The Definitive Spheres Tier List

[SangoProduction]

I'll be ranking all of the Magic sphere from S to F, based on totally objective measures, like power, fun, and how well it fulfils its fantasy (with bonus points for being something that won't be instantly banned when you pull it out).
Obviously, it's ranking the spheres as a whole, not the standouts on either extreme. For that, you can look at my Spheres in Review series.

S Rank - Supreme

• War: Some of the most efficient, and least obtrusive magic in the game with Momentum. It's like Bards' Inspire Courage on crack. No one gives it too much mind, despite the massive impact all around. The rest of the war sphere is not worthy of the ranking, but Momentum takes it away.
• Creation: You got a mundane item you think would be really useful, but you don't want to have 50 pages of [random, normally useless carp] on your character sheet? Well, now you have them all. Potentially for free. Ladders. Ropes. Walls. You've got it all, with no need to worry about carry capacity or having it stolen. Requires work for AMF.
• Destruction: The one-point wonder. You take this to handle your damage dealing needs, and get to spend the rest of your build resources on a fun character concept. And you can put in more points, if you want to, and not feel punished for it, but simultaneously, not overwhelm literally every challenge. It's got reasonable scaling that will always be relevant (in all but the most powerful tables). It finds its way onto virtually every build that at least pretends to care about occasionally doing damage. And even most builds that don't.

A Rank - Above Expectations

• Illusion: Illusions are great. *The* most flexible type of magic in the game... because it has very incredibly loosely defined rules. And that means that the DM's interpretations of your power matters a lot more than your talents themselves. So it can't reasonably be any higher than this. It's probably a stretch to be in the A tier. But the sphere handles being a focused illusionist so much better than literally every other TTRPG system I've seen. You actually feel like an illusionist (when your DM feels like you get to feel like an illusionist).
• Life: As a healer, I am biased, but this is absurdly busted. More than once, when I've played a focused healer (early on in my Spheres "life" time), I've had DMs request that we tone it down. And I always do because I'm not a jack axe. But taking just a choice few talents lets you be a remarkably competent healer without negating literally all non-one shots. People being low (but not necessarily dying) adds to the tension of combat. That's one of the fundamental "cheats" a lot of games pull on health displays to make it feel like you're in more danger than you really are.
• Mind: Incredibly potent, modern sensibilities aside.

B Rank - Reasonable

• Fallen Fey: Remarkably competent for the right characters (especially with reflavoring, as Spheres encourages). It's got a diverse set of tools, even if none of them really synergize, which means that almost every character could potentially find a reason to pick up a talent here or there, if they can't be arsed with the duration mechanic thing. I'm honestly not sure what the overall concept is behind this sphere is.
• Bear: For a meme, with few synergies, it's... better than expected. Not good by any means. I've literally had one character concept for it, which never saw play. But in its context, it's fine.
• Divination: It's rather fiddly to use, without substantial investment. And with substantial investment, it's... a side-thing that you do. It's never really able to fill the role as a core character concept. I do not fault the designers though. That's kinda what Divination is for any actual adventurer.
• Enhancement: It does its job fairly well (empowering martial-types, while not demanding infinite caster levels). There just always seem to be a lot fewer actual talents to meaningfully choose from than it would seem.
• Fate: Eh. It's fine. It's got tools.
• Death (Ghost Strike): Before level 4 or 5, a lot of the time, any Ghost Strikes you make, it feels like you'd be better off it you just used Destruction sphere instead. After level 5, your Strikes largely last the entire combat. But it still feels lacking compared to Destruction sphere, especially because you are *required* to get multiple ghost strike talents, unless this was just a dip, and not actually your "thing." (Again, ignore standouts like Curse.)
• Warp: Teleport. You will probably need to invest a lot in it to be reasonably useful. But if you want anything other than moving things, you're looking in the wrong place.
• Alteration: I would sometimes take it for cosmetic purposes, like pretending to be a 3.5 Changeling. Or quite literally any creature, without homebrew, with the Transformation feat. But it's a hyper polarizing sphere. It's either way too good at this particular thing you're doing (like turning bosses into blind, immobile fish), or just... really narrow and boring. (And even when it's really good, it's a very narrow type of oppressively good. It's so incredibly uninteresting.)

