Guild Wars 2

So fellow necros: Do we think that reapers will be a viable enough front liner to over take the meta of having wells? Will the shouts replace wells?

I for one would prefer to play a reaper than wells backline, what do you think?

You can be a reaper with wells.

I know… So does that mean you think reaper with wells will be new meta? Hence reference to ‘backlines’

Doubt it.

On small servers, you’ll still want your life blasts to help take out siege on top of walls. You will not want to give that up.

On larger servers or on dedicated “fight” guilds the situation is a little better for the reaper.

You’ll be able to take chilling darkness for your plague blinds, and get some damage reduction from that too. You’ll have stability stacks to help prevent getting stunned on the first push. Your fears will also chill which will annoy your teammates less.

But you still will be dead weight in “pirate ship battles” metas that WvW is turning into. You’ll still need to be carried by your teammates for condition removals, and you still will melt in the AoE that is everywhere. You will not be as good as necromancers for tagging stuff, which means less loot, less life force and less auto revives on kills.

I think if these shouts give more access to stability, necro could probably compete with warrior as a frontliner…haha, almost had myself going.

If a necromancer specs into 6 second deathshroud cooldown it could tie really well with “blighter’s boon”.

Basically when a reaper is out of reaper shroud his life force will regenerate exponentially, and whilst in reaper shroud his health will regenerate really quickly as well.

I think zerker DS necro with wells will still be more optimal in zerg play.

Reaper will never back line as well as necro because of lack of range.

Front line is a different story. It depends on build and your team. They should also allow easier dealing with classes that have skills that reduce direct damage to 0 such as ranger and warrior.

Lets not forget about backline chronomancer with wells!

Second reaper with wells. With the short range on wells it will be nice to have reapers condition mitigation to get you “out of the muck”.

But to answer your question it just might give us another meta as a dps front liner. Will have to see it in action, Im sure some will succeed at it anyway.

Reaper won’t backline as well due to melee vs ranged DS, plus I don’t see anything useful that Reaper would bring for them, while Spite/Blood Magic/Soul Reaping are pretty important lines for a backline Necro. I do think Reaper has the potential to be a frontliner, if shouts work out to be strong enough. The boon spam will make for some crazy sustain and tankiness, and the super short CD shouts or massive snare reduction can make for a good frontline, even if they don’t necessarily have the CC of the hammers.

Sigmoid.7082:

Reaper will never back line as well as necro because of lack of range.

Front line is a different story. It depends on build and your team. They should also allow easier dealing with classes that have skills that reduce direct damage to 0 such as ranger and warrior.

I agree with this, I think a backline reaper should definately bounce to front when they can if they want to play it properly.

So, here’s a thought.

Reaper Shroud #5 causes a stun and a large cold field. #4 is a big ol’ spin to win move that shoots out a massive amount of cold bolts and similar when used in a field.

Let’s get into traits here though. Just from the Reaper Line, we have Chilling Nova and Chilling Force. Basically, you cause chilling explosions on the areas you hit, increasing the number of chills all around, and every time you hit a chilled target you gain a stack of might. It won’t be hard at all to cruise into an enemy zerg on 25 might stacks and keep spreading chill around like a monster, while the might you’re generating also heals you or adds to your life force in massive chunks.

But wait! There’s more! Because ground targeting is becoming baseline for wells, there’s nothing stopping you from taking Soul Reaping and Blood Magic on top of being a Reaper, allowing you to do the chillsplosion dance while fighting people inside wells.

So, I don’t really see there being a problem here. Reaper feels like a direct upgrade.

How i feel reaper may work as a front line for damage is spite/soul reaping/reaper with full valk gear sor valk solider mix.

Things that have good synergy with blighters boon. (1%lf or 133hp)

• siphoned power, 2 might ever few secs when you strike someone under 50%
• reapers might on every shroud swing
• Chilling force and chilling nova or rs#5 for chills everywhere and mass might
• Anything that grants you a boon from any source. Including Spiteful spirit

Other things that heal you.

• Spiteful renewal is 2k hp every 5s as long as a target is below 25% hp. Easy with 5 target cleave
• Whirl bolts from dark fields

When you are gaining lf you are gaining hp or sometimes both at the same time. you will stay in shroud for a very long time and can even heal to near full in it due to boom spam, might spam and blighters. Whenever you drop shroud its only another 7s before you are in it again and by that time again due to so many sources for lf it will be full. You will have decent armour as well as a flat between 15~72% damage reduction, you wont be soft at all. Damage will still be decent due to high crit chance is shroud and valk gear. You can effectivly have between 60k and 124k health as a reaper of which is always being topped up due to traits.

I have a few more reaons why i think it would be fine on the front line but cba with super long post.

I be playing Reaper Frontline, shouts are poor in many areas so can easily take 2 wells whilst deciding about what else I will take. Just going to take my time deciding on exactly what to do.. however just by carrying spare armour you can instantly change to meta Wellmancer with limited hassle.

Mind you, im a suicidal player. Dont matter if im on my full zerker necro (when i play him which is rare now), he right there in the middle of the fight 50% of the time