Spec lines and the PvE Animist
I see a lot of questions in /advice regarding how to spec an Animist, so I thought I'd offer my own take on how these spell lines compare in PvE. I'm not getting into the RvR Animist because it tends to be a very specialized niche where it exists at all; Animists tend to not be part of the RvR 8-man meta and are more likely to be in Keep battles.
VERDANT
This line is decent, but is not versatile. It forces a very specific playstyle to be effective.
The objective of the Verdant Animist is to draw critters to your controlled turret (CT), then use the pet PBAOE to blast critters off the map.
The first problem is in getting critters to attack your CT in the first place. Your CT has taunts, but they'd not effective in overcoming the aggro you've accumulated onto yourself by drawing the critters in the first place. From testing, the Verdant appears to be the least effective CT in directly peeling aggro off of you.
To help with this, you can use one of at least three strategies:
1. Use a low-aggro draw, such as the CON debuff from the Creeping baseline. I tend to use this debuff a lot to draw across all Animist specs for this very reason. It doesn't really give you aggro so much as it just makes your presence known, so your CT will usually have little trouble in peeling it off of you.
Benefits: Quick, available from level 12 (you can use the slightly slower level 8 root before then), costs little power.
Drawbacks: Not good for drawing more than one critter at a time, as the debuff has a 10-second cooldown.
2. Use one or more fire-and-forget (FnF) turrets from the Creeping baseline, placed <=700 units away. Phoenix has custom code not in other freeshards that causes all aggro generated by FnFs to transfer to the CT IF the CT exists and is close enough to the FnF. Somewhere between 700-800 units, the FnF is too far away to do this.
Benefits: Can draw multiple creatures fairly automatically.
Drawbacks: Can easily draw far too many creatures, and you'll have trouble keeping your CT alive. You'll have to spam pet heals (baseline Verdant, so at least you'll be good at them) rather than PBAOEs, and your CT is going to kill VERY slowly by itself. It has more damage in melee range than Arboreal or Creeping CTs, but not by much.
3. Draw with a damage spell, move to where the CT is between you and the critter, then fire the PBAOE to land while the critter is in range.
Benefits: Actually kinda fun, and damages the target as well.
Drawbacks: Requires effective timing, can still fail to draw aggro to the CT if your damage spell was too effective, and probably ultimately isn't any faster than the CON debuff method.
Once your CT has aggro and remains alive, you're pretty safe. PBAOEs draw aggro to your CT, not to you, so as long as you keep it alive and nothing else sneaks up on you, you're going to live.
Because the FnF strategy is largely required, this requires a bit of room. In dungeon passage rooms, it's often possible to place FnFs too far away to start attacking everything before you're ready, but not always. So you're going to be far more effective outside.
A good outside strategy would be to place the CT in a close but safe place on its own, and put one FnF 650 or so units away to draw in critters. Then per your area and power management be happy with that and just PBEAOE / heal away, add more FnFs 650 units BEHIND the CT to assist in attacking critters drawn to the CT, or add more FnFs to the FORWARD FnF to draw in even more critters.
In groups, you'll need people to keep critters in range of your PBAOE. This works easily with some group types / members, not so much with others. Newb pickup groups (PUGs) are going to be the worst. Your CT does ZERO damage from range, only taunts, so only your FnFs or own baseline Arboreal / Creeping damage spells are going to contribute to the fight. Of course, these groups tend to want you to just plant FnFs and sit on your ass anyhow, so it's probably no thang.
Final note: many old Verdant guides recommend using the spec-level 2 CT from Creeping with the PBAOE from Verdant. The idea is that even though the pet damage is almost zero after just a few levels, it does have a snare that can be useful. The problem with this on Phoenix is that pet level is capped for any given spell level, so your CT is going to very quickly be a grey pet unless you continue to invest in Creeping. (In original 1.65 dynamics, your pet level would continue to be 88% of your Animist's level, so it would have decent AF/health, and just damage output was determined by the spell level.) Splitting spec lines is NOT effective for an Animist.
CREEPING
This is my least favorite spec line. It has all of the drawbacks and none of the benefits of Verdant. It remains a crowd favorite, so I'll need to explain why.
For Creeping spec, you get higher CTs, an AOE root, and a wider variety of FnFs instead of just damage from baseline Creeping. Your Creeping baseline bombers are going to have less variance, too. And... that's pretty much it.
