Reaper Idea...

I have been thinking about odd ways to buff Reaper Shroud (and hopefully give it some purpose), and wonder if anyone has thought about the following:

1) Make shroud skills 1a,1,b,1c each hit 5 targets at 220 (normalized to life reap range and target count)2) Shroud 2: (Death's Charge) longer leap (would give some mobility)3) Terrify: use ammo system for 2 (or maybe three) blasts (no ICD cooldown, so fears could be stacked, given the short duration)4) Soul Spiral: hit 10 targets, otherwise identical5) Ex Scythe: hit up to 3 targets at 300, otherwise identical

Basically, increase the number of cleave target to a baseline of 5 in shroud, max 10 (for Soul Spiral), and 3 for the special stunning attack. The attacks should reach out a bit farther to offset the relative slowness of the reaper in shroud (can't use wurm or spectral walk). I also like the ammo system for Terrify, as it might be able to get a long enough fear to actually really benefit from Dread and other buffs that increase damage (also might make Terrormancer a viable thing again). The burst from Soul Spiral would actually be a serious threat to bunched up groups of players (imagine 2 Reapers spinning at the same time!), although you would still probably die afterward. The idea would be a cleaving melee monstrosity, with a large and dangerous melee burst. High Risk = High Reward?

1.) yes.2.) well maybe, i think the biggest problem here is that the leap does not end when you hit a target. Often you actually reach your target, but before the end hit occurs the target has enough time to dodge while youre stuck in the animation. Another big problem is, the leap finisher occurs at the END of the leap. It should be at the start.3.) would be ok, 2 charges max, though.4.) well yeah, if youre in a situation to hit 10 targets you should be rewarded.5.) maybe. The biggest problem is that sometimes you dont hit your target if other targets are in range. Sometimes you hit that ranger pet for no reason, even though you target the ranger and both are in range. You could fix this by increasing the target cap, though.

Rs isn't really the problem of necro.

The problem is that it's meant to be offensive and defensive at the same time while being capped by a resource.

And outside of shroud you don't have a real good defensive skill other than spectral armor.

But the "second healthpool" isnt a real good reason. I would gladly trade it for blocks, invulns and evades

Then reaper could also get more dps

I agree that shroud being both offense and defense is a real problem. The ideal solution should be that shroud is accessible at all times: no cool down, but limited by life force (which depletes over time and with damage). Have all Traits and weapon swaps abilities (sigils) that trigger "on shroud" should have an ICD of 8-9 seconds. This would make certain abilities in Death Magic (soul comprehension) and Signet of Undeath much more valuable, as they would help fill a resource you have instant access to.

@"Nerah.8235" said:I agree that shroud being both offense and defense is a real problem. The ideal solution should be that shroud is accessible at all times: no cool down, but limited by life force (which depletes over time and with damage). Have all Traits and weapon swaps abilities (sigils) that trigger "on shroud" should have an ICD of 8-9 seconds. This would make certain abilities in Death Magic (soul comprehension) and Signet of Undeath much more valuable, as they would help fill a resource you have instant access to.

I have to disagree with you here. Removing the cool down would certainly improve the necromancer's survivability but it wouldn't do any good to the skillset of the shroud as a whole.

The issue of the necromancer's special mechanic (DS, RS and, sadly, scourge's shroud skills) is that those thing try to do way to many things at the same time. The very best course of action would be to remove the 2nd health bar from DS and RS and specialize a bit more scourge's shroud skills. This way there would be room to reallocate the necromancer's defense onto spefific skills and traits which would allow builds to specialize a bit more and thus improve either in defense, support or offense.

What's best for the game balance? The necromancer gaining more survivability whatever it's build or the necromancer being able to specialize?

The biggest issue with the above is that it would require a ground-up rebuild of the profession, which I am not sure will ever happen. I would be happy with the current professional mechanic at least making the necromancer a true bruiser. Besides, if you had instant access to shroud, it would be easier to use utilities to mediate some of the deficiencies: shouts like NCSY, all spectral skills, and some other underperforming abilities (like dagger 2,3) would become much better.

At any rate, the original set of ideas were more modest, and would help provide shroud burst, as well as being "easy" to implement.