C Rank - Disappointing

• Conjuration: It's simultaneously too cheap to get a lot of "good enough" (especially magical) summons, and too expensive to get a truly good summon. Very few of the talents actually feel particularly impactful, even if you didn't have to buy them for each and every summon. I also hate minionmancers.
• Dark/Light: Plant down zone. Disorient enemy. Win. That's the general game plan. And it can be very effective. It's just incredibly boring. They are useful for dipping for cosmetic reasons. Though a darkness dip is less useful than illusion dip.
• Nature: It's got some tools for potent area control. It promises flexibility with its talents. I don't think it particularly delivers on the promises. A lot of the time for nature-based characters, I'd honestly prefer different spheres to get the concept across.
• Blood: Although the sphere's defenders got me to admit it's not total trash, and it has certain outliers, it does simply not deliver as a notable sphere, and almost every class and archetype tied to it suffers for it.
• Death (Reanimate): Ew minionmancy. But it also limits the DM's encounter designs, accounting for your ability to steal the corpses, potentially indefinitely. Unless he directly intervenes and tells you to knock it off.
• Time: Eh. Never felt useful, and quite literally never had a build that meaningfully used it. Save for stand out talents like Retry. But it feels like there's something here that puts it above F rank. I can't put my finger on it.
• Weather: This is the only sphere which prompted me to create, and made use of, the D-Bag rating. Because the only point of some of these talents is to be a total axe wipe to commoners. And that's it. Never found a use for that tag ever again. But (relatively) recent additions like shrouds and mantles, have made it more usable as a sphere in actually meaningful ways. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice cosmetic touch to have some control over weather for some characters.

F Rank - Absolute failures

• Telekinesis. Need I honestly say more?
• Mana: I reviewed it twice. I was bored to tears both time. The new amps are fun. But that's literally all the sphere has going for it. And I'm not suffering through the sphere just to get amps.
• Protection: Ignoring some silly stuff that can be done with (Selective) Barrier, the rest of the sphere is really unremarkable. Each effect is rather narrow, so though it screams that it's the "Listen all half casters" sphere with its flat effects per talent... each talent handles only a couple situations. And in the early Spheres (which was the context in which this was created), half casters got half the talents. (Nowadays, half casters get full talents, and a choice of martial and magical. Hard to know where to take that, because both exist simultaneously in the rules today.)
  Know what? This is suddenly a candidate for adapting from 5e. I'll have to check out how they handled it there. I would have probably combined talents, much like Nature did.

If you disagree with anything I've stated, you're factually wrong, but feel free to air your disagreement below anyway. :p

[AsuraKyoko]

Weather: This is the only sphere which prompted me to create, and made use of, the D-Bag rating. Because the only point of some of these talents is to be a total axe wipe to commoners. And that's it. Never found a use for that tag ever again. But (relatively) recent additions like shrouds and mantles, have made it more usable as a sphere in actually meaningful ways. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice cosmetic touch to have some control over weather for some characters.

I actually did find another use for the large-scale weather control talents: warfare. Attacking an enemy army by dropping a hurricane on top of them is pretty great, and somewhat uniquely capable of affecting entire armies at once. It also allows for you to mitigate the effects of winter on your own army, which can have a lot of strategic value.

That being said, in the vast majority of campaigns, causing snowstorms or whatever just isn't very useful...

EDIT: The sphere totally deserves its rating, though I would say that scouring armies off the map with a hurricane is pretty exciting.

[icefractal]

Interesting list! I'm partly in agreement, but I do have some significant differences, probably caused by different play-styles. So here's my objectively wrong opinions :


Conjuration - As a personal preference that you hate minion-mancy, then sure. But objectively, it is a very useful sphere. You praise Destruction (accurately) for being a one-talent "decent offense" package, but Conjuration is a one-talent package for lots of things. Party doesn't have a healer and nobody wants to change classes? Conjuration dip gets you a pretty good out-of-combat healer. Need an assistant with some particular skills nobody took? Conjuration dip has your back. Yeah, you're not getting a strong front-liner with just a dip, but even then you can get a flanking buddy. I'd go so far as to say that at mid-high levels, the only reason not to take a Conjuration dip is that you already have sufficient power and versatility and don't want to add more.