People insist that Creeping spec does two other things: reduces costs of casting FnFs and reduces variance of FnFs' own damage spells. Sounds awesome, but I'm dubious, as I'm not seeing either effect. Focus on casting staffs is what causes a reduction of power consumption at this patch level, but all loot-gen casting staffs on Phoenix have all focuses at level 50. (If a staff's focus for your spell line is >= the spell level - 1, then the spell's cost is lowered.) I've found little to no difference in how many FnFs I can cast on a full power bar between Creeping and other specs.
As for reduced variance of FnFs' own damage spells, this is harder to test. I'm not seeing a difference, but it would be worth some tests. The challenge is in placing FnFs at the right distance from a level-appropriate testing dummy so it attacks only that dummy, or combing the combat logs, as you can't choose the target for your FnFs.
The CT has a snare, which can be useful. The only other CC an Animist has available is Root. This does have less damage than an Arboreal's CT to compensate, however.
The extra FnFs are all essentially useless. They reduce target's AF (entirely useless alone) or melee damage (seems useful, but rarely worth the cast). Even if they were worth the cast time / power, Phoenix has a cap of 14 FnFs per AREA, not per Animist, so it's a waste of a valuable pet slot.
The AOE root has its uses, but the baseline single-target root is effective in almost any situation where you even need a root. And once one of your FnFs hits a rooted target (and they do in 1.65, not tested on Phoenix, though they do not attack mezzed targets, confirmed on Phoenix), then it's moot anyhow.
Creeping has a baseline bomber spell, so the Animist can effectively participate in battle instead of just watching turrets do it all, but it's generally best just to let the turrets do the work. Creeping bombers have a slight body debuff attached, but this isn't going to make much of a difference outside of boss battles. It's also pretty easy to draw aggro AWAY from the Creeping CT, since the CT is also doing less damage. The CT can effectively hold aggro with enough FnFs to draw aggro toward the CT (see the Verdant section for more on this), but maintaining FnFs generally doesn't leave enough power for bombers.
So the playstyle of Creeping is generally a CT and multiple FnFs doing all of the damage, while the Animist is in power recovery mode almost all of the time. Bear in mind that if your mushrooms are fighting, YOU are in combat, so only in-combat recovery applies. Your power bar will grow more slowly, Mystic Crystal Lore won't work, and campfires will do nothing until 10 seconds after your last mushroom attack. Fortunately, Phoenix won't penalize you with even slower power recovery when under 1/2 a bar, Serenity works fine, and power recovery potions / mentalist buffs work fine in combat mode.
As you have neither the pet PBAOE nor the lower-variance heal spells from the Verdant line, you'll probably want to place your FnFs far enough away from your CT so they don't transfer aggro, but your CT is still close enough to hit your FnFs' attackers. I've said 750 units in the past, but I have found areas / creatures where this is still too close. 800 units seems to be effective pretty much anywhere. 950 units (just shy of mushroom casting range) is fine on other freeshards, but too far away on Phoenix. (This is a GOOD thing; the biggest problem with FnFs is that they often draw WAY too much, so a reduced aggro range helps more than it hurts. Phoenix FnFs seems to be better at concentrating on the same target and firing in unison as well.)
ARBOREAL
My preferred spec. You'll be fighting almost identically to a Creeping most of the time, but you have options to fight in tighter spaces or to mimic a Verdant, albeit more dangerously.
Arboreal spec gives you BOMBERS, AOE bombers, root FnFs (useless though I keep seeing newbs popping them), and higher CTs.
The Arboreal CT does the most (ranged) damage and draws the most aggro of the three. It's pretty straightforward: it shoots things, no side effects. It's not hard to draw a critter off of one, but it's not difficult to keep aggro on the CT, either. In other 1.65 freeshards, bombers draw almost no aggro; on Phoenix, they draw appreciable aggro. But the aggro formula appears to be pretty straightforward here; it's whoever has done the most damage. If you let your CT get in at least two hits (that land; watch your battle log), you'll be able to land probably several bombers before you outdamage the CT and draw aggro back onto yourself.
So it can be a very effective strategy to place a single CT, leave it in passive mode, and draw in critters one at a time. I quickbar the pet ATTACK; shift-click the button to get an icon to place on your quickbar. Your CT has a pretty decent range for initiating the attack that appears to be about 1000-1500 units, somewhere between mushroom planting range and bomber range. (NOTE: the CT will simply wait until the critter is in range, then attack it if the critter is too far away; if you get the message "the target is too far away" then it's too far away from YOU, not the CT.) Otherwise, a Creeping baseline CON debuff works well to draw critters without drawing personal aggro. They can get in an attack before they turn to the CT if they're close enough to you to reach you before the CT lands a spell, but they will turn to the CT once it draw blood.
