Guild Wars 2

My thoughts on reaper traits after playing for many hours.

Minor Traits

1 Reaper’s shroud- Simply plagiarizes other trait tooltips that effect shroud. No additional benefit like you see on any other trait. Death shroud doesnt require a trait to activate so why does reaper?
2 Shivers of Dread- Pretty cool tie in’s to multiple builds and a slow to keep them fairy close, although kind of lackluster for a minor on the master line. I see this as an adept minor. Also why not try a fear immobilize instead if the idea is truely to keep enemies close. They still run off in all directions which means that its still a pain to attack in melee and makes it not viable STILL for pve grp fighting.
3 Cold Shoulder- 10% damage reduction component is good and in line with a grandmaster tier. 10% increase in chill duration is a joke.

Major Traits

Adept
1 Augury of Death- I’ve seen a few complaints on this. Personally I think this is a very cool trait idea. I think the reduction percentage is good. I think it’s powerful for an adept line trait. wouldn’t change a thing. I’m finding great synergy and timing with other skills.
2 Chilling Nova- Where to begin. Anet completely destroyed this b4 even the first prepurchase beta. This was supposed to be a test trait on a new concept of multiple proc in a given time. It was 3 procs within 10 sec, now its one proc every 15 sec. Problem I’ve always had with the single proc on long cd design is that its unreliable and a pain to manage. For this one you basicaly need to run around and try to group a few enemies together without engaging at all because once you get a crit on chilled target there goes your proc for the fight. It’s just a pain. The fact that it’s so lackluster now also means instead of 2 viable options for pve it’s now shout spec or shout spec, or i guess just the knowledge that I’m using a very underwhelming trait.
3 Relentless Pursuit- I’m not a big pvp guy in this game so I’ll leave the comments to those more passionate about it.

Major
1 Chilling Force- Should be renamed to “Chilling Force Kindof”. 5 sec might lol? So, if u manage to get 5 enemies chilled and then strike them all, you just get 5 stacks of might which is extremely short lived. Finding this one to be more trouble then its worth in testing. The latter element of life force generation i think may be beneficial with further experience.
2 Decimate Defenses- with so many ways to cause vulnerability and so few ways currently to additionally benefit from it, this trait is a welcomed addition. Wouldn’t change a thing. fits nicely in the master line.
3 Soul Eater- The reality of the cd reduction is maximally 9% reduction every few seconds on lower health targets. Since Gravedigger was changed to 80% self reduction as opposed to 100%, the reality is that you’ll be able to get perhaps a couple swings for 18% total reduction of other greatsword abilities, per mob pack, which i guess may be beneficial grabbing next pack if you can do so pretty much immediately. Life siphon is meh, but used in combo with other siphons adds up. not very exited by this trait in its current form.

Grandmaster
1 Blighter’s Boon- Don’t have access to sigil of strength in beta for some reason, so finding it hard to test accurately. With this its all about rapid fire boon creation. The second component to this trait seems interesting since it gives some health regain options for those not choosing to use blood.
2 Deathly Chill- This would be great as the Coup de gras of a chill build. Unfortunately I see alot of problems with the former, in this current iteration. most chill is extremely short lived, hard to stack and lackluster in effect. I’m annoyed that anet is forcing us to use chill through our minor traits that could have been more broad spec oriented.
3 Reaper’s Onslaught- attack speed increase as an idea is ok but only 15% for a grandmaster? wt…:on the second component, why would you need reduction on necrocopter? It’s only 6 sec cd to begin with (plz dont take that as an invitation to get clever increasing the cd since needed for mobility). The reality is I have to kill something every couple seconds just to have this do anything! Really bad grandmaster imo.

A few additional thoughts on current gs and rs skills.
1 Grasping Darkness is broken right now. This is beta so not too concerned bout it, but I do feel like the poison component of skill should be changed to chill since Anet is forcing us to take minor chill traits already and since a pull and chill just makes more sense in any event. Also this would help in initial chill stacking.
2 Chilled to the Bone is fricken awesome. Don’t change a thing, especially the animation. Talk about a feeling of explosive power!
3 Animations for the most part are spot on for a feeling of necro power. Would love to see Death spiral have an even greater pronounced effect. Something that screams, hey look everyone I just drilled that guys noodle. I’ve seen complaints that Executioner’s Scythe effect is too large. I hope Anet doesn’t cave on this one. I get a trill every time it lands.
4 Not gonna comment on damage since this is still early beta. I’ll leave that to the theory crafters and time.

