What are the key differences between Reaper and Scourge?

[kobe.3150]

As a returning player, who is testing out all the differerent elite specs and trying to find a class i like to play best, i just wanted some general advice and facts on the difference between reaper and scourge and what scenarios they work best in

 

Thank you 🙂

[QuirkyDM.2351]

They are much different. Though it’s not exclusively the case, Reapers are power specs and Scourges are condition. Reaper focuses on chill, chasing down their enemies and bursting for lots of damage. Scourge is about putting up lots of barrier, stacking up torment, and then melting their enemies.

 

 You can find variations of these classes, but these are the “typical” way they are played. Scourge is very powerful right now because it provides sustain and damage all in one shot. Both are quite good though. 

 

 

[KrHome.1920]

Quote

 Reapers are power specs and Scourges are condition

 

This is plain wrong.

[Wintermute.5408]

Reaper is melee-centered, with focus on both condi and power. It has its own melee shroud with different set of skills.

 

Scourge is almost exclusively 900 ranged, with focus on condi and "healing" (barriers, whatever). It has no shroud, life force instead serves as mana for a set of F1-F5 skills.

 

Both are pretty heavy on AOE, though in different manners.

[Modliszka.5027]

13 hours ago, KrHome.1920 said:

 

This is plain wrong.

In general it is not wrong. Condi reaper is inferior to power in almost every possible scenario. As for power scourge it is not that obvious. Power builds are used in wvw, as condi is non-existent in zergs. In pvp scourge is bunker and run "power" due to feed from corruption which is too op, and you have to sacrifice demonic lore for it, and the fact that focus is better offhand than torch, makes sage scourge inferior too avatar. In pve it's simple there are no power scourge builds.

[jpsssss.7530]

Reaper generally runs power in every game mode. Weapons generally are staff/axe+focus in PvP/WvW, greatsword can also work, but generally it can be too slow if you don't have experience with it. In PvE I'd say drop staff for greatsword.

 

Scourge in PvP tends to be a fat boon build by stealing opponents' boons. In WvW scourge runs a bower build focused around boon removal, and a ton of it. In PvE, scourge can do a lot more. Torment is actually good in PvE, so condi builds can be utilized. There is also a support/condi scourge build around that puts up so,e decent dps, healing and barrier/boons but it seems more focused on organized group PvE.

 

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

[ZeftheWicked.3076]

Lotsa hot garbage advice here.

After recent balance patch condi reaper is the top dog necro bar Harbringer which obviously you won't be able to play perma till xpac release (and who knows what will happen to it in the meantime)

https://snowcrows.com/benchmarks

 

With combo field priority fixed and lingering curses giving condi damage to all weapons, reaper is now awesome as both power and condi, with condi being actually stronger. So play him how you like.

Scourge as always is condi and/or support. Power sucks on scourge (least in PvE).
 

Edited August 21, 2021 by ZeftheWicked.3076

[Zalavaaris.5329]

5 hours ago, Modliszka.5027 said:

In general it is not wrong. Condi reaper is inferior to power in almost every possible scenario. As for power scourge it is not that obvious. Power builds are used in wvw, as condi is non-existent in zergs. In pvp scourge is bunker and run "power" due to feed from corruption which is too op, and you have to sacrifice demonic lore for it, and the fact that focus is better offhand than torch, makes sage scourge inferior too avatar. In pve it's simple there are no power scourge builds.

Condi reaper is out pumping power reaper by about 4k so..... I wouldn't say that 

[Infusion.7149]

Condition scourge is easier to play because you don't need to manage shroud and life force as much. All your cooldowns are visible as well.

 

Scourge is able to do damage at range which makes the DPS uptime far higher. Condition reaper relies on the newly buffed lingering curse trait (before August it only applied on scepter) along with Well of Darkness triggering bleeding (via Chilling Darkness which in turn triggers Deathly Chill). Dhuumfire was used before and is still used for condition reapers. Because you lose quickness in shroud, condition reaper generally isn't as good for solo scenarios compared to power reaper.

