Lets say that all the 9 channeling mages (excluding druid) got buffed to 10 channeling.
Would you say: "Because they buffed Mage X, ill never play Druid, Forcemaster, Necromancer, Priestess or Wizard again!".
Because i can't...
First, this is a good way to ask the question.
Generally speaking, no, I can't either. Except maybe Priestess. Her shtick is that she's a dedicated slow build-up mage who protects her creatures, both in terms of health/life and in terms of conditions. Being channeling 10 helps solidify this vs an aggro mage with channeling 9.
Said another way, if those mages listed above were dropped to channeling 9 (and the Druid to channeling 8 ), would you refuse to play them again?
I think Priestess would suffer disproportionately, and perhaps so would Forcemaster since the high channeling compensates for lack of total actions - e.g. fewer friendly creatures, spawnpoint (besides Forge), familiars (besides Thoughtspore(s)), etc. Perhaps Priestess could be given something like Druid's Treebond to give conditional +1 channeling for cheap (I guess the Monk and priest creatures are sort of a Mana Crystal on a stick, so it might already exist).