Have Spirit Guides caught your eye? All of the classes have been designed to be metaphysically interesting, but with an obvious connection to a major part of the metaphysic it's not surprising that Spirit Guides seem enticing. They are another class which may seem complicated, but have ways of making them simple. Or more complex, if that's what you really go for.

The main thing to watch out for is the fact that most of their abilities play completely differently in a Vision Quest, so you effectively have two sets of skills. In the Physical plane they can perform Katas to throw various effect calls at range, whereas in a Vision Quest their role is more supportive - generally skills become instant-use ranged abilities which provide some benefit to allies, followed by a cooldown in which no Spirit Guide abilities may be used.

Spirit Guides have a resource called Linkage, which represents their ability to manipulate the boundary between the physical and spiritual planes. The main use of this is to enter Linkage State in the Physical plane, which allows them to actually use their special abilities there.

1. Once in Linkage State, you can perform Katas. Each Spirit Guide skill generally comes with an associated Kata which you also know by having that skill. To use a Kata, you perform a Flow which you start by holding the Spirit Guide distinct rest position, with your palms meeting in the middle with one arm high and the other low, for one second. One leg must be in front of the other, this is your leading leg.

2. Katas will have a cast time associated with them. You must spend this length of time making motions with your hands. Something martial art-looking is appropriate. Think Avatar. During this time you can't reposition your legs. If you can't remember how long it takes to do a particular Kata, you can always get away with doing this for 4 seconds, plus the one second in the starting position.

3. Conclude the Kata by bringing your hands together again and making the associated call at a target in range. To then perform another Kata you need to have held this position for a second again before you start performing the next set of moves. Also, you can't use the same Kata twice in a row, so no rapidly spamming DOUBLEs, now!

4. That thing about making the call at a target in range? This is the area you can hit. Whilst it gives you a decent target area, note that it's largely defined by the direction you're facing based on where your legs are positioned, and with the Katas discussed so far you can't reposition these once you take up the starting position.

5. To help with this, some of the Katas specifically allow a position change. When using these Katas, within the first second of the hand motions you may also make one purposeful step with your back leg which switches which of your legs is the front one. This can be used to alter the angle you're aiming at, but one of the main uses is to turn on the spot and reposition to a stable stance in which you're facing the other way, to aim at foes behind you.

You can also use a Linkage to instantly Refresh an ally wherever you are (although Spirit Guides only restore 1 Linkage from this so you can at best pass your Linkages between you), which can be especially useful in a Vision Quest when you can no longer enter Linkage State. However, doesn't that just sound less fun?

At low level, Spirit Guides will have a few Katas to remember and a few corresponding Vision Quest abilities. Each of these has an associated call and timer (cast time for Katas, cooldown time for Vision Quest abilities). Nothing too complicated.

At high level, Spirit Guides prove to be one of the more complicated classes as they end up with a wider range of Katas and Vision Quest abilities, each with an associated call and timer. Though most of the timers associated with Katas are, in fact, 3 seconds, and most of the Vision Quest skills have 10 second timers. Although there isn't much variation on how skills are executed, if you're not keen on remembering different timers associated with different things you do have the option of falling back to the worst case scenario (4 seconds for Katas) and avoid using Vision Quest abilities which don't have a 10 second cooldown.

A possible basic build for a Spirit Guide is:

• Combat Proficiency (Free)
• Weapon Use
• Spiritual Blade
• Depart
• Empower
• Spiritual Resilience

This starting build gives you your weapon of choice both in the Physical and Spiritual planes, and whilst you have the base 8 hits in the Physical plane, you're up to 6 in the Spiritual to balance things out a bit. You can focus on keeping yourself STRENGTHENed in the Spiritual plane if you want to fight, or if things are going badly evacuate your allies and yourself instead. Katas allow you to mainly focus on dealing damaging and repositioning foes with REPEL and BE DRAWN calls.