Necro Reaper Ranked PVP

[Gainsby.4609]

I have been playing guild wars 2 for 2 years now (probably more) I only have one character. A Reaper. I've only really done ranked PVP and unranked led during off seasons, and only recently have jumped into story content and wvw. But this is about Ranked PVP as a Reaper.

I have tried absolutely everything, every build imaginable, every combination of weapons. I got lucky once into platinum tier during placement, but I always usually end the season in silver 3 - Gold 2 and am no stranger to 10+ losing streaks. There are 3 main problems. Movement, survivability, and stability. With a 4th problem of no counter to invisibility. Blocking projectiles with noxious poison cloud does help, but the skill itself doesnt do much else taking up a spot for probably better skills just to stay alive against rangers and deadeyes who like to attack from a distance.

My build, along with noxious poison cloud is Spectral grasp for pull, well of power for might, stunbreak, and a measly second of stability, and chilled to the bone for 10s of stability which can be stripped anyways. Death magic, soul reaping. And reaper. Vitality and movement, and stun break 3s stability while in shroud. There are matches where I still get tossed around like a ragdoll. And changing or removing any of these makes the eing tossing around even worse.

It's so frustrating playing this games ranked pvp as a reaper. Because I often rack my brain thinking it's my fault for losing, start going through different build ideas, only to lose more and eventually realize that it's the Reaper itself and the team I am randomly stuck with. Ultimately losing hope in trying to get to platinum or ever reaching diamond is just never even a thought. Do it for the gold and have fun... well at least theres the gold. I will say that if we're going to be stuck with random teams, if 1 or 2 is afk and 1 or 2 more are new and randomly running around, at least let us survive a battle solo against 5. If I see 3, 4, or 5 opposing team members coming at me and none of my team is around I know I am dead but I still try and feel like an idiot for even doing so. Can this ever be changed? Reaper would be too OP then right? Can any class solo beat 5 enemy players? I dont want to change Reaper, I want to love it and it's a really awesome class and I want to enjoy it. But I also want a fighting chance in ranked pvp. In my first year I was banned once for cursing too much. After learning ing to play nice, I realized that maybe this isnt the game for me and searched for other pvp games, even tried eve online e which wasn't bad but the time another player spends in the game simply gives them the winning advantage and there is no skill WHEN up against so.eone who has played for a year or more and u been at it for a few months.

Long story short, Reaper can be fixed. It can be made a little better by giving us some skills and abilities that help us stay alive instead of die and give us at least some hope of making it to the top instead of mo hope and just giving up and playing just for "fun" and the gold coins. I feel forced to play a new class, find a different game, or pve storyline which I am trying to make that last as long as possible because that's at least fun and new.

Remember, the problems are Stability. Survivability. And movement. U may think the shroud gives us more survivability but I can assure you, it doesn't. Some are full of fear of the Reaper but don't be. Playing as a reaper, I only see people afraid of Scourges. Which I feel forced to play also. Thank you for hearing my rant. Hopefully some changes can be made with this class.

[Itz Jay.8941]

Actually you will normally find that experienced players will focus the reaper before the scourge because of its peak burst damage, scourge builds its burst much more slowly than reaper does and it is more condition based which can be cleansed. Your first mistake is only ever playing one character in pvp, without playing multiple classes or having an extensive knowledge of each class you're always going to find yourself struggling to climb. Without having a good knowledge of the other classes you won't know how to fight them and how each class can support you in a game. Unfortunately if you cannot climb out of silver then this is a learn to play issue because there are plenty of people playing reaper and other non-meta builds effectively all the way up the ladder. I'm not saying reaper is in a good place but you have no standpoint to make any calls in your situation friend.

[witcher.3197]

Your build is what has to be fixed, not reaper. Some of your setup like death magic is awfully bad, you should first try to play a viable version of the spec before coming to the conclusion that it's bad.

[Gainsby.4609]

@Itz Jay.8941 It's possible to rise up and win with poor random teams too?

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

@Gainsby.4609

www.metabattle.com

Rune Of Speed, start using it on Necromancer builds.

[Tiipi.6750]

Reaper is fine, either you're bad or it's your build.Just don't play greatsword on reaper and it's fine.