Beta has been fun to play and reaper I think adds alot to the profession, and there is still time and room to make it even better.

I’m very happy with the Reaper spec so far myself! I did notice a few things I’d like changed though. GS auto attack is… too slow for the damage it puts out. I feel that in order to justify the high cast time the damage needs to be more substantial. Either that or keep the damage hitting as it is with a lower cast time. Gravedigger is a nice skill, but again the high cast time (in my opinion) doesn’t really match the damage output. I find dagger main hand to still be the better dps option. GS 3 and 4 I am very pleased with; wouldn’t change a thing! I also agree with what others have said about GS skill 5. It’s quite difficult to aim the way it is in game. If it could at least cast in the same direction of the camera (and not just your character) that would be awesome.

Also I found it near impossible to survive long range attacks. With no form of reflect/projectile block, these scenarios are difficult to play in. Robert mentioned the possible addition of a projectile block to reaper shroud skill 2, which I believe would be an excellent counter to these situations.

And… maybe it’s just me, but I feel like RS degenerates faster than regular DS? I honestly feel squishier. Again, maybe it’s just me, but it feels a lot less sustainable than the original shroud. I haven’t gone to test if they are the same myself, so it could be in my head.

As far as the shroud skills go, I’m in love with them. The only thing I’d like to see changed (and maybe this is a long shot ‘cause I’ve been a necro main since launch) is the RS skill 3 armor shatter cast. I would love to see this become a quick cast like the original fear in DS so we can land other attacks while in RS. Executioner’s scythe has a long cast time, and the change to a quick cast fear could allow us to fear the enemy to allow an opening for the attack (or for the necrocopter for that matter. That’s pretty much all I’d like to see changed; anything more and I could see it becoming OP, which is highly undesirable. Changes aside, this is the most fun I’ve had with the game for a long time! Really looking forward to the other specs and the release.

I played around with it a bit, used Carrion armor/trinkets, based Reaper trait line around Chill and I think it’s pretty cool (no pun intended).
Run in there laying down all your staff marks, then switch to GS, use skill #5 to pull them in, skill #4 to give them a few conditions, use the suffer shout to chill them again and keep wailing on them the entire time.
I was seeing chill DOT do about 1.5k damage per tick on some enemies which seemed pretty nice if it lasted longer. Maybe if the GS AA was a bit faster and chill lasted longer. Frankly, I think it’d be nice if the chill DOT was a base trait for the Reaper line. If only we had access to Rune of Grenth or Rune of the Ice.
But Reaper Shroud? I’d go as far as to say it’s perfect. I fell in love with it.

loving the reaper. Have tried power GS and condi scepter / dagger builds and am loving a Dire condi Reaper build, Nightfall, Suffer, Dhuumfire scythe is awesome, every Reaper Shroud skill is awesome and with a Dire build you can really mix it up and get in the middle of things. No complaints about Reaper skills or traits,its a great addition.. I think you could only complain if you’d already made assumptions about how it’d work or tried to make it into something else. I was previously put off by chill stack changes but am loving it. Can’t wait for HoT.

Overall Impressions: I love how Shroud works for Reaper, it’s got amazing animations, great damage and powerful utility. Greatsword feels sluggish and has some minor usability issues, but the resetting mechanic and the pulsing blind are strong. Animation for some of the GS abilities is lacking. Shouts have decent utility but some of them come out a little slowly for the benefits they provide. Traits have a bit of wonky numbers, but I’ve not spent much time with the class to tell for sure. I see potential for Reaper to be a burst-finisher in PvP, as Necro has access to tons of buffs when foes are below 50% (still lacking on mobility to burst a mobile foe though, and this is just theorycrafting after a few hours).

I played with Berserker stats, focusing on might-generation with some control. I know that I didn’t min/max my stats with my traits (over 100% crit chance sometimes) but whatever!

