir Wall is useful and 1 point in Guardian Stones is good for bosses or anything with a lot more health to chew through. Maxed out Runeword Feather and Rune of Life before the end of normal and Transmutation currently sits at 5/6 in epic (act 3) with +1 to Rune item. Reckless Offense and Rune Weapon also are maxed, not sure when.

Spirit mastery I took Life Drain (I like it) and wish I'd known about the Atlantis synergy Soul Drain earlier. Can mass sleep groups for 2 seconds (maxed) along with the heal. Good set up for Thunder Strike or to help with escape. Also have 7 points in Enslave Spirit which is sometimes useful. This could be skipped for other stuff easily.

Currently working on Deathchill Aura and the Ravages of Time synergy in particular.

[kbbscuba]

Spirit is a blast to play. You must pair it with Dream.
Life Drain is unique as it reaches above walls and around some obstacles.

Dream provides passive vitality bonus damage with Lucid Dream.

You also get Trance of Empathy buff which mitigates damage to you.

Dream provides a much needed left click attack with Psionic Touch that is total damage, so it will apply to vitality as well as anything else. This is important since vitality, which is the Spirit primary damage, will not effect undead and mechanical cause they are immune, as they are lifeless. You will want to use cold damage on those entities. Reason being is that you will find necklaces on vendors that have vitality bonus damage up to 92%, that I have found, always paired with bleeding, cold and frost damage bonuses. The cold and frost bonuses range from the mid 20's to mid 40's. The bleeding damage bonus can also reach 92%, I have found, and is ideal for a Hunter character to utilize.

I have only ever found one 100% bleeding base damage staff whilst quality cold base damage staffs are common for every lvl range.

So primary bar should have vitality staff and secondary bar has cold staff and flip back and forth based on need.

100% base damage vitality staves are not sold on vendors. They are the rarest staves.
I have one that is base 61 vitality damage at the lower lvl and one that is base 210 vitality damage at the higher lvl. They are both yellow grade drops and extremely rare so you need to check the stats on those yellow grade staff drops instead of ignoring them. I found the higher lvl one in Legendary Atlantis. I found the lower lvl one also in Atlantis off the lizard mobs. Since they are yellow grade, you can enhance them with Fury Charms which can have vitality bonuses making the entire charm vitality damage. These charms will super power those staves. I have found Epic and Legendary 100% base damage vitality staves but all were found in Legendary mode Embers.

You can also create vitality damage bonus rings. Combine vitality bonus damage/energy drain rings sold on vendors with Vile Ichor charms.

The Spirit Ward buff combined with -% undead damage gear will make you practically immune to undead, which exist everywhere in Titan Quest. You can easily enhance jewelry with Spectral Matter Charms that offer bonuses of 50% damage to undead. The Atlantis vendor sells lvl 20 rings that can be modified twice so you can build 100% damage bonus rings to undead and demons. I carry them with me and swap them out when in areas infested by those types and certain boss mobs. You will devastate undead and demons.

Liche King is a good pet. It's always nice to have a pet to gain aggro and distract mobs but your Spirit can be powerful on it's own if given the most effective gear. The Outsider is a beast that I utilize on boss mobs only.

Deathchill Aura and Circle of Power are nice debuff/buffs.

As you should know, equipment drops lag in use time, meaning high quality lower lvl equipment drop in higher lvls which is why I recommend playing your first character to lvl 80 and saving/transferring quality drops to the appropriate premade lvl 1 characters in waiting. The best character to max out first is the Nature/Dream combo since they are a pet based character and thus, equipment is less important for them. This is an excellent farming character also.

[dwaynegand]

Apparently, Ternion Attack is very weak at the start due to low damage and penalized damage at low levels at the skill. It's also not a very good idea to max Deathchill Aura at the start. Life Drain is apparently more useful as a healing skill rather than dealing actual damage. So the best skill for levelling up in Spirit at the start is definitely the Liche King.

I've deleted the Spirit character I started a couple of hours ago due to all this and will try again later, but this time, will climb the bar until LIche King becomes available, with only one point spent in Life Drain and no other skills.

Once I start gettign much more powerful staves available, then Ternion Attack is much more useful with maxed Arcane Lore.

Like Nature, Spirit is more of a support tree rather than an actual damage tree.

[WIKI]

u figured out well, at first life drain+cascade later on ternion attack, bleed vitality staffs works very well with necrosis

deathchill aura also reduce enemy armor so i like to play with defance mastery with shield procs sadly you dont have any auto attack modifier so using batter

dual wield passives of warfare also hit bleed damage so there can be very powerful bleed builds also

as others mentioned spirit +dream is easiest best combo for vitality staff user

death ward a must pasive for hardcore play for me its amazing up to %94 damage absortion

i generally pick spirit as second mastery for my pure casters since life drain heal my casters and its last upgrade at level 40 bar is awesome

spirit also best at highest level of tarturus farming with life drain has %reduction to enemy mobs

and vs typhoon or hades lich king and outsider can kill them if u upgraded

[Swanky]

Ternion works well enough but it's energy heavy. You can have it working well by the Parnassus War Camp which is early enough to not bother with other skills for early game considering Spirit only. It heavily depends on the second mastery on whether power levelling the skill makes sense or not. In my opinion still the best skill of the mastery if you plan on using XMAX in any capacity.
Only issue is energy consumption, a lone piece of of the Golden Fleece won't do much. Best bet is to have 2 pieces of the Oracle's set for a massive early game energy regen boost.

[WIKI]

ternion+dark covenant can be effective with some pots or energy drain staff

[dwaynegand]

The problem with the Liche King I found out is that he struggles against crowds of undead. Since he can't leech life or inflict vitality damage against them, he is much weaker against them than against normal enemies.