[Kameron8]

I feel as though Ghost has so many effective tools offensively and defensively that it beats out many classes in almost every conceivable facet.

It's no secret that Ghost is one of, if not the most popular classes in the game right now. Because it has so many tools to keep itself alive, deal damage, and properly leverage some of the best weapons in the game, it very rarely loses out to other classes in competing archetypes. Before making a suggestion, I'm going to cover some of the reasons I have for making this claim.

Survivability: A core aspect to the class' identity.

1. Ghosts have access to Wraithguard, which provides them a buffer of 300 HP, can block unfavorable positions (such as your ass), and can stall out fights once the Ghost has gone unconscious. The spirit summoned never times out. Because of its duration and its small, but good enough, cast range, Ghosts can all but guarantee using this skill at the very least trades evenly with momentum from the enemy. Because the spirit will mitigate the full damage of an attack even when it dies from transferring it, this buffer very often exceeds the 300 HP threshold. To visualize this, imagine taking 500 damage from one attack, when the spirit is at 10/300 HP. It will still mitigate the remaining 150 damage off of the hit, despite its health.
   
2. Ghosts have access to Rebound. Though this is not nearly as momentum efficient as Wraithguard, it comes with unexpected utility that adds more tools in Ghost's toolbox. This skill can serve its function as a heal, but it also has no trouble wiping out a non-spellcaster's FP to zero after two or three casts. Additionally, it can be used as a way to bypass 'on damage' effects, such as: killing someone with 50 HP and Body of Isesip, or finishing someone off who Die Harded across the entire battle map.
   
3. Ghosts have access to Eviter. Though this is Duelist, and not Ghost, the latter necessarily inherits the strength of the former. Eviter provides such potent damage reduction that it can easily be a deciding factor in fights, and adds another layer of passive damage mitigation for the class.
   
4. Ghosts are permitted to build heavy evasion, without exposing a glaring weakness elsewhere. With free stats and the aforementioned mechanisms for surviving, Ghosts can defend against spells and autohits well enough that they can forego some defenses for raw evasion. Using Disengage with Miragewalk still forces an unfavorable circumstance on just about everyone -- moreso if the leap back necessitates burning additional momentum just to reach them afterward.
   

Damage: Katanas? Ghost. Spear? Ghost. Spellcaster? Ghost.

1. The class has access to an enormous suite of damaging effects, passives, and skills. Claret Call provides a finite, stacking bonus to all attacks and skills, almost all of which have higher scalings than every other skill or spell in the game. Blood Spike, which costs a small tithing of HP, has more scaling in an Area of Effect than every spell and invocation Evoker has. On top of this, it benefits from and applies Claret Call. Much of the same can be said about Scarlet Twister, but the health cost attached to it is significant enough to dissuade endless spamming.
   
2. Even without using these spells, Ether Invitation is a spammable attack that deals on average 150-200 additional damage before being multiplied by crit damage and other external % boosts. This poses a problem because it functions as a one-point-wonder. The missing health scaling does not scale with level, the cooldown does not scale with level, and the skill itself does not even require Claret Call to be present anymore. This provides a top tier offensive option for dirt cheap, and allows Ghosts to leverage the saved Skill Points on their other skills.
   
3. Ghost, by inheritance, gains access to Eclair Lacroix and Fleur. Because these are base class skills, it's important to be careful about attributing issues with the base class to the promotion. With that in mind, these two abilities add more area of effect damage (more scaling than almost every other ability in the game, a common theme), and shift the action economy. The latter could be far more of a discussion than I'm giving it here, but suffice to say influencing Momentum is single-handedly the most powerful trait in the game. Resisting physical elements to weaken Fleur is extremely difficult for non-summoners, and Eclair Lacroix can be spaced to detonate in front of enemies so that Spirit Mirror can be easily bypassed.
   

Because of its top-end damage and survivability, people will often find themselves in a situation where they're trying to damage race someone with 300 more health than them, at least 30% more Damage Reduction than them, 50% more actions per turn than them, and harder hitting spells, skills, and basic attacks than them. This would be a blanket statement if secondary classes didn't exist, which brings up the final point I'd like make.

Synergies: The Free Space in Bingo.

1. Ghost can effectively synergize with most of the other (generally agreed upon) strong items, to make itself a walking ball of optimization. The class works extremely well with swords, some of which put most other weapons to shame (Tarnada, Spine Leash, both granting access to Eclair Lacroix), and is one of the few that work with axes in general. It can easily support any other weapon that want hits and crits, like guns, daggers, or bows, simply based on passives and Fleur alone.
   
   
2. Ghost supports most of the other strong classes, too. It can easily leverage Hexer, Black Knight, Demon Hunter, Bonder, Void Assassin, Monk, Curate, any Archer promotion, and any other Duelist promotion. This could be viewed as a positive attribute, since promoting diversity is, in my opinion, desirable. However, the reality I'm seeing is less that everyone plays all of these different classes, and more that everyone plays all of these different classes...With Ghost. Even using a Katana, players are almost always better off using Ghost over Kensei for the majority of situations they encounter.
   

With all of that in mind, here are three changes I would like to see to prune some of this power:

1. Wraithguard no longer reduces the full impact of attacks that will overkill it. An attack that deals 1500 damage to a player with a full health spirit would be reduced to 1200, instead of its current iteration where it would be reduced to 1050. An attack that deals 200 damage to a player with a 10 health spirit will do 190, instead of 140. Lastly, the spirit will disappear when the caster drops to zero hit points, unless it's in range of Gravestone.
   
   [list=*]This should incentivize investing more Momentum into Gravestone usage, which opens the opponent up to less disparaging momentum trades.