[Gainsby.4609]

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:@Gainsby.4609

www.metabattle.com

Rune Of Speed, start using it on Necromancer builds.

Thank you. I have tried it. It's good I used the vampiric greatsword from metabattle last season and I am still here, silver 3 to gold 2.

[NecroSummonsMors.7816]

Despite agreeing with you on the lack of suvavibility under focus fire by enemy team, you should really start playing an actually effective build for reaper, because it hurts me to know you are using death magic as traitline.So here is a proper build http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSwAEd3lVwsYeMHWJOqXntaA-z5gXI9mARHBtXA2NAIf you dont feel comfortable with greatsword swap it for staff, you can do that especially if you face heavy condi enemies.Good variations are also leadership rune to have a 3 condi clear on elite shout, if you feel like you still have not enough survivability go for paladin amulet instead of demolisher, because it is better an alive less damaging reaper than one constantly dead.Advices:

• Learn how to use wurm and spectral walk, these 2 utilies are the key to not get slaughtered as reaper. You place wurm outside combat, go in for the burst, when you are focused or stunned teleport back into your safe place. Spectral walk must be used in the same way, try to use it to mislead people by going into a direction then teleport back and go in the opposite one to create space.
• Learn how to cast grasping darkness and stow weapon, then cast whatever skill you want. Generally the best combos are gs5_>stow weapon-> go into shroud cast executioner scythe(shroud5) then soul spiral( shroud4), you must also learn to cast gs5 stow then cast grave digger.
• Learn to fake cast your shout to bait dodges( cast shout then stow weapon), or combo place wurm close to a fight teleport while casting the shout.
• Learn no port spots on maps, so revenant and thief cannot jump on you.
• Never 1 vs 2 on reaper, it is pointless. You can 1vs1 someone if needed but never more than that. You have to be in team fights at specific times, get in do your burst and get out.

Explore other classes and elite specs learn how they work, because it is best way to know how to counter them.Do all this and you will easily get out of silver-gold and you will be a better player.Dont get me wrong reaper has a lot of problems, but to me it seems you have a long way to improve before starting to worry about how to fix reaper.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

@Gainsby.4609 said:

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:@Gainsby.4609

www.metabattle.com

Rune Of Speed, start using it on Necromancer builds.

Thank you. I have tried it. It's good I used the vampiric greatsword from metabattle last season and I am still here, silver 3 to gold 2.

Keep in mind how rune of speed works. At first, I thought it was bugged and didn't work. But what it is essentially doing, is it does not make you lose speed while in combat. So you run just as fast while in combat, as you would out of combat, while wearing Rune of Speed. This does wonders for your ability to chase or disengage as a Necro.

[Ragnar.4257]

To be honest, it sounds like your issue is focusing waaaaaay too much on your build.

If you take a Legendary player, and give them a joke build, put them in Silver, they'll still be able to climb back up to at least Platinum fairly quickly.

Build isn't everything. A huge part of conquest is knowing where to go, where not to go, when to engage, when not to engage, when to disengage, which targets to pick, which targets to ignore. There are Reapers in Plat-3, who aren't being held back by their build, because they know how to move and what fights to pick. Reaper isn't in a terrible spot, there's nothing fundamentally broken about it. It would only take a few shaves to the current meta builds to push Reaper up to the top.

What I find is alot of players understand "in theory" where they should go, what fights they should pick, etc. but that they don't have the discipline to follow this theory in practice. Once they're in-game, the red mist descends and they just "have" to kill a particular enemy, and they ignore their theory-knowledge which says "I shouldn't fight a bunker on a node they own". Or, they do eventually remember, but only after 2+ minutes of trying to fight the bunker. Or they know "in theory" that they should be focusing captures, but they just can't help chasing a spellbreaker miles off point. Or they recognise that a particular enemy is hard-countering them 1v1, but rather than acknowledge that and go do something else, they get "angry" and keep throwing themselves into a losing 1v1 over and over.

Build is an aspect, but I think you should look very critically at how disciplined you are on other aspects. Often there isn't much mechanical or build difference between a Gold-2 and a Plat-2, the difference is the Plat-2 will recognise IMMEDIATELY that they should/shouldn't be doing something, whereas the Gold-2 will only recognise it 10 seconds later, and 10 seconds is the difference between winning and losing.

