Guild Wars 2

I’ve been playing the reaper quite a bit on the last BWE and this one. I really liked it when I started playing last BWE even if it was clunky and under tuned. GS and RS felt good. And this BWE was the same at the start with the buffs and slight skillchanges.

But now when the first bit of excitement has gone away Reaper feels “meh” the more I play it. It’s not that it’s bad. It’s just that there is nothing really interesting about it. The main offender is the traits for me. They are mostly solid ideas though some still feel under tuned. I just can’t feel them having an impact on how I play or the builds I make.

RS sure has some good animations and it’s nice to have a few more finishers. The stab is great as we lack that otherwise. Can’t complain about it really.

GS I thought was amazing at start but now it feels a bit lacklustre. The auto feels like slow motion compared to the rest of the combat. Too many time have I reach a foe raised my sword and seen it die before I swing. Gravedigger while a nice concept and probably works better in pvp but is quite boring in pve. I was fighting a champ at an event and after 50%health I made it my auto and that was the only skill I needed to use for the remaining 3 min of the fight. I mean sure I can use the other skills but why when the game incentives me to use it. The rest is fine but they don’t really feel that impactful (With impactful I mean that they affect the flow of the combat in a way that is noticeable which I think higher CD skills should do). It kind of feels like my necro runs at a slower pace than the game using the GS(this is based on Verdant Brink combat). The more I use GS the more I wished it worked like spear as I think the spear is the best designed weapon for the necro when it comes to skill functionality(not really how it’s balanced atm though).

The shouts follows the same theme as the traits. They are solid skills but they don’t really feel impactful. And the only truly interesting one is “Rise” after the recent changes even though it still uses the same model as boneminions.

So when I now look at other Elite specs, their skills and traits are a lot more interesting then the Reaper(not necessarily better or more useful). And looking at what Reaper brings to necro now when I’ve played it I feel it’s not that much. The only “new” thing we’re really got (according to me) that we didn’t really have before is a straight up power weapon with burst potential. While that is fine I feel like RS is made to fill that roll as well which makes Reaper feel less versatile.

So after running around in VB feeling reaper is loosing my interest I swapped back to D/W & staff with the usual spite, soul reaping and blood magic with wells. Sadly I felt way more flexible and useful. The encounters became easier as well. So I guess Reaper is not for me any more, which is a shame as I was really looking forward to it. I’m going to miss RS but I can’t sacrifice a whole traitline for it as it is now. Looking forward to axe and scepter changes though.

TL;DR
After playing Reaper in the previous and current BWE I feel that Reaper lacks depth and it covers it up with a nice theme and animations. Which is a shame as I really looked forward to play it in HoT.

This is actually my reaction as well. I love the theme of reaper, but feel that with the chill nerfs its raison d’etre was kind of aborted before it could even be born.

If it is not a chill, machine, what is it? Melee? Well, the RS is nice, but Dagger/Warhorn really covers all my melee needs. And if I am just going dagger/warhorn, I think there are better trait setups in the other tracks than the reaper one.

Its opposite, the greatsword is a pure PVE weapon, its 4v5 if you use it in pvp.

Flumek.9043:

Its opposite, the greatsword is a pure PVE weapon, its 4v5 if you use it in pvp.

Believe it or not, its slow animations are just as much a liability in the Verdant Brink as they are in PvP.

You’re interrupting your auto chain or gravedigger half the time to dodge skills that otherwise take off half your health or more, and you only have one source of stability in a place where mobs love to knock you around like a pinball.

I think people will become disenchanted real soon when they realize that there are still classes doing more DPS and burst than reaper without the slow animations and better defenses and more group utility.

Of course, the greatsword animations are very pretty, I will say. Reaper easily has the best animations.