Guild Wars 2

Anyone got a WvW Reaper build for GvG they’d be willing to share?

Since reaper mostly brings you utilities for melee range (shroud, GS and shouts), are you actually looking for a frontline build?
I will probably try it, but I’m really scared of CC. Better have a few guardian friends around

I haven’t given much thoughts but I would say
Skills:

• main weapon: GS, obvious choice for frontline
• second weapon? staff for disengage?
• healing: Your soul is mine! for the LF
• utilities: may keep a well of 2 (corruption/suffering/power?), spectral armor/walk
• elite: Chilled to the bone! for stability and strong CC if they reduce cast time… Else, plague.

Traits

• Blood Magic: Ritual of Life, Vampiric Presence, Vampiric Rituals
• Soul Reaping: Speed of Shadows, Vital Persistence, Foot in the Grave
• reaper: Relentless Pursuit, Soul Eater (Decimate Defenses?), Blighter’s Boon (Reaper’s Onslaught?)

That can at least be a base to work on…

Picking traits/utilities for wvw and especially gvg is not enough. The classic wellmancer runs zerk armor, doing so in melee range, even with trusted guardians is not enough to survive. Need to switch up armor for toughness or vitality, but you lose out on dmg.

any suggestions on armors???

I think for frontline as a reaper you’re gonna want Soldier gear. Gives you as much survivability as possible in terms of mitigating damage, and still has power as the primary stat. Use Soul Reaping to get Death Perception and slash at people in RS as often as possible

Yes, I didn’t mention it but soldier is definitely the way to go. I’ll have to see about foot in the grave, because if we could use the 50% crits in DS, that would be huge. But I just think the extra stab + stun break is priceless…

A good question is what would reaper bring by being frontline. It’s not just about trying to emulate a warrior. Reaper will only find its place in the frontline zerg meta if he brings something warriors/guardians don’t.

For the damage, we’ll have to wait and see.

Vampiric Presence seems like a nice addition. I don’t know how effective it would be, but adding healing is always a plus. Last Rites may be useful, but the cleave + AOE will eventually finish people anyway. I didn’t take transfusion, but it may be better than vampiric ritual (so basically extra healing or protection+well CD?). I was a bit afraid of the teleport part, if you stack all your downed friends in the same place for a cleave, it may be bad…

An interesting question is if we will be able to bomb the enemy back lines with our wells while we are in the frontline (and if this is useful in the first place). But we will be the only frontline class with access to strong range AOEs.

I survive well enough as a triple Wells staff Necro in full zerker, but I don’t see Reaper pulling that off. I’m thinking Soldiers gear with some kind of defensive rune.

What about a full shout build, something like:
GS
? D/W or S/D ?

Your soul is mine!
Suffer!
Nothing can save you!
You are all weaklings!
Chilled to the bone!

http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQG3AVkBLw~

Something else to consider is playing the same way and subbing GS for dagger/war horn and use GS for single target dmg after a well bomb.

For armor, your gonna want a nice mix of soldiers, zerkers, and knights. Pure soldiers won’t be as good as something with a little crit chance because as attack goes up crit chance gets more and more valuable. Ex: with 3k attack and no crit chance you won’t do as much damage as 2.7k attack and 30% crit chance.

@Johannes
dagger is only 2 targets max + DPS is lower than GS. Warhorn is good, so if staff is not so useful (but I feel it would be), we can trade it for dagger and open the push with locust swarm before switching to GS.
Life force regen should not be a problem with all people dying around, the limit to our survivability will be the cooldown of the shroud.

@lujate a full shout could be fun, especially with rune of the trooper. But I’m not convinced by shouts vs wells + spectral armor. “Nothing can save you!” could be interesting both the vuln and the unblockable, “You are all weaklings” is guaranteed 20 might on you + weakness around, “suffer” we’ll have to see how damaging this is… Definitely something we could think about. Do you think rune of trooper will work considering our shouts don’t affect allies?

i’ll probably build my reaper the same as my core necro, save for replacing whatever i have on the 8 skill with ‘suffer!’ or whatever the condi transfer shout is called. you are going to want that.

Do you think rune of trooper will work considering our shouts don’t affect allies?

from wiki

The sixth bonus activates on any shout and applies to nearby allies, regardless of who is affected by the shout, e.g. “On My Mark!” triggers the condition removal for party members even though it targets a foe.

@Sigmoid thanks
Then shouts build are potentially interesting indeed. I’m still hesitant with wells… The team protection + life steal from trait is strong, and boon corruption or blinds is always nice (of course, our non-reapers from the back line should give us some of that)… Any opinion well (and/or spectral armor) vs shouts?

Silverkey.2078:

@Sigmoid thanks
Then shouts build are potentially interesting indeed. I’m still hesitant with wells… The team protection + life steal from trait is strong, and boon corruption or blinds is always nice (of course, our non-reapers from the back line should give us some of that)… Any opinion well (and/or spectral armor) vs shouts?

