The

This is how I believe necromancer should be. The corruption skills were made with high hopes for man kind. If you feel that I should kill that part of me, please help me find it so we can purge it, burning doesn't work, last time I did that it just sent me cake with "thank you for keeping me warm" written on it XD. I also added what I believe what the condi conversion should be like. I would appreciate any feedback on my work.

Necro Rework Public

My Condition Table Public

Thoughts, criticisms, and cakes are welcome, pies should be thrown out.

Is there a way to view without downloading?

must have been loads of work for such a heavy file ;)just for that.. thumbs up.

I'll look into other ways to upload it here when I get back

I require permission to access what's in the link... erm.... why?

@HardRider.2980 said:I require permission to access what's in the link... erm.... why?

Same.

My mistake, I used the private link, updated to public link

What a useless topic title.

hmm ima spend a time to read this thoroughly. Tho i dont see any greatsword rework. Any reason why?

I swapped the reaper shroud's scythe with the reaper's gs. Land spear fan and all =P

What this rework still based on Shroud act as 2nd lifebar and weapon skills generate life force similar to current necro?

No, more of a druid's astral force but still has the hp scaling. the{} brackets indicate the lf cost of shroud skills

I didn't really look into Scourge as I'm not invested enough into it to give a proper response, but here's some initial feedback. I'm appreciative of the work you've put in so far, but this is about as far as I can give you praise for.

Sorry, but I'm going to be staunchly against nearly all of what this proposal entails, from the concept to the implementation. Ultimately, I see it as making the necromancer substantially more binary and difficult to balance than it is right now across the board unless the durations (not specified) on a number of abilities are made strictly excessive. In doing so, it would make the profession a strictly better version of the warrior or guardian, which is unfavorable and lacks the identity I'd like to see from the necromancer. Generally, most of the identity of the necromancer has been stripped away in this proposal, and its shortcomings seem to be addressed in the same means which many players have been extensively critical of, such as massive introduction of blocks and invulns. If I wanted to play like a guardian, I'd play a guardian.

Misc:

• The ethereal effect is honestly kind of overpowered given how easy it is to get and its relatively low cooldowns when compared to various other immunities, and the sheer number of immunity/negation effects is excessive in sPvP for point-control and in any situation where mobility isn't required; OTOH, it's completely pointless in melee-based kits which can be kited out or may require movement.

• The shroud mechanic changes overall don't really behave nicely unless hinging on blocks and invulns which necromancers aren't really thematically supposed to do, and fixed -values as described cause stat-scaling to break and a lot of the HP-oriented skills to no longer really work well. Overall, these changes cut out a lot of build diversity for necromancer.

• Spectral and Corruption skills seem massively overtuned and would probably break WvW in particular more than necro already does.

• HP-oriented skills are generally not a good idea; too many makes the class too hard to predict and not fun to play as or against. The idea of getting stronger closer to death is neat and all, but having this on too many abilities and not as a core feature of shroud/the profession makes things too inconsistent and detracts from gameplay integrity.

• The mobility options have largely been removed making the profession as a whole a weaker and more one-dimensional duelist.

Reaper Shroud:

• Massive nerfs to the identity of the spec, and likely completely unplayable against anyone competent; GS is a utility weapon and a DPS tool for PvE and not a kit I'd suggest anyone using as a primary/power-up. RS is the common-denominator and as a non-optimal melee kit it needs the mobility from Death's Charge and bonus movespeed from traits and other things.
• Blocks on necromancer don't make sense with the rest of the kit and as a primary defense are generally nerfs overall given Reaper's current hard-counters run a lot of unblockable skill capabilities such as S/D thief or SoTH ranger.
• Two damage mitigation skills at once is excessive on any kit/class ability on such short cooldowns for sPvP. Combined with Ethereal and Spear -> GS immunities this is anti-fun and doesn't make the kit more consistent or solve its matchup problems; it only exacerbates them and breaks reaper in sPvP.

