Here’s an example of a setup that was mighty fine (especially energy wise) which isn’t anymore.
While we’re at it, for the love of god give this set some phys res and OA.
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The Physique dump on a 500OA debuffing Reaper looks like another deliberately looking attempt to prove a point (just like the OP) 
Not saying it doesn’t need lowering energy usage but come on guys, give some actually valid example. Move points from Physique to Spirit, take of Vitality or sth on the pants instead of Frostbite and you have more damage, energy regen (which solves the problem because it’s close in the vid) and 1k more Health.
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holy heck that turned out longer that expected, apologize for the wall o’ text & ramblings 
i don’t even think that’s necessarily is/stemming from a desire to be zoomey, but just a coincidental “collateral” accident from comparison.
You can even see this on new player posts complaining X skill is “bad”/they are struggling, and would like advice to something more default “easier” by nature of just being stronger.
Not saying all skills should be equal/1:1 in terms of dmg and efficient or even during levelling,
but if you have a skill that nukes Shambler in 6 seconds “without even trying”, vs a skill that does it 3x slower and also completely drains your mana bar almost twice in the process, “why should i play the vastly inferior skill” might be sorta a natural mindset/question that pops in for some people.
Every skill works for levelling, and MIs have most definitely changed some 
skills into actually decent or straight up OP, heck i used to consider PRM and spam DEE “unplayable” for levelling just by virtue of default comparison at the time; white auto attacks felt better to me 
but even now/after, there is still a technical efficiency spectrum where some skills just take longer to kill, have a bigger toll on your energy, or “require” more/better/specific items to be brought up in levels to other skills, and that gets tangible once you’ve tried the other skills, deliberate/being told or just accidental.
to me there is 2½ solutions, neither is necessarily “fun”, although one can be tolerable/feel acceptable
either you grab Scales, which fixes most energy issues, and doesn’t really hurt most builds anyway
or you “waste” a bunch of effort stacking energy regen where you just feel like this skill is gimping you “extra” in the sense you’re getting forced into stacking stats and affixes other skills simply doesn’t.
My own sentiment during levelling is that if i’m forced into Scales, it’s a slight detractor, but tolerable. If i however can’t fix energy management with basic stuff like spark/prism/owl and a couple of ectos, and have to rely on either insight procs or even straight up Harmounious/energy regen stat/affix stacking, then it goes beyond detracting and feels “bad”, as if the skill is too demanding to the point of restricting my freedom “too much”, again just be virtue of default/“automatic” comparison to other skills that don’t have the same requirement.
Obv not going to compare a 6-10 energy cost DAR skill to a 200-400 energy cost spell lazor, but i do start to then feel skills are more/“too” unequal when AAR or FoI or EoR has similar costs but a zillion more dmg.
Likewise with spam PRM/DEE vs spam PB etc “skills that seem to share similarities but being miles apart in some aspects still”, it just happens sorta on its own that a difference occurs that for whatever reason then becomes sorta more stark in contrast, - even if keeping in mind that can’t compare all skills 1:1, “DE has native omega lifesteal AAR doesn’t etc”, but there is still something there in the back of the mind.
spam Forcewave being almost the default recommended first char skill to beginners, or at minimum if you picked Soldier class is almost a meme in my head, i think the skill is boring as heck personally , but can’t deny it’s an efficient levelling skill, and decently alround in terms of dmg, range/aoe and energy cost + being on what feels like a safe mastery. Even if i think Cadence or spam Blade Arc is more fun, it’s like you “have” to mention FW first, if not recommend it, because otherwise you might get complaints back it’s not as smooth etc.
Every mastery/class has these sorta basic beginner/suggested starter skills, for a reason, and it’s totally fine, again not all skills have to be 1:1. But sometimes it feels like the gap is just larger than a mere caveat of “cadence/blade arc might be fun/ok to keep in mind, but you’ll might prefer FW”, to straight up leaving skill mentions out if not straight up not recommending them at all, "because you’re just going to (unnecessarily) guarantee or increase your “suffering” compared to XY skill available instead"
Drain Essence most definitely have fallen in the later category imo, and rarely do i see it praised for levelling, and the main time is due to the perceived sense of free safety from its lifesteal, but more often seem to be “i swapped to another skill and now i’m just steamrolling/having fun”.
Which i think the comes back to the thing you mentioned about standards of what’s acceptable, because while a skill is playable, or even totally fine if personal standards are a certain way, it still sorta requires an existing knowledge of what you’re then getting into picking a specific skill that then “requires” such different standards, otherwise it just feels off or you get puzzled as to why this X skill is OP and Y skill is “bad”/a “tolerance skill”
anyway, unrelated,
it’s often been sorta a personal “balancing intrigue” of mine, how does one buff skills or make them feel good for levelling, without necessarily OP, but also without said buffs carrying over to endgame and blowing end builds out of scale.