Greatsword: Feels slow, but that’s apparently by design. Is it good design? The reset mechanic for Gravedigger feels good, and the 3/4/5 have good utility, but it’s lacking in damage (outside of Gravedigger) for the sluggishness of the casting. Feels pretty unresponsive and it’s hard to land skills against mobile enemies. Could really do with a leap or short dash, maybe even as part of the auto-chain. That is certainly in line with a horror villain lunging at you.

• The autoattack chain feels sluggish and does poor damage for the speed it works at. I’d appreciate a quicker first and second hit with the current speed on the final hit (chilling hit). An increase in the number of cleaved enemies might be nice as well (the horror villain carving down foes in swaths).

• Gravedigger #2 seems to be the bread and butter of the weapon. I really like the reset mechanic, but boy is this skill slow. Shaving it down to 1s or 3/4s would make me happy, preferably by removing the after-cast spin (horror villain’s aren’t known for their flourishes… or are they?). The range and damage are in a good place as far as I’m concerned, consecutive 10k crits (in Zerker) every 2 seconds in a full circle is nice, but getting below 50% on bosses to enable that mechanic can be a trial. Perhaps change it to “Gravedigger’s cooldown is reset by 80% when it lands on a foe with Chill. Can only reset once per application of Chill.” This would allow you to reset at any time with careful application of Chill, while removing the monotony of “2 > 2 > 2 > 2” below 50%.

• Death Spiral #3 has pretty devastating vuln application, but the range/AoE feel lacking. It could also be that the animation is just poorly describing where the skill hits, but I found myself missing this skill sometimes. The vuln/damage could be spread out over the animation instead of all happening at the end, because the cast time is pretty long. The cast time is probably balanced where it is now, but I really want it spread throughout the skill’s animation instead of being so easily interruptable/missable. I like the idea of the AoE being in a line, but it could use a little buff to the range (since it is a lunge).

• Nightfall #4 is a very strong skill for a weapon. Damage, blind and cripple pulsing over a duration is a lot of strength for a skill. I did find myself missing this ability a lot on even mildly mobile enemies though. The small radius (starts at ~200 or lower to a max 300 at the end) being centred on the character feels shorter than the autoattack range, which makes this skill more defensive than offensive (can’t be used to chase someone, only to disengage/bunker). If this ability had 150 range and was centred on the enemy it was cast upon, it would be much more intuitive. That or increase the radius to 300 for the full duration so it at least matches a Mark.

• Grasping Darkness #5 I also found myself missing quite often. The cast time on top of the short travel time for the claws means that enemies can either out-range the skill (only 600 range) or sidestep it. It is quite a narrow grab, especially if you are trying to land it on multiple enemies. If you try to cast this on someone dashing laterally, it will miss if you target them (have to cast it in anticipation of their path for it to hit). Compared to the Guardian GS5 skill this is sorely lacking, despite being faster. If this skill applied no condis or damage but had 40 degrees more arc to the cone and maybe 150 more range, it would be amazing. It feels like ANet is being really conservative with the strength of this skill, and that’s kind of disappointing since it’s one of the few gap-closing abilities Necro has.

Shouts: The shouts as a whole aren’t amazing, largely due to the sometimes ridiculous cast times, but a couple of them give the Necro new utility and offer reasonable effects. The damage on them feels pointless, outside of the elite. ANet pls use title capitalization for shouts!

• You Are All Weaklings! has a large suite of effects, all of which are pretty nice. The 3/4 second cast time feels a little sluggish, perhaps a shave down to 1/2 second and this skill would be quite strong. If the damage was removed and the cast time shaved this would be perfect.

• Suffer! is a somewhat novel way to cleanse conditions, shedding one to five and chilling on top. The damage is completely unnoticeable and again, I would love to have it removed in exchange for shaving the oppressive cast time on this shout. The chill duration also feels really lacking. 2 seconds (yes, I’m ignoring that 1/4 second) of chill after effectively silencing yourself for a 1 second cast time seems counter-intuitive. I would never take this skill over Plague Signet which is instant, double the range, reliably transfers five conditions every time and breaks stun on the same cooldown. This skill needs a massive reduction in cast time, or it needs to apply stability before it starts casting, along with longer chill duration. The chill is the unique part of this spell, but right now it’s barely there.

• Rise! offers mediocre damage and a few paper bags that join your party before swiftly departing. Jagged Horrors are useless; they will die before they complete their summoning animation. Might see fringe use in Minionmancer builds; I can’t think of any way that numbers could make it useful, it needs rework.