[*]Ether Invitation now scales damage with rank, dealing [4%/8%/12%/16%/20%] of missing health as additional damage on hit, and requiring Claret Call be active.
[list=*]This should make SP distribution across the numerous powerful abilities harder.[/list]
[*]Blood Spike now costs 8% of the caster's health, up from 5%.
[list=*]This should make people just a little more weary about spamming the ability every turn.[/list]
[/list]

As always, I appreciate the time taken to read through this.

[Autumn]

A good read, I also think that Eclair Lacroix could use some touching up in another thread at some point because it is also currently a huge problem, all of the changes proposed in the latter half of the post are changes I'd much welcome, I'd also possibly look into making Rebound not suck out FP anymore as that can be quite a huge problem sometimes, and further fuels just how much versatility Ghost even has compared to most other classes in the game.

[K Peculier]

I absolutely agree with everything said here. Especially with the regards to changing wraithguard and crutch spike.

Ghost at the moment is so disgustingly easy to optimize that rather than being a 'berserker' kind of class that gets stronger when its weaker its just now a death lord of unkillable damage from the very start of any battle.

"All that for a drop of blood." - Actual quote from ghost who took damage before rebounding all the HP and FP back.

The only thing I can really dispute is you only calling ghost a large support for 'other strong classes'...When lets be honest, it can support EVERY other class even if duelist/ghost abilities are the only thing you use. Its just that good.

[Senna]

I kinda agree here. Ghost is too overtune(I'VE BEEN PREACHING THIS FOR A WHILE TOO), it ain't even funny. I've died to spikes spam (Guess what! hey more they spam it, the more range! You can't even outrun the damn thing. You haven't seen shit until you've met someone that builds AROUND spike spam and healing with rebound and so on, a Ghost/VA with impure ice with a river sword for more salt), I've seen people lolrebound themselves from 50 HP to half health FROM spamming the spikes/twister and covering people on the battle field with them. (If there damage wasn't so damn high, people out here taking 150-200 damage from spikes/twister alone a turn.). It's pretty much the easier class to deal massive damage with minimal effort. Its like, they'll just be super tank, they'll just do burst damage, they'll just lolheal, they'll just autofear, they'd reduce reduction, they'd silence, they'll just get more bonus damage. What's that? Low health? Let me just EI you real quick.

My rant aside, I do like the class and what it does, since I do have a character call the Immortal Cat (Deadass unkillable) just because of what the class brings to the table but it's too good of a class that works with literally everything lol. This is why it's meta and why it's so popular.

All the suggestions made, I can get behind. The first step to bring this class down a bit.

[SolAndLuna]

I agree with all the suggestions given here, as well. The way Ghost is right now, there is very little reason not to use it with the incredibly powerful and versatile tools it has, compared to most other classes.

[Hanzo]

I do agree with the first suggestion. What more, even though I do play ghost, I did not even know that such was a thing. It was probably not intended. The seconds on is fine as well, and I completely agree with you. However, I do not think the cost of Blood Spike should be increased, as it would leave the skill completely overshadowed by twister. Twister offers far more utility for the cost of just 2% more HP, despite the range - one you get only after going dangerously low on HP anyhow. Likewise, the argument that it needs to be nerfed just because River Sword exists is completely insane.

[Senna]

No? I'm not saying because River sword exist it should be nerfed, I'm just giving a good example of a random build that can simply abuse them. Blood spikes and twister are one of the strongest magic abilities in games WITHOUT any extra stuff like that. You can easily do 150-200 damage with them a turn, and it's AOE damage so whoever is around you at the time is also getting hit with this 150-200 damage a turn which is crazy. Because all the price is 5%-10% of your health. If you are truly running Ghost then losing health benefits you more as well as they can always just lolrebound or lolEI after spamming it.

Aside from that, yes ghost is over loaded.

[Autumn]

I do agree with the first suggestion. What more, even though I do play ghost, I did not even know that such was a thing. It was probably not intended. The seconds on is fine as well, and I completely agree with you. However, I do not think the cost of Blood Spike should be increased, as it would leave the skill completely overshadowed by twister. Twister offers far more utility for the cost of just 2% more HP, despite the range - one you get only after going dangerously low on HP anyhow. Likewise, the argument that it needs to be nerfed just because River Sword exists is completely insane.

Blood Spike as already stated does a ton of damage, even more than a lot of invocations would, its utility over twister would be the larger amount of damage, these skills already snipe you across the map.

[FaeLenx]

Wraith always struck me as funny as an extra 300 HP unless the ghost was silly enough to stay within reasonable AoE range of it. It would be great if it could be coded to take damage from AoEs before players did, with that in mind, because even if you do manage to whip out an overcharged isenshi it'll still be reduced by 30% a lot of the time.

[Kameron8]

I do agree with the first suggestion. What more, even though I do play ghost, I did not even know that such was a thing. It was probably not intended. The seconds on is fine as well, and I completely agree with you. However, I do not think the cost of Blood Spike should be increased, as it would leave the skill completely overshadowed by twister. Twister offers far more utility for the cost of just 2% more HP, despite the range - one you get only after going dangerously low on HP anyhow. Likewise, the argument that it needs to be nerfed just because River Sword exists is completely insane.

As others have mentioned, the main benefit of picking Blood Spike over Twister is the additional damage. Twister offers a huge amount of utility with the pull it provides, but has less universally applicable 'optimal times to use'. Often, people who aren't using cinders won't even take Scarlet Twister because of the SP investment.

Making Blood Spike hurt the caster a bit more than it already does should (hopefully) shunt the ability from "use this every single turn unless your opponent is full anti-magic" to an actual decision about resistance spreads, number of targets hit, and current health. I can't imagine the aforementioned change would ever dissuade a Ghost from using this skill as often as possible when two or more enemies are able to be hit simultaneously, but the intent was to trim small bits of power, and not chop the legs out from under the class.