Can’t imagine what it would mean for end builds if just blanket buffing base DE like Protoss/league did, tho i’ve no doubt it was a boon for levelling Drain Essence too
Everyone’s always biased in some way or form, you being biased pro DE as it is, me biased contra, that’s normal, but imo it definitely wouldn’t hurt to take out some of the power from the gravechill (GC) node and put it into the base DE skill instead. GC used to have the leech penalty, but it got removed, so adding a slight penalty to it again seems fine to me considering it’s 25% TDM for 1 point.
E.g. buffing the base damage of DE by ~10% and reducing the %energy cost of DE by ~25%, removing the energy cost of hungering reach (it feels really weird how its energy cost per second scales due to the way channeling skills work with very low energy cost numbers anyway imo) while at the same time reducing the %TDM of GC by ~5% and adding ~20% total energy cost multiplier to GC.
I was not deliberately attempting to prove any point when I made the build, and the severity of the energy issue caught me completely off-guard.
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This is kind of OT:
It’s pretty rare to see energy devotions (other than Scales for RR) used much at all in recent 1/2 year.
It’s almost a meta to go out of your way to avoid any of these. Which is another way to say they get in the way of taking all best options. You can actually use a lot of minor stepping-stone devotions to grab a lot of energy.
Just an observation and no idea of what do do with this. Harvestman is almost never seen. Maybe energy use is too pampered now?
Scythe will actually see a rise in popularity in 1.2. Not because of Energy but Health regen though.
Not really related to op, more like reegarding Energy in general - I may or may not be spamming skills too much, but I constantly find myself running out of energy on things I had no issues with in 1.1.9.8. So, energy devos might be becoming more attractive 
Harvestman sees its use on caster skills converted to pierce/phys, where you want to dump cunning and are going blue/purple, e.g. physical AAR or spam pierce PB. You get a 1:1 ratio of affinity and points, which isn’t awful, and some of the stats on the nodes are OK.
I tried to level with almost every skill by now and, in my experience, DE leveling (cold variant with apostate) was in top 3 most miserable ones. Above sabo quickjacks leveling, and only outdone by leveling conjurer with grasping vines (which was a very retarded idea of mine to begin with).
It’s easily as energy hungry as AAR, but lacks cleave, lacks range, lacks good leveling MIs (maybe I missed something), and its life leech isn’t good enough to actually sustain in veteran.
I levelled with DE, cold variant until end game. Was just fine.
Just to set a contrapoint here.
And even if.
Is our demand rly that not only in end game each and every skill should perform equally (debatable for my taste) but also during levelling …?
Just fine doesnt sound very convincing to me.
Equally? Ofc not!
But if something beforms a lot worse than everything else in every aspect then there’s something rly wrong with it imo.
Just fine: Levelling was.
End game: Best dps with a channelling spell in my experience (especially concerning single target)
That’s the char:
Why bother playing with Drain Essence from level 1? You get a better version with Searing Ember component and its Fireblast ability + item with Mending suffix. Better range, damage, aoe, sustain, and energy cost. It provides better experience, safety, and kiting.
I prefer to level my characters with the skill I plan to use end game, but Drain Essence kind of sucks from lvl 1 to lvl 20 or 30 (depends if you get the MI shield at the start or not) and then drops again around from 80-ish to 94 level. The damage is too low, limited aoe, forced to relative close range, and pathetic sustain. You actually regenerate more on your own than you are healed by Drain Essence on Veteran. I don’t wanna even think of how it is when you start on elite or ultimate.
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I doubt that but since I haven’t tried a cold reaper version in endgame yet I’ll come back to this once I did.
I just cant see this somehow magically being much better cuz of it’s TDM transmuter. (if that, however, should be the case than vit/aether versions also need it!)
The OA, crit dmg & overall dmg. values are also way lower here than what I tried.
This might come off as cocky or rude (which rly isnt my intention here!) but what did you consider “end game” when you played with this character? (just for the sake of comparing & to know what you archived with it.)
My endgame benchmark:
Breezing through SR75, even easily through SR80, without dying.
With nice AOE and very satisfying single target DPS (e.g. around <5s for Benny in SR75)
Channeling Skills:
I`ve tried all EoRs except chaos, as well as all supported AARs plus pure vitality, and vitality plus aether DE.
I’ll post here what I suggested in the other tread.
Should dot damage of channeling skills (DE, AAR, FoI) be transferred to their flat part?
DE deals 3 Aether damage and 10 Vitality Decay over 2 seconds on the first level.
This could be changed to:
DE deals 3 base flat + 5 (1 sec damage from dot component) = 8 aether damage only on the first level.
Or just buff it and leave the DoT. Not sure why you have to buff by removing the DoT
Isn’t it better to kill enemies fast with flat damage with greater tick rate, than leave low dot that is wasted on strong beefy targets?
Whether you have the dot or not is irrelevant to how fast you kill a beefy target because you can always buff the skill (even just the Aether part) if it’s too slow while keeping the DoT (which finishes leftovers or can help with killing trash by just tagging it). Similarly %ADCTH can be increased to compensate for the dot part not leeching.