Protection - Seriously, how is Protection F-rank? It's the best way to get energy resistance, saves, and AC; you don't have to take the situational stuff if you don't want to, and "always get a save" is a potent effect at high levels. Plus, it lasts a long time, so you're not spending your precious, limited, in-combat actions on casting it (YMMV, but in our group fights seldom last a large number of rounds).


Light - Darkness is mostly about zones of enemy-sadness, as you describe, but Light is a grab-bag with lots of effects. It has some good buffs (Encompassing Light ftw). It has efficient direct damage. It has interesting utility effects like seeing through walls and reading books instantly. B-rank at least.


Mind - Ok, it's at least B-rank, but A-rank? It has good effects, but you need a backup plan because a number of foes are immune. And while effects like Enthrall and Inception could potentially let you take over an entire city politically, IME most GMs don't want it to be that easy and will put road-blocks in your way (and TBF, they're not unreasonable to do so).


Alteration - I may be biased, because "shapechanger" is one of my favorite archetypes, but I think this deserves at least B-rank. I don't usually mess with the offensive transmutation (too binary, they either resist unscathed or they're toast), but even a little investment gives you lots of utility - movement, disguise, stealth, even a few senses. Primary combat use takes more focus, but IME you can get pretty solid natural-weapon offense, good for anyone who wants to melee with subpar BAB.


Mana - I think it depends on how many Sphere-using foes you fight, and how many Sphere-casters are in the party (and what level you are)? Like, at CL 8th, Manabond + Sudden Empower is twice as good as casting boons; in a party with multiple casters that's worth at least a dip. And if you fight a fair amount of enemy casters, the anti-magic stuff can be pretty good. But it definitely is situational.


Illusion - The GM-dependent nature, and the fact that many GMs I've played with either:
A) Were flustered by illusions, had no idea how to deal with them, and got unhappy when I used a lot.
B) No-sold illusions most of the time, on the flimsiest pretense.
C) Were theoretically pro-illusion but often forgot to have the enemies react accordingly.
Means that I can't personally rank this higher than B-rank.


War - I'm not saying you're wrong in general, but for many groups I've played in, Momentum would not be at all "unobtrusive", because several of the players won't remember the option exists unless I prompt them for it every time it would help. And then they'll need to be reminded how big the pool is so they can ponder whether the spend is worth it. Meanwhile the GM is staring daggers at me for slowing the turn down in order to get a minor benefit. I'd still call this a good sphere though, just not S-rank.

[SangoProduction]

Fair on the War sphere deal. Although I almost exclusively play it as me spending it to improve them, rather than having others worry about my stuff.
Just chime in with a "You can move 10 extra feet," or "+5 damage" when appropriate. Worst I've ever got was when someone was assuming that they did get the bonus movement, and I had to tell them that I was out of momentum.

As far as Mind is concerned... yes, you need a backup plan (if you don't have the Ignore Immunity advanced talent). And one talent in Destruction sphere has you settled. Destruction sphere just negates that downside. It fulfils its fantasy very well.

As for Conjuration. That's actually what I *don't* like about Conjuration. It's way too easy to be "good enough." Summons are very "visible" as an effect to the table. Summoning a locksmith is going to be more noticed than casting Knock, despite the former being strictly worse in most cases. (More ridiculously, you can get like 5 magical summons for 1 talent (and drawbacks) that can each cast life sphere. Which notably feels a lot more abusive than just being really good at life sphere.)
In my opinion, It also feels a very... mechanical... sphere. It's strictly there to do mechanics rather than fulfil some sort of fantasy.

And also fair on the Alteration point. I rated it C because I am literally never enthused to play an Alteration specialist, or even have particularly many talents. But it definitely deserves at least a B for the sheer fact that Transformation talent exists, which enables playing literally every creature in the game without homebrew (while even having it scaled down to your current level). And yes, it's got good utility.

[paladinn]

Umm.. forgive my ignorance, but where is any of this in 3.0/3.5/D20?

