I knew it was bad at first cause everyone was taking Master of Death over it even in non-pet builds but then I saw what the inquisitor gets and my god is HoS bad. whelp i guess i can go play an inquis
lol. Play an apostate with Master of Death. 
I played Apostate and picked Conviction :eek: Master of Death was second on my pick-list
Conviction is nice too. Apostate surprised me.
Can someone please explain why exactly it’s bad? Shouldn’t be worse than Reckless Power.
Heh, its actualy better that reckless powa,lol.
Well to be fair people have been asking for Reckless Power granting total speed for a while now.
Even besides that Reckless Power is still picked for Aether builds, it’s not all that bad with that fuck-ton of flat damage on it. Not saying its better than HoB though
The problem imo is the damage provided by HoB is vitality decay which lacks good items support. Well Necro as a whole could use some extra items (Cold DE anyone?)
Checked some build threads for necro as well as ceno’s “A S S R E A P E R” build and yea looks like everybody takes master of death as a subpar(for non pet), but still better than HoS, exclusive skill. fun stuff
I tested both Reckless Power and Harbinger of Souls in my Aether CT Spellbinder and it was a day and night difference. Reckless Power is just more powerful and flat out better than Harbinger of Souls.
So yes, Harbinger of Souls is easily the weakest exclusive skill in the game.
Because Harbinger of Souls’ main benefits are 12% ADCTH and flat vitality decay damage/vitality conversion. So it should be good for vitality-based attack build. However, those builds usually have insane ADCTH anyway. Furthermore, for some wierd reason, Harbinger of Souls gives cast speed, which isnt useful for attack builds.
And in GD, OA is so hard to obtain, that players will try to grab it whenever they have a chance. That’s why Master of Dead feels so powerful.
Loving my necro by yeah I’m trying different builds and at 100 I’d never consider touching HoS. If you read the bonuses it looks incomplete, like they just forgot something.
Also cast speed lol. Every spell in GD has the same like 0.25s to cast but just in case!
Most classes have an “offensive” exclusive skill and a “defensive” exclusive skill. It just so happens that Harbinger of Souls is neither and Master of death is both.
12% bonus OA and flat DA make MoD a must for challenging AoM content.
I’m playing around with HoS at the moment but will more than likely switch to MoD later on.
I don’t understand the need for cast speed in Grim Dawn. If this had a dedicated server where most end-game builds revolved around PvP like back in D2, I can agree with casting speed, but here against enemies? Not needed.
AAR, Drain essence and PRM builds have as much need of cast speed as melee builds have of attack speed. A higher cast speed directly translates to higher DPS for these builds.
I agree that this is clearly not the most powerfull exclusive skill in the game but if you put 8 points in it you still have 10% ADCTH which is not bad for attack build, no? (I’m using it for the moment on a aether cadence DK, i can tank for the moment so I don’t need Menhir’s Bulwark atm)
And even some melee builds, such as Forcewave (with transmuter) or Callidor’s Tempest, use Cast Speed just instead of attack speed.
You better grab ADCTH elsewhere, and still use Menhir’s bulwark for damage absorbtion (which you CANT get from items, components, etc).
Yeah that’s right 
I forgot about AAR which is weird because I still use my AAR Sorcerer…
Callidor’s Tempest and Phantasmal Blades also need as much cast speed as possible.
HoS is very suituble with phatasmal blades spam build if you convert chaos to aether of nether edge.