How's Reaper in OW?

[Zei.6537]

Hey.

 

I mostly play solo and try to kill tougher things in open world as much as I can. I've been playing as Mirage lately but I want to try something different and Reaper looks aesthetically pleasing. 

 

I saw a lot of people complaining about Shroud nerfs, so I wanted to ask if Reaper is still good as a solo spec? I've played Firebrand and Mirage before so I am not sure how squishy is Reaper compared to those.

 

thanks.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

Solo overworld, Reaper is pretty good.  As a simplification, Reaper may have a lower cap on any one thing in a group setting than other professions, but it provides itself most of what it would get in a group anyway, so even alone, it's much closer to its cap than other specs are.

Edited October 17, 2022 by Drarnor Kunoram.5180

[Maultrace.5761]

If only healing reaper gets from soul eater could be transfered into shroud to prolong it's active time, it would be on level of viability with others.

Otherwise... scourge is better, at least for big things that take a bit of time to kill, you can pretty much use a wooden stick to kill anything less...

[Asum.4960]

Despite popular belief, Reaper never was a fantastic solo spec - just a low skill floor spec. 

Meaning for players unaware of how to make effective builds or to play them well, Reaper will perform drastically better than most other specs simply due to Shroud carrying both decent offense and defense with one button, which is impossible to completely mess up even with the worst Trait, Weapon and Utility choices. 

 

For anything more advanced/more difficult, Reaper has always been lacking in tools though, be it range to kite, sustain, mobility, Utility access or a diverse set of Utility in Necro as Core in the first place.

In essence, low floor, low ceiling. Hard to mess up at a basic level, but not much to get out of beyond that.

 

All the Shroud nerf did was to slightly erode even that floor, without building upon the ceiling. 

 

17 hours ago, Zei.6537 said:

I've played Firebrand and Mirage before so I am not sure how squishy is Reaper compared to those.

How Reaper compares depends entirely on how well or badly you built your builds on those other specs.

[stormemperor.3745]

Reaper good for clearing weak monsters. For anything at or above elite level scourge or harbinger much better.

[Parpage.9867]

On 10/17/2022 at 8:01 PM, Zei.6537 said:

I saw a lot of people complaining about Shroud nerfs, so I wanted to ask if Reaper is still good as a solo spec?

Reaper is horrible at the moment, you're way better off playing scourge for open world (especially if you're planning to solo events and other similar things). Sure, you can still use it but i wouldn't really recommend it in his current state since they have nerfed him over and over again for literally no reason. 

 

But if you're a reaper enjoyer, here you go :

 

 

[Scalacious.4139]

Reaper deals a lot of damage up close and has high mobility. With the recent buffs to tanks, he is a very good choice to melt them down. His ultimate ability can wipe whole teams with ease. I would say he works well with any team composition on pretty much all maps as long as the enemy team doesnt have flying characters like phara or echo.

[draxynnic.3719]

Used to be pretty godly in open world, largely because it could achieve by itself so much of what you'd normally need a team for. Quickness. Full might. Full vulnerability. Enough bonuses to crit chance that you can skimp on precision and still crit cap without needing fury. 

But... the nerfs...

You can probably still do fairly well with a celestial build like the one @Parpage.9867 linked, but it probably won't compete with a good quickbrand or solo mirage build if that's what you'll be comparing it to.

[UncreativeGreen.2019]

I agree completely that reaper is basically a lawnmower for trash mobs in its current iteration.  Once Elites and Champions come in, it can handle them, it just takes longer/feels worse compared to other E-specs. I ran this awhile back as kinda a joke cause someone mentioned reapers don’t need boon duration. It totally doesn’t, but it worked surprisingly well in OW (which basically anything does) while handling champions a bit easier…. And it was a good laugh.

 

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSwEE6MsMBmCzj1wKxx25t1B-zRJYwRNfZEWKEYFo2lQMJAM1D3/pJErWAA-e

Edited October 29, 2022 by UncreativeGreen.2019

[Aurora.9347]

Like everyone is saying, normal trash monsters and veterans reaper is good because self quickness and a fair share of dmg mitigation for those mobs, mixing elites and champions nvm reaper, you're shroud will literally desappear, scourge is still a god tier solo class in most open world pve, you're much better of using scourge, as for harbringer, it's ok, but scourge is still superior.

[Nabbut.7480]

Reaper can be customized to solo break a champion's bar in one combo (with golem) so he is quite good at soloing lesser champs as well.

