Whats the point of playing reaper in sPvP?

I enjoy playing power reaper, and was able to solo queue my way into platinum 2 this season with it. And while power reaper was never top of the meta, you could do well with it, and could compete.

But nowadays it's so pointless. Holosmith does way better damage than reaper while having better survivability, better mobility, and better CC. Spellbreaker despite only having T1 bursts can still F1 people as hard as a full channel of Soul Spiral does, while having 5 times the survivability of reaper and way better mobility. Mirage applies 15 stacks of confusion just by sneezing, while being able to run circles around reaper. Rangers now have pets that hit harder than gravedigger. Thieves just dunk on reaper regardless of if they are daredevil or deadeye.

Reaper needs serious buffs in damage if it's going to be competitive in the new meta. And by damage buffs I don't mean adding more ferocity to Reaper's onslaught, nor adding some tiny damage modifier with some arbitrary prereq that is rarely met in a practical situation. I mean the weapon skills straight up needs more damage.

Power necro's are big on power stacking and vuln stacking. But even running Hoelbrak Runes with Might sigils reaper stuggles to stack vuln in this cleanse heavy meta, and can only reach 25 might by spamming shroud 1. Meanwhile Holosmith is running around with perma 25 might all the time, and able to instantly drown people in vulnerability just by uses Proton Forge skills.

And looking at the Amulets ArenaNet is planning on adding to sPvP, it's only going to get worse. Anet seems bent on adding more and more damage, and the more damage is in the meta, the weaker and weaker shroud becomes as a defensive.

as a diamond Reaper main......... well was a diamond reaper main... since scourge lol...

Reapers MAIN issue is mobilty... dmg is actualy good if you can land it.... but nowdays everyone learned to abuse their 1000x better mobility againts Reapers... and because majority of reapers dmg come from slow channeled abilities...... well yeah i just stopped playing reaper in Spvp especialy that i have nobody to baby sit me it aint worth it....

everyone with better mobility will laugh at you while you try to waddle yourself to them.......

there is no point playing reaper in PvP especialy in higher ranks where people learned to dance you arround.... the only reapers still playing usualy at lower rating OR have an ele or something that babysits them

^. Unfortunately we're old news and treated as such. I basically watch on staffing/lf genning and jump in when ive watched half of them blow their load. But what a way to play..shameful.

Bbbut... we have shroud ! It doesn't scale though, which makes it useless in teamfights, so we probably rock as bruisers, right ?Oh wait...

More seriously, I don't think main issue is mobility. But rather how useless our tools are when it comes to stick to our targets. Be it ultra low access to stability (we should be kings in that department! Kings!! Especially with all our skills having very slow cast time on top) or everyone and their mother having passive traits to cleanse mobility debuffs.

And yes, Holosmith amount of boons is disgusting. Let see how our dear designers (aka balance team) will hide and dodge every question in the reddit AMA today.

I'd figure maybe you're slightly better at control with the greatsword pull and the gs5 and you technically do have a longer HP bar.

When I get more damage on weapon skills for my Power Reaper, my build feels completely broken.

I destroy Holosmiths in general and I destroy Power-Thieves in sPvP (in WvW it is a bit harder because: more dodges + more damage for the Thief and no Demolisher/Paladin stats for me).

But why not?! Maybe I am just so good that I deserve to faceroll everyone and playing underpowered build holds me back atm ... lol.

This may cause some consternation- but I feel like a simple fix would be to jut make the greatsword swings quicker. Reduce skill 1 to the same speed as guardian skill 1 greatsword. Reduce skill 2, 3 and 5 to shorter swings. That would increase our dps while also helping us in pve because your landing more damage quicker

@KrHome.1920 said:When I get more damage on weapon skills for my Power Reaper, my build feels completely broken.

I destroy Holosmiths in general and I destroy Power-Thieves in sPvP (in WvW it is a bit harder because: more dodges + more damage for the Thief and no Demolisher/Paladin stats for me).

But why not?! Maybe I am just so good that I deserve to faceroll everyone and playing underpowered build holds me back atm ... lol.

If a thief dies to a reaper that thief is bad. I cannot emphasize enough the sheer level of incompetence required for a thief to die to reaper.

Holosmith is literally a upgraded power reaper. It packs far higher damage, with far better mobility and range dictation.

the Design is flawed to the Core....

Lets give him HUGE MELEE AOE Dmg / Dont give him Mobility

Lets give him a Strong Shroud as the only self defence / It degenerates and locks you out half of your abilities and passives....

Lets give Reaper a GS a HARD Hitting weapon / With so slow animations that everyone can get away from it with the most minimal of mobility

Lets Make it a Slow moving killing machine in close range Without mobility / Don't get enough amount of reliable stackable Stability/immune/block to make this work

They made a Slow Melee class without giving it ANYTHING that makes a melee class/Spec in this game actualy work.....

I think reaper and core necro would benefit greatly by completely removing passive shroud reduction, scourge does not passively lose its life force, so you get the full benefit of it. It would also make us a little stronger against thieves because they won't be able to bait our shroud. Shroud was okayish before HoT as a defensive mechanism, but now everyone does too much damage for it to be good.

Death Shroud and Reaper Shroud shouldn't be transformations but a 3rd weapon set. And if we don't have Life Force, it should consume health instead, but never lock us out of it because we had to soak up damage, thanks to our total lack of active defense. Design is a mess since beta.

Honestly... The core of the issue lie in the shroud. They gave the shroud to many roles and failed at making any of these roles really effective.Why do the necromancer and reaper have so may trait that focus on shroud damage but fail at making the shroud damage competitive?Why do we have traits that require you to be in shroud while there is no tool to keep us in shroud?

The shroud traits in their current state favour not being in shroud but still using the shroud. Yeah, it favour scourge. The shroud's traits nature hint you toward a dps role yet all you can do with the shroud is turtle damages or flash shroud to proc when entering shroud trait. This is a waste.

Traits tht promote dmg in shroud but then we're not supposed to be in shroud for max dmg... wtf. Absolute knucklehead design. Did they just have a bunch of ideas crayon'd onto cards throw em in a bucket and randomly draw the alotted few without thought in regards to synergy. HerpaDerP.