I thought "spheres" was a 2e cleric thing, replaced by domains in 3.x.

[icefractal]

Ah - I think I'm misunderstanding the meaning of tiers here then? I was thinking more like the way classes are tiered. Is it just personal enjoyment, or "how likely it is to have a useful effect without annoying the GM", or something else?

Now as for subtle, I agree Conjuration usually isn't. I'm coming at this from a spotlight-time perspective rather than actually concealing anything from the GM, because the latter seems counter-productive. But I'd agree that too much "and now my companion does this!" could get annoying to the other players. However, there are several cases where I think that's not an issue:
1) Companion fills a party role. Like healer, or ancient-language translator, or flanking buddy for the rogue, or whatever. The other players asked for someone to do this, they're not going to get annoyed when someone does.
2) Morning buffing routine. Instead of sitting there alone and casting buffs, you sit there with a companion and cast buffs. Either way, something that's a single sentence in real-time.
3) Companion is your combat turn. You, the PC, just take support actions which are quickly resolved, while your companion is the one who actively fights the enemies.

Regarding the fantasy - being a summoner who has bound demons / spirits / etc working for them? Having a faithful pet / steed / bodyguard? Having a symbiote like Venom? Having an imaginary friend who isn't just imaginary? Building robot helpers? Not a universal thing, but seems like there are plenty of character ideas where it would fit.

Re: War - That's fair, I could probably just treat it as my own activated ability for most purposes and it'd work fine.


Re: paladinn - Spheres of Power is a third-party expansion for Pathfinder 1 (and there's a D&D 5E version too). Compared to traditional casters, I'd say that sphere casters:
* Are usually more focused on a particular area of magic
* Hit their stride sooner, and don't change focus as much over the course of their levels
* Have more endurance at low-level, less at high-level
* Are mechanically smoother; less things to track
* Multiclass very well, as opposed to it usually being a bad idea for traditional casters

By using custom Casting Traditions, Oaths, and/or Origins, you can achieve something close to the Hero system idea of "represent any character concept" in Pathfinder, which I think is pretty cool personally.

There are also two other systems by the same publisher - Spheres of Might and Spheres of Guile, which are often used alongside Spheres of Power (but don't have to be).

[Seerow]

I'm also going to go to bat for protection here. It's not flashy, but it does exactly what you want it to do, and makes it easy to do so. It's not s tier and it's not going to be your main shtick but it's a sphere that most casters at least have a reason to look at dipping into.

Also Shared Aegis is probably one of the coolest talents out there to have if you have a reach based defender in the party. Being able to cast a defensive buff on the tank and have that spread to everyone else nearby is super cool.

I'd call it an easy C. D would be pushing it. F makes no sense.

[Ramza00]

Umm.. forgive my ignorance, but where is any of this in 3.0/3.5/D20?

I thought "spheres" was a 2e cleric thing, replaced by domains in 3.x.

( icefractal already covered this well 👍)

http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/

And various pdfs at drivethrurpg and other sites.

———

Spheres is from 2014 and got a 3.0 to 3.5 like update with Ultimate Spheres in 2020, it is now²⁰²⁴ going to be continued not by Drop Dead Studios but by Diamond Recreational Studios and other 3rd Parties due to not making much money off it and the whole OGL / Pathfinder thing.

Spheres gets its name for in the BC years of our history people tried to create a cosmological system of heavenly spheres, like we think of the orbits of the planet. It was very scholastic / religious but also involving math and geometry , and thus many fantasy systems talk about spheres much like DnD 2nd edition with the various domains of the gods, their spheres of influence.

[SangoProduction]

The deal about "visibility" is not about hiding information from the table. It's about how...apparent the power seems. No one cares about Knock. It just happens. But if you bring out a minion to do it, suddenly people are paying attention to it. Almost because you are asking them to, in addition to the effect, also put in their mindspace that there's this new thing that's been created and doing it.

Doesn't matter nearly as much when the DM is already fully on board with Spheres. But with those that are letting Spheres in on a tentative basis, there's a line of "You're just doing too much," where they break, and just don't allow Spheres in the future. Unfortunately, aside from me and a couple of friends who will occasionally DM, the majority of the DMs I find are tentative on it, at best, because it isn't yet widely accepted.