[Gainsby.4609]

@Ragnar.4257 Thank you for that response. You've all been helpful so far, thank you.

[Interpretor.3091]

[Gainsby.4609]

Yes Hollts vids, I am subbed.

[Gainsby.4609]

My vids if anyone is interested. I dont run that build currently.

[Vancho.8750]

The only problem with reaper is the existence of scourge, hard counters it and it is in the same role. I wish it has shorted cd on shroud so you can flash it do soak some damage(since all the POF specks are spam heavy on short cd) when you need to and some get some shroud on demand button. Reaper is pretty good till first part of p2 at this point you have to play duo meta and maybe reroll scourge.I feel like Reaper could be their closest to "balanced" profession huge burst but with drawbacks (too many compared to everything else), wish they applied it to the rest of the professions and say this elite is good at this and bad at this, instead of pushing the one man army god levels on some stuff.

[Ragnar.4257]

So a few comments on your vid.

1st, clicking your utility skills is definitely going to hold you back. It means you aren't as quick to stunbreak, and you don't have as much freedom with the camera to look about. If you're using your mouse to click, you can't be using it to look about for what's going on. A few times you get side-swiped, which you would've known was coming if you were able to be looking around. If you watch videos from the pro players, they're constantly swinging their camera about to keep an eye on what's happening.

2nd, at the 11:10 marker, there are 3 of you capping an un-contested mid, while you lose both the side-nodes. The instant that all the hostiles were down, 2 of you should have been heading off to reclaim the sides. Nobody in Plat would be standing around for that long. Again, at the 20:30 marker, there's 2 of you just standing on mid. At that point, it probably is correct to hold on mid rather than push, but you should at least be looking around a bit to see where the enemy will come from; where you stand you literally can't see anything.

3rd, pretty much every fight, you use all of your utilities at once, right at the start. That's fine if you can 100% guaruntee an insta-kill, but otherwise it leaves you with nothing left after the first 5 seconds. It also suggests you aren't really looking at whether it's a good time to use them or not; just get them all out ASAP. Your Well you want to save for when you're CC'd or conditioned, not at the start. And Spectral Grasp you want to save for when someone is kiting or running, there's no value in using it when they're up in your face.

4th, at the 18:50 marker, you get a holosmith down, good stuff, but then you completely ignore it, and tunnel-vision on the dragonhunter. The holosmith nearly gets rezzed back up by their revenant that comes in, and it appears that your dragonhunter gets himself killed securing the holosmith. If you had helped your own DH secure the kill, then you might have been able to turn that fight around.

5th, at 21:30, you leave their holo to bleed-out in down-state. But then you leave, and if you watch the minimap, you see that the holosmith gets rezzed and then kills your soulbeast. If you're going to bleed a downed, then you must keep an eye on it. If you can't keep an eye on it, you should just take the kill.

6th, at the 12:15 marker, you let the enemy DH revive the downed Renegade literally in front of your face. ???

7th, at the 12:30 marker, you face-plant directly into their Scourge's Ghastly Breach. That animation should be the biggest "dodge now" cue.

8th, at the 19:50 marker, you ask "did the skyhammer happen?", when the skyhammer capture-bar is staring you in the face in the top-right of the screen, and then at 20:10 you say "I didn't even know it was still going on". That's..... a basic lack of awareness.

Now, nobody's perfect, but there are mistakes happening there which nobody in Plat would be doing. If you're making those mistakes, and they aren't, well...... it's kind of obvious who's going to end up in Plat and who isn't. To be brutally honest, when I watch that video, I don't see a Plat player who is being held back by their build and/or team. I see a Silver player.

I would highly recommend WoodenPotatoes2 channel, where he does in-depth break-downs of games, both his own and other peoples. It gives a good insight into what you need to be thinking about during the game.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC07_U_mN9-gljJkwcGbifcQ/videos

[MyPuppy.8970]

@Gainsby.4609 said:@Itz Jay.8941 It's possible to rise up and win with poor random teams too?

I was placed in silver 1 or 2 this Season, and i'm now in plat with a core dd ele build, only solo Qing. So i'd say yes.

