I do it all the time, too 
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I genuinely think you could turn BB into Mirror (letting you move) and keep all the stats on it as-is and nothing would break. (Might need some keen looking at some Spellbreaker/CDR equipment to ensure no shenanigans, but those were probably already possible if so.)
If anything, people might complain that they need more skillpoints/+skills for Nightblade.
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Which Necro builds do you think are “balanced?” Afaict, they are one of the most underpowered masteries in the game and only occasionally get taken as a support mastery for better skills elsewhere. As for skeletons, they’re only the “largest portion of strong pet builds” if your only metric is crucible times (a metric that I honestly think should just die at this point because it’s often not very representative of performance outside of crucible or even within crucible without buffs) and disregard of everything else while also not factoring in that skeletons get the most amount of MIs for different damage types of any pet which is inflating the numbers a good bit despite the builds not ultimately being that different. They got nerfed pretty hard a few patches ago and Skeletons currently struggle to even live through SR30.
We just had necros infesting 10 of the last top20 builds.
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The last “top 20 builds” was pre-FoA and several of them already got nerfed hard since then as above. I also wish people on this forum took more seriously that these are opinions from specific players (to which many of them have their own incentives on not getting certain builds hit).
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We literally got a good physical BH Defiler in FOA.
Which also enabled the non-intended spam chaos BH that’s breaking the game.
How many ‘good’ builds do you want per one ability?
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Fair point, but still. We need some reference in the overall sea of builds. If a single class manages to form even a subjective top20 to that degree, at the very least it means its tools aren’t weak.
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This is not an antagonistoc comment but you sound like someone who hasn’t played the game in a while and came back for expansion.
At least “we” as in top20 authors, are looong past the point of “hiding op builds”. We are mostly old men with jobs and families that treat GD as a hobby, not a battleground, and we try to help developers make the game we all like better. I think this notion extends to most of forum veterans.
No, Necro is pretty good. Drain Essence was the strongest skill pre FoA, now it’s mid due to a big danger profile shift and non-existent new support in 1.3 for the skill itself. This can change back very quickly.
Skeletons are extremely good, both chaos and vitality Cabalists are top-top tier for all content in the game, they haven’t struggled with pet survivability in like 4 patches already.
Other active Necro skills are behind, but the mastery as support is very good: big hp and good OA in one source, huge flat that’s often easy to convert in one source, decent dr source. The rr is also one of the best for any non-pet build.
You can make countless aether Binders, cold Reapers and vitality Oppressors/Ritualists that will cruise through the game. That said, both Apostate and Defiler were the two weakest classes in the game pre FoA.
I think, MoT could use an update with higher absorb levels due to new FoA danger, DE needs some pinpoint lift and RE needs a small pass to the base skill. But it’s quite evident already that the mastery is far from the weakest, Soldier and Inquisitor are fairly behind.
The amount of strong Veilwalkers you can do right now is staggering. It’s probably on par with Reaver for the amount of all around strong endgame builds.
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not true for a few points it is a great last save for hardcore
if that is true it should just have greatly increased retal dmg, because the idea is cool as it is.
And even if true, how does that disqualify them in any way? You make otherwise good points (or I think you do), but you should have stuck to those.
And herein lies the rub. I’ve been around this forum, participating or lurking for longer than you. Yet, I never really cared for gaining a deep understanding of the game mechanics to the level of theorycrafting many of you possess – It’s just who I am. Veterancy means little.
However, that puts me in this privileged position where I often see you guys discussing game balancing at the highest levels of the endgame with little to no regard to objectivity (which I personally find very annoying considering the absolute certainty many of you add to your opinions) or to game balancing at lower levels of the gameplay (where in fact the vast majority of players stay). And I’ve seen also plenty of discussions in these forums resulting in changes to the game that backfired.
So, yeah… keep trying to help make the game better. You won’t find many more grateful than me. But pipe the attitude down a notch.
