• AoEMod grants even single target skills additional targets
• Flurry 3 and Speed 3 make this class one of the best (if not the best) at repeat attacks.
• Air magic allows access to the guided mod, making repeat attacks more powerful

• -damageimmunity base AND through the buff makes it very risky to use: every hit HURTS
• .5 Moderate armor seems like a lot, but doesn't offer much protection
• No aggro mitigation and lots of attacks means enemies want to target you

• Hearth Magician: Earth+Water Magic and repeats

• Avoid cover souls like the plague. You're squishy enough as is.

• Sabre, especially guided: good damage and further boosting repeats

• GUIDED You have access to it, use it! Boost repeats for attacks and buffs

• High raw damage output
• Excellent DoT damage
• High Affinities
• Potent AoE
• Strong Skills

• Poor HP
• Poor access to armor
• Low Defense
• Low Accuracy
• No medical affinity or heal abilities

• Ninja: hpbuffer passive
• Medic souls: offers medical affinities and/or passives)
• Dark Knight: Heavy armor and Vampiric passive
• Summoner souls: Pets can tank damage
• Windrunner: Allows use of Fine Tuned/Heavy/Guided

Short Bow for attack and accuracy passive boost

• Tank souls (e.g. Fighter & Crusader): Cause you to take damage for others
• Other fire souls: Redundant affinities

• Flame of the Creator (Venomous/CI/Heaviest)

= 83 base damage over 4 rounds

• Parrying blade (Fine Tuned/Heavy/Guided/Large)

= Light weapon, provides 20 defense and 10 accuracy buff

• Sphinx: Offers Damagebuff + Technical
• Phoenix: Offers Healing + free Revive
• Elementalist: Gives you tank or healing pet
• Elemental Dragon: Offers some resists
• Siren: AoEguard causes party to take less damage
• Cerebrus: Offers DoTattack + some resists

• Kraken: AoEmod caps damage, neg. damagebuff hurts
• Kirin: causes you to tank

• Great at fighting one or two enemies
• Variety of combat skills make for a versatile base
• High damage and high defenses stat
• Capable of heavy damage bursts
• Good proficiency selection
• Combat soul with some non-combat proficiencies

• No inherent AoE attacks
• Defenses may be strong, but are very thin
• Very easy to burst through energy reserves
• Split focus means other souls are better at specializing
• No innate healing capabilities

• Souls with strong AoE (Army Magician, Street Fighter, Mage Adept)
• Souls with complimentary styles (Samurai increases Defense and uses counter damage, Ninja's Smoke Grenade and Sudden Decoy complement high defenses and the HPBuffer helps compensate for low resist/low HP)
• Army Magician adds two strong AoE attacks and a passive +Damage power, as well as enough Fire and Air magic to allow the use of Thunderbolt, Flame of the Creators, and Guided.
• Monk and Street Fighter both add the Twirling Kick AoE attack, useful passive powers, and allow the use of high quality Moderate Weapons.

• Souls that duplicate proficiency or with conflicting styles.
• Crusader and Fighter rely on toughness and durability without complimenting Duelist's strengths like Samurai or Ninja
• Scholar and Dark Magician have AoE debuffs, but Duelist does not have the base capabilities to fully use them
• Windrunner, Rogue, and Shrouded Assassin all have positive benefits, but their heavy overlap limits their utility.

• Parying Dagger - Thanks to Avoidance 3, the defense bonus from this item is increased by 45% - easily providing 60 or so defense for the Duelist.
• Swift Sword - Instant attack for high damage, although the bonus penetration from Duelist's combat skills doesn't add much.
• Martial Training - Even without Flurry, the Martial Training is an excellent option for a duelist's 'main' attack.

• Spyguard - Thematically fun and provides a lot of bonuses to RP rolls
• Kraken - Duelist -needs- good equipment, and Kraken's Technical boosts it. Also, AoE Swift Swords.

Ok:

• Phoenix - Fiery Rebirth comes in handy
• 3D Magister - Duelist gets many fast attacks, so can reliably proc the abilities every turn; the energy drain will hurt though.

• Kirin - Damage shifted by cover uses the source's defense, and not yours. This will kill a duelist quickly
• Gryphon - The Duelist's innate attack powers are weak; it relies heavily on equipment.

• Machine Priest: Leadership plus 3 loadout-free summons at MP level 15 (i.e., GC level 30)

• Broad base of skills
• Diverse combat skills enable more specialized builds than some more focused souls
• Access to essentially all of the magic skills
• Earth magic can help check low innate survivability

• Despite the broad base of skills, they require some effort to maximize.
• More specialized souls are better for the execution of most standard builds
• Having a broad spread of combat skills means that utilizing all of them effectively is near impossible.
• Most magic suffers from incurably long charge times.

