Comprehensive Reaper Rework

[DeceiverX.8361]

Okay, so reaper is a hot mess since the changes to VP, SoS, and shroud degen and is basically out-classed by everything. In every environment. In every game mode.

I was hoping this would be addressed in the previous patch. Since we're out another 4 months until the next one, might as well get some ideas flowing.

I'll make changes if there are glaring issues, but this is just one madman's response to find a way to make reaper perform well again.

 

Let's take a minute to look at the design goals of the spec and see where things are going wrong. Maybe, just maybe, this will finally get understood.

 

The reaper was basically meant to be this terrifying melee beatstick. It's not supposed to set any landspeed records, but it is meant to be able to slowly close the gap on its foe and really inflict some serious pain if it gets close.

 

Given how necromancer isn't really meant to be extremely mobile, I'm relatively okay with not giving it a million gap closes and teleports like people are demanding. The mobility powercreep is really starting to get out of hand, but this is a spec designed to not so much be mobile so much as having some degree of mobility with a high resistance to being impaired, while impairing its prey. It's that whole "movie monster" thing that was conveyed on its concept release. These kinds of big bads don't step on a piece of glass and bleed out or give up the chase, and they're more than willing to chase for a long while if all the enemy does is run away. And once they get there... the whole point is to really mess their targets up.

 

The necromancer already has some solid mid-range tools and long-range CC as well as two pulls to assist in its melee-specific mechanic, anyways. I really like the concept of bringing the enemy to you rather than just teleporting to them; it's a different approach to melee dominance and can be a lot of fun and very rewarding in the PvP formats. With melee-oriented damage, it also gives the necromancer as a profession the possibility on the design-level to offer some pretty awesome bonus damage.

 

With this in mind, it's important to consider what can make such a concept lose in a fight:

- Kiting and mobility

- Abuse of its slow speed with high speed of your own and weave in and out of combat.

- Ranged dominance/damage

- Stability/resistance uptime

- Immunities and massive burst damage to nuke shroud

 

These are pretty widespread and a lot of specs can opt into these build paths, especially considering that most of these are already dominant in the PvP formats. Things like raid bosses already have CC immunity from break bars, and obviously have plenty of burst.

 

So the overarching design and ideas behind the reaper are sound and make sense for the game and the class: Get in shroud and beat them senseless. It fills some holes and has some defined weaknesses. This is good.

 

The problems it has right now is that if you look at those design goals, the current implementation is contrary to nearly everything it's supposed to do well:

- It's dominated by CC and impairments due to poor stability uptime.

- Condition duration on cripple/chill/immob from expertise negates most of the gains from Relentless Pursuit, which is basically a required trait.

- It has horrible base landspeed such that it can't even keep pace with classes due to a lack of permanent swiftness which pretty much every class has.

- Its skills to close gaps are on too high of cooldowns to use repeatedly over the course of a fight; Grasping Darkness is good but has mediocre range, and Spectral Grasp is on too high of a cooldown and simply too many utilities take way more precedence to cover weaknesses in the kit.

- Most of its strength is split between needing to sustain in combat for long stretches of time (CV, might synergy, Decimate Defenses) while having low shroud uptime to actually captialize on this.

- It's extremely vulnerable to being corrupt-bombed with no way of dealing with it.

- Its damage is okay but it can't follow-through with kills anymore with the change to Onslaught in multi-target environments (Use one kill to spring into the next).

- It has mathematically longer periods of weakness than it has strength (shroud uptime, VP nerf, decay rate).

- Quick melee counter-pressure removes all its defenses and it cannot respond to threats well due to the long cooldown on RShroud.

 

So I understand why the Soul Reaping changes happened: Desert Shroud is incompatible with those old traits (30% cdr + 25 movespeed, 50% decay rate has no effect, etc.) And I understand that while buffing the reaper's damage to insanity, shroud decay was changed so it wasn't camping shroud and dealing too much damage.

 

Problem is, the decay rate changes actually negates a lot of purpose and strength of the concept when you consider its weaknesses. It's now easy to shut down in melee because applying mild pressure while just waiting out shroud will 100-0 its life force, and the entire spec is pretty much designed to be strong by being in shroud in melee; core necromancer is pretty bad at sustaining without rotating shroud, which is intentional, and GS and the reaper trait line lacks the tools to keep the necro alive while outside of shroud as it is, while also having more counterplay/hard-counters. Aside from burst-comboing someone half-afk, it literally has no favorable matchups.

 

We could try to answer this with mobility skills and additional powercreep on the concept level to reduce the number and types of weaknesses it has, but I disagree with this design philosophy. We should be playing into its strengths and allowing other players to utilize its weaknesses to win. This mentality should be expressed with every profession and specialization, but I digress.

