Given how much more Edge it costs to safely summon higher ones
What do you need edge for when a mage can come out of chargen with 26ish drain resistance dice?
From what had been released it does sound more powerful.
High end of the spectrum of force, definitely. Up to about force 6 stays relatively equal to before all things considered.
I’m not sure I’ve seen powerful defensive magic since like 2e, useful but not super powerful.
If you are willing to quicken defense it gets insane quickly. My missions mystic adept from chicago had 41 defense dice vs. melee, 50 defense dice vs. ranged, 56 damage resistance dice, 41/47 toxin resistance dice, and 34 radiation resistance dice. That was waking up for breakfast before stuff like full defense, and with only buying hits for the spells. It cost me the ability to be subtle around magic through because I was never going to not set off an alarm if I went (broke) through a ward.
Given how soak works in 6e I strongly suspect spirits will be unstoppable in 6e.
It looks to me like the "my role is to kill the opposition" PC is going to have an average DV of about 7 or 8 + net hits, after extra like burst fire and what not. So up through force 6 spirits I think things will roughly be status quo to what we are used to 5. Past that it will quickly outpace potential player damage values. The sole exception being physical adepts, who actually have the potential to do incredible melee damage despite strength being completely useless on all but unarmed builds.