Patch Notes - 30k DPS Power Reaper incoming

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Suggestion: remove the 1/2% Life Force gain on Soul Eater (it's useless anyway) and add a 10% damage increase for GS skills. This should bring us above 30k without too much impact in PvP.

Please ANet, don't add more shroud-burst too Reaper! WvW is full of "Death Perception" + "Reapers Onslaught" builds now. 1v1 they can be outplayed as they are full glass, but babysitted and freecasting this damage is devastating. I've seen 4k Hydromancy and 6k Spiteful Spirit followed by some nice 4k Chill of Death procs today due to 3,5k power and 260% crit damage.

At least Reaper fulfills its theme now^^ When you get close you die.

[Sigmoid.7082]

Hmmm I can get around 28k with greatsword camp, tier 2 food and stone and no infusions at all. I'm sure someone can do much much better.

And I never saw soul spiral hitting 90k, Most was somewhere like 67k

I'm getting up to 70~80k+ spirals.

Edit: The above is with realistic buffs as well.

[KrHome.1920]

That 90k was full ascended berserk, scholar runes, 18 mighty infusions, power buff food, Spite 122/SR 122/Reaper233 and ALL BUFFS + all condis on golem (!).

Change Awaken the Pain to Dread and you might even reach 100k. (I did not test this)

On realistic buffs you won't hit 90k. That example shoud just show that reaper is moving to a weird spot. The burst numbers are huge but overall DPS is still sub par.

NevertheIess I can see the intention behind this from a PvP perspective. Necro needs over the top glass burst in PvP/WvW as it only can achieve sustain through vitality and toughness gear which will limit its damage at the same time. Other classes just use a block/evade/port.

[Raizel.8175]

I actually like the changes in PvE gameplay-wise. Using shroud is now incentivized and you don't spam Gravedigger all the time below 50% anymore which is awesome. I hope they can fine-tune this a bit without nerfing anything.

[Kam.4092]

@Aetatis.5418 said:

@Kam.4092 said:The damage buffs are great, but people doing tests that don't understand how to do the Conditions and debuffs on golem with the self buffs need to stop. You will always get over inflated numbers. There's a warning for this in the Training Area.

The average was around 28k DPS before for Power Reaper.

The Soul Reaping buffs will make it mandatory for Power Reaper. Gear setup will change a bit for sure. Will have to drop some Berserker gear for another stat like Valkyrie.

I'd estimated being around 31k-32k DPS after the changes. This would sound great for Power Reaper, but will cripple it in another way. You lose Vampric Presence. This was mediocre group support and DPS, but it was at least something to offer. Having highish DPS when not offering much for the group will keep Power Reaper in a crippled spot. The main thing will be burst. If Power Reaper comes out being an amazing burst DPS for Fractals, and multi phase fights, then it will have several uses.

Time to just wait for benchmarks.

soul reaping buffs arent that huge. it looks better than it actually is. since your are not 100% in shroud; the 33% crit chance and 300 ferocity do not count when you are not in shroud - which is the majority of the time.and as nimon said, the vampiric presence adds total dps (but only about 1k-1.5k and not 3k) which makes the two traitlines equal-ish.burst-potential with soul reaping however is increased (!!)

dropping berserker stats for valkyrie equals to a net dps loss, since sharpening stones scale with precision. if you are going for minmax (which we are talking about), this is a nono!

You forgot about Strength of Undeath, +10% damage when above 50% Life Force. Trading the Vampiric Pressence and Vampiric Traits are going to be around a 1,500 DPS loss I'm just estimating. This is also missing out on the group support of Blood Magic.

The previous Power Reaper focused buffs upped DPS by around 2k. This was while still using Blood Magic.

Switching from Blood Magic to Soul Reaping will make up for the Vampiric Presence loss, and also buff damage. I don't expect it to be amazing, but with a Trait tree like Soul Reaping that is all about buffing Shroud, and making it last longer, I see it being a straight damage buff. It's also a Core Power buff as well.

An added 300 Ferocity is +20% Critical Damage. This buffs Shroud by a lot Damage wise, and Soul Reaping increases Life Force generation. It also increases the time we can spend in Shroud. Soul Spiral, and auto attacks will have +20% Critical Damage. Shroud skills have skill recharge reduced with Soul Reaping. This will make Soul Spiral able to be used more in fights, and allow for more auto attacks. The goal would be to always end on 50% Life Force for the +10% Damage.

I think 30k-31k would be the outcome of the buffs. It may be more though. Even with these buffs, it makes Builds like Dragonhunter still preferred over something like Power Reaper due to Dragonhunter providing more utility, and having group buffing.

