- Skills that actually make your character worse.
Upheaval - Replaces Feral hunger and Zolhan’s technique, and doesn’t do nearly enough damage to justify it. Should be triggered on any crit at 33% rate, like Deathmarked weapon procs.
Cadence - Everything has been said already. When even Blademasters who do a lot of physical damage prefer to use Shard of Beronath which converts some damage to elemental, you know you have a horrible skill on your hands. Needs to stop overriding attack procs, but even then it would probably not be worth investing many points into. Needs a damage buff as well.
Infernal breath - This is weaker than the Hellhound’s normal attack and he will use it constantly lowering his dps. It should be an aura around him rather than an actual attack, though it still probably wouldn’t be worth the points. Alternatively, making more items that give cast speed to summons could let you build an interesting alternative to the classical Conjurer summoner, as well as make the bird more useful (I’m assuming Infernal breath and the birds default attack are cast speed based).
- Skills that do nothing.
Second Rite - 95 vitality damage at 22/12 (which is almost unattainable) and nothing else. It needs an additional bonus like you get from Flame touched or a better damage type (vitality is horrible). And no, bringing back the mana burn effect is not a good idea, it doesn’t work on bosses and only screws the player trough reflect.
Arcane will - Should trigger on attack, so it could affect ranged skills like Devastation and Phantasmal blades instead of only being activated once the enemies have surrounded and damaged you.
Merciless repertoire, Overload, Fabric of reality… - 90% to a specific damage type is usually worse than bonuses you get from high level weapons and rings. Not worth 12 points, barely worth 1 point when you have +5 or such to skills. I understand that something like doubling the numbers (which would still make them meh after lvl 75) would make levelling too easy. A possible fix would be to make these bonuses character level dependent, something like x% times character level (mb even a faster progression like lvl^1.5) + y%.
Terrifying gaze, Supercharged… - Same problem again, % damage bonuses either have to be insanely high or they are useless. Crowd control effects don’t work on bosses, and this is the only situation where levelling those skills may be useful. Give those skills reduction to CC resistance which increases with level.
Stun jacks - What’s with the physical damage? Lightning is underepresented in spammable skills anyway, unlike physical (which is also useless since there are no dedicated items for physical dmg casters).
Forcewave - Speaking of physical damage spammable spells. Unimpressive damage (though weapon damage is nice) and no item support.
Doom bolt - Not worth bothering with an extra button to push. Laughable compared to Devastation. It should be a similar skill, attacking in pulses in a large aoe (and moved up to lvl 50 mastery). Also needs more item support, Occultist seriously lacks cooldown reduction.
Bloody pox - Like Doom bolt, but needs a ton of skill points as well. Procs things, but so does the Sigil which is easier to use. It should be a proc, with the transmuter making it castable. Speaking of which, the transmuter needs some fine tuning, the Occultist can’t tank mobs when this is active.
Blade spirit - It’s dumb, it’s slow and the damage is unimpressive. Drains mana that the NB doesn’t have, and slows you down since you have to recast it constantly. Make it a passive proc tied to normal attack crits (like Upheaval) to avoid abuse with PB. Make it die and trigger the aoe damage when resummoned.
Lightning strike, Ember claw, Ground slam - Summons suck at using them effectively, and they don’t do enough considering how skill point hungry summoners are.
- Skills that do something, but should be buffed to be on-par wth similar ones.
Phantasmal blades - Overnerfed. Switch all instances of vitality damage with cold and vice versa. This way, Witch hunters could focus on the chaos + vitality aspect in Nether edge, while Spellbreakers could focus on cold. Reduce mana cost because it’s ridiculous. Proccing things extremely effectively is the only benefit of PB, mb nerf the number of blades to keep the skill balanced.
Aether ray - Straight up worse than CT and PRM. Make it piercing like the Tome of arcane wastes skill. Reduce the damage if needed, though I don’t think it is since it eats around 1000 energy/second.
Wind devil - Only in this category because it reduces resistances and because caster Shamans are better than caster NBs. Otherwise just as bad as Blade spirit for the same reasons. Physical damage of the base skill is useless, no Warder will invest points in WD for it.
Blackwater cocktail - Same thing as Wind devil, only good for resistance reduction.
Star pact - Only decent for SS Spellbreaker munchkins because of how it stacks with NJE. Reckless power and Stormcaller’s pact are straight up better in 99% of the cases. Why does RP, an already insane skill, give flat aether dmg while this thing gives frost burn? Giving it flat cold damage is a good start.
Demolitionist cooldown spells - Straight up worse than the Shaman and Occultist alternatives because of nonsense damage types like piercing and trauma.
Summon familiar - Simply not worth the points, which is a shame because it’s the only ranged summon. Again, making more items that give cast speed to summons could make it good.