• Nothing Can Save You! is a great shout. This should be the benchmark that the other shouts are compared to. The 1/2 second cast time isn’t too bad while still… existing. The potential 10 vuln application and signature Necromancer boon stripping are great, and 5-9 seconds of Unblockable will make this skill very useful in PvP. The cooldown even feels perfect at 35 seconds base.

• Chilled to the Bone! actually works kind of well. I was scared of the 2 second cast time, but it does offer some stability to help mitigate all of the interrupts that will be flying your way. The damage is capital-G Good, the chill duration is acceptable for an elite spell, and the stun can be potentially fight-swaying in any game mode. My only complaint with it is the cooldown; at 120s it feels like it should have a longer range (currently 600). Having this interrupted would make me feel awful. There’s room to shave numbers though, either by increasing the range to 750-900, reducing the cast time to 1.25-1.5 seconds (again, self-silencing for 2 seconds for a 2 second stun is kinda backwards, at least it chills for longer than the cast time), or decreasing the cooldown to at least under 2 minutes…

Currently running Soul Reaping and Spite with a hybrid might-stacking and condition build utilizing Dhuumfire.

Reaper Shroud is awesome. The scythe looks ridiculous, but I love it. Attacks hit hard, inflict tons of condition stacks, and synergize really well with the rest of your kit. Reapers in shroud will definitely be something to fear on the battlefield.

Greatsword I am less excited about.

As EvesDesire said, the damage per strike is low for how slow it swings. My guildmates and I agree that a possible solution would be to speed up the first two attacks in the AA chain to help alleviate this. Alternatively, if the timings are to be kept, the damage per swing needs to be increased dramatically to compensate.

Gravedigger I had no issues with.

Drill attack I agree could be flashier and could also use an effective range increase. I’ve fallen short quite often when I try to use it against stacked opponents for life force gain.

I love using the shouts. They really add great flavor and functionality to the necromancer class and go along with the vicious melee combatant theme of the Reaper.

My one objection lies with the Chilled to the Bone shout. At the moment, it is a short duration stun with an extremely long cast time and an absurdly long recharge. The effect is not substantial enough to warrant the extreme CD or cast times. By comparison, the Shiro Revenant’s Jade Wind skill stuns for 3 seconds, casts much faster, and also recharges faster.

Chilled to the Bone needs a CD reduction, a cast time reduction, or an effect duration increase. Alternatively, an additional self-buff (such as frost aura) could be added to compensate.

Shroud Skills: I’m pretty blown away by every aspect of the shroud skills. The animations are great, the damage is pretty good, the utility is quite strong, and it even offers good Condi application. I was running Strength runes which turned out to be complete overkill; the Shroud autos with the might traits and Strength runes had me at 25 stacks easily. I found life-force generation to be pretty reasonable, allowing me at least 50% Shroud uptime.

• Auto-attack feels great with the trait to speed it up, generates TONS of might and vuln (from the traits). Can burst down foes once they drop below the health thresholds for all of the traits to activate.

• Death’s Charge #2 adds a nice bit of mobility to the Necro’s kit, but it’s not amazing. The distance is not very long (maybe shorter than Warrior GS3) and the blind application seems unreliable. I also killed myself a dozen times in Verdant Brink dashing off of cliffs, because unlike nearly every other dash in the game, this does not stop at your target. You will always dash the same distance until you hit a wall. This might be intended to allow the Necro to catch foes more easily (get in front of them instead of stopping behind them) but it’s a little off-putting. Probably requires more practice for proper use.

• Infusing Terror #3 is a pretty amazing substitute for the targeted fear in normal Shroud. It pulses Stability on to you for a duration, and can be re-activated for an AoE Fear. Keep in mind that all Reapers will Chill foes that they Fear, so it isn’t a free escape for an enemy. This skill feels great, maybe even overpowered, but then again Necros do lack stability. AoE Fear is the icing on the cake.

• Soul Spiral #4 is a massive AoE, applying 12 stacks of poison for 4 seconds and moderate damage. It is pretty scary to see another player use this in PvE, let alone PvP; great job on the animations. This skill is a great followup to activating #3 so you can’t be interrupted during the spin. Could be a potential staple of Condi-Reaper, although I haven’t tried that yet. I’m happy with the numbers on this skill, again it almost feels like they may have put too much strength into the Shroud that could have been in Greatsword or the Shouts.