 

With this in mind, I've made the following suggestions for change to make the reaper (and some extent necro in general) play better.

 

**Remove the passive decay on RShroud** - I know this seems insane, but hear me out. The reaper is supposed to be damned hard to simply put completely out of combat while it's in its "movie monster" mode. Outside of shroud, this spec is just a core necro and not very intimidating. Its specialization weapon (GS) is slow and has a lot of counterplay. It's got some okay zone denial, but so does staff. If you cut some of the LF generation in the reaper line as a consequence (allowing a better/cooler rework to Soul Eater) and on the GS, you fix issues with some trait paths having too much LF sustain, and otherwise fix the issue with some not having enough. Not to mention, this enables the reaper to spec into other trait lines - particularly Death Magic - and have some damned impressive sustain by being fed conditions. With a lack of bulk cleanse in shroud due to the denial of utility skills, this makes the reaper as a whole a much more potent bruiser, but still have counterplay via cover conditions and denial/soft CC, and rewards players for playing into its (punishing) weaknesses: ranged and mobility. Things like a GS warrior can whittle down that LF bar while outrunning the reaper itself, and then rush in for the kill. Further, with the ICD being standardized on RShroud to 10s as currently due to lack of access to SoS (which was a huge deal in the PvP formats), if and when the reaper does decide to leave shroud to generate more life force, it becomes exposed for a longer period of time than it used to be. Rotating shroud no longer becomes essential, but staying alive outside of it with fewer universal/defensive trait lines than core becomes the big challenge.

 

**RShroud now grants 25% mobility baseline** - Not quite swiftness, but enough to keep up with everyone else's base landspeed. This isn't quite as good as running Signet of the Locust since it won't apply out of shroud when you may need it most while being pressured in its neutered state, but it allows the reaper to at least have some chance of keeping up without depending on a signet it can't activate, or get immediately countered due to a single boon corruption with no means of re-activating what has become an essential combat effect for all professions.

 

**RSAA Chain rework** - Lots of opportunity here to mess with the AA damage numbers where appropriate but also change how the AA chain works. To keep the reaper pressuring a foe and give its condi build more viability, instead of LF gain on RSAA3 (because it's not necessary), it can now apply a short application of chill (.5 to 1s). Now the spec can actually stay in melee by sticking to its target better and its condi option has some nice synergy with Dhuumfire, Bitter Chill, and Deathly Chill, or it can simply opt out of SR and still have some damage access.

 

**Damage cut to Soul Spiral** - With the shroud uptime being indefinite, reaper no longer remains a one-trick-pony where its primary attack pattern consists of F1 -> Spin -> hope they die before you lose LF. This means Soul Spiral can see its damage reverted (which was still good) and feels more fair to play into, and leaves room to make the AA chain more oppressive for PvE like how most other DPS professions need to play. Combos don't really work except in builds with a lot of escapes and negation, and reaper is not one of those specs.

 

**Infusing Terror -> Stunbreak** - Lack of utility skill access during shroud, low mobility, melee-only skills, and an abundance of CC in the game makes for this skill to be a serious under-performer in terms of its stability. With proposed changes below to Onslaught, the skill can gain some big potency for large-scale battles and just acting like the unstoppable bruiser that it's meant to be.

 

**Remove the ICD on CV and no longer gain LF** - Playing with the above, LF can be removed from this trait to be a properly full-offense quick-ramp ability, and with the nerf to Soul Spiral's damage, this can allow a full-hitting combo of Soul Spiral to quickly ramp to 25 might like the reaper was meant to, rather than putting its defensive state in limbo.

 

**Blighter's Boon -> LF removed** - BB would become oppressive with the LF regen and lack of ICD on CV, so I'd change this trait by giving it an ICD of 1s and doubling its healing, and then remove the LF generation component on it due to the aforementioned degen rate changes.

 

**Reaper's Onslaught -> Better resets** - A hybridization of what it was then and now. Previously, it allowed some great group and open-world PvE play for resetting death's charge and allowing re-casts of Infusing Terror. While I see the value of the cooldown reset on AA for raids and bossing, this trait simply needs more capability for PvP and WvW for offenssive, aggressive builds if the RShroud cooldowns are going to be maintained, and the reset-on-kill was just downright more fun in situations with trash mobs. Now gives 1 cooldown refunds on AA and 3s on-kill which is a pretty happy compromise.

 

**Chilling Scythe (GSAA3) -> LF Gain to 3%** - 5% for an AA chain with the proposed degen change is plenty.

 

**Necrotic Bite (DAA3) -> LF Gain to 4.5%** - Prevents a one-AA-rotation lurch of LF.

 

**Life Siphon (Dagger 2) -> Healing upped by 25%** - Giving dagger some compensation and out-of-shroud sustain for Necrotic Bite changes to allow it to give it just a little more time/hp to rotate another AA in for the same LF.

