In my opinion a few of these are pretty weak talents and not actually worth or interesting to level up. I've included a list below of what I think is good, okay, needs improvement, and what should be changed with how. If anyone else has ideas I'd love to start a discussion on this.


Crescent Cleave - 5% Damage Boost
Slam - + 50 Stun Reduction
Gasping Frenzy - Double Pet Health
Death Strike - Causes Bleed Effect
Life Tap - Reduce Cooldown by 10 Seconds (Bringing it to 30)
Summon Dead - 35% Chance Pet Mimes Your Physical Attacks
Resist Cold - All Physical Damage Slows Target | Resistant to Cold Attacks
Harm Touch - Cooldown Reduced by 40 Seconds (Bringing it to 80 Seconds)| Hits 3 Targets
Fear - Reduce Strengthen Dead Cooldown by 45 Seconds
Shadow Vortex - 8% Chance Physical Damage Negated
Dooming Darkness - Hits all Targets
Heat Blood - Boiling Mobs take 15% More Damage

_____

Useful:
Potentially Summon Dead - I haven't tested it yet, but if it does what I think it could be useful
Resist Cold - Is the clear winner here as far as what it does.
Harm Touch - Useful for clearing rooms, but not much for chaining

Okay (But not Great):
Gasping Frenzy
Death Strike
Life Tap
Heat Blood
Fear
Shadow Vortex
Dooming Darkness

Needs Improvement:
Cresent Cleave - Should this be 10% Like I've seen for other classes?


Probably Should be changed:
Slam - I would like to see this changed to along the lines of the Necromancer's fear immunity. Stun reduction is useful, but honestly it would be even better as stun resistance. As an Ogre, this is completely worthless to level up for the level 20 bonus.

Great post! SK is the most popular class, so I'd be interested to hear what players think. I will try not to be too reactive. Sometimes you have to let things marinate for a while. Sometimes strategies happen to emerge with things that were once thought to be less powerful or even worthless. Just look at how well the Enchanter has performed in hardcore mode. Who expected that?

Nevertheless, I definitely want to change talents that are deemed worthless. I want each talent to have some appeal to some of the players. Now that we have server accounts, I will even be able to pull data and see what talents each class is using. This will be really interesting!

the Harm Touch talent is EXTREMELY powerful if you get it to 20 points right at level 24. it really loses it's usefulness by the end of Normal, though.

the bonus for Resist Cold is definitely so useful as to be pretty much obligatory.

getting Heat Blood to 20 points is really worth it, too.

is the 20 point bonus for Crescent Cleave just +5% damage to Crescent Cleave itself, or +5% to all damage?

Pretty sure just to cleave itself

yeah that's a super weak bonus then, especially since each point of Crescent Cleave only gives 1% bonus damage.

Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if those L20 bonuses on the main skills get changed down the line. Probably to something that has nothing to do with damage and contributes more to the class's unique flavor. I was hesitant about powering up the "free" skills at all because then it would be considered mandatory if too powerful.

what % is the slow on the 20 point Resist Cold bonus?

I personally found SK to be super overrated but lets not hop on board buffing the most popular class.

My experience was most of your healing comes from vampiric embrace which is based on damage done, thus the harm touch lvl20 was huge, big reduction in cooldown and enough damage for a large heal.

The summon dead lvl20 sounds great, but I couldn't determined what it did or if it works. Maybe it was just auto attacks and it worked as a +damage? I couldn't tell.

The Slam talent is awesome, except Ogre racial is OP and everyone that is playing a class that can be ogre, is an ogre.

The real reason people are loving SK is because its ease of play, you can pull a full room and just spam 1. Hit death strike, gasping frenzy, HT, or lifetap when you need a heal and back to square 1. Low risk, low difficulty, low reward imo. If you buff their damage their survivability increases too and I'd think the class would need a bit of a workover altogether at that point.

33%.

yeah TadaceAce is right.... i think SK is so popular mainly because it is mindless fun. it definitely is one of the more powerful classes, but not absurdly powerful enough to explain its popularity.

also, i'm super surprised that i am the only Dark Elf SK on the leaderboards. the DE racial talent goes so well with Grasping Frenzy.

I think the Stun Immunity is too good to pass up for any classes that can be an Ogre like TadaceAce mentioned.

Is the HT random? or is it a cone. I keep targeting a mob in the middle of three and one of the mobs occasionally doesn't take any damage at all. It shouldn't be resistible right?

its a cone. harm touch doesn't eat through Rune-style effects, that might be the issue.

Ah, could be. Yeah that's probably it.

I played SK in Beta and if the HT works the same now, the mobs had to be directly adjacent to each other. If you had 3 next to each other on deck, it would hit each one. If you had a space between them it would miss the ones too far away.

I kind of concur with the consensus that SK seemed super easy. I leveled one to upper 70s in Beta. Nothing was too difficult. In contrast, I am playing a Ranger right now and there is a hell of lot more difficulty keeping alive! Lots more strategy involved this time around. Even during Normal play through, I was stuck for half a dozen failed attempts at a single boss encounter here and there. (Fucking OP casters chain nuking 1/3 of your HP bar per shot and no way to interrupt)