[Gamble.4580]

@"Gainsby.4609" said:I have been playing guild wars 2 for 2 years now (probably more) I only have one character. A Reaper. I've only really done ranked PVP and unranked led during off seasons, and only recently have jumped into story content and wvw. But this is about Ranked PVP as a Reaper.

I have tried absolutely everything, every build imaginable, every combination of weapons. I got lucky once into platinum tier during placement, but I always usually end the season in silver 3 - Gold 2 and am no stranger to 10+ losing streaks. There are 3 main problems. Movement, survivability, and stability. With a 4th problem of no counter to invisibility. Blocking projectiles with noxious poison cloud does help, but the skill itself doesnt do much else taking up a spot for probably better skills just to stay alive against rangers and deadeyes who like to attack from a distance.

My build, along with noxious poison cloud is Spectral grasp for pull, well of power for might, stunbreak, and a measly second of stability, and chilled to the bone for 10s of stability which can be stripped anyways. Death magic, soul reaping. And reaper. Vitality and movement, and stun break 3s stability while in shroud. There are matches where I still get tossed around like a ragdoll. And changing or removing any of these makes the eing tossing around even worse.

It's so frustrating playing this games ranked pvp as a reaper. Because I often rack my brain thinking it's my fault for losing, start going through different build ideas, only to lose more and eventually realize that it's the Reaper itself and the team I am randomly stuck with. Ultimately losing hope in trying to get to platinum or ever reaching diamond is just never even a thought. Do it for the gold and have fun... well at least theres the gold. I will say that if we're going to be stuck with random teams, if 1 or 2 is afk and 1 or 2 more are new and randomly running around, at least let us survive a battle solo against 5. If I see 3, 4, or 5 opposing team members coming at me and none of my team is around I know I am dead but I still try and feel like an idiot for even doing so. Can this ever be changed? Reaper would be too OP then right? Can any class solo beat 5 enemy players? I dont want to change Reaper, I want to love it and it's a really awesome class and I want to enjoy it. But I also want a fighting chance in ranked pvp. In my first year I was banned once for cursing too much. After learning ing to play nice, I realized that maybe this isnt the game for me and searched for other pvp games, even tried eve online e which wasn't bad but the time another player spends in the game simply gives them the winning advantage and there is no skill WHEN up against so.eone who has played for a year or more and u been at it for a few months.

Long story short, Reaper can be fixed. It can be made a little better by giving us some skills and abilities that help us stay alive instead of die and give us at least some hope of making it to the top instead of mo hope and just giving up and playing just for "fun" and the gold coins. I feel forced to play a new class, find a different game, or pve storyline which I am trying to make that last as long as possible because that's at least fun and new.

Remember, the problems are Stability. Survivability. And movement. U may think the shroud gives us more survivability but I can assure you, it doesn't. Some are full of fear of the Reaper but don't be. Playing as a reaper, I only see people afraid of Scourges. Which I feel forced to play also. Thank you for hearing my rant. Hopefully some changes can be made with this class.

Hey I have watched your videos for ast 2 months as I always check YouTube out see if anyone finds new tricks or w/e with reaper.Firstly you seem to by your videos want a team on point fighting role instead of anti roamer.That’s fine but you have the wrong build for it.I main reaper to, I do ok on it but I only play gw2 when I am stoned so sometimes I can play plat level other time gold lol but it’s defo a plat class for ranked. AT not really but ranked defo.If u ever want to duo or play some unranked I defo happy to play with u buddy as u seem like a fun guy to chat to lol.

I am on Na but play eu time as I am from and live in UK. Hit me up anytime bro!!I prob not best person to ask but I can give u some builds if u like.Never switch builds myself as found one I like and went yeah this isnthe play style for me. but don’t do that... I really don’t care about the rating and that’s the first step to improve bro.Reaper is a great and fun class to play and stick to it but u first need to find a play style u like on it then make a build for that and just practice and play./w me my reapers name is Gambal. Me be a fan so invite me lol always wanted to duo reaper but other reapers don’t like me and never accept a duo. :(

[Gainsby.4609]

@Gamble.4580 Sounds good Gambal, thank you.