 

**"Your Soul is Mine!" -> Casting LF to 4% and LF/target to 2.5%)** - Again, LF degen stuff.

 

**Spectral Grasp -> CD reduced to 25s, max 3 targets, and LF set to 7% per target** - Makes the skill usable instead of a gimmick and might actually have some nice cohesion with Scourge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

I think you overestimate how long Reaper's Shroud, even without decay, will actually last when you suggest gutting life force generation. Worse, you mention hitting core Necro skills and traits on this front.

 

Considering you're focusing this entire rework on Reaper specifically, you need to keep out of touching Core Necro stuff.

[DeceiverX.8361]

The only change of substance to anything core is MH dagger AA3 dropping down 1.5% across the entire rotation. That genuinely has no effect in PvE and marginal effect at most in the PvP formats, with the bonus healing on Life Siphon designed to offset this by giving a little more extra sustain out of shroud to get in that next quick AA for LF on the first hit of the rotation.

 

Otherwise, LF gain and consumption is strictly better for reaper and could be easily split for core/sand shrouds as reaper shroud's has been.

 

Spectral grasp isn't run anywhere due to its cooldown and ends up a net buff in target-rich environments.

 

[Swagger.1459]

I'll reply to this quote.

 

"Given how necromancer isn't really meant to be extremely mobile, I'm relatively okay with not giving it a million gap closes and teleports like people are demanding. The mobility powercreep is really starting to get out of hand, but this is a spec designed to not so much be mobile so much as having some degree of mobility with a high resistance to being impaired, while impairing its prey. It's that whole "movie monster" thing that was conveyed on its concept release."

 

I'm getting the feeling that there are players who don't really care what the old design concepts and rp themes for this class, or any class, are. The games evolves, yet profession development is only slowly evolving with it.

 

Professions and combat mechanics were built for PvE first. E-Specs were built with end game raiding in mind first. MO (Mike O'Brien) clearly stated in the wvw section a year ago that "the team is looking for balance wins that don't screw over pve"... yet we have 2 other modes (spvp and wvw) that PvE designs don't mesh well with (see struggling wvw and failed e-sports push). These have been issues since launch, and major changes have not been made due to resources. Yes, the devs tried to make a shift with HoT by offering a greater variety of build types, attempting to squash the "not very healthy" zerker meta and make some genuine efforts with profession updates... but here we are years later still begging for substantial improvements to the original design concepts that didn't work out so well.

 

Professions in this game could use a makeover (like other games have done).

 

I'll check out your ideas later when I have time.

 

Edit- And I may be a bit salty when it comes to profession stuff and original designs, but I think it’s justified considering the concept design was to make professions and combat all about offense, the game launched with weak non-heal support designs, the devs intentionally did not want support healers to play any big role (although the devs knew players liked to play healers) and they thought the thief profession brought strong support to teams with their skill sets... particularly “blinding power”... that was dubbed “the strongest support skill in the game”.

[ZDragon.3046]

The only thing i kinda dont like about this is you are cutting life force gen on gs auto i can see it done for the traits if the lf drain gets reverted on reaper shroud though.

Base movement speed would be nice too but it makes all of the other passive move speed things in necros kit even more worthless to just sit around.

 

Make spectral grasp back to 1 target with a 20s recharge holds 3 ammo with a cd of 3-5 seconds between use. This way its not a 1 shot all or nothing kind of tool. But the idea of cutting it from 5 to 3 is still ok ish if the cd gets dropped by that much.

[DeceiverX.8361]

> @"Swagger.1459" said:

> I'll reply to this quote.

>

> "Given how necromancer isn't really meant to be extremely mobile, I'm relatively okay with not giving it a million gap closes and teleports like people are demanding. The mobility powercreep is really starting to get out of hand, but this is a spec designed to not so much be mobile so much as having some degree of mobility with a high resistance to being impaired, while impairing its prey. It's that whole "movie monster" thing that was conveyed on its concept release."

>

> I'm getting the feeling that there are players who don't really care what the old design concepts and rp themes for this class, or any class, are. The games evolves, yet profession development is only slowly evolving with it.

>

> Professions and combat mechanics were built for PvE first. E-Specs were built with end game raiding in mind first. MO (Mike O'Brien) clearly stated in the wvw section a year ago that "the team is looking for balance wins that don't screw over pve"... yet we have 2 other modes (spvp and wvw) that PvE designs don't mesh well with (see struggling wvw and failed e-sports push). These have been issues since launch, and major changes have not been made due to resources. Yes, the devs tried to make a shift with HoT by offering a greater variety of build types, attempting to squash the "not very healthy" zerker meta and make some genuine efforts with profession updates... but here we are years later still begging for substantial improvements to the original design concepts that didn't work out so well.