Weapons:

• Staff becomes way too strong in WvW; hp leech effects ignore damage immunity effects by the way.
• Immob on scepter on a 15s cooldown on a ranged corrupting condi weapon is likely overpowered.
• Dagger seems way off thematically and honestly would need some hefty coefficient nerfs to its AA to justify the sheer amount of mobility, and I see this as easily becoming the premiere melee kit.
• Reaper's Protection (focus 5) is literally a copy-paste of Guardian's Shield of Wrath and changes the weapon pretty drastically.
• Immob on Axe is OP unless its damage gets gutted; it already can deal massive damage.
• Land-spear is non-negotiable; ANet has repeatedly stated that this weapon will not be used out of the water for any profession on any spec, current or future. I don't think it's fair to change an existing weapon on people, either.
• Tying vuln for DD to one weapon isn't a good idea and removes build diversity/choice.
• Wicked Spiral is too weak for the cooldown unless it's Soul Spiral damage, which is otherwise too strong/becomes a gimmick when combined with the capacity to use it outside of shroud with things like Ethereal. This design makes Spear -> GS remain a one-trick-pony that easily gets out-played by skilled opponents while requiring no skill to execute its primary sources of damage due to its relative safety and lack of capacity to be shut down. Too little consistency here for me to OK this.

Soul Reaping:

• Increased LF gain becomes hard to balance when it's so essential; this trait line either becomes mandatory or worthless quite quickly.
• With the rest of SR designed to modify shroud, I honestly don't think I'd ever run this traitline with your changes; most of what is changed here are downright nerfs or are not compatible with most builds.
• Removal of DP and FitG remove any reason to take this trait line or any GM here.

Blood Magic:

• Vampiric Evasion feels out of place; necromancers are not dodge-oriented.

Death Magic:

• You've restricted DM to minions exclusively and made non-MM builds running DM worse than current. DM isn't avoided because it's weak so much as it's avoided because currently there are just better/necessary trait options available for most builds to function. Pursue the current design further instead of focusing too heavily on MM builds alone.

Curses:

• Haemophobia contesting a trait slot with Cursed scepter seems kind of silly as there is a lack of bleeding in the rest of the kit aside from scepter or a few niche skills. One of these will be a dead trait.
• Path of Corruption seems OP with scepter and precision-based builds. Needs an ICD or it breaks Axe.
• Furious Curse is probably excessive.
• Wide Curse is overpowered in the PvP formats.

Spite:

• Death's Might having an RNG on might gain isn't a good idea and would be better off kept as-is. There's enough criticism with this on Dagger Training for the thief.
• Spite feels off as a whole as well and lacks synergy with vuln application to make Reaper any good.

Reaper:

• You have no crit chance gains for power builds except for Curses, and Decimate Defenses is nerfed from lack of vuln synergy with Spite. Huge nerf to power reaper overall
• Removal of Death Perception in SR over-emphasizes need for use of Decimate Defenses on every single build by providing no alternatives or benefits. Even with vuln synergy in Spite restored, CV is a non-option from lack of crit chance overall.

Thank you for the feedback. I did share some of your concerns when proposing this to my guildies. I'll make some changes as soon as I can, though some points I want to address.

As for the identity of necro, I thought that it should be a high risk light armor profession due to its theme of death. The necro shines most while it it close to death and I tried to have it shine through the traits and skills. I will admit I may have gone overboard and need to reassess. Thank you.

One of the ways that I was thinking of for balancing ethereal was to make it so it doesn't stack, so the necro would have to think about when they should pop a spectral skill, as they would be wasting an ethereal if they spammed it. Additionally, I was thinking of having the necro receive a debuff after ethereal ends that prevented them from gaining the buff again for a short while. The duration of the debuff would be halved if ethereal was stripped.

Corruption is a tricky one. I had hoped the double edged nature I put on it would help with the problem as using it is just as likely to harm allies as it would opponents requiring cautious use of them. If they are still a problem even in this incarnation, then I'll just reduce the number of boons that they strip.

Also, may I ask for clarification on your point about staff? The only skills on it that have siphon is vampric drain and mark of the vampire, both of which are single target skills that require a target, with mark of the vampire essentially being a weaker version of vampiric signet's active.

I'm not sure about what to do with dagger. If it's just thematics that's the problem then it becomes a tricky one to solve. Eye of the beholder and all.

Would increasing the tell of axe's immobilize help? I had it at a 1 sec cast time, 15sec cd. I'd be fine raising the cd of the skill to 20-25 sec and let it have a 1.75 sec cast.

As for land spears, a man can dream =(

For dd I'm assuming you mean decimate defences? I made it so it gives bonus crit to chilled foes, not vulnerable ones. The whole idea of reaper was to benefit from chilling your targets in addition to necro's high risk game play of constantly being in a low hp state.

