Guild Wars 2

Has anyone made it work in WvW zergs ? I spent most of the weekend trying to get my GS reaper to work in a zerg but failed mostly. Imo there are 2 reasons for that:

1) Reapers miss the tools and survavibility that warriors and guardians have
2) Reapers dont have the mobility warriors and guardians have. All they have is a small slide in death shroud. That doesn’t cut it when you’re stuck in a thousand red circles :/

Anyone have any good experiences or should i just give up on running a GS Reaper in a zerg ?

Yea setup with Nightfall followed by Grasping Darness works great for large scale WvW fight. Also useing Gravedigger as a finisher after exiting say Reaper Shroud in areas around enmies is working very well with the 5-man cleave.

I think the biggest stigma u have to let go off is that “u have to land every action”…

If u miss a Gravedigger its there just a few seconds later and the reward is when u land it on a few unlucky ppl it can down them. I have a vid on a Guild raid in WvW when I use Gravedigger and hit 5 targets form between 9k to 12k+ so it can be done.

Is it as usefull in WvW large scale as Staff ? no its not but it on the same level as the rest of the Weapons and with some practice due to its Cleave can be better then them.

I went Staff/GS and will continue down that road atleast, so did most of my Guldies

The idea is to charge death shroud with staff then go mental in reaper shroud. It works like a charm. GS is a pve weapon imo.

However keep it in your other weapon slot, since it’s great for finishing off downed people.

If you try to play Reaper frontline in WvW ZvZ, you’ll die a lot. Reapers lack the invulns, blocks, reflects, escapes, etc.. to survive the heat like other frontline classes. However, if you play your reaper like a mid-line reaper, you’ll do just fine.

What’s midline? You build yourself like a power reaper, load double wells, bomb like a standard current meta wellmancer. You play a patient game, and when zergs clash (they always do), you go in and do your reaper thing. RS 3-2-5-4, switch to GS and cleave it up, own downies, and RS 2 to leap back out of heat when it gets too hot. Then you lay your wells & marks again, and wait for the next opportunity. You’ll do most of ZvZ using staff for ranged hazing, which you do right now anyway during the pirate ship phase.

Reapers are rugged and do very well around 600 range. Key is to leap in and do your thing after your opponents have laid their well bombs on your frontline. You can’t eat the well bombs like guardians & warriors can. So you just have to pace yourself and learn when to leap in and when to leap out. It’s very doable, just takes practice as it’s a different playstyle than what we’re used to currently.

I think GS is a great PvP weapon… but its situational. Imho its use is on points fighting vsX players not in 1v1’s when your enemy can see your animations and focus is on you. But for a on point Weapon its even better then Staff, Gravediggers the 1 player will see and dodge the 2 next to him may miss and get hit by… this is a fact that happens and will continue to do so.

Dont judge the slow cast-times and visual animations on 1v1 encounters vs Good players only, thats a mistake. Also want to add that Nightfall on point is one of the best defensive skills/tool we have it covers the whole point basicly and works like a WoD and imho is very underapriechiated.

gavyne.6847:

If you try to play Reaper frontline in WvW ZvZ, you’ll die a lot. Reapers lack the invulns, blocks, reflects, escapes, etc.. to survive the heat like other frontline classes. However, if you play your reaper like a mid-line reaper, you’ll do just fine.

That was what i kinda expected though, being able to play frontline like i do with my warrior now Why else give necro’s a GS with 130 range :/

But i’m gonna take your suggestions and try that next beta weekend and see how that goes. Can you make a suggestion what kind of gear i should be running ?

Still looking forward to play a GS Reaper, just need some adjustment i guess

Midline is effectively what the Necro does currently though in a zerg. Playing a midline melee with no engage or range isn’t productive and continuing on wit the current playstyle doesn’t exactly show the Reaper is effective.

Now unfortunately I haven’t played the class as I refuse to pre-order and I’m still on the fence about getting HOT at all, but some of the other players have said the class is suitably tanky in large scale combat so it may just require a little more effort on your part to get used to the new ‘ins and outs’ of the class.

Mind sharing your build and gear as that may shed some light on the problems you were having? Obviously running in with Spite/SR/Reaper in full berserker isn’t going to work as well as it currently does.