• Executioner’s Scythe #5 also feels pretty good. It’s got a pretty sizeable cast-time at 1 1/4 seconds, but it stuns for that same duration with a short Chill and Ice Combo Field. The best part is that it has great damage, scaling up at 25% increments as the enemy loses life. Unfortunately it only hits one foe, which is considerably at odds with the rest of the Reaper skills. I’d be willing to trade the majority of the Stun duration for the potential to hit more targets with the damage. I’d also be willing to trade damage for reduced cast times, as this skill could be a great finisher for leaving Shroud and starting up the Gravedigger train.

Traits: I took Reaper/Spite/Soul Reaping.

Overall I feel like there are too many enemy health thresholds that must be met for the traits to function. Soul Reaping is by far the best in this sense, as it is only really concerned with your health/life force thresholds. I took 3/2/2 in Soul Reaping to maximize my Life Force generation and Shroud uptime. The health threshold complaints really come into effect in Spite and Reaper. I took 3/2/2 in Spite, but there’s plenty of room for variation. Two of the Minor traits and one good trait in both Master and Grandmaster only work below health thresholds. That means that on top of Gravedigger being balanced for the massive damage it deals under 50%, a lot of good traits only function below 50%. This makes the effort of getting through the 100-50 zone a lot more difficult.

Now on to the Reaper traits themselves:

• Minor traits seem to be designed to push the Reaper into that “horror villain” style that the devs spoke of, but they’re also a little bit diffused imo. Shivers of Dread is just necessary for Necro to not have to deal with giving enemies a free escape when they’re feared. Cold Shoulder comes in to give a damage reduction against all chilled foes, as well as increasing chill duration (that aggravating 1/4 second that Reapers get in so many places). I’d really like it if Cold Shoulder were more focused, either giving 15% damage reduction vs Chilled foes, or 25% increased Chill duration, exclusive of eachother. Right now with it giving both 10% buffs it just feels negligible. I also feel like the Chill durations of a lot of skills were artificially lowered because of this trait’s existence. As a whole, Reaper puts out a lot of Chill that barely lasts until he finishes a skill cast.

• Adept traits: Recharge duration on shouts being dependent upon how many foes you hit is a little annoying. I would like it for 10% recharge to be baseline, and 5% additional reduction for each foe hit. They could still have the 35% reduction when 5 people are hit, but missing your 600 range, 1 second cast time shout and getting zero recharge time is… bad. Traits on other classes are largely net benefits, but Necro gets quite a few that do nothing in many circumstances. Chilling Nova looks good for a Condi-Reaper, but the 15 second ICD is painful for the measly 2 seconds of Chill that explode. This trait needs increased range, longer chill duration or lower ICD. As it is now, it seems like a throwaway trait slot for a PvE Condi-Reaper that doesn’t need the other Adepts. Relentless Pursuit is another horror villain trope, and it feels okay as it is. 40/80% reduction would be nice since Necros are relatively immobile.

• Master traits are where Reaper can really shine. Chilling Victory grants might and lifeforce once per second per foe when striking a chilled foe. This is where some of the Reaper Shroud might comes from, as well as sustaining lifeforce. This feels like a pretty balanced trait. The might duration could be a little longer baseline, but that’s probably unnecessary. Decimate Defenses is probably going to be the meta for PvE-Reapers, as the 50% crit chance against 25vuln foes can bring you up to 100% crit chance in Shroud, with zero Precision. Then we have Soul Eater which looks pretty dull compared to the other Master traits. The siphon is lackluster because GS attacks hit so rarely; only #3 and #4 hit multiple times. The value for the siphon needs to be buffed considerably as it looks like it was simply copied from the minor Vampirism trait, even though GS hits much slower than other weapons. The 3% reduction on cooldowns when landing Gravedigger is also pretty unnoticeable. 3% of the longest cooldown of 30 seconds isn’t even 1 second. For how slowly Gravedigger casts, you’re not gaining anything by using this trait. It really just suffers from under-tuning IMO, and (large) number increases could make it attractive for Reapers.

