Reaper. Where have you gone?

[Agrippa.1693]

@KrHome.1920 said:

@"mindcircus.1506" said:really? I mean in what format?Open World, story, t1-2 fractals, dungeons my reaper is the toon most in need of a serious nerfing.You should try dragonhunter. As much aoe and survivability while being much higher in the dps chart on top.

The only two specs that have noticably less survivability in their dps builds than reaper are thief and elementalist. And these two classes are top dps with 20% more dps than reaper.

Fun fact: with all of these 3 classes you can run the quite forgiving marauder gear and still out-dps a berserker reaper.

You forget that the Thief has the Bounding Staff Daredevil and the Pistol/Pistol Unload Deadeye, which are dead easy to play and you're virtually unkillable because of: Invigorating Precision. Slap on some Marauder gear and you can literally only die if you're afk. Ow ... and before I forget, with still higher DPS than a Reaper can even get near to!I really got a feeling that these people have read somewhere that Necro is the easy 'training wheels' option, which might've been the case back in 2012, but a lot has changed (mostly for the better with other classes), where every single profession has very sturdy and easy to play builds at their disposal these days and literally all of them being capable of outdps-ing the Necro in PvE (if you do a fair comparison, that is!) ....

[Agrippa.1693]

@Anchoku.8142 said:

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Josiah.2967 said:

@"mindcircus.1506" said:really? I mean in what format?Open World, story, t1-2 fractals, dungeons my reaper is the toon most in need of a serious nerfing.

I hate to be that guy; however, if that's the case you might be terrible at the other classes. We have two classes doing 9k more damage then the Reaper is capable of doing in fractals/raids after the last "balance patch". I (a necro loyalist) was finally forced to switch classes for raiding. The difference is just to big at the moment, this difference was enough for me to change. The said thing is when I switched, I realized both of these classes have better survive-ability in raids to.

Well in theory necro (reaper) is able to reach higher number due to the dread trait.However, in practice it's nowhere near possible to have perma fear on a boss even if you drop soulbarbs for fear of death which makes you drop a 10% modifier, to get better access to a 33% modifier.It's comparable to the danger time trait of chronos. With the difference, that Chrono actually has a way to get good slow uptime.

Reaper doesnt have a lot of fear uptime.We have:Reaper shroud 3: maximum of 2 seconds of fear and with alacrity 19 seconds cooldown (I know it gets reduced by autoattacking in shroud)Staff 5: maximum of 2 seconds of fear, with alacrity 24 seconds cooldownSpectral ring: maximum of 2 seconds of fear, with alac it's 30 seconds cooldown. But also has a downside. The enemy/boss needs to walk through it to trigger the fear.

So basically it's just reaper shroud 3 and staff 5.In order to have a near permanent uptime:

To make this easier I'll not use actual numbers but make both 20 seconds cd.So:In one minute, you are able to use both of them ~3 times. That's 3times x 2 skills x 2seconds fear = 12 seconds of fear. So you'd have to use 5 reapers to reach an almost permanent uptime of fear. But that's calculated too favourable.

So theoretically it is possible. Now find a rotation that lets you use both skills on cooldown. Which might be possible. But you loose another dmg source in form of axe 2.

So in order to make this work, we'd loose:

• 10% dmg from soulbarbs
• axe 2 as damage source
• power from might (awaken the pain)

So overall this won't be a 33% dmg buff, just a 10-15% if you keep in mind what we're loosing, which would make reaper a 35k dps spec, max.

Which sounds fine first, but if you look at the condition to reach that number (no pun intended) that's not really worth it and way too low compared to other classes with similar conditions.

Yes, people who point at Dread's 33% modifier and think it's OP probably don't play with it much. Dread's real benefit is the 10 vulnerability for 5 sec and the fact the vuln can cover the fear.

I think because vulnerability in group PvE is usually capped, the extra damage modifier was added. However, fear up-time is very, very low. Fear sources are corrupted stab, a utility weapon (staff), a utility (Spectral Wall), locked behind 2 ICDs (shroud and the longer skill ICD), or on environmental (skill), stolen (skull), or other profession sources. Fear is nearly always used as a pseudo control effect and interrupt. Trying to squeak a third more damage out within a second is pretty hard to do.

Dread is not a serious dps source. It is more of a way to force a condi clear and stun break. It is a flat-out nerf from Unholy Fervor it replaced, which was a solid axe dps trait. For another comparison, Chill of Death was nerfed a lot to bring it down to Dread's level. Compare it to grandmaster traits Close to Death and Spiteful Spirit and you realize it is not worth the discussion.

To recap, Dread is there to protect a Fear's duration and punish opponents without enough condi mitigation. It's almost a noob-trap.