I think we basically got a DPS increase, but Power Reaper becomes a more selfish DPS spec that offers little to nothing when dropping Blood Magic. It creates a whole new issue.

[Lily.1935]

@ZDragon.3046 said:Just like that scourge meta is gone... :+1: Reaper flood in coming all the pervious scourge players who played it for the damage will be going right back to reaper.All the reaper players will continue to play reaper.

Actually no. Scourge got buffed too. Lingering curse and Furious demise are both pretty good buffs. And the new skill Devouring darkness gives condi scourge some new tech. Still sticking with scourge.

[ZeftheWicked.3076]

You people are getting overexcited. This is not a hard buff, it's a tradeoff.

• Quickness - great for open world PvE to be sure, finally something that makes this trait competitive with blighter's boon. However in raid scenario you're already assumed to have it from chrono so 0 boost there. While in competitive modes it makes you easy prey for enemy necros with their boon corrupt (hello 24/7 slow).
• Strength of Undead - a minor boost that will work only half of the time while shrouded, which is more like 1/4 of total time in combat time since there's also shroud cooldown to deal with. A miliscule buff in reality.
• Deadly Precision - the 300 ferocity is the only real dps buff here, raid wise. But it comes at a cost of reduced precision, which really screwes over core necro. Having 100% crit chance without investment into precision is one of old, tried and defined necro playstyles, allowing him to wear more defensive gear (valkyrie, crusader, cavalier and whatnot). Reaper can endure that little loss fine (decimate defenses), but core nec and power scourge just received a kick in the nuts..
• Furious Demise - ok fair is fair. This is the compensation for lost crit chance in Deadly Precision - half of it is here, but it's a half that will work outside of shroud unlike Deadly Precision itself. Guess core necros get some love back with this one.

[NICENIKESHOE.7128]

Would be interested since my guild raid group does have significant number of necro/reaper lover. Is it possible to chain spectral wall and get 100% uptime for 33% damage uptime?

[Warscythes.9307]

@ZeftheWicked.3076 said:You people are getting overexcited. This is not a hard buff, it's a tradeoff.

• Quickness - great for open world PvE to be sure, finally something that makes this trait competitive with blighter's boon. However in raid scenario you're already assumed to have it from chrono so 0 boost there. While in competitive modes it makes you easy prey for enemy necros with their boon corrupt (hello 24/7 slow).
• Strength of Undead - a minor boost that will work only half of the time while shrouded, which is more like 1/4 of total time in combat time since there's also shroud cooldown to deal with. A miliscule buff in reality.
• Deadly Precision - the 300 ferocity is the only real dps buff here, raid wise. But it comes at a cost of reduced precision, which really screwes over core necro. Having 100% crit chance without investment into precision is one of old, tried and defined necro playstyles, allowing him to wear more defensive gear (valkyrie, crusader, cavalier and whatnot). Reaper can endure that little loss fine (decimate defenses), but core nec and power scourge just received a kick in the nuts..

Well this thread is about power reaper in PvE so other specs are not really looked at.

Quickness is actually more useful than you think because it is entirely possible for chronos to mess up and miss quickness sometimes in realistic situations. Granted it doesn't happen often so this is fairly negligible.

Strength of Undead is 5% extra damage buff plain and simple. You never camp in shroud, you only stay in it for RS4 and 3 auto chains which takes about 5 seconds. Then you leave and maintain the bonus.

Death Perception is a straight buff as well because power reaper already over cap crit by somewhere around 40%. 300 extra ferocity is +20% extra crit damage for 0 loss.

The buff is definitely significant for pve power reaper, the question is that if this is enough. Right now it looks to be no but there hasn't been a good bench yet but I think the spec still needs maybe 5% more damage or so. Though I will hold off on that until there's a bench comes out.

[Nimon.7840]

@ZeftheWicked.3076 said:You people are getting overexcited. This is not a hard buff, it's a tradeoff.

• Quickness - great for open world PvE to be sure, finally something that makes this trait competitive with blighter's boon. However in raid scenario you're already assumed to have it from chrono so 0 boost there. While in competitive modes it makes you easy prey for enemy necros with their boon corrupt (hello 24/7 slow).

But the attack speed from before didn't stack with quickness. But I said somewhere, that this is a buff and nerf at the same time for PvP scenarios.

• Strength of Undead - a minor boost that will work only half of the time while shrouded, which is more like 1/4 of total time in combat time since there's also shroud cooldown to deal with. A miliscule buff in reality.