[Modliszka.5027]

48 minutes ago, Zalavaaris.5329 said:

Condi reaper is out pumping power reaper by about 4k so..... I wouldn't say that 

That's why I wrote almost. In wvw, pvp , fractals power reaper is a way to go.

[ZeftheWicked.3076]

52 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Condition scourge is easier to play because you don't need to manage shroud and life force as much. All your cooldowns are visible as well.

 

Scourge is able to do damage at range which makes the DPS uptime far higher. Condition reaper relies on the newly buffed lingering curse trait (before August it only applied on scepter) along with Well of Darkness triggering bleeding (via Chilling Darkness which in turn triggers Deathly Chill). Dhuumfire was used before and is still used for condition reapers. Because you lose quickness in shroud, condition reaper generally isn't as good for solo scenarios compared to power reaper.

Chilling darkness is just tiny cherry on top. Well of Darkness received pulsing chill stacks along blinds some time ago so it's a great condi reaper tool with or without the trait. In solo scenarios condi reaper is indeed worse off, but not hopeless. There are alternative sources of quickness (Dread trait, sigil of celerity), that will let you get that speed reaper esperience on condi as well. 

[Infusion.7149]

1 hour ago, ZeftheWicked.3076 said:

Chilling darkness is just tiny cherry on top. Well of Darkness received pulsing chill stacks along blinds some time ago so it's a great condi reaper tool with or without the trait. In solo scenarios condi reaper is indeed worse off, but not hopeless. There are alternative sources of quickness (Dread trait, sigil of celerity), that will let you get that speed reaper esperience on condi as well. 

Where are you getting Dread from? You linked snowcrows but their build doesn't even run the traitline that carries Dread, Spite. It's running Curses for Lingering Curse, Soul Reaping for Dhuumfire, and Reaper because it's a reaper.

 

For 1K more DPS in ideal scenarios I would not say it is worth the extra effort. If you need to any mechanic at all or you have pulsed arena damage that eats into life force or high incoming damage in general it won't be superior to condition scourge, especially when 65% of the DPS comes from bleeding. Condi fights such as SH (high incoming damage), Matthias (high incoming pulsed damage and mechanic), TL (high movement), Cairn CM (high movement) or Sunqua Peak are prime examples of what I mean.

 

edit: that doesn't even include instances where you need to range such as on QtP pylon duty

Edited August 21, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Zalavaaris.5329]

2 hours ago, Modliszka.5027 said:

That's why I wrote almost. In wvw, pvp , fractals power reaper is a way to go.

I bet condi reaper in fractals with epi would be siiiick

[Warscythes.9307]

21 hours ago, ZeftheWicked.3076 said:

Lotsa hot garbage advice here.

After recent balance patch condi reaper is the top dog necro bar Harbringer which obviously you won't be able to play perma till xpac release (and who knows what will happen to it in the meantime)

https://snowcrows.com/benchmarks

 

With combo field priority fixed and lingering curses giving condi damage to all weapons, reaper is now awesome as both power and condi, with condi being actually stronger. So play him how you like.

Scourge as always is condi and/or support. Power sucks on scourge (least in PvE).
 

While this is not wrong, I would hesitant to call condi reaper the top dps for necros even after the combo fix in comparison to scourge dps and that is dps uptime.

 

Reaper in the bench has a few things that can be a problem, it requires you hitting your whirling bolts, the boss moving out of your fields, your minion proccing projectile finishers and quickness up time to use your whirling bolts in ice fields. Your BIP self condi will get cleansed a lot before you can dagger 4 to transfer. You are also melee at least half the time.

 

Scourge doesn't really have any of those problems. It's benchmark is much easier to achieve compared to condi reaper. Just remember benchmark is just benchmark, I'd try this a couple more times in actual raid and see how the numbers compare.

Edited August 22, 2021 by Warscythes.9307

[Asum.4960]

5 hours ago, Warscythes.9307 said:

While this is not wrong, I would hesitant to call condi reaper the top dps for necros even after the combo fix in comparison to scourge dps and that is dps uptime.

