Whoa major nerf changing this from 120 ft range to Touch! 

Not sure why they felt the need to nerf this spell. It's in competition with Eldritch Blast for goodness sake. They also removed the bonus effect it had on undead. It was basically baby's first necromancy spell, summoning ghost hands to grab someone is the most basic form of summoning undead and it fit that concept really well. The buff to damage is good but not good enough to justify the tradeoff for the nerf. This has gone from not as good as, but the only competition to the almost mandatory cantrip Eldritch Blast to one of the lower tier cantrips out there in my opinion. I'll be using the older version of this for sure when I DM (maybe keep the damage boost too but probably not since the slightly lower damage is part of balancing the awesome effect of no HP recovery) and asking if I can if I'm a player. I get most of the changes that were made to most of the spells, but the nerf here is mind boggling to me. Were there DMs out there complaining that Chill Touch was over powered?

Don’t know why they didn’t just rename the 2014 version into something that made people think “ranged necrotic” attack. Now we have a bad Touch spell that still doesn’t do the Cold damage people are going to think it would do. (Despite how it’s supposed to evoke “the chilling touch of the grave” vibe.)