• Grandmaster traits on the otherhand look pretty cut and dry. If you are a Condi-Reaper, you’re going to take Deathly Chill for some minor damage on the Chill condition (hey look, another health threshold). Blighter’s Boon is a defense/sustain focused trait, which will likely see use in WvW or PvP only. The life force gain is pretty minor while the heal does double Altruistic Healing. I think this may need tuning to increase the life force portion, as it’s underwhelming for a Grandmaster. Reaper’s Onslaught is the go-to for power based Reapers. The increased attack speed in Shroud means more might and vuln as well, making this a clear choice.

TL;DR: It’s a beta, feedback is being given! Greatsword feels a little slow or a little too meek, some of the shouts look like great additions to the Necro while others look very… situational, and the Shroud looks and feels amazing!

augury of death: i dont really like the scaling off multiple enemies, makes reapers even worse vs bosses and pvp. i think this would work better as a flat 20% recharge and a fun shout effect like steal 3% lf per target hit or somthing.
chiling nova: definitly needs a buff once every 15 secs? for a little damage and chill?
relentless pursuit: not all that useful, necros got plenty of cond removal and its only a time reduction.
all the middle range traits were really good i found, i really like decimate defenses, the cooldown reduction on souleater seems useless to me but the lifesteal has potential i think.
I felt the grandmasters were all pretty lackluster
deathly chill: pretty useless 200damage? barely anything, this should be 400 on application in addition to tick damage, then multiple chills would have some damage.
blighters boon: pretty situational, to really make use of this i ended up just spamming all the might, since thats really the only boon necro can access, i can only imagine what i would be geting up to if it werent for the 25 cap.
reapers onslaught: this is a little bit weak, if you compare it to death perception what is essentially +50% damage helping with all your on crit buffs, onslaught does seem pretty lackluster. i think perhaps 30% would be fair, its really just a straight buff tho so its not as fun as blighters boon or what deathly chills COULD be.

So, my take on the Reaper. Suggestions are in bold.

GENERAL:
+ Awesome concept.
+ Awesome awesome awesome animations.
+ I really dig the slow chilling reaping movie monster.
– For an elite spec so reliant on chill it certainly can’t keep it up.
– For such a slow powerful monster, it certainly doesn’t hit hard.

REAPER SHROUD:
+ Most skills are of very relevance and with much more utility than DS.
+ Good mobility and stability is gold.
+ Better synergy with traits such as Dhuumfire.
– Only melee (not necessarily a bad thing).
– Damage on RS1 is a bit low. Right now I’m not even sure it out-dps’s DS1. -> Increase damage in RS1.
– RS2 very hard to land and unreliable. -> RS2 should be something like war GS3 or Sw2. Also should have its damage increased a bit.
– Doesn’t have an instant fear -> Make the fear part of RS3 instant cast. The rest of the skill can stay as it is, that way, even if the fear is not instant it is a bit better.
– RS appears to be consuming more LF per sec than DS (even with VP). I hope this is a bug, if it isn’t I’d like it to be the same (if not, at least, increase LF generation on RS1). It also appears to not mitigate damage as DS does. I hope it is another bug.

GREATSWORD:
+ Nice concept, awesome animations.
– Very very very slow. This is very bad from a PvP point of view.
– VERY low DPS for such a slow weapon. -> GS1 should hit much harder. GS2 should hit harder and recharge fully when under the threshold (if 50% is too much, which I don’t think it is, make it 33%)
– Mediocre LF generation. -> Consider making GS1 give LF (1% per target hit with third attack of auto?).
– Low chill uptime for a class so reliant on chill. -> Consider increasing chill duration on GS1 slightly.
– No reliable gap closers (it is very different -and better- to close a gap by rushing to a target than pulling that target to you). –> At least GS5 should be able to be ground-targeted and aimed like war GS3.

SHOUTS:
– Good concept, but not original to Reaper (Ele received shouts too).
– VO doesn’t seem very frightful. Should be a darker, more reapish, tone.
– Cast times are too high, for the benefit they bring. -> Decrease or remove completely all shouts’ cast times. CttB should be maximum 1s to cast.
– YSIM (Heal)’s healing is too low. -> Increase YSIM base healing to at least the same amount of raw healing as WoB.
– CttB (Elite) cast time and recharge time too long. –> Decrease cast time to 1s and decrease CD to 80-100s.