Once the CT has aggro and has hit it at least TWICE, you can generally start to bomber the critter without pulling it off of the CT. This varies per critter and how much damage each of you is doing. It is possible for the CT to be resisted, which doesn't accumulate aggro, so watch combat logs.
Alternately, you can just open up and bomber away at your target, and expect that by the time it gets into range to hurt you back, your CT will be able to assist in demolishing it before it can do much damage to you. This is quicker but riskier, best for easier targets. The nice thing about this strategy is that bombers are SLOW, so you can get a few in-route before the first one hits your target. This is not a good strategy with the Arboreal baseline lifetaps, as those are DD and will immediately draw, though you can use a bomber for the first attack or two then switch to lifetaps once the first bomber is about to land.
Alternately, you can stack a root and a lifetap. Fire a root (Creeping baseline), then fire a lifetap. You want the lifetap to land FIRST, or it will break the root. This causes critters to trickle into your CT range at a manageable rate and with some damage already done. Not fully tested across all levels and targets, but the CT seems to have an easier time regaining aggro than by drawing with just a bomber.
Alternately, it's also possible to play a full Creeping style as an Arboreal with little or no downside. Just plant FnFs around, 800ish units away if you want to spread aggro, or 650- units away if you want to concentrate aggro.
Finally, you can play a semi-Verdant style, albeit not safely, by using your AOE bombers instead of the PBAOE. You'll want to plant FnFs <=650 units away from the CT to help concentrate aggro onto the CT, then draw multiple critters (using the AOE to draw can be very risky but very effective on weaker targets, or just CON debuff / bomber / lifetap multiple targets), and AOE them once they're on the CT. Expect them to step off the CT and attack you, but they will eventually be redrawn to the CT by the FnFs, so this can be effective at killing masses of weak critters.
So this is why I like Arboreal: the flexibility. It does whatever a Creeping can do, and it can take less room and sometimes even mimic a Verdant style. It's at least as powerful as the other two. It might even get you an RvR slot, though I wouldn't hold out on that one outside of Keep battles, and roll a different caster if you want to 8-man.
Just NEVER EVER EVER plant a tangler, or I will yell at you. They waste a valuable FnF slot and they get broken immediately, so all they do is hand out free root immunity. It's especially infuriating when I'm hitting the area cap because some other newb Animist is planting tanglers.
I see a lot of questions in /advice regarding how to spec an Animist, so I thought I'd offer my own take on how these spell lines compare in PvE. I'm not getting into the RvR Animist because it tends to be a very specialized niche where it exists at all; Animists tend to not be part of the RvR 8-man meta and are more likely to be in Keep battles.
VERDANT
This line is decent, but is not versatile. It forces a very specific playstyle to be effective.
The objective of the Verdant Animist is to draw critters to your controlled turret (CT), then use the pet PBAOE to blast critters off the map.
The first problem is in getting critters to attack your CT in the first place. Your CT has taunts, but they'd not effective in overcoming the aggro you've accumulated onto yourself by drawing the critters in the first place. From testing, the Verdant appears to be the least effective CT in directly peeling aggro off of you.
To help with this, you can use one of at least three strategies:
1. Use a low-aggro draw, such as the CON debuff from the Creeping baseline. I tend to use this debuff a lot to draw across all Animist specs for this very reason. It doesn't really give you aggro so much as it just makes your presence known, so your CT will usually have little trouble in peeling it off of you.
Benefits: Quick, available from level 12 (you can use the slightly slower level 8 root before then), costs little power.
Drawbacks: Not good for drawing more than one critter at a time, as the debuff has a 10-second cooldown.
2. Use one or more fire-and-forget (FnF) turrets from the Creeping baseline, placed <=700 units away. Phoenix has custom code not in other freeshards that causes all aggro generated by FnFs to transfer to the CT IF the CT exists and is close enough to the FnF. Somewhere between 700-800 units, the FnF is too far away to do this.
Benefits: Can draw multiple creatures fairly automatically.
Drawbacks: Can easily draw far too many creatures, and you'll have trouble keeping your CT alive. You'll have to spam pet heals (baseline Verdant, so at least you'll be good at them) rather than PBAOEs, and your CT is going to kill VERY slowly by itself. It has more damage in melee range than Arboreal or Creeping CTs, but not by much.
3. Draw with a damage spell, move to where the CT is between you and the critter, then fire the PBAOE to land while the critter is in range.
Benefits: Actually kinda fun, and damages the target as well.
Drawbacks: Requires effective timing, can still fail to draw aggro to the CT if your damage spell was too effective, and probably ultimately isn't any faster than the CON debuff method.