Been having a blast with power reaper, in wvw, recently. It made me realise how much I hate scourge and remember how much I loved reaper. Pretty good results as well.It's easy to say yes I want buffs for reaper, but honestly the only one I'd want is the increase in range on auto attack (mainly due to how the animation looks like it should hit but fails to reach the target).

@Lahmia.2193 said:Been having a blast with power reaper, in wvw, recently. It made me realise how much I hate scourge and remember how much I loved reaper. Pretty good results as well.It's easy to say yes I want buffs for reaper, but honestly the only one I'd want is the increase in range on auto attack (mainly due to how the animation looks like it should hit but fails to reach the target).

We'll. It's pretty easy to kill solo scourges as a solo reaper.In group content reaper just sucks right now

I don't like the idea of no cd on shroud.Maybe it should be like engis photon forge just the other way round. So you start at 100% lf. Using skills get lf cost same as scourge, and if you reach below 10% lifeforce you get like 9 seconds cd on shroud.

However. After 9 seconds you get your shroud refilled to full. And if you use of generating skills and you hit 90% lf or more while shroud is on cd. It refreshes.

But: no more second health bar. This would require all shroud related traits to be reworked.And all lf generatorsSame as giving necro more defensive options with some evades or blocks

Theory crafting is all the further this will go. Anet will not beef up Reaper or any necro class. We will continue to get meaningless token buffs. Why? Because necro class is used to extremes in zergs , so any buff they make they have to consider it's effect when multiplied. Reaper was originally a great design, so good that it got nerfed before release due to other class complaints. Since then it has been constantly reworked (nerfed) to what it is today Scrounge is now on the same path as base necro and Reaper, fact is outside of zergs it is easily defeated except in close quarters fights. I regularly roam necro class except scrounge) and see the difference in class strengths, any well played ranger, thief, Mesmer, war class should be a match for necro with burst downs frequent.. oh forgot Holo. Hell a lot of builds can be noviced played and beat roaming necro. Best thing for Reaper would be reverting the shroud lf degeneration and making Reaper shroud 1 a ranged attack. Oh and giving chill it's processing damage back, making it inline with burning and confusion.

Only problems i have with reaper shroud is the decay and the Shroud 2.

Shroud 2 should be a single hit and have no animation lock, if you charge have the distance to catch up to an enemy, your stuck in animation as if you were going the full distance. Make it a normal leap. Really just some QoL for it.

Reaper problems come down to lack of sustain/defense (No invulns, Mobility, Blocks, Evades, Access to Resistance) Not saying we need all of that but when our defensive option is 8sec of Protection and some extra LF gen on a 40sec CD (Spectral Armor) in a meta where boons are stipped and corrupted as fast as their put on its kind of a joke.

Personally i think the Reaper GS needs some love. Adjust Gravedigger to either hit twice (1/2 dmg of current value each hit), or provide something along the lines of a block while casting. That and remove the "50% HP Cooldown Refund" Whether in PvP or PvE, spamming a single button doesnt make for interesting gameplay. Hundred Blades on Warrior GS atleast gets some value outside casting the full channel

Reaper does not need more defense. Reaper needs more mobility. It doesn't matter how much defense you give Reaper if Reaper can't catch any of its foes.

@Crinn.7864 said:Reaper does not need more defense. Reaper needs more mobility. It doesn't matter how much defense you give Reaper if Reaper can't catch any of its foes.

Isn't reaper supposed to be a slow moving killer? so i think defense:Yes mobiliy:No

how about a souped up torment application? i kinda feel like that + chill should've been the way to go for reapers

@Axl.8924 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:Reaper does not need more defense. Reaper needs more mobility. It doesn't matter how much defense you give Reaper if Reaper can't catch any of its foes.

Yeah, reaper was meant to keep it's foes close to him thanks to chill, and that's why it does have low mobility. However, the reaper had quite a lot of change over the years, reducing it's passive defense, it's active defense and it's chill uptime for the sake of an almost harmless increase in power damage potential. The reaper is limited by it's strong point (potential burst) and the nerfs just made this strong point harder and harder to land.

All the change led to make things more difficult for the reaper because anet value the burst potential it does have. What's amazing is that this burst potential is not enough to make the difference because it has always been limited by it's difficulty to land, however, anet every answer to the small power buff they gave to the reaper was to balance it with an even harsher difficulty to land the burst.

