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I just thought I'd share my thoughts on the animist after a PFS playtest session.
Basic summary : A very versatile and useful and FUN class, even while NOT abusing the heck out of Bile. But Bile IS too powerful and needs to be reigned in.
We were level 5 playing through 4-07 (A Most Wonderous Exchange).
I built a gnome Channeler with Custodian, Stalker and Steward Apparitions. My plan was to only slightly abuse Earth Bile while shapechanging for melee support and using Garden for out of combat healing. Being a gnome let me totally dump Str and only pay a little attention to Dex so that I had decent (+3) in BOTH Int and Cha which allowed me lots and lots of skills (always a good thing, especially in PFS).
Basic plan (gotta have a plan :-))
Round 1: start in Steward, Stance, Bile, Whirl into Stalker
Round 2+: (order as appropriate), Sustain Bile, Sustain or cast Forest Form, Strike.
At the beginning of the session, the GM informed us of his interpretation of Bile. He was interpreting "first time you Sustain it each round thereafter" as "you can only sustain ONE Bile spell a round, the "it" refers to the Bile spell in general and not the specific one cast". While this is definitely a questionable interpretation it (or something like it) is desperately needed to keep Bile under control.
WITH this interpretation I only ever bothered to cast Bile once. And WITH this interpretation I was doing quite reasonable damage every turn (6D4+3) in an area. I always managed to catch at least one foe, often caught 2, once caught 3 and once caught 3 WITH an ally also caught (the player of the caught ally agreed to be in the area). I was VERY happy with Bile even with this interpretation.
Without this interpretation (or some other nerf) Bile is obviously just way over powered.
My above plan actually worked a oouple of times. In one scenario I never got to see the HUGE flexibility that changing form every round potentially allows (I was always a bear :-)) but I've played enough shifting druids to KNOW how incredibly versatile and powerful that ability is (climb speed one round, huge move speed another, agile second attack only when bothering to make 2 attacks, etc).
In those rounds I was quite happy with my damage output, even competing with all the other characters (Exemplars :-)). A decent AoE and a no MAP strike each round is pretty good.
Then the true value of flexibility actually showed up one fight.
Round 1 went as planned, I'd done some significant damage with Bile and had whirled into Stalker for next round.
Then things went south as the bad guys hit us HARD. One character down, another close to down, and a bit more damage spread around.
So, I changed my plan :-).
Round 2 : I whirled into Custodian, sustained Bile which allowed me to dance into the right position while still damaging the bad guys and then cast Garden. Turns out that Garden is a quite decent (not great, but decent) IN COMBAT spell as well as doing insane amounts of out of combat healing. That was enough to bring the one character back up and top up the nearly down enough to survive the next round.
Round 3 : Still in healer mode. Sustain Bile for some damage, sustain Garden for some healing, one action heal spell for some more healing.
One thing that I found quite enjoyable is that I actually had to pay significant attention to the combat. I had to make sure that I sustained and danced in the right order to the right places, had to decide where to place Bile, etc. Its just NOT a boring "Strike, strike, raise shield" or "move then throw spell" class. I had options, I had to plan my turn, group position mattered.
I've always loved flexibility and this class delivers that very well. I was impressed with the fact that I could pivot into a healer role in the middle of combat while still maintaining a decent amount of damage to the bad guys.
And the class supports quite a few builds even in the playtest.
I like the way that they handle shapeshifting. I hope that they transfer the much simpler "+1 status to hit" to the remastered druid instead of the current incredibly kludgy "If you're greater you get +2".
Although it didn't come up in this playtest the flexibility of changing shape each round is probably just about balanced by having to sustain it each round, especially with Dance so the sustain allows considerable movement.
During the entire session I only actually bothered to cast ONE real spell (a one action heal). I also cast a cantrip once more to see how it felt than for any other reason. The vessel spells were enough. This may actually be evidence that the vessel spells are TOO good. But its probably just the build I chose. A pure caster build would probably be using Bile every round and a spell every round.
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One thing that I found quite enjoyable is that I actually had to pay significant attention to the combat. I had to make sure that I sustained and danced in the right order to the right places, had to decide where to place Bile, etc. Its just NOT a boring "Strike, strike, raise shield" or "move then throw spell" class. I had options, I had to plan my turn, group position mattered.
This is exactly what I was thinking while reading your description of the combat. It sounds fun, it makes me want to play an Animist, and I hope that we can have a class that is still this engaging when the overpowered stuff gets reigned in.