TRAITS:
+ The traits make sense and synergise well. However:
– Augury of death not that useful in this iteration. -> Should be 20% CD reduction baseline + 3% per target hit (up to 5). That way it still caps as 35% as it is now.
– Chilling Nova as it is now is useless. -> Either revert it to the version we saw in Livestream or drastically reduce its CD.
– Chilling Force was too powerful in the livestream, however I find it underperforming now. -> Either increase the might duration for, say, 10s or decrese the CD per target too 0,5s.
– Deathly Chill is very weak, even when speccing fully into condi damage. -> Should scale better.
– Reaper’s Onslaught is bugged right now.

OTHER SUGGESTIONS:
– Let us chose between DS and RS, by making both available to reaper. Of course, they should share the cooldown and the LF pool.
– It would make sense if RS and DS had a breakbar (discussion in another thread, just a reminder). If this ever gets implemented, I’d like to see RS3 giving resistance instead of stability (probably with a smaller upkeep in resistance).
– Let us see or even use utility’s in DS/RS.

Been running a straight up zerker build with strength runes using Reaper/Spite/Blood Magic (sometimes swap Blood Magic for Death Magic) all afternoon in Verdant Brink and here are my 2 cents:

First off, I love the animations and sounds. Spot on!

Reaper’s Shroud is pretty solid as is. Love the #2 as a gap closer (especially on ranged opponents). #3 is perfect for stability or a quick interrupt with fear. #5 is perfect for CC and of course more chill!

The GS skills seem ok. Not going to get a lot of spike damage like other classes but I found opening up with #4 for blinds/cripple then #3 for vuln followed by RS#1 is a great opener and it gets the might stacked up to 25 pretty quick and then back to GS and the awesome Gravedigger for the finish.

The GS by itself is slow but I found by weapon swapping back and forth between my 2nd weapon set (Dagger/Warhorn) and Reaper Shroud I was able to get the best out of what each has to give. And Gravedigger always for the finishing move just because it’s AWESOME.

I did not find the shouts to be optimal for a zerk build. Only the elite was worth carrying and is pretty rock solid as is. The shouts do look like they may have some utility on other builds though.

Overall I am very satisfied with the Reaper from a PvE perspective and look forward to trying it again in the future with different builds and in different gaming modes.

leftyboy.9358:

2 Chilled to the Bone is fricken awesome. Don’t change a thing, especially the animation. Talk about a feeling of explosive power!

I do have one suggestion for a change for Chilled to the Bone – PLEASE make it usable underwater! Necros have only had 1 usable elite skill that can be used underwater ever. There’s no reason this one can’t be. I’m hoping that underwater just hasn’t been addressed yet with the new specializations (although I did discover Reaper Shroud does work underwater, I haven’t tested out any other professions yet), and I know underwater combat is minor compared to many other things, but it would be nice for necros to have another option.

increase more damage and we are ready to go

Syiao.7042:

I played around with it a bit, used Carrion armor/trinkets, based Reaper trait line around Chill and I think it’s pretty cool (no pun intended).
Run in there laying down all your staff marks, then switch to GS, use skill #5 to pull them in, skill #4 to give them a few conditions, use the suffer shout to chill them again and keep wailing on them the entire time.
I was seeing chill DOT do about 1.5k damage per tick on some enemies which seemed pretty nice if it lasted longer. Maybe if the GS AA was a bit faster and chill lasted longer. Frankly, I think it’d be nice if the chill DOT was a base trait for the Reaper line. If only we had access to Rune of Grenth or Rune of the Ice.
But Reaper Shroud? I’d go as far as to say it’s perfect. I fell in love with it.

How are you seeing 1.5k chill ticks? With 1500+ condi damage it barely does 300/tick. It stacks in duration, not intensity. I just tested it again with 1300 condition damage and it ticks for 221. It’s quite useless.

On a separate note: I’ll mirror most of the comments about GS being too slow and doing too low damage. I really tried using it and it was flat out terrible (and boring).

The animations on GS need to be fixed. Both Gravedigger and Death Spiral have a huge aftercast and overly long animations that don’t actually line up with when the attack hits! Gravedigger is about 0.5s too long in the animation department relative to when the damage is delivered. The only responsive skill is #5 but it appears to be bugged. It misses 90% of the time (no joke). My guess is that it suffers from the classic terrain bug where any difference in elevation between the caster and opponent results in the skill missing.

