To reply to that. I really liked reaper as a dps cooldown which increased poison stacking ability. I currently play a poison stacking lich and popping reaper form was a great DPS cooldown when everything I did applied poisons. You have some decent space on one side of the tree to bring in a poison build beyond just Reap. Additionally I haven’t played with reap, but it seems very hard to scale reap as opposed to other Acolyte lich skills, since it’s an attack and scales off of just attack relevant modifiers, while most of your other abilities scale off either spell or dot multipliers. If you’re playing a poison scaling build having reap apply 1 stack of poison isn’t going to be very impactful since those builds are generally about getting as many stacks out as possible.
Additionally I like the increased healing effectiveness in Reap, it seems good. I did like though that the increased health was a way to stack int to stay in reaper longer, essentially giving you a stat to maximize your dps window. That said if that’s not really back on the table I’d recommend having int translate into armor AND protections so that you’re not just tanking phys dmg you’re scaling your ehp vs all dmg. That would also jam with the poison build if you’re using (the name escapes me) poison stacking aura, you’d take less damage from poison in your reaper form.
For a spell scaling build you have that lower right corner of the tree which scales spell dmg based on duration in Reaper form, which is great, but It’s also a rough build since while it’s fine to have that as a dps cooldown it doesn’t have a ton of synergy with most spell builds I’ve seen beyond flat damage. Though if you combine it with the increased healing and the rip blood skill you could probably stay in reaper form decently long.
The summoning skeletons… I don’t really like this, it muddies the waters between lich and necromancer. It falls flat. I don’t see sumoning skeletons as a great thing for lich builds, maybe there are some where it’s good, I don’t know It doesn’t seem very great as there aren’t too many nodes which scale them in the lich tree.
I prefer that specializations have clearly defined themes, The acolyte does its thing but then you specialize in one area, having lich bring out skeletons just feels bleh.
Effects on entering reaper form. These are pretty lackluster nodes, this isn’t like aura of decay that you’re toggling on and off if you build up too many poison stacks, there’s a pretty chunky cooldown on any effect that happens when you enter reaper form, since you’re going to want to be IN reaper form for as long as possible due to its other benefits, and there’s no real way for you to expedite your exit from reaper form. That means once you push the button, you get the effect, have to wait for the duration of your reaper form (sometimes this can be quite long) and then the cooldown on reaper form before you can push it again. That means these effects need to be VERY strong, or maybe taking that node causes reaper form to have a max duration but a lesser cooldown. Something like On entering reaper form you summon X skeletons per point, Reaper form has a max duration of 10 seconds but its cooldown is reduced to 7 seconds. or something. I don’t much care for the skeleton summoning in the lich pool but that’s an example. OR you could have it be something along the lines of When you enter Reaper form you shoot a free hungering soul (using skill tree bonuses) at all enemies, you gain ward equal to 50% of the damage done by the initial hit, Or something. To give you a nice chunky ward start.
Anyways those are some thoughts. I will say reap was hard enough to fit into most builds that I took none of the reap nodes and just use it purely as a mobility skill, to dodge or get around faster.