>

> Professions in this game could use a makeover (like other games have done).

>

> I'll check out your ideas later when I have time.

>

 

While I respect this, both the developers and we as a community need to respect the fact that concepts as a whole need weaknesses. Contemplate the power creep we've been facing and why the competitive scene has fallen apart. Professional players were quite literally in official streams stating that allowing everything to be good at everything has ruined this game's PvP experience. PvE is a numbers race based on encounter design and it always will be. The use of the term "meta" in PvE is downright incorrect; in PvE, it's an __optimization__, and as such is literally impossible to create a perfectly-balanced game-state for all encounters unless there is literally zero diversity. ANet will never be ahead in this regard, and the only way to make PvE in particular not suffer is by changing the encounter designs altogether repeatedly over time to punish the existing optimized strategy. No amount of class tweaking will fix this. Unless there's zero chance for redundancy, there will always be redundancy somewhere. The builds which ran CoF P1 were not the same as those running CM or TA. People ran CoF and the builds it used dominated the scene because strictly speaking, CoF was just faster for gold gain when spammed than the others. Berserker gear had a disproportionately high amount of play in dungeons, but that was because of the mechanics of dungeons only favoring damage (nothing has changed with raids really) than surviving or whatever else have you.

 

PvP environments are a lot more dynamic; in competitive games, metas are created not as optimizations to the game itself but rather a response to the opposing strategy. If reaper for example as proposed above started dominating the scope of the PvP formats, there would be concerted efforts to counter the reaper by playing heavy ranged damage. Into heavy ranged damage, lots of reflects and boons. Into boons, scourge and corrupt necros. Into those, burst builds. And so on.

 

By allowing everything to be good at everything, we end up with an arms race that makes PvP in general just not fun. Too many boons? -> Buff corruption and boon stealing -> Blocks to keep said builds intact. -> Unblockable damage to negate this -> Immunity effects to negate unblockables -> massive power burst damage and Condition pressure to overcome this -> Resistance implemented to overcome this... the cycle just keeps going and going. We're already on this path and it seriously needs to stop. Power reaper was already excellent at its release for this reason and never felt unfair to play against because of it. And it was still a defensibly strong spec. I found tremendous success with it even into Daredevils and other hard-counters because I know the weaknesses of the thief and played into those. It's one thing to make gameplay adapt to some changes and promote healthier gameplay mechanics like cutting down on bursting from stealth, it's a whole other to just keep raising power and reducing vulnerabilities in the design space.

 

The reaper should have some tools to overcome some of the hurdles it may face - like GD and Charge and soft CC as a means to close the gaps that opponents may try to exploit if it plays really well - but it needs those weaknesses to exist in order to be able to be useful at anything while being fun to play both as and against.

[DeceiverX.8361]

> @"ZDragon.3046" said:

> The only thing i kinda dont like about this is you are cutting life force gen on gs auto i can see it done for the traits if the lf drain gets reverted on reaper shroud though.

> Base movement speed would be nice too but it makes all of the other passive move speed things in necros kit even more worthless to just sit around.

>

> Make spectral grasp back to 1 target with a 20s recharge holds 3 ammo with a cd of 3-5 seconds between use. This way its not a 1 shot all or nothing kind of tool. But the idea of cutting it from 5 to 3 is still ok ish if the cd gets dropped by that much.

 

It's mostly just because it's really necessary if what I proposed were to make it through. I'm not asking for a revert but simply removing the degen whatsoever for RS. It's why LF gen needs to come down. It'd be that if you no longer get hit, you'd no longer lose LF, so it'd last much, much longer than both now and before. Reduced LF gain on GS is just a necessary byproduct so that you're not basically full-healing instantly as soon as you leave shroud, since GS is one of the best LF generating weapons in the game.

 

Ammo on pull is clever, but I tried to stick with the theme of the reaper being strong into multiple foes at once, and I think it'd make it a little too strong in 1v1's since it'd require 3 stability or triple stunbreaks to negate, which is very, very strong. It also scales nicely with the LF generation to be a bulk gain upon starting a fight rather than needing to land three casts for the LF to enter shroud.

 

The base movespeed is again only meant to help in shroud due to the fact it's melee-only. With ranged options, I wouldn't have made this change, and I didn't simply ask for the reversion on SoS for this same reason (it also interacts poorly with Desert Shroud). Things like SotL and the QT have purpose outside of shroud which can bring value, and also provide movespeed options for non-reaper builds. Kind of like saying Acro and Daredevil are redundant these days; there's a lot of overlap, but they have their definitive purposes and differences for specific builds.