I would have to argue about your assessment about dm. While the traits do benefit your minions, they don't require you to have one. A minion's presence would just mean that there is another body for your opponent to hit to proc flesh of the master, and the rest of the changes were made so that minions don't have to compete with other players for any boons. Additionally the minor living flesh, would make it so that you would always have at least 1 minion with you at all times, as the death of the shambling horror counts towards its refresh. The only trait in dm that requires you to have a minion to be of any use is sacrificial pawn, but that's the minion skill's cd reduction trait.

For your point of path of corruption, it has a 10 sec icd, the () on the traits denote the icd. I apologize for not making it clear on the document itself. I will put a legend section on it as soon as I am able. I will also look for an alternative to wide curse. I do agree with haemophobia, it was my attempt to try to make fear of death useful so I didn't want it to be on the same trait. Though now that I look at it, I can probably move it and fear of death down a trait, and make a new trait to compete with cursed scepter instead. For Furious curse, would it make more sense to gain precision based on expertise with that trait?

My idea for spite was for it to encourage and reward the high risk play style of necro, gaining damage bonuses while low on health. And as for dp being gone, I put it's effect in foot in grave, and made it an hp thing, I'll look into reducing the low hp bonus traits of necro starting with this trait. And while I did remove foot in grave's effect from sr, I put in in dm and gave it a leaving shroud counter part in the same trait.

Reaper shroud was an experiment I wanted to try. I really am happy with the feedback about it and now have a better grasp as to what can and can't work on it. Thank you for your criticisms.

My original thought on it was to make it like a boss' attack in dark souls or monster hunter: an obvious wind up that will mess you up if you failed to move out of the way in time. Though now, I'm doodling with some other ideas. One of which was to synergize gs auto with grave digger, such as having the dusk strike and fading twilight buff grave digger by reducing its current recharge and removing its cast time respectively, while causing it to now immobilize foes. And as a bonus, I was thinking of having chilling scythe either: stun immobilized foes that you hit, or give you a buff that increased the damage of your next gd. While gs 2,3 and 4 would ensure that foes would have a difficult time getting away from you.

I thank you again for sharing your thoughts, I will make adjustments accordingly.

As someone who love necro class and put a lot of thought into making a rework too, id like to share my opinion on this but do correct me if im wrong on facts.

CorruptionSo you changed the apply-self-and-opponents-conditions theme to a total boon corruption + extra when below health threshold. Current utility skills is great as current condi source of damage (BiP/Epi) so changing it to a more pvp/wvw oriented might affect the pve condi dmg output which i certainly dont wanna see tht happens. New corruption debuff seems wicked and might be a better trade to current boon corruption across a lot weapon skills which looks to me is ridiculous. Probably too op lol.

SpectralEthereal could use a better definition tht explain its drawback. However, the 2nd lifebar shroud removal is big move because its one of the primary theme for necro "the capability to cheat death through shroud". Giving the ethereal makes necro more of a ghostmancer. The epi replacement is really bad to me due to need the target to die before condi can be transfered. A huge nerf to a potent condi cleave.

TraitsWhy i see a lot of "deal more damage when your health/opponent's health/lifeforce below _____ in spite and soul reaping traits? Some seems redundant and an indicator to a rushed design.

At this point most of the others looks fine for me except a few issue on the overall concept

1. The extra bonus in a lot of traits and skills might be a major disadvantage to necro in an environment where a party is able to sustain full HP in presence of competent healer. In addition to more boon corruption skills/traits, this overall rework seems excessively favor pvp/wvw content which pve which suffer even more. Ultimately, necro will sadly be in worse position than its already now. If necro can achieve competitive dps without bonus damage modifier, i can imagine itll be broken op with one and become mesmer 2.0.

2. The ethereal might not be a bad idea if its more defined and balance on how it works can be achieved in exchange to shroud as 2nd lifebar removal. However, I dont see how itll happen due to opposed theme. Corruption debuff do seems too op.

3. Based on all specialization, i see overall it favors heavily to power build from damage modifiers and offensive traits in spite/soul reaping/reaper while condi is pretty underwhelmed with curse/death magic/scourge as the likely choice. I believe a trait choice should also consist of choice for offense (either power or condi)/defense or sustain/support/focus of the specialization. A few examples of trait choice opposed to this on this rework:

Soul reaping adept: a. power offense b. defense c. power offensemaster: balanced between traitsgrandmaster: a. defensive focus b. defense c.defense

Blood Magic: all about support and sustain through healing and siphon

Death magicadept: redundant traits between choice of offense and defensemaster: a. defense b. defense c.defensegrandmaster: a. defense b. defense c.defense

Reaper has become an offensive death machine here which entirely opposed to what Anet envision lol. It could use some tasty defense trait other than sustain from CV + BB.

