Spiritual strength lets you use heavier armour so it's very useful.
Haven't tried AoD so no comment on that one.

Well yes I understood that part But could you leave it at 1 and let +skills and +AA do the work or is it necessary to max?
First time playing Guardian so no idea about the req's on items for Templar.

I've not built a pvp char so I'm not sure but for pvm I've maxed out spiritual strength for both my chars, it's just too good to pass up really.
Actually just got decent unique leg plates with over 120 armour and + 2 spiritual strength so I'll need to use my reskill token to lower that one when I hit level 50.

Hmm ye guess I could do the same, too bad I only got 1 token in total, forgot to make evok/guardians before the patch ><