As far as Protection. I am unconvinced.

[Ady]

The deal about "visibility" is not about hiding information from the table. It's about how...apparent the power seems. No one cares about Knock. It just happens. But if you bring out a minion to do it, suddenly people are paying attention to it. Almost because you are asking them to, in addition to the effect, also put in their mindspace that there's this new thing that's been created and doing it.

Doesn't matter nearly as much when the DM is already fully on board with Spheres. But with those that are letting Spheres in on a tentative basis, there's a line of "You're just doing too much," where they break, and just don't allow Spheres in the future. Unfortunately, aside from me and a couple of friends who will occasionally DM, the majority of the DMs I find are tentative on it, at best, because it isn't yet widely accepted.

As far as Protection. I am unconvinced.

If GM annoyance with spheres for GMs that aren't on board is a concern, then the ratings are definitely rather dubious. Destruction outputs as much or more damage as almost any vanilla spell caster, and can do it very frequently at very low cost. Mind Sphere gives you access to effects like Hold Monster waaaaay earlier than you could with a normal class. Creation can do all of that utility and create walls that cut encounters in half with very minor investment. Point being that if your assessment of these spheres depends on the likelihood of their power being perceived as abnormal by GMs who are on the fence, there are far worse offenders than Conjuration, which can be played in a myriad ways to take attention away from you.

In my experience, a GM is much more likely to reconsider spheres based on combat encounters blitzed than skill checks resolved with a summoned creature or party gaps plugged with a mediocre healer or a tank, especially if you can sell it with the flavor. As long as you can make sure you're on top of your character mechanics, which is kind of a given for all complex abilities.

I'm also going to go to bat for Nature sphere here: it's not spectacular, but I think you severely underrate the potency of being able to ignore Spell Resistance as a universal feature of the sphere. Spell Resistance is the bane of spell casters in pathfinder in my experience, and it only ramps up with scarier foes. The fact you can do various useful but not overwhelmingly powerful crowd control effects when enemies with Spell Resistance present themselves is an incredible tool to have, and the fact it's not that good and is very flavorful really helps mollify GM antagonism.

Lastly, there's also something more to be said about Protection sphere, most casters who can take Mage Armor and Shield tend to do so in vanilla pathfinder 1e. Both of these effects can be acquired for only a single talent if you take a drawback, and you can get a deflection buff or Energy Resistance to go along with it if you want to give up Ward or the base Aegis. Offense is important, but Protection very elegantly provides the defenses normal casters can provide. I personally never make a character without one talent in Protection, unless I'm playing a Gish with armor proficiency.

[vasilidor]

I am sad about the Telekinesis sphere. I wanted it to be good to play a Jedi. How would one make it worth while? what level of investment does it take to be worth while?

[icefractal]

I'd say that if you're prepared to fairly heavily focus on it (spend a lot of magic talents and some complementary combat talents) it can work fine. And also simply being at higher levels solves the "can't interact with other medium-sized creatures' issue. It's just rather clunky at the start compared to most spheres.

[Rynjin]

I am sad about the Telekinesis sphere. I wanted it to be good to play a Jedi. How would one make it worth while? what level of investment does it take to be worth while?

Honestly importing the base functionality from 5e Spheres goes a long way towards fixing PF Spheres. It fixes the issues like until level 5 the base Telekenesis ability is legit worse than Mage Hand by just letting you affect things up to a SIZE CATEGORY instead of raw weight, and then augment that by spending SP. The supplementary talents for Telekinesis are pretty good, but the base Sphere functionality and weight limitations are just so dog**** that it's basically unusable until level 5 at minimum.

To the broader topic, I think Fate and Time are being slept on a lot as support Spheres. One of my favorite Spheres character was a "zDPS" support caster, and a big part of how that was possible was with Fate. Tug Fate in particular is pretty insane as a Consecration. You spend one spell point and just maintain concentration all day to essentially make your allies have a 5% extra chance to auto-succeed any check and a 5% chance for your enemies to auto-fail any check.

