Reaper mobility and Gap closers

The issue of mobility (or lack there of) for reapers is quite a hot topic.

It surprizes me that Anet discribe a Reaper as a melee orientated elite while having nothing in terms of gap closers, escapes and hard defensives (like block, extra evades, invunerbity, etc). Not to mention Reaper is probably the slowest hitting Great Sword profession in the game, with very little pay off when actually landing an attack (especially when compared to ranger GS, reaper feels second best - which is odd to me considering ranger should be a ranged class!)

I would like to suggest 3 simple changes that I feel would go a long way to making reapers a more melee orientated elite as intended:

First and foremost, reduce all reaper GS cast times by 50%. No explaination needed if you ever tried playing with it!

Secondly buff warhorn 5 "locust swarm" to gain +66% movement speed and the locust swam buff also adds weakness in addition to cripple. Increase life force gain to 2% and set the duration of both the speed and locust swarm buff to last 15 seconds on the 30 CD. This would work well for mobility as the speed and cripple would let you chase down enemy while also acting as an escape. Weakness would be an additional defence when you are in duels (as melee elites should be in!)

Finally "Death charge" and "Grasping darkness" have their range increased to 1200 to become proper gap closers.

that locust swarm is just ridiculous

@derd.6413 said:that locust swarm is just ridiculous

Why?

@James.1065 said:

@derd.6413 said:that locust swarm is just ridiculous

Because you just gave an already good skill 4 major buffs. Speed, Duration, LF, and Weakness. That's completely OP. If you want these buffs trait Blood Magic for a cooldown reduction and increase in swiftness and swarm and run runes of speed for the 66% speed. I wouldn't complain if they buffed the skill but this is over the top.

The 50% GS cast time reduction is also OP. I think making GS1&2 25% faster would be more than enough. I'd change the Soul Eater trait to give all GS skills +20% range and Life Steal & LF on hits (no CD) instead of periodically but with 25% lower heal gains.

@"James.1065" said:The issue of mobility (or lack there of) for reapers is quite a hot topic.

It surprizes me that Anet discribe a Reaper as a melee orientated elite while having nothing in terms of gap closers, escapes and hard defensives (like block, extra evades, invunerbity, etc). Not to mention Reaper is probably the slowest hitting Great Sword profession in the game, with very little pay off when actually landing an attack (especially when compared to ranger GS, reaper feels second best - which is odd to me considering ranger should be a ranged class!)

I would like to suggest 3 simple changes that I feel would go a long way to making reapers a more melee orientated elite as intended:

First and foremost, reduce all reaper GS cast times by 50%. No explaination needed if you ever tried playing with it!

Secondly buff warhorn 5 "locust swarm" to gain +66% movement speed and the locust swam buff also adds weakness in addition to cripple. Increase life force gain to 2% and set the duration of both the speed and locust swarm buff to last 15 seconds on the 30 CD. This would work well for mobility as the speed and cripple would let you chase down enemy while also acting as an escape. Weakness would be an additional defence when you are in duels (as melee elites should be in!)

Finally "Death charge" and "Grasping darkness" have their range increased to 1200 to become proper gap closers.

Reaper main here and wow... that's way too much powercreep. Esp. the range increases would make Reaper to a master of everything. Insane mobility, insane AOE and insane CC. The only balanced way to add mobility to the spec would either be put it on dagger because the weapon is nowhere near as strong as GS or into a utility skill on a cooldown of at least 40 seconds (if it is acutally viable and not as gimmicky and clunky as wurm).

Reaper would already be too strong if you just gave it the PvE damage numbers of Cold Shoulder (+5% damage), Soul Spiral (+50% damage) and Nightfall (+50% damage). That shows how in line the spec already is.

ANet wasn't so wrong with their statement that at the moment they don't see much room for buffs. Except the shout buffs which were great - NCSY! gives us a 50% unblockable uptime now in team fights. That's incredible. Now think a moment about your ideas combined with that for a good example of problemes behind your ideas.