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Nominally, it means they have little exposure to discussions and importantly, video evidence, surrounding specific skills and builds.
Less experienced players might come up and say “X sucks” from their experience with like 1-2 builds that used it in suboptimal circumstances (Without proper gear support)
While objectively, such a thing might perform well in ideal set-ups. With video evidence of it tackling difficult content.
To be fair, that’s generally the approach that balance has been done.
Most balancing is done around end-game things like Crucible, high SR, Superbosses etc. With most changes being to address things that are stand-out in those areas.
With very little concern at all about lower level stuff. Be it the actual leveling process, or just putzing around at low SR.
There has never really been any major interest expressed by development into places other than the tippity top end-game when it comes to balance.
Which is actually part of the reason why many balance changes come in the form of item adjustments rather than base skills. Instead of adjusting how a skill works, they just change how level 94 gear works and who cares that like 90% of a casual player’s experience will never be impacted by it because said gear only arrives towards the end of their gameplay?
This of course also plays into the aforementioned scenario. Where a less experienced player might play with a build or skill and find it sucks. But objectively it doesn’t because in a specific set up with perfect gear it’ll clear SR 69 or kill a Superboss in 0.4 seconds or some crap like that, which means the skill is fine and doesn’t need any adjustments.
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Is it? I’ve always found it to be a quick way to get killed because when it wears off I’m in the same place as I was when I pressed it, and generally in an even more dangerous situation (because monsters have been doing their thing unmolested while BB was up). But how do you use it? Maybe I am missing something.
I played some Defilers and Apostates now. And Defiler has improved but Apostate is not great but that is just due to Inquisitor…
My Physical/Fire Defilers run “Master of Death” cuz Harbinger F*s with conversions. Maybe give MoD some more stats?
Adds % All Damage for player will be great.
Proper value is half or 2/3 of HoS’s % X Damage imo.
Honestly,i believe that the main current FoE mechanic issues should be addressed first before anything is done to the old skills. Right now, with the new toys,maybe it is hard to judge where the trad/always working meta stand.
Potion TDM and flat time reductions should be balanced first imo.
One TDM bonus should be removed or reworked to maybe something like flat damage bonus.
The other should have greater/more impactful penalties.
Flat time reductions, especially in combination with charges should be a bit harder to balance.
Easier should be to remove charges from cooldown bonus skills to reduce the burst. Another is to limit the flat cooldwon reduction to one source (highest, like the RR res reduction) and slightly boost values.
Underpowered things - Rip and tear. While AA part of the werewolf is strong, the CD skill that we constantly reset and that’s, supposedly, meant to consume onslaught stacks on Fenris set… let’s put it this way, if a skill eats 8 stacks and damage from it is still barely visible on healthbar, it’s not a good skill.
It also has all the unfortunate issues of the VM skill family, where it may or may not properly activate based on the moon phase and Mars weather.
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my guess is Tear+Cold snap was balanced around the baked in consideration of spam/pseudo spam 
It’s not exactly the same case as other cd nukes with OS, but more like a pseudo replacement main skill/running 2 spam skills for once. Probably also why Jardin etc “other” stuff is so busted or requires outside/“unintended” itemization to cause spam while remaining strong.
Basically arrived at the cold snap and tear base CD was “cosmetic”, where on other big cd skills it wasn’t
I’d almost expect it to be even more the case now that you can straight up ignore Claws and just put Tear on LMB and hold down 
But 100% the distance bug/oversight needs to be fixed for rush/leap attack movements, it’s super annoying to die from basically being frozen by immobility caused simply from target error. - more so when a boss is so chubby you can’t even move the cursor a lil to the side to relocate out of the hitbox distance fluke, but have to proper move to not still stay targeted.
^My chaos leaper got very sweaty from halted attacks yday too
Added plaguebearer prefix and Reap and Tear. Added formating. Formating text in here is such a pain…
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Making Rip & Tear benefit from Voracity would be an easy start imho. I was pretty surprised when I realized it doesn’t.