Combined with other luck manipulation and ass-saving powers like Retry from Time (which acts as kind of an Immediate action Breath of Life among other things) you can make a really annoying battlefield controller who makes the party incredibly consistent and resilient to harm...without ever forcing any kind of save from your enemies. It Just Works. (TM)

Plus y'know, Haste is a good spell.

[Ramza00]

Time is One and Done due to how you can get 2 or 3 real good talents via drawbacks if you are willing to sacrifice inferior slow and haste.

• Retry (redo a save or die as an immediate action), Steal Time (nova), and Retroactive Preparation (grab what scroll you need.) Can all be grab as a single talent due to drawbacks.
• Time if you want to specialize in it needs a few extra talents to impact a range and multi targets / an area. Destruction and so on is more talent efficient if the target is others and not yourself
• Time is powerful if you want to sink 5 or so talents into it, or if you sink 3 or 4 plus Flex
• In sum a U shape curve, either you do one and done, or you do several

Fate is weird.

So many good talents but they do not synergize well so you have to know what you are dumpster diving, and people can dumpster dive for different things. Like if your cohort or animal companion has low casting with 2 talents, them being able to Bless or Curse is merely an action plus 1 sp sink, and your ally or enemy reroll with no saving throw, it is just advantage of disadvantage. Throw on echoing word and you can force multiple enemies to roll twice for a single area of effect a different ally does like a fireball.

Yet Fate is not strong enough to be one’s speciality and be effective, you do 1 or a few talents to give yourself versatility but it is not good at killing things, instead being a second hand that helps.

[SangoProduction]

If GM annoyance with spheres for GMs that aren't on board is a concern, then the ratings are definitely rather dubious. Destruction outputs as much or more damage as almost any vanilla spell caster, and can do it very frequently at very low cost. Mind Sphere gives you access to effects like Hold Monster waaaaay earlier than you could with a normal class. Creation can do all of that utility and create walls that cut encounters in half with very minor investment. Point being that if your assessment of these spheres depends on the likelihood of their power being perceived as abnormal by GMs who are on the fence, there are far worse offenders than Conjuration, which can be played in a myriad ways to take attention away from you.

In my experience, a GM is much more likely to reconsider spheres based on combat encounters blitzed than skill checks resolved with a summoned creature or party gaps plugged with a mediocre healer or a tank, especially if you can sell it with the flavor. As long as you can make sure you're on top of your character mechanics, which is kind of a given for all complex abilities.

I'm also going to go to bat for Nature sphere here: it's not spectacular, but I think you severely underrate the potency of being able to ignore Spell Resistance as a universal feature of the sphere. Spell Resistance is the bane of spell casters in pathfinder in my experience, and it only ramps up with scarier foes. The fact you can do various useful but not overwhelmingly powerful crowd control effects when enemies with Spell Resistance present themselves is an incredible tool to have, and the fact it's not that good and is very flavorful really helps mollify GM antagonism.

Lastly, there's also something more to be said about Protection sphere, most casters who can take Mage Armor and Shield tend to do so in vanilla pathfinder 1e. Both of these effects can be acquired for only a single talent if you take a drawback, and you can get a deflection buff or Energy Resistance to go along with it if you want to give up Ward or the base Aegis. Offense is important, but Protection very elegantly provides the defenses normal casters can provide. I personally never make a character without one talent in Protection, unless I'm playing a Gish with armor proficiency.

Wait. Nature sphere ignorers spell resistance? Even the stuff that directly affects people?

As far as Mage Armor / Shield... Those casters tend to be ones who literally can't wear armor, even if they wanted to.
In spheres, you have to actively choose to go out of your way to not wear armor.
If you take just 1 level of the armor restriction, well, you now need at least CL 10 before your magic spell is better than a completely mundane Chain Shirt. Same for a mundane heavy shield. The very cheap options by any given level gives you better results than the spell, and takes neither time, prep, talents, nor SP. In most cases. Sometimes you get ambushed in your sleep... but I forget if you take penalties for wearing light armor to bed.
Now, for the aesthetics of being shielded by magic, that's one thing. But a kind GM would probably let you buy armor that "looks" like it's a magical forcefield. Or there's that Glamer enchantment or whatever, that makes it look different.

