My lvl 40 class change is coming up very soon, and im not really sure if I want to go Elemental summoner or Spellsinger.
Can someone please tell me the Pros and Cons of each and any differences with skills and playstyles?
Well, one is a nuker and the other is a pet class.
I do know that leveling a spellsinger at higher levels is challenging because they don't really have an efficient way to regain mana. Though, the new hunting grounds with mana pots might help.
Essentially, ask yourself, "do I want to be a nuker or do I want to control a pet".
I imagine that the Elemental summoner has an easier time leveling because of the built in party.
Are you ironman solo or do you have a boxed out-of-party recharger or two?
If you have the recharger and don't like parties and just want to solo with the out-of-party rechargers following you, then spellsinger is a possibility.
If this is your only account, for Eva's sake go Elemental summoner.
You will be slightly less deadly in a 1v1 PvP confrontation, but MASSIVELY better in a PvE party, Solo, and group PvP, and especially extended group PvP like sieges.
A spellsinger's mana regen is the absolute worst in game. (18 seconds of downtime for ONE endgame nuke and that's BUFFED.) You will kill fast and be completely manaless in under 60 seconds... after which you are almost completely useless. Yes, recharges woudl help, but the rechargers will get more than 5x the damage out of a buffed archer than a Spellsinger with the same aount of mana spent.
Elemental summoners are ready-made AoE party.
The pet AoE nukes and melees (and hits hard) and the summoner buffs, heals, and recharges the pet.
At this point Spellsingers are pretty much a dead class.
They do only ONE thing well and that is (very) short-term damage.
Most parties group up for longer than 60 seconds... and thats all the time a spellsinger is actually useful for.
You can always party live SEs (or EEs for that matter). And I'd argue that if anything, there's rarely room for an ES in group PvP because people don't seem to care about getting rooted, stunned and silenced.
I've had a spellsinger stay on her feet for a whole buffround being the ONLY damage dealer there, without recharges (but with herbs). Of course, she wasn't forcibly trying to deplete her MP pool, but rather walking around and picking her targets carefully to maximise MP.
It wasn't much worse exp than I got grinding in a duo with a similar level summoner over time - and if I had actually not been a complete leech (I wasn't with the summoner), it might have been equal.
Spellsingers are also the AoE nuker (between pulls you have plenty time to get your MP back) in groups: ESs can not provide any reasonable amount of DPS since the pony casts very slow (its skills have a higher reuse timer than those of the SpS, and even buffed, its cast speed is atrociously slow).
That said, they are both very interesting classes - chose based on the style you want, but do be aware that the elemental summoner is probably more straightforward (who would have thought this would ever be true?) and the spellsinger will require knowing live support classes (you wouldn't believe the amount of live SEs starved for party - at least on Lionna) and/or boxing.
PS: If you box, do it IN party until your SE is so high that it can recharge you forever. :p
PPS: For end game PvP, I honestly don't think either class is that great - ES being an important [censored] support class nowadays seems to enjoy more popularity though. Yay for roll changes? Don't expect to actually do what your class should do (damage) in PvP though.
Edited to add one last time: And just before anyone says 'the buff round won't work at end game' - she was too high for me to recharge. Somewhere in her 70ies.
ES is a very expensive class, you have to get money for crystals, beast shots, and your own shots, that would be like 3 times the money you spend on an average class. The good part is that you will get party kind of easily, because everybody wants that pretty nice cubics and buffs, also being summoned to remote places.
By the other hand, the SPS is an excellent PVP class. You will have to rest from time to time if you solo (which is kinda the only way to lvl for a nuker) because they run out of MP very fast. Not many parties want a nuker, since its like a solo class.
Im hoping that with interlude, nuker parties will be resurrected. As it is now, a full nuker party with 2 or less regeners can run out of mp very quickly (in non-mp pot dropping areas). Hopefully with invocation, nuker parties will become more feasible again. But yeah... at the moment, nukers aren't wanted that much in parties. SpS is still a fun class tho :)
If you go the AoE way with the ES, it´s not expensive at all.
2 beast sps to kill about 12-48 mobs, and you get to keep all adena and drops for your self.
And you dont have to spend andy money on armour/weapon.
And even if you want to melee abit you will survive in Bgrade gear with noooo problems at all. and i am not using ss for the ES. 48-61 gonna make you a rich ES ^^