I love the direction that B31 is taking, but with recent skill and devotion buffs, I noticed that some skills/constellations have fallen behind. I’ve only played 10 or so hours so far, but I’ll quickly list some things I’ve noticed.
Nightblade’s Merciless Repertoire is still unappealing. Cold/poison is a practically nonexistent damage combo outside of the nightblade mastery, and since skill points are so valuable, %-based damage increases are rarely worth the investment. I’d consider adding two of the following passive effects which scale with rank: % chance to freeze, % chance to petrify, % chance to confuse, or a % chance to fumble. This gives the impression that the repertoire of the nightblade is truly merciless, and it would add a sense of dynamism to an otherwise one-dimensional passive.
I would also like Doom Bolt so scale a bit better with rank. Currently, adding points only increases the energy cost (which is very high) and the flat damage. I would like to see another scaling attribute added to the skill, such as a tiny increase in AoE (perhaps a 2.5 meter total radius at max rank), a tiny reduction in cooldown (perhaps 8 seconds at max rank), or some sort of utility buff.
The Eye of the Guardian and Gallows devotions are also a bit flat. Gallows could use a tiny buff (perhaps the vitality resistance node could be buffed to 10% resistance with an added 10% bleed resistance), and Eye of the Guardian could use a little buff. The guardian active is quite good, but the player has to spend five skill points to reach it, the majority of which only provide increased chaos, poison, and acid damage. 10 Flat spirit, some flat hp, or some flat acid damage added to the 10% chaos damage node could complement the damage increases.
I REALLY like the occultist changes though. Although a one-point investment in CoF was nerfed and armor of the guardian no longer provides cheap attack speed for 1 point, these changes were necessary to make the class less one-dimensional.