 

Reaper in the bench has a few things that can be a problem, it requires you hitting your whirling bolts, the boss not moving out of your fields, your minion proccing projectile finishers and quickness up time to use your whirling bolts in ice fields. Your BIP self condi will get cleansed a lot before you can dagger 4 to transfer. You are also melee at least half the time.

 

Scourge doesn't really have any of those problems. It's benchmark is much easier to achieve compared to condi reaper. Just remember benchmark is just benchmark, I'd try this a couple more times in actual raid and see how the numbers compare.

I really wish people were less obsessed with benchmarks (as someone who makes and benchmarks builds), or at least understood that you still actually need to look at the specs to judge their performance outside of benchmarking conditions - with them just representing theoretical DPS in ideal, normalised, situations from which you can then do your research. 

 

This is like when everybody thought Mirage was trash even though it did like 45k+ DPS on numerous bosses for 2+ years while sheer perma evading all mechanics, because Arc wasn't tracking all it's damage and it wasn't able to benchmark well with confusion. 

Or Scourge being straight up kicked from groups for years for bad benchmarks pre-buff/Torment changes even though it has insane DPS uptime in real case scenarios.

 

Likewise, it always annoys me to see builds where you can literally simplify the rotation by 30-80% and bring twice the utility and only lose like 500-1k DPS, which would cause a performance increase (including actual real case DPS) for 99.9% of players and squads - but because that's not the ideal benchmark scenario, no one thinks that far.

Edited August 22, 2021 by Asum.4960

[Zenith.7301]

Scourge is just a better reaper. Unless you have really short lived enemies where power based burst is better, for any organized raid and fractal content the Scourge eclipses the reaper.

 

As a scourge:

 

1-your damage is flexible by range. In 100cm, it doesn't matter if you're forced off the boss because your damage stays the same from range while spread out.

2- You give your group a 2.5k barrier every so often.

3- You give your group aoe condi conversion to boons and free boon strip.

4- Ranged CC built in via shades; makes CC'ing the sorrows when you only have a single epi available trivial.

5- Epidemic. Epidemic makes any add based fight trivial. It cleans up Artsariv easily of the annoying adds during Afflicted instability days. It makes anomalies die on their own so you don't lose group DPS swapping to it. It gives you massive DPS boost on sorrows with 2 well done epidemics letting you stay on the boss.

 

And all of this while doing more sustained DPS than reaper.

 

I use reaper for the fun factor, but since Anet is allergic to giving necromancer good utility outside scourge, and reaper damage is undertuned considering it's a melee spec relative to scourge, reaper is just outclassed by scourge.

[Warscythes.9307]

2 hours ago, Zenith.7301 said:

Scourge is just a better reaper. Unless you have really short lived enemies where power based burst is better, for any organized raid and fractal content the Scourge eclipses the reaper.

 

As a scourge:

 

1-your damage is flexible by range. In 100cm, it doesn't matter if you're forced off the boss because your damage stays the same from range while spread out.

2- You give your group a 2.5k barrier every so often.

3- You give your group aoe condi conversion to boons and free boon strip.

4- Ranged CC built in via shades; makes CC'ing the sorrows when you only have a single epi available trivial.

5- Epidemic. Epidemic makes any add based fight trivial. It cleans up Artsariv easily of the annoying adds during Afflicted instability days. It makes anomalies die on their own so you don't lose group DPS swapping to it. It gives you massive DPS boost on sorrows with 2 well done epidemics letting you stay on the boss.

 

And all of this while doing more sustained DPS than reaper.

 

I use reaper for the fun factor, but since Anet is allergic to giving necromancer good utility outside scourge, and reaper damage is undertuned considering it's a melee spec relative to scourge, reaper is just outclassed by scourge.

 

Well I think you might be underestimating condi reaper a bit here.

 

1) You are absolutely right, range is a huge advantage scourge has. I talked about it in my above post about dps uptime.