 

Redundancy is a good thing if it opens up more options that aren't "mandatory" like how VP used to be. Kind of like classes with lots of distributed cleansing options - they have lots of viable builds - which others may not have. The issue is the effects of VP and even SoS are still largely mandatory for the spec to be any good.

[Swagger.1459]

> @"DeceiverX.8361" said:

> > @"Swagger.1459" said:

> > I'll reply to this quote.

> >

> > "Given how necromancer isn't really meant to be extremely mobile, I'm relatively okay with not giving it a million gap closes and teleports like people are demanding. The mobility powercreep is really starting to get out of hand, but this is a spec designed to not so much be mobile so much as having some degree of mobility with a high resistance to being impaired, while impairing its prey. It's that whole "movie monster" thing that was conveyed on its concept release."

> >

> > I'm getting the feeling that there are players who don't really care what the old design concepts and rp themes for this class, or any class, are. The games evolves, yet profession development is only slowly evolving with it.

> >

> > Professions and combat mechanics were built for PvE first. E-Specs were built with end game raiding in mind first. MO (Mike O'Brien) clearly stated in the wvw section a year ago that "the team is looking for balance wins that don't screw over pve"... yet we have 2 other modes (spvp and wvw) that PvE designs don't mesh well with (see struggling wvw and failed e-sports push). These have been issues since launch, and major changes have not been made due to resources. Yes, the devs tried to make a shift with HoT by offering a greater variety of build types, attempting to squash the "not very healthy" zerker meta and make some genuine efforts with profession updates... but here we are years later still begging for substantial improvements to the original design concepts that didn't work out so well.

> >

> > Professions in this game could use a makeover (like other games have done).

> >

> > I'll check out your ideas later when I have time.

> >

>

> While I respect this, both the developers and we as a community need to respect the fact that concepts as a whole need weaknesses. Contemplate the power creep we've been facing and why the competitive scene has fallen apart. Professional players were quite literally in official streams stating that allowing everything to be good at everything has ruined this game's PvP experience. PvE is a numbers race based on encounter design and it always will be. The use of the term "meta" in PvE is downright incorrect; in PvE, it's an __optimization__, and as such is literally impossible to create a perfectly-balanced game-state for all encounters unless there is literally zero diversity. ANet will never be ahead in this regard, and the only way to make PvE in particular not suffer is by changing the encounter designs altogether repeatedly over time to punish the existing optimized strategy. No amount of class tweaking will fix this. Unless there's zero chance for redundancy, there will always be redundancy somewhere. The builds which ran CoF P1 were not the same as those running CM or TA. People ran CoF and the builds it used dominated the scene because strictly speaking, CoF was just faster for gold gain when spammed than the others. Berserker gear had a disproportionately high amount of play in dungeons, but that was because of the mechanics of dungeons only favoring damage (nothing has changed with raids really) than surviving or whatever else have you.

>

> PvP environments are a lot more dynamic; in competitive games, metas are created not as optimizations to the game itself but rather a response to the opposing strategy. If reaper for example as proposed above started dominating the scope of the PvP formats, there would be concerted efforts to counter the reaper by playing heavy ranged damage. Into heavy ranged damage, lots of reflects and boons. Into boons, scourge and corrupt necros. Into those, burst builds. And so on.

>

> By allowing everything to be good at everything, we end up with an arms race that makes PvP in general just not fun. Too many boons? -> Buff corruption and boon stealing -> Blocks to keep said builds intact. -> Unblockable damage to negate this -> Immunity effects to negate unblockables -> massive power burst damage and Condition pressure to overcome this -> Resistance implemented to overcome this... the cycle just keeps going and going. We're already on this path and it seriously needs to stop. Power reaper was already excellent at its release for this reason and never felt unfair to play against because of it. And it was still a defensibly strong spec. I found tremendous success with it even into Daredevils and other hard-counters because I know the weaknesses of the thief and played into those. It's one thing to make gameplay adapt to some changes and promote healthier gameplay mechanics like cutting down on bursting from stealth, it's a whole other to just keep raising power and reducing vulnerabilities in the design space.

>

> The reaper should have some tools to overcome some of the hurdles it may face - like GD and Charge and soft CC as a means to close the gaps that opponents may try to exploit if it plays really well - but it needs those weaknesses to exist in order to be able to be useful at anything while being fun to play both as and against.

 

I understand the things you are saying, but you can still have unique class designs, and class strengths and weaknesses, will still providing optional movement and positioning skills to all classes. It’s not unheard of.

 

[DeceiverX.8361]

There are optional ones already via consume flesh wurm and baiting a chase into Spectral Walk. Wurm is already on a comparable cooldown to most other blinks and shadowsteps. Assuming the foe comes in to strike, an attack or two on RSAA also will help further reset the cd on death's charge.