[God.5728]

Many times I have to swap to Scourge when I go against a boss and at some point I wonder why even bother swapping to Reaper might as well just stay Scourge.

Yes Reaper can be fun.. Against trash mobs and stuff that doesn't matter that basically any other class can deal with and more easily.

I still like Reaper and I want this class to get a serious balance update this November.

 

Edited November 7, 2022 by God.5728

[Nash.2681]

Just did the Dragon's Stand Meta this weekend with my Reaper. Still worked like a charm.

[Vlad Morbius.1759]

Reaper is in a terrible state right now and they've put virtually ZERO effort into fixing this since they gutted it not long after it launched. Don't waste your time, just play the meta or you'll be horribly disappointed.

[Lily.1935]

On 10/17/2022 at 2:01 PM, Zei.6537 said:

Hey.

 

I mostly play solo and try to kill tougher things in open world as much as I can. I've been playing as Mirage lately but I want to try something different and Reaper looks aesthetically pleasing. 

 

I saw a lot of people complaining about Shroud nerfs, so I wanted to ask if Reaper is still good as a solo spec? I've played Firebrand and Mirage before so I am not sure how squishy is Reaper compared to those.

 

thanks.

Reaper functions at a moderate level in open world. Against weaker mods from core maps and some enemies in harder maps they can do alright. But the flaws with reaper begin to pile up pretty quickly. You need to be aware of your surroundings and how enemies engage with you if you want to be successful in living world maps and EoD maps. Enemies will take advantage of your melee focus and a few of them hit extremely hard. So you need to be very aware of your options and own weaknesses. Enemies that spam weakness can keep you in combat much longer as well so if you lack the confidence in zones where conditions can be crippling account for that. Bitterfrost has a lot of chill so considered taking Relentless pursuit and speed of shadows in an area like that. That's just one example but in most situations consider Spectral walk since its easy to cast and can remove any type of condition.

Is reaper really strong in open world? Core tyria only. Outside of core tyria reaper struggles quite a bit. Scourge will typically preform much better. An example would be dragon's stand. Scourge is just leagues better there for a multitude of reasons. Reaper can be enjoyable even in more difficult maps. When you're fighting trash mobs they're pretty strong. But don't let that fool you. You get into fights in the meta events with mordrem or Chak and you need to be very careful.

Of course from my perspective I run glass cannon builds, so my goal is always to kill them before they can kill me. And most enemies and most champions I can do that against.

[xavios.3601]

Zerker Reaper Shroud 4 is legitimately silly. I get upwards of 75K damage with full buffs. Can probably get more with better runes. 
Ive yet to find something thats not a world boss, that I cant solo on any class/spec. However Reaper is one of my highest burst damage builds. 
Im full ascended with offensive runes/sigils for every class. RS4 scales very well with buffs. Easily triples the base damage, since its so high. 

Only thing I can currently do more burst damage with is BladeSworn. But that requires standing still and charging the ST burst slash. BS3 was it?

[God.5728]

3 hours ago, xavios.3601 said:

Zerker Reaper Shroud 4 is legitimately silly. I get upwards of 75K damage with full buffs. Can probably get more with better runes. 
Ive yet to find something thats not a world boss, that I cant solo on any class/spec. However Reaper is one of my highest burst damage builds. 
Im full ascended with offensive runes/sigils for every class. RS4 scales very well with buffs. Easily triples the base damage, since its so high. 

Only thing I can currently do more burst damage with is BladeSworn. But that requires standing still and charging the ST burst slash. BS3 was it?

 

Please go do a video record of you soloing legendary, champion bounties with your Zerker Reaper and show it to us.

Statement like yours gives the wrong impression to new players on what they expect vs the reality of what a Reaper can do.

All Reaper is good for in it's current iteration is clearing trash mobs and core Tyria content with Shroud 4, end of story.

Edited November 10, 2022 by God.5728

[Ruisenior.6342]

When i played reaper for the first time, i was surprised specially on how fluid, simple, and well rounded it is. 

Like people are saying here it excels on clearing trash with ease, but you can also manage to clean harder/group content with it. It may be not the best solo class tho but if you like its playstyle give it a chance to build the feeling with the class and you wont regret it. 

The video of Lord hizen posted above will help you alot, and it shows him clearing some of the hardest content this game has to offer, i would say the key here is to dodge all posible damage while not in shroud and build up your life force and go all in while in reaper form, I mean press 5-3 and just autoattack 🙂.

Edited November 10, 2022 by Ruisenior.6342