I'm sure it probably would never work, but I sometimes theorycraft to get the full advantage from Dread would be to stack Necro's, right? What about 7 or 8 Reapers in a Raid, all with Dread and their sources of Fear, it stacks duration, so in theory, it could work, right ????Happily ever after, when it really does and it would see play in Raids .... ANet wouldnt think twice to hit it with the nerf hammer within weeks, they normally never miss an opportunity to do this with Necro's .... Like they're now actively doing with Guardians ... right ... ow wait ...

[Skiravor.1257]

@Agrippa Oculus.3726 said:

@KrHome.1920 said:

@"mindcircus.1506" said:really? I mean in what format?Open World, story, t1-2 fractals, dungeons my reaper is the toon most in need of a serious nerfing.You should try dragonhunter. As much aoe and survivability while being much higher in the dps chart on top.

The only two specs that have noticably less survivability in their dps builds than reaper are thief and elementalist. And these two classes are top dps with 20% more dps than reaper.

Fun fact: with all of these 3 classes you can run the quite forgiving marauder gear and still out-dps a berserker reaper.

You forget that the Thief has the

Bounding Staff Daredevil

and the

Pistol/Pistol Unload Deadeye

, which are dead easy to play and you're virtually unkillable because of:

Invigorating Precision

. Slap on some Marauder gear and you can literally only die if you're afk. Ow ... and before I forget, with still higher DPS than a Reaper can even get near to!I really got a feeling that these people have read somewhere that Necro is the easy 'training wheels' option, which might've been the case back in 2012, but a lot has changed (mostly for the better with other classes), where every single profession has very sturdy and easy to play builds at their disposal these days and literally all of them being capable of outdps-ing the Necro in PvE (if you do a fair comparison, that is!) ....

Well thats nonsense. I play both thief and necro. Pp thief has no real aoe, a few unloads and you are out of initiative. Necro is cruise controk easy mode and nothing comes close to it in that regard. I'm fine with that too. There are times when i dont feel like struggling, i use my necro.

[Agrippa.1693]

@Skiravor.1257 said:

@Agrippa Oculus.3726 said:

@KrHome.1920 said:

@"mindcircus.1506" said:really? I mean in what format?Open World, story, t1-2 fractals, dungeons my reaper is the toon most in need of a serious nerfing.You should try dragonhunter. As much aoe and survivability while being much higher in the dps chart on top.

The only two specs that have noticably less survivability in their dps builds than reaper are thief and elementalist. And these two classes are top dps with 20% more dps than reaper.

Fun fact: with all of these 3 classes you can run the quite forgiving marauder gear and still out-dps a berserker reaper.

You forget that the Thief has the

Bounding Staff Daredevil

and the

Pistol/Pistol Unload Deadeye

, which are dead easy to play and you're virtually unkillable because of:

Invigorating Precision

. Slap on some Marauder gear and you can literally only die if you're afk. Ow ... and before I forget, with still higher DPS than a Reaper can even get near to!I really got a feeling that these people have read somewhere that Necro is the easy 'training wheels' option, which might've been the case back in 2012, but a lot has changed (mostly for the better with other classes), where every single profession has very sturdy and easy to play builds at their disposal these days and literally all of them being capable of outdps-ing the Necro in PvE (if you do a fair comparison, that is!) ....

Well thats nonsense. I play both thief and necro. Pp thief has no real aoe, a few unloads and you are out of initiative. Necro is cruise controk easy mode and nothing comes close to it in that regard. I'm fine with that too. There are times when i dont feel like struggling, i use my necro.

You know you have to swap weapons right (to gain almost an infinitive amount of initiative)? It's so easy to play, you can just sit back and relax and deal topdps in any squad during world events for instance. I sometimes even use rifle, which should be more of a strain on my initiative than P/P, and still find it quite easy to maintain initiative (btw, DPS on bosses is insane with rifle, try it).I agree on the AoE part but that's where the Daredevil comes in (and good use of templates). Also unmatched in DPS, btw. And again, Invigorating Precision will keep you alive!

Sure you can use shroud with Necro to soak up damage and probably survive, but you're gonna be useless in the DPS area, which is already not Necro's strong-suit, to put it mildly (in fact it's literally on the bottom of the charts in that area!).

Ow and one more thing with the Daredevil ... have you seen those yellow blocks above your Health Orb, I swear there's 3 of them, I had to pinch myself, but it's true ... and you know what, next to having those 3 lifesavers ... you can actually use them and not loose any DPS ... actually it even boosts your DPS ... crazy, right?

[Thornwolf.9721]

As a revenant player I feel for you, I really do....