Once your CT has aggro and remains alive, you're pretty safe. PBAOEs draw aggro to your CT, not to you, so as long as you keep it alive and nothing else sneaks up on you, you're going to live.
Because the FnF strategy is largely required, this requires a bit of room. In dungeon passage rooms, it's often possible to place FnFs too far away to start attacking everything before you're ready, but not always. So you're going to be far more effective outside.
A good outside strategy would be to place the CT in a close but safe place on its own, and put one FnF 650 or so units away to draw in critters. Then per your area and power management be happy with that and just PBEAOE / heal away, add more FnFs 650 units BEHIND the CT to assist in attacking critters drawn to the CT, or add more FnFs to the FORWARD FnF to draw in even more critters.
In groups, you'll need people to keep critters in range of your PBAOE. This works easily with some group types / members, not so much with others. Newb pickup groups (PUGs) are going to be the worst. Your CT does ZERO damage from range, only taunts, so only your FnFs or own baseline Arboreal / Creeping damage spells are going to contribute to the fight. Of course, these groups tend to want you to just plant FnFs and sit on your ass anyhow, so it's probably no thang.
Final note: many old Verdant guides recommend using the spec-level 2 CT from Creeping with the PBAOE from Verdant. The idea is that even though the pet damage is almost zero after just a few levels, it does have a snare that can be useful. The problem with this on Phoenix is that pet level is capped for any given spell level, so your CT is going to very quickly be a grey pet unless you continue to invest in Creeping. (In original 1.65 dynamics, your pet level would continue to be 88% of your Animist's level, so it would have decent AF/health, and just damage output was determined by the spell level.) Splitting spec lines is NOT effective for an Animist.
CREEPING
This is my least favorite spec line. It has all of the drawbacks and none of the benefits of Verdant. It remains a crowd favorite, so I'll need to explain why.
For Creeping spec, you get higher CTs, an AOE root, and a wider variety of FnFs instead of just damage from baseline Creeping. Your Creeping baseline bombers are going to have less variance, too. And... that's pretty much it.
People insist that Creeping spec does two other things: reduces costs of casting FnFs and reduces variance of FnFs' own damage spells. Sounds awesome, but I'm dubious, as I'm not seeing either effect. Focus on casting staffs is what causes a reduction of power consumption at this patch level, but all loot-gen casting staffs on Phoenix have all focuses at level 50. (If a staff's focus for your spell line is >= the spell level - 1, then the spell's cost is lowered.) I've found little to no difference in how many FnFs I can cast on a full power bar between Creeping and other specs.
As for reduced variance of FnFs' own damage spells, this is harder to test. I'm not seeing a difference, but it would be worth some tests. The challenge is in placing FnFs at the right distance from a level-appropriate testing dummy so it attacks only that dummy, or combing the combat logs, as you can't choose the target for your FnFs.
The CT has a snare, which can be useful. The only other CC an Animist has available is Root. This does have less damage than an Arboreal's CT to compensate, however.
The extra FnFs are all essentially useless. They reduce target's AF (entirely useless alone) or melee damage (seems useful, but rarely worth the cast). Even if they were worth the cast time / power, Phoenix has a cap of 14 FnFs per AREA, not per Animist, so it's a waste of a valuable pet slot.
The AOE root has its uses, but the baseline single-target root is effective in almost any situation where you even need a root. And once one of your FnFs hits a rooted target (and they do in 1.65, not tested on Phoenix, though they do not attack mezzed targets, confirmed on Phoenix), then it's moot anyhow.
Creeping has a baseline bomber spell, so the Animist can effectively participate in battle instead of just watching turrets do it all, but it's generally best just to let the turrets do the work. Creeping bombers have a slight body debuff attached, but this isn't going to make much of a difference outside of boss battles. It's also pretty easy to draw aggro AWAY from the Creeping CT, since the CT is also doing less damage. The CT can effectively hold aggro with enough FnFs to draw aggro toward the CT (see the Verdant section for more on this), but maintaining FnFs generally doesn't leave enough power for bombers.
So the playstyle of Creeping is generally a CT and multiple FnFs doing all of the damage, while the Animist is in power recovery mode almost all of the time. Bear in mind that if your mushrooms are fighting, YOU are in combat, so only in-combat recovery applies. Your power bar will grow more slowly, Mystic Crystal Lore won't work, and campfires will do nothing until 10 seconds after your last mushroom attack. Fortunately, Phoenix won't penalize you with even slower power recovery when under 1/2 a bar, Serenity works fine, and power recovery potions / mentalist buffs work fine in combat mode.