2) True

3) condi version yes, boon strip both reaper and scourge does this. Scourge only has scepter 3, F2 need to trait to boon corrupt.  Reaper has gs4 and scepter 3, it just has less access to it because you are constantly weapon swapping.

4) True, though to be honest these days I think you just have alaren do it.

5) Reaper can run epi as well.

 

Reaper actually bench higher than scourge, the latest bench is 39.3k. Scourge bench 35.9k. Yes I know about bench vs real raid situation as I talked about. But Reaper definitely does not have lower sustained dps than scourge in theory.

[Zenith.7301]

Sure, reaper can run epi as well, but he won't benefit remotely from it in a power build whereas a scourge benefits himself on top of his groups.

 

And real world performance is definitely an issue, because scourge is a priority based rotation that's very forgiving whereas reaper builds have to rotate their weapons and autoattack chains appropriately while mentally keeping track of reaper shroud cooldowns which don't even show on the interface. In real world performance, reaper will perform noticeably worse with the average player than scourge because of this.

 

Soul barbs is also trivially played around in Scourge whereas it takes more finesse in Reaper. The minimal amount of management scourge takes is having shades out for the extra expertise and waiting 1 second between each shroud skill to not run into the trait ICD.

 

I don't want Scourge nerfed. For once, necromancer has a competitive DPS and support build with desirable utility.

 

But they need to fix reaper shouts to not be absolute garbage in PvE and make core necromancer utility and elites better to make Reaper not such an obviously eclipsed choice.

 

I do think Last Rites should be moved to soul reaping to make it a more accessible necromancer wide utility, or make it a core mechanic of necromancer to give them some attractive utility, as well as giving reaper more boon conversion hate in the greatsword and shouts.

 

Chilled to the Bone in particular is such an awful elite, 90 sec cd for an inferior CC in PvE to Flesh golem for a mere 2 stacks of self stability. Make it 60 sec cd in PvE and apply slow, weakness, and cripple on top of the chill; increase chill duration and make it also give the reaper protection.

Edited August 23, 2021 by Zenith.7301

[Warscythes.9307]

18 minutes ago, Zenith.7301 said:

Sure, reaper can run epi as well, but he won't benefit remotely from it in a power build whereas a scourge benefits himself on top of his groups.

 

And real world performance is definitely an issue, because scourge is a priority based rotation that's very forgiving whereas reaper builds have to rotate their weapons and autoattack chains appropriately while mentally keeping track of reaper shroud cooldowns which don't even show on the interface. In real world performance, reaper will perform noticeably worse with the average player than scourge because of this.

 

Soul barbs is also trivially played around in Scourge whereas it takes more finesse in Reaper. The minimal amount of management scourge takes is having shades out for the extra expertise and waiting 1 second between each shroud skill to not run into the trait ICD.

 

I don't want Scourge nerfed. For once, necromancer has a competitive DPS and support build with desirable utility.

 

But they need to fix reaper shouts to not be absolute garbage in PvE and make core necromancer utility and elites better to make Reaper not such an obviously eclipsed choice.

 

I do think Last Rites should be moved to soul reaping to make it a more accessible necromancer wide utility, or make it a core mechanic of necromancer to give them some attractive utility, as well as giving reaper more boon conversion hate in the greatsword and shouts.

 

Chilled to the Bone in particular is such an awful elite, 90 sec cd for an inferior CC in PvE to Flesh golem for a mere 2 stacks of self stability. Make it 60 sec cd in PvE and apply slow, weakness, and cripple on top of the chill; increase chill duration and make it also give the reaper protection.

Mate I am talking about condi reaper

[Zenith.7301]

Sure, but if you're going to run condi, why condi reaper? Unless it does significantly more damage, the utility of the scourge is flat out better.

 

And this is totally biased and subjective on my part, but when I run reaper, I don't want to run condi. I want my power greatsword reaper to be what they balance the spec around, not a meme chill damage condi build that only materialized because at the beginning power greatsword reaper was so bad.

