My problem with Reaper's Onslaught

Blighter's Boon: best choice for defenseDeathly Chill: best choice for condiDeathly Chill: best choice for power

Even playing pure power, you still run around with 600+ condi from might stacks, which makes Deathly Chill stronger than Reaper's Onslaught.

With the last changes to Onslaught, I understand they are trying to boost it, but IMO this is still not enough. I really want to remove Deathly Chill from my power reaper, but not there yet.

Why is deathly chill best choice for power? I'd think that 15% increase in aa chain damage + 20% bonus to critical damage should result in more damage then the bleed on chill?

Quickness overrides the speed buff on RO.

Camping shroud is a dps loss. Auto is crap damage wise and so you only need for 4 5 and 2, when it comes to dps rotation if I recall correctly.

You will still be doing a tonne of chill on a power reaper and with max might and other buffs, that is actually a nice damage boost (better than the boost from RO).

Yes. Maybe the main problem here is that camping shroud is a dps loss, so RO either must become too good or shroud 1 must be buffed.

@Lahmia.2193 said:

1. Quickness overrides the speed buff on RO.

Ugh, I hope that is a bug that will be fixed.

2. Camping shroud is a dps loss. Auto is crap damage wise and so you only need for 4 5 and 2, when it comes to dps rotation if I recall correctly.
3. You will still be doing a tonne of chill on a power reaper and with max might and other buffs, that is actually a nice damage boost (better than the boost from RO).

Thanks for the explanation. I assume this is from group content perspective. What weapons does one use normally? Dagger?

It's the same for all increased attack speed traits, which is why they are always considered trash for anything competitive. And use greatsword. It's our best dps weapon.

@leasm.1279 said:Deathly Chill: best choice for power

Are you talking golem, meta-supported PvE, or all PvE?

• Golem allows max utilization of ice fields for the best possible Deathly Chill results. Looks awesome, definitely gets results, but it's only applicable against the golem.
• With meta support, I agree that RO is just a refresh/ferocity bump. You're getting might and vuln from other sources, so your Reaper 1 isn't useful at all. Raid teams would much rather hit fire fields than some Necro's garbage ice field, though. The more you drop ice fields, the more DPS you'll cost your team, so DC becomes a lot less attractive. Better than RO? Maybe?
• Without raid meta support, the ability to add Might and Vuln through Reaper 1 is a lot more useful. That 15% attack speed bump also becomes a real benefit in Shroud. For most players - and most players do play the game without meta support - RO will be a sizeable DPS gain. Solo, they can drop ice fields without hurting anyone else's DPS, but they won't have all the other meta support keeping their numbers up. I'd take RO.

I've been experimenting with an Axe/WH ad GS rotation on Reaper that does 25k dps at best. I take RO and Signets of Suffering to buff Shroud damage more. Shroud 1 autos are really bad while the 3rd hit is decent but all of them have bad base damage. Nevermind the coefficients but the base damage is just really bad...they should really buff Shroud 1s damage and make it so that it's close to GS's auto numbers but even with that it still is weak. Power Reaper is just a mess.

@Refia Montes.3205 said:I've been experimenting with an Axe/WH ad GS rotation on Reaper that does 25k dps at best. I take RO and Signets of Suffering to buff Shroud damage more. Shroud 1 autos are really bad while the 3rd hit is decent but all of them have bad base damage. Nevermind the coefficients but the base damage is just really bad...they should really buff Shroud 1s damage and make it so that it's close to GS's auto numbers but even with that it still is weak. Power Reaper is just a mess.

Ey someone else who uses Axe/WH + GS! high five how's it going friend? :D

Reaper onslaught improve the reaper shroud damage. Loke always for the necromancer, it's a very strong trait on the paper. However, the core necromancer power damage is based on stacking damage sources and the shroud, aside from the fact that it does not have competitive damages, keep you away from that. Naturally, this weaken the trait to an abysmal level.

The point is that:

• Our utilities are where we have to capitalize on power damage (well/minion... I want to put lich form but it's so bad I just can't)
• Instead of a lot of damage modifier our traits capitalize on "proc" damage (siphon, chill of death, chilling nova)
• The shroud skills are at a level of damage that is close to a random power weapon but the shroud keep you away from your utilities.
• You can't stay in shroud to benefit from the "while in shroud" traits

What else can we say... the shroud litterally nerf the damage of the necromancer while the traits and utilities don't promote high damage but numerous low damage sources. You can put all the ferocity you want on the necromancer while he is in shroud, it won't change the fact that it doesn't affect minions and siphons which are your most consitent source of extra damage.

Tis is the irony of the shroud. It give go mostly power skills and traits that make you think that it's a good thing to use it as a dps tool, but the result is bound to fail because the shroud keep you away from the extra source of damage which the the necromancer have to rely on if he want to do some damage and most of the "procs" that the necromancer have access to are not affected by the shroud damage traits.

It's just a vicious loop of mechanisms and design philosophy that do not synergyze with each other. They could even double the current ferocity bonus while in shroud and you still wouldn't have a competitive power reaper trait.

As a side note, but still related to the topic, I never understood why Shroud has less dps than Greatsword/Dagger. Shroud consumes a special resource and locks utilities, so it should definitelly be our ultimate source of power. IMO we should always want to stay in shroud until it is completely depleted, unless we want to save it for later defense.

With that said, skills 2, 3, 4 and 5 are pretty great, what kills it is shroud 1. Some damage boost to bring it close to the other melee autos would be great, and would change how we view shroud offensivelly.

EDIT: I'm not even talking about core shroud, because core is dumb :)

^. As said above for all we lose in shroud we need Shroud 1 brought up to speed... at least.

@leasm.1279 said:As a side note, but still related to the topic, I never understood why Shroud has less dps than Greatsword/Dagger. Shroud consumes a special resource and locks utilities, so it should definitelly be our ultimate source of power. IMO we should always want to stay in shroud until it is completely depleted, unless we want to save it for later defense.

With that said, skills 2, 3, 4 and 5 are pretty great, what kills it is shroud 1. Some damage boost to bring it close to the other melee autos would be great, and would change how we view shroud offensivelly.

EDIT: I'm not even talking about core shroud, because core is kitten :)

I still wish they'd make core necro and reaper like scourge, in that our life force no longer becomes a health pool but an energy source to power our 5 shroud skills which are now in the F slots. That way they could really buff our shroud damage but it would be balanced because it was now energy based.

What I gather from this thread is that GS #1 has more DPS than the Shroud #1. Why is that? If I do the math, sure, the GS #1 has around 20% more damage (time-normalised). But with +50 critical chance from Death Perception, the Shroud #1 should be ahead, even without ferocity. What am I missing here?

@green plum.7514 said:What I gather from this thread is that GS #1 has more DPS than the Shroud #1. Why is that? If I do the math, sure, the GS #1 has around 20% more damage (time-normalised). But with +50 critical chance from Death Perception, the Shroud #1 should be ahead, even without ferocity. What am I missing here?

Umm, Decimate Defenses exist. In a raid setting or most group settings, you will always cap with 100% crit chance with Zerk gear, and without Zerk gear when there's Fury, Spotters and Banners to cap your crit chance.