RIP Reaper

[Static.4258]

Reaper is no longer viable to play in PVE. It's already mediocre DPS was destroyed with this shroud nerf. Reaper heavily relies on shroud for it's Power DPS build/rotation and now that the nerf has gutted shroud, it's also gutted it's DPS.

Was there a reason why we needed to completely kill the Reaper class in PVE? What's the purpose of the Reaper class now?

[Dadnir.5038]

I do think you're over-reacting.

Reaper's dps wasn't "mediocre" before the nerf nor is it "mediocre" now. The proper rotation need you to be 10s in shroud and 10s out of shroud and if you take more than 7k damage within the 10s shroud timeframe then it mean you're doing something wrong.

If you really do struggle, use spectral armor before entering shroud, it will allow you to offset the incoming damages.

Edit: traited signet of undeath can also help you.

Edited March 6, 2022 by Dadnir.5038

[Puck.3697]

Prolly will get sorted in summer patch, the impact it's had on its rotation likely wasn't entirely intentional so I imagine they will be doing something to compensate that with. 

3/4s of the patch got delayed, which is the issue. We got a some random parts of the patch thrown in at launch

[Tobias.8632]

14 hours ago, Daddy.8125 said:

3/4s of the patch got delayed, which is the issue. We got a some random parts of the patch thrown in at launch

 

Source for that?

[Puck.3697]

45 minutes ago, Tobias.8632 said:

 

Source for that?

It was in their initial post concerning balance, it included the posts confirming ranger spirit rework and warrior banner rework. 

They said they had to delay the larger balance changes til summer 2022. 

[Salt Mode.3780]

5 minutes ago, Daddy.8125 said:

It was in their initial post concerning balance, it included the posts confirming ranger spirit rework and warrior banner rework. 

They said they had to delay the larger balance changes til summer 2022. 

Don't get your hopes up with whatever they are putting out. Look at the game's release with the E-Specs. From the first beta till now very little was done to MANY of the E-Specs people had concerns and commented about. The most recent "balance patch" is a pretty pathetic one considering how much time they have on their hands.

If the game had one team and everyone is working on everything that is understandable, but they have a team solely for balancing so there is no real excuse there. 

[KrHome.1920]

The damage you have to take to be kicked out of shroud to mess up your dps (but you are still alive) would kill any elementalist - 1st world reaper problems. Just dodge properly.

[Fueki.4753]

Those shroud nerfs should have been for sPvP, not PvE.

Or better yet, equalize Death Shroud, Reaper Shroud and Harmbinger Shroud, so that not one of them can be used as a second health bar.

[Static.4258]

On 3/6/2022 at 12:25 PM, Daddy.8125 said:

Prolly will get sorted in summer patch, the impact it's had on its rotation likely wasn't entirely intentional so I imagine they will be doing something to compensate that with. 

3/4s of the patch got delayed, which is the issue. We got a some random parts of the patch thrown in at launch

yeah, they sorted us all right... They sorted us by nerfing us further.

[Wintermute.5408]

On 3/7/2022 at 11:16 AM, Daddy.8125 said:

It was in their initial post concerning balance, it included the posts confirming ranger spirit rework and warrior banner rework. 

They said they had to delay the larger balance changes til summer 2022. 

Well, that aged like fine milk.

[Lily.1935]

On 3/6/2022 at 12:04 PM, Dadnir.5038 said:

I do think you're over-reacting.

Reaper's dps wasn't "mediocre" before the nerf nor is it "mediocre" now. The proper rotation need you to be 10s in shroud and 10s out of shroud and if you take more than 7k damage within the 10s shroud timeframe then it mean you're doing something wrong.

If you really do struggle, use spectral armor before entering shroud, it will allow you to offset the incoming damages.

Edit: traited signet of undeath can also help you.

Yeah, this over reaction is kinda getting to me too. I've been testing reaper myself and their DPS is very good. Not outright broken and you will be putting a bit more work to do the rotation than a Mechanist, but that's a bad comparison.

What I'd recommend someone struggling with life force is to drop axe for Dagger. Dagger has a strong auto attack, about 50% stronger and generates life force much faster. You can ignore the axe side of the DPS rotation and focus mainly on GS and Shroud and only swap to dagger when you need to build life force back up and this is a viable strategy. You wont lose THAT much DPS by doing this.

There's also the fact that condi reaper is comparable DPS. If you don't like Scourge or Harbinger condi reaper IS a viable alternative as well. Honestly, people are jumping too hard on reaper when its not bad.

At most it could maybe use a 6%-10% damage bump, but nothing beyond that.

[Bobby.8069]

Nobody was playing Reaper before this nerf. So yeah, not sure why they took away the crit in shroud. I feel like Reaper and maybe Warrior should have always been on the top side of DPS benchmarks. Because they're melee class. Melee loses all kinds of DPS against bosses that move around a lot and bosses that force you to move from them etc. There should be a premium for a class that has to be right in the face of the enemy. Other games like League of Legends understand this. (I know League isn't the same kind of game but has mechanics that work the same. Ranged characters can maintain their tether on the target, while melee has to chase it around).