I mean, you do still want proficiency, and Incanter, Soul Weaver, and Fey Adept all fail to have Light Armor proficiency (ignoring archetypes).
But masterwork light armor can give an ACP of 0 for +3 AC, equivalent to the spell for up to CL 5.

And Protection is great for elemental resistance. But I am rating the spherre as a whole, not its standout talent.

[vasilidor]

In the description the Nature Sphere, first paragraph, "Because Geomancing manipulates natural elements, it is not subject to spell resistance, even if a geomancing ability targets a creature directly."
So while it might be less effective than other forms of damage or crowd control due to various limitations without serious investment, it is still a good way to get around things like spell resistance and spell immunity.

[Nizaris]

Wait. Nature sphere ignorers spell resistance? Even the stuff that directly affects people?.

Geomancy effects ignore spell resistance even when targeting creatures directly. [Spirit] talents are subject to SR when directly targeting a creature.

*edit* Ninja'd

It also means if you want to use Nature's Weapon as the basis of your damage, it's SR: No because the talent creates a weapon and doesn't target a creature so it's potentially a higher damage option (with some investment) over Destruction

[Ady]

Wait. Nature sphere ignorers spell resistance? Even the stuff that directly affects people?

As Vasilidor and Nizaris already pointed out, yes, explicitly in the third line of Geomancy it says that "Because Geomancing manipulates natural elements, it is not subject to spell resistance, even if a geomancing ability targets a creature directly.".

This means that effects like Freeze, Bury, Air Geyser, Entangle, and others are all better on account of being usable when your other sphere effects might fail against spell resistance. I've found that having even one or two talents in Nature on about any build proved invaluable as a tool on off-turns. It also gives access to the incredibly potent Imbue With Nature (Dual Sphere) dual sphere feat if you want to use blasts other than Stone Blast and still bypass SR.

As far as Mage Armor / Shield... Those casters tend to be ones who literally can't wear armor, even if they wanted to.

In spheres, you have to actively choose to go out of your way to not wear armor.
If you take just 1 level of the armor restriction, well, you now need at least CL 10 before your magic spell is better than a completely mundane Chain Shirt. Same for a mundane heavy shield. The very cheap options by any given level gives you better results than the spell, and takes neither time, prep, talents, nor SP. In most cases. Sometimes you get ambushed in your sleep... but I forget if you take penalties for wearing light armor to bed.
Now, for the aesthetics of being shielded by magic, that's one thing. But a kind GM would probably let you buy armor that "looks" like it's a magical forcefield. Or there's that Glamer enchantment or whatever, that makes it look different.

I mean, you do still want proficiency, and Incanter, Soul Weaver, and Fey Adept all fail to have Light Armor proficiency (ignoring archetypes).
But masterwork light armor can give an ACP of 0 for +3 AC, equivalent to the spell for up to CL 5.

And Protection is great for elemental resistance. But I am rating the spherre as a whole, not its standout talent.

It's true that classes that do have proficiency in armor don't care as much, but the three you mention (alongside base PF casters who take spheres archetypes) would benefit from taking Protection even if they do so after CL 5 when it becomes more useful than masterwork light armor (which you may not be able to get early on depending on your starting wealth situation). I also brought up Energy Resistance as one potent aegis, but there are several more non-situational ones like Ablating, Resistance, Spell Ward that will help to have in most circumstances. Mainly the fact that Aegis' last for hours at a time means you can spend spell points to help you without consuming your action economy, and that is valuable by itself.

My main argument is that it's a reasonable option, and therefore doesn't deserve to be grouped with the other disappointing options. It may be more accurate to split it like you did for Death sphere and say that Protection (Ward) disappointing but Protection (Aegis) is reasonable, even if I'd like to say the Aegis/Ward options are mostly usable.

[stack]

In spheres, you have to actively choose to go out of your way to not wear armor.

Assuming that you can freely select or create traditions. If you are locked into more rigid tradition choices to mimic base casting styles or to suit a setting, armored casters may be much more limited.

[vasilidor]

I just realized that the gnome player who primarily uses the creation sphere in my game probably doesn't realize that his casting is not limited by using armor...