Nice rework on scourge tho. It retains the scourge offensive aspectbwhile giving a better support aspect as synergy with shade. Current punishment skills are poor in term of support tbh.

This is my personal opinion on your rework. Tbh there are a lot that opposed the supposed theme so its hard be implemented (even if Anet consider the ideas from forum after all lol). New stuffs added seems fine for me technically due to exchange of shroud as 2nd lifebar but it may require a lot of testing to balance things out.Id love to have a more condi-based traitline in soul-reaping for a non-minion condi build. And i love to have a compitive condi dps reaper because i simply want it to be :(

Tbh i personally is fine with current shroud mechanics. I just feels like tone down a bit on life force generation and boon corruption from weapon as well as remove crappy health sustain in some traits in exchange to a bit of damage mitigation skills is great enough as a starter for a better reaper defensive-wise. Great work overall :)

Gonna address your response outside of a quote as it'll get out of hand.

The thing about Ethereal is just that damage mitigation/immunity is super strong, and there's still even more of it in other parts of the kit. Let me put this into perspective: Endure Pain lasts 2s. Defy pain lasts 2s. That's all a warrior has. Even with a 1s duration, you're looking at making a side-effect of Spectral skills provide the equivalent of one of the best warrior traits it has and one of the best utilities it has. Necro quickly starts overstepping the defensive capabilities of heavies, particularly when you combine it with reaper. On a fixed-position like in sPvP, this kind of chained damage denial is pretty game-breaking.

With corruption, it's honestly powerful and game-breaking for WvW due to the effect which prevents boons from being applied to a target. Spellbreaker bubble has quite frankly broken WvW as a 90s elite skill which just denies boons in an area. Necros are already super dominant in WvW as well. I just see the mechanic being way too strong to the point where again, I think it'd remove the purpose and identity of running warrior and other classes; chained immunities and strictly superior versions of a single ability which has totally changed how WvW is played.

For staff, maybe I'm misinterpreting things, but a siphon effect on AA is just OP. Siphon effects in GW2 ignore armor and damage reduction and also ignore damage immunity effects. For example, on current necro, if you cast Signet of Vampirism, Vampiric, and Vampiric Presence + Life Siphon from Dagger 2, all of the damage dealt will outright ignore Endure Pain, Signet of Stone, etc. As a ranged AA, and where these effects are balanced to be limited-access, I imagine these would quickly end up deemed too strong.

Dagger just seems more suited to a thief than the iconic blood-mage aesthetic the dagger symbolizes. Like I said, a lot of the necro's identity is massively changed in this proposal. Having all that mobility seems out of place for D/D, especially since even thief D/D is possibly less-mobile depending on your ranges.

I don't think the issue with Axe's immob is a cast-time issue so much as it is something that makes things rather un-fun and gimmicky. Ancient Seeds from ranger's Point Blank Shot has a pretty obvious tell, but it's frustrating to play against and when it hits, it's basically a guaranteed mass sum of damage. Given GC's huge damage, it effectively ends up being the same thing; upping the cast time will just make it weaker into a skilled 1v1 matchup which doesn't really help necro's weaknesses in general. It's more of a gameplay health thing. It's a strictly better version of Dark Pact into an already-strong weapon with tons of burst potential.

DD change - it was late and I must have neglected chill -> vuln. Though it begs how much crit chance you're willing to give for an effect that's pretty easily-spammed. Like I mentioned, though, it's a very limited-access trait contending with others and locks the bonus crit chance of the whole class into a specialization. SR currently kind of covers this for all possible builds with Death Perception, which is nice. DD + SR as it is currently just opens up some more possibilities exclusively for reaper to build a bit more durable if they combine DP and DD together, but also becomes dependent on vuln which needs to be sourced elsewhere, cutting burst potential without setting up, first (justifying the increased defenses these builds can then provide). This change (mostly to SR) just seems to interact less with other builds/specs/choices and require fewer decisions on how a reaper wants to play.

