[Suggestion] Cold shoulder buff

Hello there. The reaper has great burst capacities but in the end falls short when it comes to consistent damage upkeep. One of the problems I see in the spec is the cold shoulder trait. Keeping the chill up on a boss is probably possible, but forces you to delay or skip harder hitting attacks. I have two suggestions to make the reaper a bit smoother.

1. Increase the damage boost to make up for the upkeep efforts.
2. Swap cold shoulder with chilling victory (might and life force when hitting chilled targets), change cold shoulder to a stackable damage boost (could be power, ferocity or flat % DMG) that applies every time you hit a chilled target with shroud abilities.

I personally would favor option 2 as it would enforce jumping in and out of shroud as a DPS mechanic but either would be fine with me. It would also make you decide to either pick up the damage boost or the crit boost, with both having good niches for different playstyles.

You already use Shroud as a DPS mechanic, and Chill isn't worth changing your rotation for. Reaper just got a bunch of buffs again, and people are already suggesting outlandish things. Necromancer also already generates enough Might by itself. Reaper also just got buffs, and is doing around 31k DPS now.

Chilling Nova is already a great Trait for Power and Condition Reaper. Also it's an Adept Trait. Wanting to make it some powerful Trait belonging to a Grandmaster Trait would make no sense. I mean it already is powerful.

Cold Shoulder is great as is already, and is up 100% in benchmarks already. It's just that solo or lower man content doesn't have it up always.

Maybe buffing Chill Duration to 33% like other Traits may help, or add a small % chance to deal Chill on Critical hits. Doing like 33% chance to inflict 1 second of Chill on Critical hits. This may cause Condition Reaper to do too much, Idk.

Cold Shoulder - Critical hits have a chance to inflict Chill for 1 second (33%) Deal bonus damage to chilled targets (10%)

I mean this would help solo play, and 5 man content mostly. I'd rather Core Traits be used to buff Power damage. reaper is fine as is. Making a Trait like Unyielding Blast have a damage bonus with Vulnerability would be better.

Unyielding Blast - Shroud 1 causes Vulnerability. Deal more damage to vulnerable targets (5%)

That would be around a 1,500 DPS buff, and be more fair.

One thing you might wanna start doing when you do your Shroud rotation on an enemy without chill is use the fear to chill them. RS5 if it is a more durable opponent. Honestly, between the chill I apply from my regular rotation and from Chilling Nova, I can't say I ever had problems maintaining chill.

I am not sure I understand what is meant with outlandish. Yes, the recent buffs were nice and needed. However, it barely pushed the (power) reaper into the "okay alright we will do a guide for it" section of DPS specs. I dont want it to be the BIP DPS for everything, I am just thinking of how to increase its viability without killing its theme of reaper shroud and chill and without making it ridiculously overpowered. The two things that limit reaper the most are, in my opinion, chill uptime and shroud uptime. Simply improving the damage of either would probably give reaper too much burst to handle, so I thought of a medium fast stacking DPS buff that increases damage with a small build up. You seem to be neglecting how many boss fights clear conditions during phasing, how many adds need to have chill applied first before reaper burst is good and how many raid mechanics can potentially decrease shroud uptime.

@"Deadvillager.1956" said:I am not sure I understand what is meant with outlandish. Yes, the recent buffs were nice and needed. However, it barely pushed the (power) reaper into the "okay alright we will do a guide for it" section of DPS specs. I dont want it to be the BIP DPS for everything, I am just thinking of how to increase its viability without killing its theme of reaper shroud and chill and without making it ridiculously overpowered. The two things that limit reaper the most are, in my opinion, chill uptime and shroud uptime. Simply improving the damage of either would probably give reaper too much burst to handle, so I thought of a medium fast stacking DPS buff that increases damage with a small build up. You seem to be neglecting how many boss fights clear conditions during phasing, how many adds need to have chill applied first before reaper burst is good and how many raid mechanics can potentially decrease shroud uptime.

I was referring to how you wanted to swap it into a Major Master Trait. A stacking Damage buff would do less than the Decimate Defenses most likely, and Decimate Defenses is simply too good. Also people are focused on still buffing Reaper which is a mindset problem. Core Necromancer needs to be buffed, and most picked Traits need buffs. It's bad to add a new trait into a Trait line, when there is already something so powerful that will always be taken.

I also made my suggestion with the idea of straight up buffing DPS in a simple way. Unyielding Blast is always taken, and to add +5% damage to targets with vulnerability would synergize with the Trait, and Decimate Defenses. There are other more simple ways to buff like this, and core buffs are best, not further messing with an Elite Spec. Also Condition is still lacking, and there's a new hybrid Griever build now. This would buff that as well. Think about how to buff Necromancer at the core for all builds. That's how I was thinking.

I'm sorry if I came off as a jerk. I didn't mean to. I was just stating my reasons for suggesting something else.

Honestly i see no need for this cold shoulder is fine as it is for the most part reaper is actually ok now. The majority of its traits are solid with the adept traits being the ones that need a few tweaks

The shout trait is too weak and does not bolster shouts very wellChill nova's cd is a bit to high it should be able to proc more often. (this could be the dps increase you you need)Relentless Pursuit should be rolled into base line "Shroud knight" Give Relentless Pursuit 1 shot super speed for entry for 3 seconds.

Out side of those things reaper is a solid espec at this point if you want better damage then you need to start looking at cor necro remember that especs are built ontop of the core professions. If there is a lack of damage its more than likely a lacking issue from the core profession.

This last patch helped alot with core necro by adding some ferocity and other stats fore free as well as buffing up a few lack luster traits that have not seen changes from long before HoT. Necro also still has alot of core utilities that lack proper QoL as well. Some times its not the traits its the core profession and its weapon skills or utility that lack that little bit of damage that makes something fall short.

@Kam.4092 said:

@Deadvillager.1956 said:

Exactly this. Reaper And scourge itself Are right Now really strong. No need to buff them in DPS. Lets find way how to pickup core too.I still have a problem with deathshroud. Its Always DPS loss no matter what i do. And skills Are little bit out od date. And even that huge tankiness which Is usefull only in PvE where isnt that much needed.

What really hurts reaper is chill application goes away at below 50% when gravedigger spamming starts. Either changing gravedigger ti do something else than auto recharge under 50% or allow it to apply chill under 50% with recharge would fix this.