Is Rune of Speed the only way?

[EremiteAngel.9765]

I recently went roaming again on my Reaper...and when up against foes that run in the opposite direction the moment you enter shroud...

I can't catch them at all without Rune of Speed...

[dceptaconroy.7928]

With condi clears easily dealing with our chills and cripples it's a little tricky unless they overextend or get caught in terrain. So yeah, unfortunately we dont have many other options.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

In my experience, you just have to assume that the enemy has the ability to kite your shroud, whether using speed runes or not. So if you plan to use shroud to land a big burst, you need to pin them down before hand.

 

Likewise, if you use shroud for a defense, you should be waiting in your shroud until it ticks down so that your ranged pressure skills can come off cooldown. So if your build isn't very good at gaining life force, this option isn't really available to you.

 

Also just an additional thing is that, Runes of Speed function by having swiftness. So corrupting swiftness will always yield cripple AND a loss in speed from Speed runes.

[KrHome.1920]

Speed rune is overrated. You can not catch targets that kite (and are not awful at it, and if they are, you don't need the rune anyway).

 

The first thing you should lern on reaper is to not become greedy and chase targets. You are putting yourself in an inferior position 99% of the time you are doing this. When someone kites your shroud, you either switch to axe/focus immediately (if you are patient that this will wreck your target) or you do the shroud2 leap to the nearest LOS spot.

 

Thief shadowstep: RS2 in the opposite direction

Soulbeast owl/GS: RS2 in the opposite direction (and you hopefully didn't enter the fight in open field)

Warrior GS/charge leaps: RS2 in the opposite direction

...

Everytime after you did this, leave shroud immediately to set it on cooldown. When your target comes back it is off cooldown again and you are prepared.

 

The slow horror movie monster can't catch targets that don't want to fight.

 

> In my experience, you just have to assume that the enemy has the ability to kite your shroud, whether using speed runes or not. So if you plan to use shroud to land a big burst, you need to pin them down before hand.

Basically this. Mastering GS5 and spectral grasp is what separetes the good from the bad reaper. Baiting the auto stunbreak of your target with GS5 or CttB!, then spectral grasp at melee range (knockdown) into shroudburst is what you should aim for.

 

Stunlocks (RS3, RS5, CttB!, GS5, spectral grasp) are also pretty effective. E.g. you can stunlock a soulbeast for the whole stone signet duration with decent timing and then faceroll it.

 

[EremiteAngel.9765]

Thanks for all the feedback guys.

Another question I have is... is power Reaper the only way?

I was trying to make condi Reaper work but scepter pressure feels kind of weak...

[Shroud.2307]

As I've said in the past, terrain is your friend. You won't always have that virtue but when you do, be sure to make use of it.

 

Many of the outnumbered fights I've won have been because I've dropped off a hill and GS 5'd people in to me, or forced people in to a tight spot, or gotten high ground so I could axe 2, or abused areas that can't be teleported to ( such as the hill closest to Klovan in EBG, or the hill in Rogue's Quarry, etc. ).

 

As I'm sure you know, we don't have the speed to pursue people in an open field, so your best bet is to force people in to chasing you or coming to you rather than going to them. The only time you don't want to do this is against a Ranger with longbow or a rifle Deadeye, but in that case, you again want to be abusing terrain rather than making them chase you.

 

You don't always have to be better than your opponents, just be smarter.

[Hannelore.8153]

Open field with Reaper is painful at best, Scourge handles this alot better.

 

All the suggested skill usage aside, the tried and true method is to abuse your opponent's arrogance, almost anyone will get into an unfavorable fight if you taunt them enough, so always act like you have the high ground, even when you know you are at a disadvantage. This is a general rule of melee in any PvP game, but moreso the Reaper in GW2 because of lack of distance closing..

 

Oh, and remember that Fear and cliffs are your friends. Sometimes you can even Fear people into getting stuck.

 

I've downed entire parties on Reaper in the past due to overconfidence from enemies..

[Sarrs.4831]

I've found the best way to keep enemies close is to ignore them. Just keep moving away from your enemy and they'll have a difficult time actually applying pressure without overextending; when they overextend, you kill them.

[ugrakarma.9416]

with axe #2 distance inst a problem. if your foe is wise, they will prefer stay close than ranged, axe #2 is cruel.

 

ah its wvw, i think was pvp post.

[Famine.7915]

Sarrs got it right. They have to be more invested in keeping up with you. So if you run opposite them, they will be forced to return or restart.

[ZDragon.3046]

Speed is not the only way but its one of the best runes a necromancer can use generally. (I use it more for escapes myself than chasing in wvw)

 

Unless anet reverts the changes to chill or cripple in making them reduce movement skills those conditions wont be effective at slowing down people with multiple gap closers built into their weapon kits even more so when they use them to run away from your shroud attacks.

 

There is also too much condition in the game right now form other professions so people take more clear which means the lesser conditions a necromancer puts out as part of its defense / offensive pressure are less effective right now.

 

Reapers chill is ineffective unless you over invest in it (meaning tons of additional chill sources and about 70%+ chill duration) but that cost you damage and life force generation.

Scourges cripple is decent because it will stick how ever scourge itself is in shambles atm unless zerging in wvw.

Core necro is just a hot mess basically unless your foes make tons of mistakes for you to punish core is no better than it was a year ago. Its mostly at its strongest when used against other necros like reaper and scourge and maybe the occasional ele

 

What Sarrs said is also true but you have to be very careful when employing this tactic as many professions have lower cool downs than you do.

Sometimes a reset for a foe is much shorter than what it will be for you in terms of cooldowns.

[ZDragon.3046]

> @"EremiteAngel.9765" said:

> Thanks for all the feedback guys.

> Another question I have is... is power Reaper the only way?

 

Power reaper is the most viable way at the moment because its threatening offensive pressure acts as its best defense.

Either you kill or you force people to play defensive or move away in most cases simply pressing f1 can make a person burn a dodge without you even having to use a single skill.

 

Power Reaper uses offense as its best defense. Also unlike its condi counterpart It likely uses Reapers Onslaught meaning your chances of dealing viable damage once in range is higher because you are able to attack at roughly the same rate other professions can when in melee range.

 

> I was trying to make condi Reaper work but scepter pressure feels kind of weak...

 

condi reaper is rough right now too as i said necro's condi pressure compared to other professions is lesser and the amount of clear people have in the game makes it even harder.

 

IF you are going for full reaper condi your attacks will also be super slow assuming you didnt take Reapers Onslaught. This makes it 2x as hard as not only are you slow without speed runes your attacks come out at the speed the game moved 4 years ago. Some times this is not a bad thing as people might dodge too early and still get hit by some attacks but in most cases it is a bad thing because you cant get enough damage out to be threatening in the short time frame that you are in melee range.

 

Also yes scepter is very slow ramping condition weapon. Other professions condi set ups generally use short conditions that can stack in high counts really fast necro condi is still living in the past with low stack counts with very high durations. High duration condis in low stack counts will never be good in the current meta.

 

That said all condi builds should probably be more like necro, longer durations very low stack counts. with very few combos that allow high stack counts with extremely short durations

 

The best thing anet could do for reaper right now is remove the quickness from RO and speed up the base shroud by like 20-25% baseline, to do this you reduce the cast times on all the shroud attacks by that percent.

Change RO back to its old way of adding a modest 15% increase on top of that.

 

Now you have a shroud thats generally faster but not quickness level fast at its baseline and all 3 grandmasters have a bit more value to them as reaper wont be stuck swinging its slow attacks from 2015

 

It also helps the pve top end when other players give you quickness.