Since this is a beta, now is the time to start tweaking the skills to make sure they feel right. The reaper shroud skills feel very responsive in contrast to the GS skills. The big wind-up on Shroud #5 is responsive, slow, and highly rewarding when it hits.

leftyboy.9358:

My thoughts on reaper traits after playing for many hours.

Minor Traits

1 Reaper’s shroud- Simply plagiarizes other trait tooltips that effect shroud. No additional benefit like you see on any other trait. Death shroud doesnt require a trait to activate so why does reaper?

I’m having a blast with Reaper. After trying Chrono, DH, and Shiro Rev, I settled on Reaper to keep on roaming around with. I am in the middle of something else so I can’t be as detailed as you others in this thread — I just wanted to respond to this one point in the OP.

The initial minor trait in all the elite specs is just the activation of the spec and allowing equipping of the changed weapons and skills. That’s why it’s there.

Kharr.5746:

The only responsive skill is #5 but it appears to be bugged. It misses 90% of the time (no joke). My guess is that it suffers from the classic terrain bug where any difference in elevation between the caster and opponent results in the skill missing.

actually i tested that and “Grasping Darkness”: in different terrains stairs included and works fine. The problem with that skill is:

• it’s not target dependent, it’s cast to the direction your character is facing. That’s really confusing when you are in melee with a lot of enemies. I would change that to if you have a targeted enemy cast it in that direction
• The range is too shot for a gap closer. My choice would be to increase the range to 1000 and apply chill instead of poison. That way i shouldn’t need that much mobility.
• Also keep in mind the Defiant bar, this skill is a CC so the pull go first to that bar.
  
  This is for another comment where it points out that the GS Master trait has only a 3% of reduced in the cast skill.
• “Soul Eater” reduces 3% per foe hit. I tried with the GraveDigger and it can take a chunk of 4 secs from the Grasping Darkness cool down. Although it’s difficult to appreciate it is there.

I agree the shouts felt weak.

• i would increase the range to 900 or even 1200 units. There is the limit of 5 targets, the shouts could be used as a way to engage early. 600 is again too short for a shout.
• The cast times i see them ok but the effects are lacking. I would take off the damage from them and improve the utility.
• “Your soul is mine!”: the healing has to be higher. 3K is too low for a class that has the biggest HP pool and the weakest defenses. I would add a HP siphon so if you hit 5 foes you could get up to 5K healing so the objective of using this in close quarters is still there.
• “You are all weaklings!” , off with the dmg as well. i’d add a mean random condition for a couple of secs.
• “Suffer!” off with the damage, and increase the chill to 2 secs for each foe affected.
• “Rise!” ; I specially love this shout for it’s uniqueness. Off with the damage, but the minions cast have to be stronger. It’s a 40 secs CD, the jagged horror must do more damage and be tougher. Right now they are too slow and die really easy even with the traits to make the minions meaner. When this shout is cast the foes should be worrying about the new visitors, not just ignore them. actually i would change the jagged horror for some kind of mini reapers that do the chain of the Life Rend so we would get some LF from it as well.
• “Nothing can save you!” : Perfect. This Shout is what you expect in a reaper. The range thou, 900 or even 1200 like to the other shouts.
• “Chilled to the bone!” : CD too long even with the trait. Effects no really that good for an elite. off with he damage. I’d add boon corruption to the shout. Also transfer in condition from up to 5 allies to 1 foe, same as the shout Suffer but for allies.

The GS as is been pointed out, it’s very slow. So much that is even very difficult to land the GS AA chain. It should be quicker like 1/4 reduction in every step.
Also the chill should be applied from the first impact, so we can do use of the chill.

In reaper shroud.

• Life Rend should apply a shot duration chill. 1 sec should be fine.
• Death’s Charge needs a range of 1100 like the ranger’s GS swoop. Been able to cancel the skill in any moment so you can stop when need.
  The rest of the skills are just perfect.

The reason of all this chill is because although is supposed to be a signature of the reaper it has really few skills that actually apply it. Chill is a passive condition and i think the reaper should have a good chill uptime to be able to deliver a melee profession with light armor.