 

Reaper has great AOE combos, but that doesn't really give you much in the end game content. Every class should be able to have their niche in end game. I don't really agree with talk like, "Well Reaper is survivable and good in story content." Because I love this class, and I grinded my armour and all my +5 infusions and should have a proper role like any other class. What role? Reaper doesn't give boons and such, it does damage! Should be one of the top 3 builds on Snow Crows benchmark. Not average or "okay."

 

But honestly, I'd be okay with them just fixing this nerf and returning Reaper to slightly better than bad. Or maybe a small buff to make them average. It would be fine.

 

 

 

 

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

I play a condi reaper with the food +15% bleeding and almost full grieving, the changes to "Death Perception" + the fury isn't that bad actually and equavalent or superior to dhuumfire.

It's hard to compare with before due to the lack of banners and all buffs.

[Nimon.7840]

On 3/7/2022 at 1:27 PM, KrHome.1920 said:

The damage you have to take to be kicked out of shroud to mess up your dps (but you are still alive) would kill any elementalist - 1st world reaper problems. Just dodge properly.

 

True.

 

But even the tinyest bit of damage taken in shroud reduces your uptime.

On some Bosses that doesn't matter because some adds die and refill your life force.

On other bosses you have to heavily adjust your rotation in order to not take too much dmg in shroud (for example no green VG strat) 

 

Nevertheless: a well played reaper can do solid DPS in raids. You won't be on top of the chart, if you're playing with good people, but most of the times you won't be rock bottom either.

 

That being said: I still believe, that reaper could use some adjustments. And for it being melee while also providing nothing but DPS the DPS is a bit lackluster and could use a bump to like 37k, while Anet should consider to move the healing part of soul eater away to another trait, even though that would hit pvp/wvw builds more than PvE reaper.

Or allow Necro to share might with the spite traitline and keep it's DPS at around 34k

[Lily.1935]

reaper gaining a bit of extra damage would be nice, but there are designs in the reaper traits I just do not like. Although the original theme is cool that theme is somewhat muddy in practice now due to years of balance. Reaper originally was a melee bruiser. Which I think they fill that niche in PvP and WvW. Not so much in PvE. You can't really use them as a viable tank with solid DPS so that's out.

The one trait I do just hate the most in reaper though is Soul Eater. I'd much prefer it to have its old function of adding life steal and not the damage boost. Move that damage boost to Relentless Pursuit. Now that wouldn't buff Reaper's damage a whole lot, but it would be a start.

But then it competes with Chilling nova which accounts for maybe at MOST 1% of your total DPS which life steal on every hit would easily beat that with my preferred soul eater change.

Chilling Nova is a bit on the weaker side too for DPS. Honestly, I'd probably remove its crit chance requirement or change its function to chill on enter or exit shroud.

Chilling Victory I'd really like to see it have added function with greatsword, giving it more condition synergy would be really nice, like changing gravedigger into a chill spam skill along with its other features. Or that could be added to Deathly Chill

Blighter's Boon Should, IMO should reduce the decay rate of shroud in addition to what it does.

Lastly, I've mentioned deathly Chill in multiple posts with Several different solutions to aid this. and I have a whole host of different options that would be great. Any one of these could work.

1.  Make it so bleeds deal increased damage 15% in addition to its current effect.
2. Increase all condition damage by 10% against chilled foes in addition to its current effect.
3. Change bleeding to poison with the same duration.
4. Make it so it changes all outgoing chill you apply into a new condition called Frostbite. Frostbite has high damage stacking condition, like burning but not quite as strong, scales in duration off of chill duration and stacks movement and skill recharge up to 25%(but the frostbite condition can stack higher than that.  So you sacrifice the very very strong 66% skill recharge and movement speed reduction for weaker 25% but you gain a high burst Damage condition in its place.(wouldn't stack the skill recharge and movement reduction with chill from another player, chill's skill and movement reduction would take priority.)

Those are just a couple of ideas I had that could work for reaper. And I came up with Frostbite months ago after playing way too much Elden Ring but never suggested it because of it being a much more complex change than the other options which are much easier to achieve.

Also, recognizing that reaper needs help doesn't mean I agree its dead. Its not dead, however I agree it could use a small buff. 10% in the DPS department puts it in a solid position, although not all fights. Reaper would need to be a tanky GOD to be able to sustain itself in some strikes along with having insane DPS. But that's a flaw with melee vs range, and not specifically a reaper issue.

[Josiah.2967]

I come back and Reaper is worse.... Power Chrono is sad...  I do not understand this game. Why do they keep nerfing things that were not top tier to begin with? From what I can tell I got my sustain nerfed just to get my DPS nerfed...when my spec was already barely acceptable. 

[Ruisenior.6342]

On 3/6/2022 at 6:25 PM, Daddy.8125 said:

Prolly will get sorted in summer patch, the impact it's had on its rotation likely wasn't entirely intentional so I imagine they will be doing something to compensate that with. 