I just see DM as convoluting things by having it all largely revolve around a minion that occurs when entering shroud. Won't be very useful in a lot of situations and a lot of the traits here which would make the minor traits in DM strong are only really good for MM. One minion really isn't that great, and a lot of people hate the aesthetic just as much as some people love it. The condi cleanse one may also be relatively weak (cover conditions) depending on the threshold, or totally busted if its set too high, and there's not much synergy for power builds or reconverting toughness into power damage, which is important for someone playing something akin to a Knight's/Cavalier bruiser Reaper.

I understand what you're trying for with Spite, but I think this kind of benefits nobody; it continues to make the class very unpredictable which makes PvP'ing against it not very fun, and emphasizes binary matchups; builds capable of bursting down a Spite necro are stronger than ever against it (mesmer, thief, ranger, holo) since they'll bypass the "strong" state of Spite, while those which may depend on grinding a bit (warrior, guardian, rev, ele) will just find themselves at a big loss the longer the fight goes on. For sustained advantages, I'd suggest you look towards condition damage play rather than power, as that's what conditions are already intended to do, anyways.

For foot in the grave, a big strength of it is having the stability on entry to shroud since it's meant to be the power-up/tank stage of the necro. On exit makes shroud easier to shut down. Again, I just really can't see a reason to run SR at this point since none of the traits are really any good except maybe Haunting Speed, but that also detracts from Reaper, as you're essentially mandating that Reaper take SR for the same benefits of Relentless Pursuit as currently, which is pretty big given it's melee-only.

I wouldn't be concerned with locking foes down so much on the reaper as giving its mobility back. Again, it's the binary-play issue I mentioned above; things like thief/ranger/mesmer can easily get out of these situations and just kite out a necro, while other classes may really struggle here. Resistance/stability can shut down the whole thing entirely, which means you then get locked into corruptions, and so on. There's a deep rabbit hole which makes build paths really obvious or makes the necromancer just have too much difficulty into specific classes while having too easy of a time into others. This is generally not a good thing for a game to have.

The general trend I'm seeing is that a lot of the traits/power seems to be dispersed across lines, but a lot of the synergy and cross-build interactions just aren't quite there.While not a whole-class rewrite, you can look at the link in my signature for the original Deadeye proposal for the thief (if you can stand the formatting; this was for the old forums which had some wacky syntax, and has not been updated for more recent balance tweaks since the announcement of DE which was before the buffs to Acro/various aspects of thief and nerfs to Daredevil, so a lot of numbers and issues are dated, as this was proposed two months after HoT). If you're not familiar with the thief it may be hard to follow, but one thing that made the design so robust was how nearly every single trait and utility had synergy with every other weapon skill and traitline on the entire class. Asking yourself bigger-picture questions of "What should this entire traitline accomplish?" and "How can X build/playstyle be achieved?" and forcing yourself to make way for as much build diversity as possible will give your overarching reworks much better composition.

I'd start doing a lot of gameplay analysis in the various formats as well. A lot of what may work in one format can wholly break another, and the necromancer is the most volatile of the professions such that it becomes very difficult to play into its strengths without overtuning it into absurdity.

After, ask the aforementioned questions for the current trait lines and then doing a bit of tweaking and continuously refining from there and see where you end up, and compare it to what you have right now. Weed out the over-performers where you see any, and make changes at the root of the problems by changing those, first, rather than trying to layer a fix on top.

Some three ideas that I've been working on since your feedback, would appreciate some thoughts on it.First off, I was considering having all corruption skills just remove 1 boon, and changing their below hp% thing into while in shroud. As an example:Corrupt Boon – Unleash a wave of corrupted energies that converts a boon from allies and foes into corruption. If this skill is used while in shroud: Apply torment on them as well. 40 (½)i. Corruption (1.5s): Boons currently on you are ineffective.ii. 3 Torment (4s): 264 Damage, 382 Damage if Movingiii. Number of Targets: 5iv. Number of Allied Targets: 5v. Boons Converted: 1vi. Range: 300The duration of the conditions are still a work in progress and is more of a placeholder.Some clarification, corruption does NOT prevent you from gaining new boons. It just makes any boon that is currently on you ineffective for its duration, much like how resistance makes conditions on you ineffective for its duration. My idea for the interaction between the two, is last come 1st serve: Corruption can be cancelled out by resistance, if you gain resistance after corruption, and vice versa.