What I would have liked to see in the notes was a Spectral Armor duration buff to 10 seconds and a rework of Blighter's Boon (which is useless as a sustain option currently). But that's it.

if only NCSY was instant, could make for some high skilled plays, but might be too broken?

@felincyriac.5981 said:if only NCSY was instant, could make for some high skilled plays, but might be too broken?

Instant NCSY would just make it a crappy version of warrior's signet.

Quick reaper fix guide:

• Death's charge and Death Spiral are now frontal blocks.
• Grasping Darkness is no longer negated by projectile destructs.
• Executioner's Scythe will always apply it's stun the current target instead of picking one target at random to apply the stun to.
• Nightfall does 50% less damage per strike but ticks every 1 second instead of every 2.
• Chilled to the Bone cast time reduced from 1.25 to 0.75 to bring it inline with similar skills on other classes.
• Gravedigger's reset mechanic is removed and Gravedigger's power scaling increased by 25%.
• Entering Shroud resets the cooldowns of all shroud skills. Seriously, you should always have your shroud skills available when you enter shroud.

@"James.1065" said:The issue of mobility (or lack there of) for reapers is quite a hot topic.

It surprizes me that Anet discribe a Reaper as a melee orientated elite while having nothing in terms of gap closers, escapes and hard defensives (like block, extra evades, invunerbity, etc). Not to mention Reaper is probably the slowest hitting Great Sword profession in the game, with very little pay off when actually landing an attack (especially when compared to ranger GS, reaper feels second best - which is odd to me considering ranger should be a ranged class!)

I would like to suggest 3 simple changes that I feel would go a long way to making reapers a more melee orientated elite as intended:

First and foremost, reduce all reaper GS cast times by 50%. No explaination needed if you ever tried playing with it!

Secondly buff warhorn 5 "locust swarm" to gain +66% movement speed and the locust swam buff also adds weakness in addition to cripple. Increase life force gain to 2% and set the duration of both the speed and locust swarm buff to last 15 seconds on the 30 CD. This would work well for mobility as the speed and cripple would let you chase down enemy while also acting as an escape. Weakness would be an additional defence when you are in duels (as melee elites should be in!)

Finally "Death charge" and "Grasping darkness" have their range increased to 1200 to become proper gap closers.

I'm working on schmoozing over the devs about this stuff! And I'm feeling like they are almost ready to commit to these amazing ideas VERY VERY VERY "soon"!

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/58958/eye-on-necromancer-for-2019

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/9804/idea-wvw-only-movement-skills

..leaving it alone in competitive modes, as all the necromancer specializations have a healthy representation in competitive game modes". Just leaving that here.

@"dceptaconroy.7928" said:..leaving it alone in competitive modes, as all the necromancer specializations have a healthy representation in competitive game modes". Just leaving that here.

That was in terms of damage. Not mobility and Gap closers

perma swiftness on necro is possible so no idea where the mobility issue is coming from just trait for itwar horn and spectral walk give you pretty easy perma swiftness

@"wanya.1697" said:perma swiftness on necro is possible so no idea where the mobility issue is coming from just trait for itwar horn and spectral walk give you pretty easy perma swiftness

When people talk about mobility in this game it's mostly about skill that make the player move from one point to another (charge skills/teleport skills). The movement speed isn't really taken into account. Technically you can perma 25% movement speed on most if not all professions and it's also true for swiftness, however being able to chain movement skills fluidly isn't something that all professions can do. And in this regard the necromancer is without a doubt the "worst".

@James.1065 said:

@"dceptaconroy.7928" said:..leaving it alone in competitive modes, as all the necromancer specializations have a healthy representation in competitive game modes". Just leaving that here.