The reaper's balance feel like an unwilling cat. You just want to pet it and the cat sure would like it, but the cat just stay out of reach sneering at you.

@Axl.8924 said:

@"Crinn.7864" said:Reaper does not need more defense. Reaper needs more mobility. It doesn't matter how much defense you give Reaper if Reaper can't catch any of its foes.

Do you know many PvP games there are where being a "slow moving killer" is a viable role? None. Why? Because you cannot fight what you can't catch.

@Axl.8924 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:Reaper does not need more defense. Reaper needs more mobility. It doesn't matter how much defense you give Reaper if Reaper can't catch any of its foes.

In the movies no matter how slow a slasher is they manage to catch their prey do you know what that is. Because they have mobility be it super natural or just tactical routs.They may appear to chase slowly but you go round a corner and next thing you know you have axe in your chest because said slow killer is already there.

That said reaper does not lack the power to catch its prey. Reaper lacks the power to stick to it long enough to deal its potential burst or its potential burst is too easily negated by doing one of two things, simply moving out of the way with a movement skill, or dps'ing the reaper harder than it can dps you. forcing it to its knees. Which happens far more often than alot of people think.

While the 2nd option is not always ideal for most professions there are a few that can get away with it rather easily.

@Axl.8924 said:

@"Crinn.7864" said:Reaper does not need more defense. Reaper needs more mobility. It doesn't matter how much defense you give Reaper if Reaper can't catch any of its foes.

The nerf of this mechanic was probably the hardest nerf necro ever got.

These days a 1200 leap is a 1200 leap - no matter how desperatly the poor reaper puts chills on you. You just leap away and kill the "scary slow moving thing" from range or high ground you ported to. Honestly fighting reapers feels like PvE - you can use the same simple kiting tactics like for PvE mobs when fighting reapers. It's just too easy and not acceptable!

The necro class (not just reaper!) needs one reliable 1200 distance leap or port at about 45s cooldown as a life saver and for repositioning options. Every other class has such a skill. On top of that the 600 leap in RS has to stay! We're outkited by swiftness otherwise. This would be ridiculous.

Don't mess up the rest of the spec, when the solution is so simple.

@Crinn.7864 said:

@Axl.8924 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:Reaper does not need more defense. Reaper needs more mobility. It doesn't matter how much defense you give Reaper if Reaper can't catch any of its foes.

Wasn't Reaper supposed to be difficult to disengage if opponents tried to melee? I think this is the part not working. Chill duration was nerfed, mobility skills are not affected by conditions and boons, anymore, and shroud decay was increased, which trimmed Reaper's mobility. Maybe the dev's should look at the Reaper theme and see if it really does what it was intended.

@Anchoku.8142 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:

@Axl.8924 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:Reaper does not need more defense. Reaper needs more mobility. It doesn't matter how much defense you give Reaper if Reaper can't catch any of its foes.

"Supposed to" is not the same as "actually is." You see in order for Reaper to make it "difficult to disengage" Reaper has to be landing hits, but since Reaper has difficulty consistently landing important hits on most meta builds Reaper cannot bring it's "difficult to disengage" capabilities to bear. This intrinsic design fault was then compounded by the fact that Reaper's design was finalized right before ArenaNet changed Chill and Cripple to not affect movement skills didn't help the problem either.

@Crinn.7864 said:

@Anchoku.8142 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:

@Axl.8924 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:Reaper does not need more defense. Reaper needs more mobility. It doesn't matter how much defense you give Reaper if Reaper can't catch any of its foes.

I would also add that Reaper is behind the curve as a melee due to Power Creep.

No access to Resistance/Invuln's/Blocks/Barriers play a major part in its ability to even withstand a fight with another melee let alone deny disengaging/catch

Had a random shower thought recently and that was what if shroud 2 reflected projectiles?

I know it's not magically fixing all issues but wouldn't that be kinda cool?

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@Axl.8924 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:

LMAO. Quote of the year.

Agree with this 100%.

Shadow step shout well whisper "I am right behind you" say on a 30 sec cd single target chill and 600 ranged shadow step. Or add a leap effect to the GS. Reaper realty dose need another movement skill.

so make reaper chill movemet skills again :+1: