Spiritmaster

The Spiritmaster is one of the more unique classes in Aion, being that you are generally not doing damage to enemies yourself. Instead, you summon a new being and allow that to damage the enemies for you. Luckily, you are able to assist your new summon by giving it heals, buffs, or tossing out a few damaging spells of your own to assist in the destruction.

Along with your own skills to assist your summons, you will also have the ability to choose which type of summon you wish to use. There are types for four different elements, each of which has their own positive and negative benefits.

The four elements are Fire, Water, Wind, and Earth.
Fire -   Melee Offensive
Water-   Magical Ranged Offensive
Wind -  Magical Melee Offensive
Earth -  Tanking

As you can see by reading the list above, these are all very different from each other. An easy way to think of these various types is to view the Earth as being like a Templar, the Water as being a Sorcerer, the Fire as being an Assassin or Gladiator, and Wind would be in a class of its own.

Strategy

The strategy for playing a summoner (Spiritmaster) will be ever-changing depending on many variables of your combat. You will want to take into consideration whether you are alone or grouped, how many players are in your group (if you have one), where you are hunting at, the mobs you are hunting, their levels, and the skills that the mobs are capable of using.

Your primary goal as a summoner is to counter your enemy's type. For example, if they are a weak defense mob (such as magic caster) you will probably want to go with the Fire type for melee damage. If they are a strong melee defensive type but low magic defense, you will want to go for Water, etc. This will take much playing around with to determine the best type of summon for your current combat situations.

You also have the ability to play as a tank in your group, by choosing to use the Earth type. This is especially useful when you are in groups that have no tank but still need one. You are able to buff and heal your pet, making it extremely effective, although still not quite as effective as one of the true tanking players (such as the Templar). Also keep in mind that using the Earth type is great for solo too, being that your pet can tank for you while you help with damaging. The only real down-side to this is that your pet does much less damage than with one of the offensive types, but your survivability is much higher.