Gotcha. Healthy numbers perhaps in their minds means the spec in its entirety is ok, hence retweaking dmg and that's it for the time being. Not sure if we've ever gone at them as heavily in regards to mobility as damage in the past. Anyway according to the theme 'reaper' we're slow menacing and slow others down rather than catch or escape. Dont get me wrong I'd want the majority of changes mentioned anyday,I mean I'm still emotional over the old speed of shadows.

@dceptaconroy.7928 said:

@James.1065 said:

@dceptaconroy.7928 said:..leaving it alone in competitive modes, as all the necromancer specializations have a healthy representation in competitive game modes". Just leaving that here.

In my opinion the theme has become out dated with all the power creep and mobility/defence buffs given to other professions in the number of blances patches.

This has exaggerated the problem of a themed slow moving low mobility Reaper. Because of this, Reaper's lack of mobility creates another problem that it's damage to sustain ratio is trash. In others words although the theme is good and damage is fine, not having mobility to get to opponents fast enough to put them under pressure combined with only having a non-scaling defense mechanic (Shroud) doesn't work well on higher levels of sPvP when the devs decide to power creep the overall damage levels by 100%.

There is a reason why everyone targets the Reaper at mid: no defenses outside shroud (Which can be blasted from 100% -0 in a matter of seconds when focused by 2-3 enemy, and no way to escape after that.

Yep. That's why we're all a hindrance to the team in the first engagement as we're darting around doing stuff all. Here's hoping we get something worthwhile.

I'm fine with the low mobility. Reaper hits like a truck. As for acquiring more mobility, I am currently testing a build that uses Fireworks runes in WVW. It's fun to watch people try to run away from me with my 25% movement speed + swiftness.

I would revert the change that made mobility skills immune to boons and conditions.

@Sakorath.8910 said:I'm fine with the low mobility. Reaper hits like a truck. As for acquiring more mobility, I am currently testing a build that uses Fireworks runes in WVW. It's fun to watch people try to run away from me with my 25% movement speed + swiftness.

Reaper doesn't do anymore damage than other damage dealer classes though.

@Anchoku.8142 said:I would revert the change that made mobility skills immune to boons and conditions.

I wouldnt.... although a useless necromancer trait that made this happen would be nice in pvp and wvw but pointless in pve. Back in the day that was a key part of necro sustain was knowing that you could hinder enemy gap closers with conditions like cripple and chill.Now we have things that boaster ignoring conditions and things that improve swiftness (traits and runes) and a lot more traits that remove and or reduce movement impairment conditions. We have yet to see runes or traits that counter these kinds of things yet.

@Crinn.7864 said:

@"felincyriac.5981" said:if only NCSY was instant, could make for some high skilled plays, but might be too broken?

• instant cast (though not required would be nice if it was instant cast)
• applies 3 seconds of reveal on hit (needs this badly)
• always applies the 10 vuln on hit
• always strips stability, resistance, and protection on hit

• Death's charge and Death Spiral are now frontal blocks.Death's charge yes... death spiral thats a bit questionable but maybe..... it would have to lose some of its current mechanics as its currently pretty loaded as is for 1 skill as is.

• Grasping Darkness is no longer negated by projectile destructs.Just make it unblockable ez fix (its still going to be buggy though)

• Executioner's Scythe will always apply it's stun the current target instead of picking one target at random to apply the stun to.Im not sure this is a major thing either, Honestly the skill should technically just be partly reworked

• First of all it should at the very least be able to strike 3 targets (your target and/or the 2 closest foes to the landing center of the aoe)

• increase the stun duration in addition to the current damage based on foes hp value

• Nightfall does 50% less damage per strike but ticks every 1 second instead of every 2.I can agree with this 100% Perhaps make this another modification of the soul eater greatsword trait

• Chilled to the Bone cast time reduced from 1.25 to 0.75 to bring it inline with similar skills on other classes.This is not a necessity but its would be a nice QoL although i don't see this as some sort of marvelous change

• Gravedigger's reset mechanic is removed and Gravedigger's power scaling increased by 25%.Needs more tbh 25% is not worth the cd reset going away in its on its own.