• Most souls that give survivability are a good bet due to Mage adept's poor access to armor. Calcified flesh only goes so far.
• Ninja: HPbuffer passive and dodge tools are very handy, but may cause some energy issues.
• Hearth Magician: Efficient regen passive, haste debuff and energybreak AoE. A very handy soul if you have some energy issues, but it's a very passive soul - it may not actually DO anything for you in some situations.
• Standard Bearer: Arguably a poor choice for non-support roles. Standard bearer offers Mark of the windslicing pinion and Standard of the Coursing river to alleviate cooldown and energy issues along with Mark of the Mighty Augur to significantly boost single-target damage and Standard of the Iron Fortress to boost your survivability (And that of your pets, should you be running them). The passive is arguably the most lackluster, though it does grant more statusboost. Also offers a respectable heavy armor stat.

• Souls with magic are usually not going to offer as much as they would to other setups.
• Souls with cover are a bad idea, as with any other squishy soul.

• Fire/Water elementals: These benefit the most from mage adept's inherent statusboost; fire offers more offensive power while water elementals have a heal. It's up to the user's discretion to select which to use.

Mods: Titanic and/or Pure, Flammable, Venomous, Creator inspired.

• Calcified Flesh: The best single-target HPbuffer effect in the game. This is more useful if your build is squishy. Since HPbuffers do heal on expiration, it's actually not a problem to ignore the duration stat when modding them.

Mods: Enhanced line, Resistive line, pure, titanic

• Flame of the Creator: The eternally relevant DoT effect.

Mods: Heavy line, Venomous, Creator inspired.

• Access to Pure, Guided and Titanic is fantastic news.
• Resistive-line mods are, as always, insane on ally items.

• Proficiency boosting chakra are often in order more than ability-granting chakra.
• Notable exceptions include Dark Arcane Arms: The vampiric can be extremely valuable.
• Chromatic Blast from the Gem Eater Torso is an immense dice-effect, on average doing 31.5 damage - much of which is in 'rare' types.

• 3-Dimensional Magister

= Best for builds running support and elementals, though the energy cost is heavy it can proc off of elementals.

• Phoenix

= Let's be honest, this ded is nuts on anything with a HP bar.

• Elementalist

= Cover or healing minion. If you already have an elemental, Fire -> go with healing, Water -> go with cover is a safe bet. 'Free' minions are insane.

• Kirin

= You do not want to cover for everyone. That will get you killed.

• Decent damage dealer
• Light Weapons (No energy problems or cooldown issues)
• High Athletics (No energy issues)
• Strong at Repeats (2 attack, high accuracy, has 2 flurry. Has access to Guided)
• Fast cooldowns

• Below average base damage potential (127%)
• Poor access to armor
• Low defenses
• Has no natural healing mechanism
• Weak soul powers

• Ninja (Strong hpbuffer passive)
• Medicine Souls (Allows equipping field medicines)
• Dark Knight (Heavy armor access + Vampiric passive)
• Pet Souls (Machine Priest, Golem Crafter for tanking pets)
• Gunslinger (2 strong passives. Can afford to pay energy for Double Tap and can use quick draw)

• Light weapons classes (Large overlap in proficiencies)
• Cover souls (Crusader, Fighter)

• Short Bow(Venomous/Creator Inspired/Heaviest = 83 base damage over 4 rounds)
• Short Bow(Fine Tuned/Crystal Sheened/Toughened/Heaviest) = Get statusboost, defense, damageresist and apply defensedebuff, energyresistdebuff, damageresist debuff to shred boss defenses!!
• Swift Sword (Guided/Heavier Optimized for Windrunners, it provides a lot of damage and buffing power)
• Guided Longbow (Heaviest/Fine Tuned One of the stronger defense debuffs around)

Optimal:

• Sphinx (Damagebuff + Technical on the Answer)
• Phoenix (Healing + free Revive)
• Elementalist (Tank pet or Healing pet)
• Kraken (Free AoE proc chance + technical)
• 3d Magister (Can sustain heavy energy cost on toggle)
• Spyguard (Very potent repeat attack actually worth using)

Ok:

• Elemental Dragon (Some resists)
• Siren (AoEguard in party to take less damage)
• Cerebrus (some resists)

• Kirin (Cover)
• Basilisk (2 weak actives)