Second I'd also appreciate some thoughts on my idea for gs. My idea for it is to stay true to anet's design of invoking a "slow but seemingly unstoppable horror monster(s)". My take on that is a slow, obvious wind up(1st auto strike), along with a swift and punishing followup (2nd and 3rd hit) that will leave you flattened while empowering the inevitable gravedigger. And making gravedigger give a movement impairing condition to make it harder to avoid the next assault. I'd keep my version of grasping darkness on it, along with veil of night, to create an inescapable area and a gap closer for the reaper to start. I have also changed the block for something else, an enemy debuff/self buff sort of skill: chilling and slowing the target/nearby foes, while granting alac and quickness to the user.

Third is Ethereal. My plan for it was to move it into the spectral master trait and give it a 90 sec icd, with increased effectiveness and recharge if it was acquired while in shroud. Spectral master would now read:Spectral Master – Spectral skills have reduced recharge. Spectral skills grant you 3s of ethereal; increase the duration of ethereal (by 1s) and the recharge of this trait if you use the spectral skill while in shroud. (90/95 if in shroud).

P.S: the immob on axe is dark pact minus the self bleed, it does not root the opponent in the same way the druid's ancient seeds does, and has the same range as dark pact. I just wanted it to give it a ghostly flavor in its description to match axe. Also living flesh from death magic procs on your 1st hit when entering combat not shroud, and is refreshed by all deaths including that of the shambling horror.

Removing the efficacy of a boon is effectively removing the boon/denying new applications for that period; boons are spammed extremely easily and right now the game is balanced around it, despite it being a horrible thing to follow. This would still allow a corrupted(status) target to still have its boons be corrupted into conditions, which is still a problem because a major source of what keeps conditions in check and not outright overpowered is Resistance, which could then be corrupted and then even if applied again, immediately disabled via the corrupted(status) effect. We're already having major issues with Winds of Disenchantment. This effect -just disabling boon application for any period of time - would truthfully be game-breaking, sorry to say. WoD already is, and there's nothing in the game that can deal with it. Boonless builds are just too weak to do anything at all. If ANet could fix the boon spam problem by making boonless builds even somewhat viable or cut down boon permanence drastically, this build would be fine. The issue is that right now, in the PvP formats, boons aren't a luxury or an option. They're literally vital to have any semblance of chance in any group environment.

For GS, I'd rather see the third hit remain the slow one. You can always interrupt your AA chain after the fast hits with something else if you need to. You can't ever even get the fast hits if your first slow one never lands, or they immediately dodge after it lands to avoid the second two. I like GS's AAs as it currently is to be honest. AA1/AA2 deliver pretty quickly, and following up with other skills or shroud is plenty in terms of consistent damage. The issue with gravedigger as it is and always will be is that it's just too slow to use as a primary damage tool unless you set up for it. Putting too much emphasis on the skill just means your opponent gets more out of dodge rolling. To be totally honest, I think the GS is fine as it is. Gravedigger has plenty of purpose, can be used if set up well, and is amazing in PvP settings to cleave downs and punish resurrections except from Mirages. Adding more to it isn't really necessary. Veil of Night begs for some specification for interactions. Does this only deny regular movement? What about shadowsteps? Denying them is honestly really too punishing for a few matchups, and I'd rather have the boon corruption that Twilight current has. Evasion is still not suitable for the reaper/necro imho. I'd prefer the blind pulsing to be back to once per second like it used to be. I dunno. I think GS is a really good weapon where it's at currently. A big problem I've seen from a lot of reapers is just they aren't using it very well and think it's worse than it is.

For Ethereal, I was referring to how each of your spectral skills state it gets applied. A full bar of spectral skills already provides tons of uptime before even considering the trait. And that effect is simply just way too strong to put on each util, and it locks out any semblance of choice from the rest; even if just consolidated into spectral armor, it becomes absolutely mandatory. Warriors are still running Endure Pain which lasts only 2s. That's how good it is.

My comparison to ranger on Dark Pact is how the skills interact with axe. Ghastly Claws is very similar to Rapid Fire. An immob on Axe is basically the same potent effect that Celestial Seeds + PBS + RF has, without the dependence on a traitline. Immob denies the victim the ability to dodge roll; that's why immob on axe I think is too strong; it tells your opponent that either they need to use a cleanse or die from range. Dagger currently doesn't have this kind of ranged burst damage which is why I think it's easier to justify.