 

By freeing the movespeed of SotL, one can easily slot either skill if desired. You have a good heal, cleanse on suffer, one of many stunbreak options, and a teleport, with 25% movespeed, a dash on a 6s cd that can reset, two long stuns from Scythe and CttB, and a pull with repeated chill application throughout the kit.

 

That's a lot of sticking power, especially since boon/stability corruption is plenty doable with A/D, GS4, Scepter, or slotting curses on top of this.

 

Reaper genuinely doesn't need much more relative mobility. It's also why Onslaught for resets is so good. It just needs less downtime where it gets hard-countered by everything and needs to not be worse than most classes are when in melee in shroud.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

I wonder how much changing Grasping Darkness from a pull to a knockdown+teleport to right in front of the Reaper would do to help with limiting kiting?

[Swagger.1459]

> @"DeceiverX.8361" said:

> There are optional ones already via consume flesh wurm and baiting a chase into Spectral Walk. Wurm is already on a comparable cooldown to most other blinks and shadowsteps. Assuming the foe comes in to strike, an attack or two on RSAA also will help further reset the cd on death's charge.

>

> By freeing the movespeed of SotL, one can easily slot either skill if desired. You have a good heal, cleanse on suffer, one of many stunbreak options, and a teleport, with 25% movespeed, a dash on a 6s cd that can reset, two long stuns from Scythe and CttB, and a pull with repeated chill application throughout the kit.

>

> That's a lot of sticking power, especially since boon/stability corruption is plenty doable with A/D, GS4, Scepter, or slotting curses on top of this.

>

> Reaper genuinely doesn't need much more relative mobility. It's also why Onslaught for resets is so good. It just needs less downtime where it gets hard-countered by everything and needs to not be worse than most classes are when in melee in shroud.

 

Do you really want to compare movement related and positional skills available per profession?

 

Wurm comparable cooldown... ok, but obviously not comparable design and ease of use as other movement skills... you should know that as a thief main (I believe).

 

Seriously, go roam on a necro and watch competent players out-maneuver and pick you apart easily. That’s what’s been happening since launch, and some of us are pretty tired of needing the safety of the zerg to carry us... This game already suffers from low viable build diversity per mode, and the old narrow concepts need to go.

 

And spvp and wvw have struggled greatly since launch... and that’s due to extremely poor concept design, the way classes perform and interact with one another, pve designs shoved into pvp modes and lack of reinvestment into professions and combat to create a quality pvp experience.

[Crinn.7864]

> @"DeceiverX.8361" said:

> **Remove the passive decay on RShroud** - I know this seems insane, but hear me out. The reaper is supposed to be damned hard to simply put completely out of combat while it's in its "movie monster" mode. Outside of shroud, this spec is just a core necro and not very intimidating. Its specialization weapon (GS) is slow and has a lot of counterplay. It's got some okay zone denial, but so does staff. If you cut some of the LF generation in the reaper line as a consequence (allowing a better/cooler rework to Soul Eater) and on the GS, you fix issues with some trait paths having too much LF sustain, and otherwise fix the issue with some not having enough. Not to mention, this enables the reaper to spec into other trait lines - particularly Death Magic - and have some damned impressive sustain by being fed conditions. With a lack of bulk cleanse in shroud due to the denial of utility skills, this makes the reaper as a whole a much more potent bruiser, but still have counterplay via cover conditions and denial/soft CC, and rewards players for playing into its (punishing) weaknesses: ranged and mobility. Things like a GS warrior can whittle down that LF bar while outrunning the reaper itself, and then rush in for the kill. Further, with the ICD being standardized on RShroud to 10s as currently due to lack of access to SoS (which was a huge deal in the PvP formats), if and when the reaper does decide to leave shroud to generate more life force, it becomes exposed for a longer period of time than it used to be. Rotating shroud no longer becomes essential, but staying alive outside of it with fewer universal/defensive trait lines than core becomes the big challenge.

 

The problem with no shroud degeneration is that if you did that the obvious play would be for a reaper to sit in shroud whenever possible. For example in a conquest setting any smart reaper would just sit in shroud whenever rotating because it would make them nearly impossible to alpha in addition to affording a higher landspeed due to being able to mash RS2 on cd. Such a change would result in reapers simply stacking as much LF pool as possible and just camping shroud literally all the time. (under your changes I'd run a Valkyrie build with spite/Soul Reap/Reaper and would shroud camp all day every day)

 

A better solution would be to embrace the 5% degen and instead cut the shroud cooldown down to at most 5 seconds. Why? Because the cooldown is no longer necessary with the current 5% degen. Used to be back in the days of 2% degen the shroud cooldown was extremely important because necros where generally drowning in LF and without the cooldown it would be nearly impossible to bring down a reaper (especially a BB reaper) without massively outnumbering said reaper. However with the new 5% degen LF has become a highly valuable commodity. The current Reaper is stuck between a rock and a hard place: 5% degen means he cannot camp shroud, but if he leaves shroud he is vulnerable for a minimum of 10 seconds. **Getting rid of the cooldown means that a Reaper can conserve his shroud usuage without worrying about being locked out of shroud when he needs it.** Also halving the shroud cooldown solves a lot of problems without having to fundamentally rework half the class.