• 25% Power scale increase

• Delivers a 2nd strike on foes under 50% hp after a short delay (this strike uses the same damage values as the normal strike)

• Entering Shroud resets the cooldowns of all shroud skills. Seriously, you should always have your shroud skills available when you enter shroud.Thats not broken at all... lol i dont think thats a good way to do it Crinn while i think that shroud skill should be more available simply pressing f1 and getting them all back every 10 seconds for free is not acceptable nor would be looked upon in competitive modes as fair.

You also forgot a few important things on your list

Additional quick fix notesReduce cast times of all reaper shroud skills by roughly 33% (faster at base but not quickness level fast) Flat out QoL and how it should have been done from the start.Reapers Onslaught

• Remove quickness application
• Remove 1s cd refund from auto chain attacks.
• This trait now grants 150 ferocity at base at all times when equipped
• The ferocity bonus doubles while in shroud.
• Augments "Deaths Charge" into "Deaths Pursuit" a new gap close skill that blinks the necro to their target delivering a slash that inflicts heavy damage, and blinds, If this strike hits the cd of all shroud skills are reduced by 20% if it hits the foe from behind or the side the cd reduction bonus is doubled (that includes this skill)

Augury of Death

• Shouts now Life Siphon into hp and life force on hit.
• In addition to the current cd reduction mechanic that this trait grants, all shouts now have their recharges partially reduced when other shouts you use strike foes. 2% per foe struck (the more shouts you run the more you can use them generally)

Deathly Chill

• Increases the effectiveness of chill from -66% to -77% movement and cooldown recharge, and additionally reduces the effective distance of skills that cause movement by an equal amount, Rush, Swoop, Bull charge etc (Blinks and shadow steps are not affected)
• Striking a chilled target grants Deathly Chill stacks at a set interval (1 stack per second). Upon reaching maximum stacks (5) gain Frost Aura.
• • Frost aura now strikes foes around you with ice shards during its duration once per second in addition to its current effects, Deathly Chill build up does not occur while under Frost aura.

Quickness is really good for solo reapers in pve, it needs to stay.

@"LucianDK.8615" said:Quickness is really good for solo reapers in pve, it needs to stay.

I don't think quickness is really "needed" for solo players in PvE, the reaper worked perfectly well without it for years.

@"ZDragon.3046"Wow, you're super greedy here...

In my opinion, ANet don't focus enough on "combos" and I'd rather see them rework things in a way that make combo meaningfull for the necromancer and it's e-spec than all those heavy change that you and crinn suggest.

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@"LucianDK.8615" said:Quickness is really good for solo reapers in pve, it needs to stay.

No but it was a solution to a problem that has many benefits overall.

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@"LucianDK.8615" said:Quickness is really good for solo reapers in pve, it needs to stay.

Augary of death is not that good if anything its life steal mechanic is out of place if you look at the whole top row of traits

If you could be more specific about which part was super greedy I may agree or disagree with you.

In my opinion, ANet don't focus enough on "combos" and I'd rather see them rework things in a way that make combo meaningfull for the necromancer and it's e-spec than all those heavy change that you and crinn suggest.

Well the issue with combos is that you need to relatively have tools to make said combos work. You also need to either be able to instantly 1 shot with a combo or have the ability to sustain until you can make or gain another opening to combo. You also need to be able to execute your combo within a reasonable time frame aka you cant be TOO slow about doing it unless given the tools to keep some one still for a longer period of time than normal when played well.If you mean combo fields then well necro is not set up for that. That would require more heavy changes than the ones we just threw up as we have limited fields that don't accomplish mush when combo'ed. So this also requires a bit more specifics when you say "You would rather see things reworked that make combo meaningful." I dont see changes in my head that would accomplish that and wouldn't be any less greedy than any of the ones between mine and or Crinns.