3/4s of the patch got delayed, which is the issue. We got a some random parts of the patch thrown in at launch

Definetly they did XD. Summer patch kicked in and Pve Reaper is dead

[Puck.3697]

5 hours ago, Ruisenior.6342 said:

Definetly they did XD. Summer patch kicked in and Pve Reaper is dead

Yeah that patch wasn't near as good as anyone was hoping sadly lol 

[samsar.9152]

On 7/5/2022 at 2:45 AM, Ruisenior.6342 said:

Definetly they did XD. Summer patch kicked in and Pve Reaper is dead

I disagree. Its not dead. Far from it. 

[Obtena.7952]

On 3/6/2022 at 11:51 AM, Static.4258 said:

Reaper is no longer viable to play in PVE. It's already mediocre DPS was destroyed with this shroud nerf. Reaper heavily relies on shroud for it's Power DPS build/rotation and now that the nerf has gutted shroud, it's also gutted it's DPS.

Was there a reason why we needed to completely kill the Reaper class in PVE? What's the purpose of the Reaper class now?

No longer? It never was really. If you played Reaper before, you still do. I mean, what nerf are you even talking about? Death Perception? You realize that was actually a DPS increase right?

Edited July 26, 2022 by Obtena.7952

[Sjentra.3409]

On 7/26/2022 at 7:58 AM, Obtena.7952 said:

No longer? It never was really. If you played Reaper before, you still do. I mean, what nerf are you even talking about? Death Perception? You realize that was actually a DPS increase right?

Pre-patch theocrafters were saying ~9% dps increase; however post patch the max dps i've seen posted was ~28k which is far below it's previous values (not positive but I'm thinking between 33-35k dps).

It's also been removed from snowcrow's site as a raid spec.

[Obtena.7952]

2 hours ago, Sjentra.3409 said:

Pre-patch theocrafters were saying ~9% dps increase; however post patch the max dps i've seen posted was ~28k which is far below it's previous values (not positive but I'm thinking between 33-35k dps).

It's also been removed from snowcrow's site as a raid spec.

The reason there was a 'raid' spec on SC for Reaper wasn't because it was considered good. It was to provide people with the information on what they could expect from the Reaper spec in a raid. I can only suspect it was removed  because the benchmark has obviously changed and needs to be updated with the new build/rotation. 

Again, the idea of these threads by the OP is somehow Reaper was 'ruined' for raids ... it was never good to start with. If someone played reaper before the patch, their reason to play it now hasn't changed because they never chose it for it's massive DPS. 

Edited July 29, 2022 by Obtena.7952

[Nimon.7840]

On 7/26/2022 at 1:53 AM, samsar.9152 said:

I disagree. Its not dead. Far from it. 

Yes it's not dead, but it's also far away from being good.

On 7/26/2022 at 2:58 PM, Obtena.7952 said:

No longer? It never was really. If you played Reaper before, you still do. I mean, what nerf are you even talking about? Death Perception? You realize that was actually a DPS increase right?

^this

1 hour ago, Obtena.7952 said:

The reason there was a 'raid' spec on SC for Reaper wasn't because it was considered good. It was to provide people with the information on what they could expect from the Reaper spec in a raid. I can only suspect it was removed  because the benchmark has obviously changed and needs to be updated with the new build/rotation. 

Again, the idea of these threads by the OP is somehow Reaper was 'ruined' for raids ... it was never good to start with. If someone played reaper before the patch, their reason to play it now hasn't changed because they never chose it for it's massive DPS. 

Nah. They said they won't be providing those benchmarks 

 

Announcement from their discord server:

"...As new builds have been added, old ones have also been purged. Just because a build has been purged, doesn't mean that it won't make a return if it's deemed to be still worth it. Here's a list of what we have purged: ..."

 

it's just noth worth to provide benchmarks and builds for specs, that barely do the same dps as boon supporters, while playing full dmg, and far less dps than the good builds. It's much more likely, that you will do more DPS on a virtuoso for example, even if played badly, than it is on reaper, even if played to perfection.

[KrHome.1920]

Just play viper harbinger. 38.6k dps. As if ANet ever offered multiple options for viable stuff across the classes (be it PvE or competitive)... but if you still don't want to give up hope: august 23rd is the next balance date according to ANet's post in the profession forum section.

[Dadnir.5038]

1 hour ago, Nimon.7840 said:

it's just noth worth to provide benchmarks and builds for specs

For them what's worth is only what's optimal. There were time when a profession had 3 specs with strike dps numbers like: 34k, 35k and 39k and they just posted the 39k dps build. Because ultimately that's the build most people looked at while they ignored the other 2 builds. The funniest part is that the lower dps builds were more reliable and this very profession lost it's appeal because it's dps was deemed unreliable.

it would be great if these speedrun guild could show 2 benchmarks: 1 for optimal result and 1 for reliable results.