 

My dream patch notes are very simple:

- Shroud cooldown reduced to 5 seconds. (down from 10)

- Death's Charge is now blocks all attacks instead of just projectiles

- The range of Life Rend and Life Slash increased to 220. (up from 170)

 

[Warscythes.9307]

> @"Crinn.7864" said:

> > @"DeceiverX.8361" said:

> > **Remove the passive decay on RShroud** - I know this seems insane, but hear me out. The reaper is supposed to be damned hard to simply put completely out of combat while it's in its "movie monster" mode. Outside of shroud, this spec is just a core necro and not very intimidating. Its specialization weapon (GS) is slow and has a lot of counterplay. It's got some okay zone denial, but so does staff. If you cut some of the LF generation in the reaper line as a consequence (allowing a better/cooler rework to Soul Eater) and on the GS, you fix issues with some trait paths having too much LF sustain, and otherwise fix the issue with some not having enough. Not to mention, this enables the reaper to spec into other trait lines - particularly Death Magic - and have some damned impressive sustain by being fed conditions. With a lack of bulk cleanse in shroud due to the denial of utility skills, this makes the reaper as a whole a much more potent bruiser, but still have counterplay via cover conditions and denial/soft CC, and rewards players for playing into its (punishing) weaknesses: ranged and mobility. Things like a GS warrior can whittle down that LF bar while outrunning the reaper itself, and then rush in for the kill. Further, with the ICD being standardized on RShroud to 10s as currently due to lack of access to SoS (which was a huge deal in the PvP formats), if and when the reaper does decide to leave shroud to generate more life force, it becomes exposed for a longer period of time than it used to be. Rotating shroud no longer becomes essential, but staying alive outside of it with fewer universal/defensive trait lines than core becomes the big challenge.

>

> The problem with no shroud degeneration is that if you did that the obvious play would be for a reaper to sit in shroud whenever possible. For example in a conquest setting any smart reaper would just sit in shroud whenever rotating because it would make them nearly impossible to alpha in addition to affording a higher landspeed due to being able to mash RS2 on cd. Such a change would result in reapers simply stacking as much LF pool as possible and just camping shroud literally all the time. (under your changes I'd run a Valkyrie build with spite/Soul Reap/Reaper and would shroud camp all day every day)

>

> A better solution would be to embrace the 5% degen and instead cut the shroud cooldown down to at most 5 seconds. Why? Because the cooldown is no longer necessary with the current 5% degen. Used to be back in the days of 2% degen the shroud cooldown was extremely important because necros where generally drowning in LF and without the cooldown it would be nearly impossible to bring down a reaper (especially a BB reaper) without massively outnumbering said reaper. However with the new 5% degen LF has become a highly valuable commodity. The current Reaper is stuck between a rock and a hard place: 5% degen means he cannot camp shroud, but if he leaves shroud he is vulnerable for a minimum of 10 seconds. **Getting rid of the cooldown means that a Reaper can conserve his shroud usuage without worrying about being locked out of shroud when he needs it.** Also halving the shroud cooldown solves a lot of problems without having to fundamentally rework half the class.

>

> My dream patch notes are very simple:

> - Shroud cooldown reduced to 5 seconds. (down from 10)

> - Death's Charge is now blocks all attacks instead of just projectiles

> - The range of Life Rend and Life Slash increased to 220. (up from 170)

>

 

I can agree with reducing shroud cd instead of removing regen as the way to go here. At most they can do with regards to combat the degen is to increase the lf gen on skills instead of just straight up remove the passive degen which is pretty silly.

[ZDragon.3046]

> @"Crinn.7864" said:

 

> My dream patch notes are very simple:

> - Shroud cooldown reduced to 5 seconds. (down from 10)

> - Death's Charge is now blocks all attacks instead of just projectiles

> - The range of Life Rend and Life Slash increased to 220. (up from 170)

>

 

5 seconds on reaper shroud would be hella generous but so nice at the same time. I really feel like crap every time I willingly exit reaper shroud knowing ill be vulnerable for a full 10 seconds.

If deaths charge only blocke projectiles i dont know they didnt do a dragon hunter thing with it where blocking a projectile causes the strike to do more damage etc etc.