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:

@felincyriac.5981 said:if only NCSY was instant, could make for some high skilled plays, but might be too broken?

• instant cast (though not required would be nice if it was instant cast)

• applies 3 seconds of reveal on hit (needs this badly)

• always applies the 10 vuln on hit

• always strips stability, resistance, and protection on hitThat suggestion is ludicrously overloaded for a 20s untraited cooldown skill.Quick reaper fix guide:

• Death's charge and Death Spiral are now frontal blocks.Death's charge yes... death spiral thats a bit questionable but maybe..... it would have to lose some of its current mechanics as its currently pretty loaded as is for 1 skill as is.I think you are confusing Death Spiral with Soul Spiral.

• Grasping Darkness is no longer negated by projectile destructs.Just make it unblockable ez fix (its still going to be buggy though)Grasping Darkness is not buggy tho, they fixed it a long time ago. It's just overly penalized due to being negated by all projectile destructs.

• Executioner's Scythe will always apply it's stun the current target instead of picking one target at random to apply the stun to.Im not sure this is a major thing either, Honestly the skill should technically just be partly reworked

• First of all it should at the very least be able to strike 3 targets (your target and/or the 2 closest foes to the landing center of the aoe)

• increase the stun duration in addition to the current damage based on foes hp value3 targets is too much for how much damage the skill does. Also the stun duration is fine. 1.5s is already very punishing.

• Chilled to the Bone cast time reduced from 1.25 to 0.75 to bring it inline with similar skills on other classes.This is not a necessity but its would be a nice QoL although i don't see this as some sort of marvelous changeIt's very necessary in order to improve the ability to clutch with the skill. Moreover Anet has been moving similar skills on other classes down to 0.75s cast. (see Chaotic Release change)

• Gravedigger's reset mechanic is removed and Gravedigger's power scaling increased by 25%.Needs more tbh 25% is not worth the cd reset going away in its on its own.

• 25% Power scale increase

• Delivers a 2nd strike on foes under 50% hp after a short delay (this strike uses the same damage values as the normal strike)

The cd reset has no value. You ain't hitting anyone twice with gravedigger and you will be lucky to hit someone once. The purpose of the change is to make gravedigger worth using. 25% does that because it puts the skill firmly in the 7k-10k critical range, whereas right now it's 5k-8k critical range and 3-5k non-critical which isn't worth the 1.25s cast. You second strike mechanic isn't desirable because it still leaves the skill worthless when the foe isn't below 50%, while at the same time being a guaranteed insta kill against a foe below 50%.

• Entering Shroud resets the cooldowns of all shroud skills. Seriously, you should always have your shroud skills available when you enter shroud.Thats not broken at all... lol i dont think thats a good way to do it Crinn while i think that shroud skill should be more available simply pressing f1 and getting them all back every 10 seconds for free is not acceptable nor would be looked upon in competitive modes as fair.Except you don't enter shroud every 10 seconds, because the cooldown doesn't start until you exit shroud.

• Shouts now Life Siphon into hp and life force on hit.
• In addition to the current cd reduction mechanic that this trait grants, all shouts now have their recharges partially reduced when other shouts you use strike foes. 2% per foe struck (the more shouts you run the more you can use them generally)That would be too much as a full shout build could potentially YSIM every 10s.
  Deathly Chill
• Increases the effectiveness of chill from -66% to -77% movement and cooldown recharge, and additionally reduces the effective distance of skills that cause movement by an equal amount, Rush, Swoop, Bull charge etc (Blinks and shadow steps are not affected)No, that's too brutal. You'd be able to completely and effortlessly lockdown any class that doesn't have passive chill removal. It's too binary.

just scrap it all and stick to the slow theme.dont make the reaper teleport and jump around like a thief - glue enemies to the reaper instead.https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Magebane_Tether_(trait_skill)was one of the best skill inventions of all time. unfortunately on the wrong e-spec :3