[Warscythes.9307]

4 hours ago, Zenith.7301 said:

Sure, but if you're going to run condi, why condi reaper? Unless it does significantly more damage, the utility of the scourge is flat out better.

 

And this is totally biased and subjective on my part, but when I run reaper, I don't want to run condi. I want my power greatsword reaper to be what they balance the spec around, not a meme chill damage condi build that only materialized because at the beginning power greatsword reaper was so bad.

It benchs 39.3k vs 35.9k. That is pretty significant. Yes there are some severe restrictions but if the conditions meet condi reaper is in theory the highest necro dps build in the entire game barring Harbringer.

 

Also none of your suggestion will do anything to fix power reaper's problems. It basically suffer from lower damage, everything else is fine. You fix this by buffing core power necro options and rework one of the off hand into an actual power option like maybe focus, add a 10% modifier somewhere in spite or SR and it's great. Ideally I'd want a gravedigger rework so it doesn't just become another autochain after 50% but I settle for simple fixes. No need to do anything else. Trying to make shouts a viable power damage option in comparison to wells is not just feasible. You'd have to make them do stupid amount of damage or utility for it to work. I am also for nerfing scourge damage by the way and keep it's utility, it should be one of the lowest benchmark dps in the game but it is somehow still pretty good at it's current state, but that's another topic. 

Edited August 24, 2021 by Warscythes.9307

[Zenith.7301]

On 8/23/2021 at 7:58 PM, Warscythes.9307 said:

It benchs 39.3k vs 35.9k. That is pretty significant. Yes there are some severe restrictions but if the conditions meet condi reaper is in theory the highest necro dps build in the entire game barring Harbringer.

 

Also none of your suggestion will do anything to fix power reaper's problems. It basically suffer from lower damage, everything else is fine. You fix this by buffing core power necro options and rework one of the off hand into an actual power option like maybe focus, add a 10% modifier somewhere in spite or SR and it's great. Ideally I'd want a gravedigger rework so it doesn't just become another autochain after 50% but I settle for simple fixes. No need to do anything else. Trying to make shouts a viable power damage option in comparison to wells is not just feasible. You'd have to make them do stupid amount of damage or utility for it to work. I am also for nerfing scourge damage by the way and keep it's utility, it should be one of the lowest benchmark dps in the game but it is somehow still pretty good at it's current state, but that's another topic. 

 

 

Scourge had low damage before, and it knocked it out of usage after the initial PoF nerfs. The main problem with scourge is that the utility is great, AS A BONUS. If it means bringing alacren levels of DPS, though, scourge will never be brought just for a 2.5k barrier and group cleanse.

 

Heal scourge is too situational, can't compete with healbrand (though honestly, no one can compete with a class that farts out the most powerful boons in the game on top of giving them frequent blocks and having trivial access to reflects and a total monopoly on stability and resolution for mechanics+Afflicted instabs).

 

Banner warrior needs competitors in its role just like alacrity and quickness and might stack supports. Power reaper shouts or reworking Herald facets could offer alternatives to the BS support role, etc.

 

Many ways to make necromancer more attractive outside scourge, it doesn't need to be purely damage, as mesmer and ele illustrate because if like mirage or power chrono or weaver all you offer is pure damage, and Anet nerfs you for some hilarious reason, you become a useless class compared to a guardian, revenant, or ranger.

[Warscythes.9307]

6 hours ago, Zenith.7301 said:

 

 

Scourge had low damage before, and it knocked it out of usage after the initial PoF nerfs. The main problem with scourge is that the utility is great, AS A BONUS. If it means bringing alacren levels of DPS, though, scourge will never be brought just for a 2.5k barrier and group cleanse.

 

Heal scourge is too situational, can't compete with healbrand (though honestly, no one can compete with a class that farts out the most powerful boons in the game on top of giving them frequent blocks and having trivial access to reflects and a total monopoly on stability and resolution for mechanics+Afflicted instabs).

 

Banner warrior needs competitors in its role just like alacrity and quickness and might stack supports. Power reaper shouts or reworking Herald facets could offer alternatives to the BS support role, etc.