Would you suggest they rework deathly chill allowing reaper to be a full on power focused spec? Or what is you idea for a rework of this trait?

[Aetatis.5418]

slow moving bruiser... certain death.... they said...

 

wtb spellbreaker tether!! it would have been THE opportunity.

you dont pull (although you can), but if something engages you and you go into shroud, you force them to use defensive abilities like blocks/blinding powder/dodges.

they jump away to reset the fight? np, your tether resets aswell.

 

 

 

i dream a lot lately<.<

 

[DeceiverX.8361]

> @"Crinn.7864" said:

> > @"DeceiverX.8361" said:

> > **Remove the passive decay on RShroud** - I know this seems insane, but hear me out. The reaper is supposed to be damned hard to simply put completely out of combat while it's in its "movie monster" mode. Outside of shroud, this spec is just a core necro and not very intimidating. Its specialization weapon (GS) is slow and has a lot of counterplay. It's got some okay zone denial, but so does staff. If you cut some of the LF generation in the reaper line as a consequence (allowing a better/cooler rework to Soul Eater) and on the GS, you fix issues with some trait paths having too much LF sustain, and otherwise fix the issue with some not having enough. Not to mention, this enables the reaper to spec into other trait lines - particularly Death Magic - and have some damned impressive sustain by being fed conditions. With a lack of bulk cleanse in shroud due to the denial of utility skills, this makes the reaper as a whole a much more potent bruiser, but still have counterplay via cover conditions and denial/soft CC, and rewards players for playing into its (punishing) weaknesses: ranged and mobility. Things like a GS warrior can whittle down that LF bar while outrunning the reaper itself, and then rush in for the kill. Further, with the ICD being standardized on RShroud to 10s as currently due to lack of access to SoS (which was a huge deal in the PvP formats), if and when the reaper does decide to leave shroud to generate more life force, it becomes exposed for a longer period of time than it used to be. Rotating shroud no longer becomes essential, but staying alive outside of it with fewer universal/defensive trait lines than core becomes the big challenge.

>

> The problem with no shroud degeneration is that if you did that the obvious play would be for a reaper to sit in shroud whenever possible. For example in a conquest setting any smart reaper would just sit in shroud whenever rotating because it would make them nearly impossible to alpha in addition to affording a higher landspeed due to being able to mash RS2 on cd. Such a change would result in reapers simply stacking as much LF pool as possible and just camping shroud literally all the time. (under your changes I'd run a Valkyrie build with spite/Soul Reap/Reaper and would shroud camp all day every day)

>

> A better solution would be to embrace the 5% degen and instead cut the shroud cooldown down to at most 5 seconds. Why? Because the cooldown is no longer necessary with the current 5% degen. Used to be back in the days of 2% degen the shroud cooldown was extremely important because necros where generally drowning in LF and without the cooldown it would be nearly impossible to bring down a reaper (especially a BB reaper) without massively outnumbering said reaper. However with the new 5% degen LF has become a highly valuable commodity. The current Reaper is stuck between a rock and a hard place: 5% degen means he cannot camp shroud, but if he leaves shroud he is vulnerable for a minimum of 10 seconds. **Getting rid of the cooldown means that a Reaper can conserve his shroud usuage without worrying about being locked out of shroud when he needs it.** Also halving the shroud cooldown solves a lot of problems without having to fundamentally rework half the class.

>

> My dream patch notes are very simple:

> - Shroud cooldown reduced to 5 seconds. (down from 10)

> - Death's Charge is now blocks all attacks instead of just projectiles

> - The range of Life Rend and Life Slash increased to 220. (up from 170)

>

 

While still a major improvement over right now, the way I see this playing out is reaper will just be a one-trick-pony that blows its load on shroud skills and then ends up staying weak most of the fight afterwards, and still ends up extremely susceptible to outnumbered fighting and sustained fights which it's supposed to be able to do well with. The LF degen as it stands doesn't help the spec be a bruiser like it functionally needs to be based on the entire premise of life force/core necromancer.

 

Neither does this change really help its PvE identity crisis, its WvW uselessness, nor its PvP value as something that can be a mean fighter on-point as a melee teamfighter.

 

Maybe zero degen is excessive, but minimal degen isn't really if the shroud CD is kept. There is definitive weakness to staying in shroud for too long; you still end up with cooldowns without a weapon swap, no utilities, no ability to recover life force, and no ability to bulk-cleanse conditions or deal with an opponent utilizing range. This ultimately demands more skillful play and thinking from the necromancer than just dropping the cooldown dramatically, as a response can be likewise argued that "Press F1 to not die and deal tons of damage" isn't particularly demanding, either. A lot of traits and abilities existing on the reaper (like CV) are just rather pointless as with the 5% degen as well.