As you have neither the pet PBAOE nor the lower-variance heal spells from the Verdant line, you'll probably want to place your FnFs far enough away from your CT so they don't transfer aggro, but your CT is still close enough to hit your FnFs' attackers. I've said 750 units in the past, but I have found areas / creatures where this is still too close. 800 units seems to be effective pretty much anywhere. 950 units (just shy of mushroom casting range) is fine on other freeshards, but too far away on Phoenix. (This is a GOOD thing; the biggest problem with FnFs is that they often draw WAY too much, so a reduced aggro range helps more than it hurts. Phoenix FnFs seems to be better at concentrating on the same target and firing in unison as well.)
ARBOREAL
My preferred spec. You'll be fighting almost identically to a Creeping most of the time, but you have options to fight in tighter spaces or to mimic a Verdant, albeit more dangerously.
Arboreal spec gives you BOMBERS, AOE bombers, root FnFs (useless though I keep seeing newbs popping them), and higher CTs.
The Arboreal CT does the most (ranged) damage and draws the most aggro of the three. It's pretty straightforward: it shoots things, no side effects. It's not hard to draw a critter off of one, but it's not difficult to keep aggro on the CT, either. In other 1.65 freeshards, bombers draw almost no aggro; on Phoenix, they draw appreciable aggro. But the aggro formula appears to be pretty straightforward here; it's whoever has done the most damage. If you let your CT get in at least two hits (that land; watch your battle log), you'll be able to land probably several bombers before you outdamage the CT and draw aggro back onto yourself.
So it can be a very effective strategy to place a single CT, leave it in passive mode, and draw in critters one at a time. I quickbar the pet ATTACK; shift-click the button to get an icon to place on your quickbar. Your CT has a pretty decent range for initiating the attack that appears to be about 1000-1500 units, somewhere between mushroom planting range and bomber range. (NOTE: the CT will simply wait until the critter is in range, then attack it if the critter is too far away; if you get the message "the target is too far away" then it's too far away from YOU, not the CT.) Otherwise, a Creeping baseline CON debuff works well to draw critters without drawing personal aggro. They can get in an attack before they turn to the CT if they're close enough to you to reach you before the CT lands a spell, but they will turn to the CT once it draw blood.
Once the CT has aggro and has hit it at least TWICE, you can generally start to bomber the critter without pulling it off of the CT. This varies per critter and how much damage each of you is doing. It is possible for the CT to be resisted, which doesn't accumulate aggro, so watch combat logs.
Alternately, you can just open up and bomber away at your target, and expect that by the time it gets into range to hurt you back, your CT will be able to assist in demolishing it before it can do much damage to you. This is quicker but riskier, best for easier targets. The nice thing about this strategy is that bombers are SLOW, so you can get a few in-route before the first one hits your target. This is not a good strategy with the Arboreal baseline lifetaps, as those are DD and will immediately draw, though you can use a bomber for the first attack or two then switch to lifetaps once the first bomber is about to land.
Alternately, you can stack a root and a lifetap. Fire a root (Creeping baseline), then fire a lifetap. You want the lifetap to land FIRST, or it will break the root. This causes critters to trickle into your CT range at a manageable rate and with some damage already done. Not fully tested across all levels and targets, but the CT seems to have an easier time regaining aggro than by drawing with just a bomber.
Alternately, it's also possible to play a full Creeping style as an Arboreal with little or no downside. Just plant FnFs around, 800ish units away if you want to spread aggro, or 650- units away if you want to concentrate aggro.
Finally, you can play a semi-Verdant style, albeit not safely, by using your AOE bombers instead of the PBAOE. You'll want to plant FnFs <=650 units away from the CT to help concentrate aggro onto the CT, then draw multiple critters (using the AOE to draw can be very risky but very effective on weaker targets, or just CON debuff / bomber / lifetap multiple targets), and AOE them once they're on the CT. Expect them to step off the CT and attack you, but they will eventually be redrawn to the CT by the FnFs, so this can be effective at killing masses of weak critters.
So this is why I like Arboreal: the flexibility. It does whatever a Creeping can do, and it can take less room and sometimes even mimic a Verdant style. It's at least as powerful as the other two. It might even get you an RvR slot, though I wouldn't hold out on that one outside of Keep battles, and roll a different caster if you want to 8-man.
Just NEVER EVER EVER plant a tangler, or I will yell at you. They waste a valuable FnF slot and they get broken immediately, so all they do is hand out free root immunity. It's especially infuriating when I'm hitting the area cap because some other newb Animist is planting tanglers.