Guild Wars 2

So, PoF is around the corner and disregarding the hoped for but unlikely balance changes I wanted to see if the horizontal gear progression was finally turning our way.

For those unaware, PoF is introducing ‘Grieving’ gear which has on it majors in Power & Condi and Minors in Precision & Ferocity.

I haven’t done the math but from personal experience, Reapers Onslaught is pretty terrible. Our shroud scales poorly so 15% attack boost is not terribly great and in PvE boss fights, recharge on death is not particularly helpful. Blighters Boon is intended for long term sustain but doesn’t fill the niche in a meta with spike damage leaving us with what I’m guessing is the most often picked reaper grandmaster trait: Deathly Chill.

Deathly Chill is functionally free damage in a power build but in a power build we’re built for Power/Precision/Ferocity (or Power/Vitality/Ferocity) so the bleeds scale horribly. Grieving gear (Power/Condi Damage/Precision/Ferocity) could bump our DPS pretty significantly.

Total stats on the Reaper running Grieving is totaled at 1388 per Major & 751 per Minor.
With a 25 stack of might thats 3138 Power/Condi & 1751 Precision and 751 Ferocity (sans runes)
Calculations...One-handed (x2) 108 59 Two-handed 215 118 Chest 121 67 Legs 81 44 Head 54 30 Shoulders 40 22 Gloves 40 22 Boots 40 22 Amulet 133 71 Ring (x2) 106 56 Accessory (x2) 92 49 Back item 52 27

Also known as ~40% Precision & 200% Ferocity

Then we apply food buffs & runes… etc

This could actually be really good for reaper as we can apply chill in many different ways so this is directly buffing our bleeds and increasing our sustain.
Should the condi damage be a significant enough buff it might even be worth it to use a few vipers for the expertise.

Do you guys think this might help push us into the ‘more viable for endgame PvE content’ catagory?

Power reaper is already fine for everything except raids, and in raids having dps that relies on deathly chill is going to suck just as badly as the current viper gs meta. We won’t know until we see the post-beta balance changes.

Also, there is an off-chance that Deathly Chill might change on 9/22 so hang tight.

For fun, though, you might review what Scourge’s Fell Beacon and Sand Soul traits do with equipment stats, provided they do not change before PoF, either.

Pretty sure people already run viper’s for dps. It will still likely be viper’s for scourge. Power oriented reaper will probably get shoved out of endgame pve raids and as such viper’s nor grieving will be used by them if deathly chill dies.

And I don’t know of any players who can rune a mainhand, offhand and a 2-handed weapon all at the same time. (4stat is 2*1173, 2*633).