Guild Wars 2

Any one have any con’s of playing the elite Reaper class?

I can literally only think of pro’s. It adds loads more variant to our game play as necro’s and some how made us a little more tanky ( almost like a secondary tank option).

If you play minion master/reaper combo not much can stop you. Whilst it’s all good the one con is the combat in PVE can get a little stale due to it. I know I should try other builds but I’ve found what works for me. It makes my life a little bit more easy ( sometimes I don’t have hours to play).

Any one else have something to say/share?

If you’re talking about PvE, there’s really no con to playing the reaper elite.

In WvW, backlining with staff/wells is extremely fun, especially when you are sniping enemies for 10k with your homing Life Blast (now only does the higher tier damage rather than having it split between >600 and <600 with piercing baseline). But yes, for pve there are almost no cons unless you are in an area where melee is impossible.

In PvE the only cons to reaper is the Range. For all the other things, it’s an upgrade to the old one.
In sPvP have more cons and grant the chance to use lesser builds, is melee and easy to kite, also can’t be use the blood trait that grant you to heal and teleport+ress your allies in your position, that was one of my favorite strategical skill. Anyway, have so much pro that is umpossible play the core build better than the reaper. Stability (RS3+elite), movement (RS2), CC (RS5) and combos to inflict huge condition damag (RS5+RS4 with the trait, or Poison Field from staff mark/poison cloud + RS4 for more poison spam instead of poison+bleed, at choice).

In PvE I used a berserker Vampiric Build and I’m been forced to renunce to Soul Reaper trait to use the Reaper. I lost the 50% critical in RS and other good utilities but obtained Blighter Boon and critical based on vulnerability.

In WvW I will always use the old-but-gold zerg power wellomancer build without the reaper. I lose stability and good traits but obtain more AoE damage with the DS1 spam.

One of gripes of the MM build in pve is the slow CC speed. I feel like every major CC has a large wind up time. It’s generally not an issue, but very noticeable for those break bars that only last 3-5 secs.

The generic viper horror build has

Warhorn 4 Which admittedly is good, but locked out of if you just swapped to dagger recently.
Shroud 3, which requires you to enter shroud and double tap 3.
Shroud 5, which has the most disgusting wind up ever.
Flesh Golem charge, which he takes his time getting ready for.

Vanilla Necromancer has more variety in condition application and high damage, homing projectiles.

Otherwise, yes, Reaper is a straight upgrade and better than vanilla Necromancer in really every way. As others have said, in PvE, there isn’t much reason to play a standard Necromancer.

Personal preference: I play standard Necromancer in WvW (which is nearly all I do) because I just plain don’t like Reaper. Strange, I know, but I very much prefer Death Shroud over Reaper Shroud and I like having 3 trait lines to play with instead of 2. (Although, to be totally honest, it’s only 2 trait lines to play with instead of 1 because I always take Soul Reaping.)

In PvE, I do use a full Berserker Reaper build but only because a) I rarely do PvE and b) because Reaper makes open world stuff insanely easy. Aggro everything and cleave it to death = cake.

At the end of the day though, play what you enjoy most. If you enjoy being effective, play what’s effective. If you enjoy what you find fun, play what you find fun. For me, I don’t mind if I put myself at a disadvantage, as long as I like what I’m playing. And I just don’t much care for Reaper.

reaper is generally better but here are some pro for death shroud
dark path is unblockable
doom is instant
lifeblast is a range attack
a group fight is where reaper shroud really pulls ahead. Death shroud is most likely going to get CCed to death in a group fight.

if you ever fight underwater vanilla necromancer 100%. Its just too good

In PvE if you want to have both blood magic and death magic traits as well as curses. Also i don’t think the chill damage stacks with other players.

For example in raids you might want the extra minions and condi transfers as well as the shroud 4 rezing trait and healing from blood magic.

IonoI.3956:

In PvE if you want to have both blood magic and death magic traits as well as curses. Also i don’t think the chill damage stacks with other players.

For example in raids you might want the extra minions and condi transfers as well as the shroud 4 rezing trait and healing from blood magic.

Deathly chill was changed a long while back. It does a stack of bleed on chill now instead of straight up chill damage so you can stack necros without overriding each other now.

Lahmia.2193:

In WvW, backlining with staff/wells is extremely fun, especially when you are sniping enemies for 10k with your homing Life Blast (now only does the higher tier damage rather than having it split between >600 and <600 with piercing baseline). But yes, for pve there are almost no cons unless you are in an area where melee is impossible.

Reaper…….

I think even in a situation where it’s not ideal—or even when it’s impossible—to melee, I’d still take Reaper over Vanilla Shroud for the Stability, Death’s Charge, Decimate Defenses, Chilling Nova, and Deathly Chill.