And considering the high %lf drain in reapers shroud and you getting hit in PvP it's a pve focused very small buff

• Deadly Precision - the 300 ferocity is the only real dps buff here, raid wise. But it comes at a cost of reduced precision, which really screwes over core necro. Having 100% crit chance without investment into precision is one of old, tried and defined necro playstyles, allowing him to wear more defensive gear (valkyrie, crusader, cavalier and whatnot). Reaper can endure that little loss fine (decimate defenses), but core nec and power scourge just received a kick in the nuts..
• Furious Demise - ok fair is fair. This is the compensation for lost crit chance in Deadly Precision - half of it is here, but it's a half that will work outside of shroud unlike Deadly Precision itself. Guess core necros get some love back with this one.

[Hesacon.8735]

I haven't tried it out yet, but is the ferocity from deadly precision tied to being in shroud, or is it a flat boost?

[Aetatis.5418]

@Hesacon.8735 said:I haven't tried it out yet, but is the ferocity from deadly precision tied to being in shroud, or is it a flat boost?

only shroud ofc

[Hesacon.8735]

@Aetatis.5418 said:

@Hesacon.8735 said:I haven't tried it out yet, but is the ferocity from deadly precision tied to being in shroud, or is it a flat boost?

only shroud ofc

Meh, that certainly limits its usefulness for scourge. Still better than it was, though.

[Methuselah.4376]

Everyone keeps mentioning the Reaper's Shroud decay. In PvE, unless I pop it to tank an unavoidable burst of damage, I rarely have trouble with shroud decay and often am out of shroud before I drop to 50% life force. Don't forget that Life Reap does give life force back and if you have more than one enemy, that value multiplies accordingly.

[Ceit.7619]

The only real use I see for personal quickness generation is for split situations where a Reaper might need to go off on their own. (I.E. Sab Cannons) or other situations where the Chrono just might not be able to buff them. It'll still look like an irrelevant buff to benchmarks though.

[Methuselah.4376]

@Ceit.7619 said:The only real use I see for personal quickness generation is for split situations where a Reaper might need to go off on their own. (I.E. Sab Cannons) or other situations where the Chrono just might not be able to buff them. It'll still look like an irrelevant buff to benchmarks though.

Ye but think about how much more independent reaper can be. I LOVE the quickness change because of that. Not everything needs to be in service of the all mighty raid benchmark.

[Loki.4871]

@Ceit.7619 said:The only real use I see for personal quickness generation is for split situations where a Reaper might need to go off on their own. (I.E. Sab Cannons) or other situations where the Chrono just might not be able to buff them. It'll still look like an irrelevant buff to benchmarks though.True but raiding is not the major gamemode and raiders are not the majority players. Most players (in pve anyway) are roaming around on their own or in very small groups and don't have a pocket chronomancer.

[Ceit.7619]

Everyone is pointing out how it is good for open world and roaming. Discussing how it does or doesn't effect raids doesn't suggest it's all that matters, only that it is a conversation to be had.

[Ceit.7619]

@Loki.4871 said:True but raiding is not the major gamemode and raiders are not the majority players. Most players (in pve anyway) are roaming around on their own or in very small groups and don't have a pocket chronomancer.

The topic is talking about benchmark, even lists it in the title suggesting it'll be at or above 30k. Roaming pve does not care about benchmarks, so I don't see what bringing this up helps in the conversation. It's like going into a pvp topic and saying their concern over pvp matters doesn't matter to the majority of players. We have sub-communities. Nothing wrong with us discussing the specifics of that.

[Sephylon.4938]

After playing around with it last night, I can say that dps was improved, but I don't think it'll be over 30k. Unless you build a squad with 5-6 dps necros for fear spamming, and atleat 3 of them are condi for the condi duration boost. Epi bounces+more power damage ?

[Kam.4092]

It's under 30k lol. This is why I kept saying expect 30k-31k. Too many expected 32k-33k...

At least it's higher again.

[Catchyfx.5768]

Ehm ? well we did it

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Finally (!) and it looks as if ANet was aiming for it, as it's an almost flat 30k on a perfect rotation.

[Kam.4092]

@"Kam.4092" said:

It's under 30k lol. This is why I kept saying expect 30k-31k. Too many expected 32k-33k...

At least it's higher again.

@"Catchyfx.5768" said:

Ehm ? well we did it

I like how what I posted got one upped. Yay xD

[Anchoku.8142]

I expect complaints about how "simple rotation" and "tanky" Necro builds now do acceptable dps. A lot of Necro builds received improvements and am waiting for the calls to nerf.