 

Many ways to make necromancer more attractive outside scourge, it doesn't need to be purely damage, as mesmer and ele illustrate because if like mirage or power chrono or weaver all you offer is pure damage, and Anet nerfs you for some hilarious reason, you become a useless class compared to a guardian, revenant, or ranger.

Bit of correction, Scourge had low benchmark numbers before. It's actual performance was average, not the greatest compared to how busted weaver but it did ok. A lot of the issues was the general population's lack of understanding regarding benchmark vs actual dps  which led to necro memes. The main problem from what I see is that in addition to personal defense, easy rotation and good utility, it also have incredibly consistent dps uptime which means its actual dps is much higher than what the benchmark suggests. You know yourself that benchmark dps is not the same as raid dps. It can be incredibly skewed at times. I am not advocating for alacren level of dps because it doesn't provide enough for that low dps, but I do think the current is too high based on the benchmark. Please remember I am talking about benchmark and in theory it should be one of the lowest if nothing else just because of how consistent it does due to the items mentioned. 

 

 

[Zenith.7301]

5 hours ago, Warscythes.9307 said:

Bit of correction, Scourge had low benchmark numbers before. It's actual performance was average, not the greatest compared to how busted weaver but it did ok. A lot of the issues was the general population's lack of understanding regarding benchmark vs actual dps  which led to necro memes. The main problem from what I see is that in addition to personal defense, easy rotation and good utility, it also have incredibly consistent dps uptime which means its actual dps is much higher than what the benchmark suggests. You know yourself that benchmark dps is not the same as raid dps. It can be incredibly skewed at times. I am not advocating for alacren level of dps because it doesn't provide enough for that low dps, but I do think the current is too high based on the benchmark. Please remember I am talking about benchmark and in theory it should be one of the lowest if nothing else just because of how consistent it does due to the items mentioned. 

 

 

 

I do agree a spec with the flexibility of range and cleave and utility profile of scourge should not be approaching the DPS of a mirage who's bound to melee, has far worse and limited cleave, guts their DPS to CC, and brings zero utility outside hurting their DPS even further for moa signet.

 

Unfortunately, we're at a place where scourge seems to be the only spec not being pushed out by guardian entirely, so it'd be a shame if scourge was nerfed in a vacuum without addressing guardians's busted group utility relative to DPS output.

 

Recently Quickness scrapper is also super busted. 30k DPS while being even sturdier than a reaper and providing a group rez and amazing CC is the kind of firebrand and renegade level of power creep eclipsing prior support builds (just as spirits are the only thing keeping druid relevant, as it's massively outclassed as a healing only spec by the firebrand spec which is not only a far superior and more flexible support spec, but can flex to DPS and quickness DPS roles while druid can only play as a dedicated healer due to how CA and druid traits were designed).

[Konrad Curze.5130]

On 8/21/2021 at 5:59 PM, ZeftheWicked.3076 said:

Lotsa hot garbage advice here.

After recent balance patch condi reaper is the top dog necro bar Harbringer which obviously you won't be able to play perma till xpac release (and who knows what will happen to it in the meantime)

https://snowcrows.com/benchmarks

 

With combo field priority fixed and lingering curses giving condi damage to all weapons, reaper is now awesome as both power and condi, with condi being actually stronger. So play him how you like.

Scourge as always is condi and/or support. Power sucks on scourge (least in PvE).
 

Talking about Lotsa hot garbage advice here.

 

The last patch did nothing to fix fields priority. It failed epicly, and chillmancer is as kitten as it's always been.

 

EVEN if it did, it's real dps would be lower than power due to the nature of the build, which relies almost entirely on getting the full worth of shr #5 and #4 every single time like clockwork, and in most real fights that's just not going to happen, and the moment you miss it you'll see the dps falling off a cliff head first

 

Stop giving advice when it's clear you don't know what your talking about and can't even be arsed to fact check your own arguments

 

Edited August 27, 2021 by Konrad Curze.5130