Hopefully it’s more along these lines and less about poor class design.

Reaper shroud will tear into wvw zergs.. GS im not sure about… But definitely Reaper shroud will have a great place in zergs.

For zergplay.

You lose DS 1 which is most useful for ranging down siege, and you lose DS 4 which is great for tagging and applying pressure.

Greatsword doesnt add much and shouts are still bad.

But you Get Blighter’s boon for more healing, and you get RS3 for stability and RS4 for all sorts of field utility.

At the end of the day, Plague and wells are still your key skills & you have to decide whether it makes sense to trade blood utility or death survivability for a melee shroud with more healing.

In my experience, so long as you’re running Blighter’s Boon, Reapers can do quite well on frontline. You do need to work some Protection into your build (Spectral Wall is good for that and Chaos Armor provides synergy with Blighter’s Boon), but you can beat things up with the rest of them, since Reapers have decent Stability. Shouts are actually really strong in ZvZ, especially NCSY, YAAW, and CttB. Augury of Death is a good pick there to amp up your shout frequency.

Greatsword also works fine on frontline, since in the chaos, people will miss seeing your animations (or just be out of dodges) and Nightfall and Grasping Darkness are great tools for zergs.

If it’s safe for Warriors and Guardians to be up there, it’s most likely safe for a Reaper. You just need to watch out for counter-pushes more.

We still have Marks, we still have Wells, we still have Plague form, we still have Spectral wall. Most importantly wells. Now we have powerful melee cleave with GS and shroud + a set of decent shouts, one of them being an aoe stun/freeze.
I think we’ll be fine

Extrema.9184:

gavyne.6847:

If you try to play Reaper frontline in WvW ZvZ, you’ll die a lot. Reapers lack the invulns, blocks, reflects, escapes, etc.. to survive the heat like other frontline classes. However, if you play your reaper like a mid-line reaper, you’ll do just fine.

That was what i kinda expected though, being able to play frontline like i do with my warrior now Why else give necro’s a GS with 130 range :/

But i’m gonna take your suggestions and try that next beta weekend and see how that goes. Can you make a suggestion what kind of gear i should be running ?

Still looking forward to play a GS Reaper, just need some adjustment i guess

I ran zerker + valk and did pretty well. Good bombs, hard hits, very good cleave damage, and enough lifeforce to sustain through heated melee range battles. People don’t realize necros already do play within 600 range, such as anytime you go in for deathshroud 5 + 4, or when you use Dark Path to push into the melee train for an aoe chill. Reapers simply do the 600 range much better than current meta necros, with added mobility & survivability to boot.

You could try to hang with frontline by tanking up, pvt gear all the way. You just need to get out of heat before things get bad. Reapers are tanky for sure, but being frontline melee requires you to be more than tanky. My experiences show Reapers are most effective a step behind frontline melee. When cc & well bombs start dropping on the melee train, guardians have shelter & renewed focus, warriors have endured pain, resistance, and various leaps to get out of way. Reapers simply lack those blocks, invulns, and reliable escapes. I mean it’d be better if Death’s Charge got rid of immob, but it doesn’t. That’s why by playing smart, by being a step behind melee train where all cc & bombs will be dropping, you could do better.

As for GS, it’s very difficult to execute GS skills in ZvZ. Nobody stands around to let Nightfall blind them for more than a pulse. GS 5 pull is unreliable in the first place, most of the frontline you’re trying to pull will have stab/invulns up anyway. The extended range of Death Spiral will help, but you’ll find it hard to land gravedigger in ZvZ unless you’re cleaving through downies. This leaves you to camp in Reaper shroud, which has better mobility and range, including your own stab. But RS will burn out real quick if you hang with frontline melee, which means once you’re out of reaper shroud, you’re left with an extremely immobile greatsword.

Honestly I saw a guildy try the full tanky route to roll with the melee train and he was dying left & right, while I almost never died throughout the whole beta weekend in ZvZ. I’m not saying it’s not possible, but based on what I’ve seen, it’s still better to play midline and be a step behind melee train. If you do that, you’ll bomb as hard as meta wellmancer, while having the added perks of reaper shroud such as increased mobility, lifeforce regen, sustain, aoe melee cleave, vuln/chill application, and stab. Good exchange imo, you just need to alter how you play.