I think Spectral armor will be pretty important for Reapers where they’re melee fighters. Remember, Spectral Armor works through shroud. Which means you have good damage reduction, and in fact, counter some damage every second for up to nine seconds traited. Plus, you can regenerate nearly 80% of your life force in those seconds if shroud is on cooldown. I know for my build I’ll be using shouts and spectrals for utilities/elite and going SR/DM/R for as much shroud uptime, toughness, and power as possible

@Vydahr
While DM makes you more survivable, it is very selfish. You don’t benefit much your party. Also, tougness becomes less important the more you have. On the other hand, the siphons from BM will heal you. In particular, I’m not too afraid for my life while in DS but rather for my life out of it. Being able to heal (a little) while still in DS means I have more life when I pop out of DS to survive until it is available again.

Silverkey.2078:

@Johannes
dagger is only 2 targets max + DPS is lower than GS. Warhorn is good, so if staff is not so useful (but I feel it would be), we can trade it for dagger and open the push with locust swarm before switching to GS.
Life force regen should not be a problem with all people dying around, the limit to our survivability will be the cooldown of the shroud.

@lujate a full shout could be fun, especially with rune of the trooper. But I’m not convinced by shouts vs wells + spectral armor. “Nothing can save you!” could be interesting both the vuln and the unblockable, “You are all weaklings” is guaranteed 20 might on you + weakness around, “suffer” we’ll have to see how damaging this is… Definitely something we could think about. Do you think rune of trooper will work considering our shouts don’t affect allies?

I think Johannes meant to take the current Staff/D-W build and just change the weapons to be Staff/GS.

I don’t think a Wells Reaper can match the damage of a Wells Necro, so I’m thinking about going in a completely different direction. The triple Shouts may not work. If I end up as a greasy spot on the ground too many times, I’ll have to swap out for something like Spectral Armor.

Silverkey.2078:

@Johannes
dagger is only 2 targets max + DPS is lower than GS.

DPS is higher than GS. In fact, the only way Greatsword can out-do Dagger DPS is specifically against 3 foes, at least one of which is under 50% HP so Gravedigger spam can happen.

Against 4 foes, you once again should be using Dagger, since it will take less time to kill all four. Gravedigger apparently got nerfed to only 3 targets.

@Drarnor Kunoram
Assuming you strike foes below 50%, your DPS is essentially gravedigger full-time which with current numbers seems more than dagger AA. On the other hand, if they really reduce it to 3 targets, gravedigger loses potency because 1) less targets 2) less chance to hit one below 50% to recharge it. The pulsing blind/cripple on GS is also a reason to take it on its own…

For the well, I was tempted with the “utility” wells more than pure damage. Corruption, darkness or power can all be useful. I love corruption in particular for being what necro shine at and potentially deadly in a zerg. But shouts may indeed be best.

Silverkey.2078:

@Drarnor Kunoram
Assuming you strike foes below 50%, your DPS is essentially gravedigger full-time which with current numbers seems more than dagger AA. On the other hand, if they really reduce it to 3 targets, gravedigger loses potency because 1) less targets 2) less chance to hit one below 50% to recharge it. The pulsing blind/cripple on GS is also a reason to take it on its own…

For the well, I was tempted with the “utility” wells more than pure damage. Corruption, darkness or power can all be useful. I love corruption in particular for being what necro shine at and potentially deadly in a zerg. But shouts may indeed be best.

Dagger AA is 2.8 total coefficient/cycle at 2.1 seconds per cycle. This results in 1.333 coefficient/second.

Gravedigger is 2 total coefficient/cycle at ~1.8 seconds/cycle. This results in 1.111 coefficients/second. Now, once you factor in that a Greatsword’s weapon damage is, on average, 10% higher than a dagger’s, we get effectively 2.2 dagger coefficients/cycle. This results in…1.222 coefficients/second.

So no, Gravedigger spam is lower DPS than dagger auto unless you have that third target.

I didn’t expect it to be that slow. Ok, well if it’s the case I really think the GS is not properly balanced. With such slow animations, we should get a higher reward…

Silverkey.2078:

@Vydahr
While DM makes you more survivable, it is very selfish. You don’t benefit much your party. Also, tougness becomes less important the more you have. On the other hand, the siphons from BM will heal you. In particular, I’m not too afraid for my life while in DS but rather for my life out of it. Being able to heal (a little) while still in DS means I have more life when I pop out of DS to survive until it is available again.

My biggest point is that I think Reaper will be an excellent shroud build. Which is inherently selfish. Kind of the flavor of necro anyway. And yes, the loss of BM is painful, but you get more powerful hits in RS with DM by a fair margin (as in, 7% more power off of what you have out of RS) which makes up for the healing loss. Plus, Unholy Sanctuary is almost a default for shroud builds, so you still get some healing. I think there’s enough with reaper in general that let’s it be survivable in and out of shroud, but it will be more focused on Shroud play, in my mind. And certainly my build. Though, I will admit that BM might be a better alternative than DM, though you lose out on boosting shroud more. You do get access to dagger and well traits, but… I don’t know. I think it’ll depend on preference between the two.

(Note: I run a Soldier Spectral-Wells build currently, so the health siphon has never been hugely noticeable for me. That being said, for lower health/toughness specs that are more bursty and don’t take GS, I’d say BM is the way to go, and DM for Tank/Brawler builds like mine)

@Vydahr
You make a strong point. Your build is indeed probably more survivable than a BM one. In particular Unholy Sanctuary as an emergency “back to shroud” since I really suspect the shroud CD will be our biggest enemy.

But then it comes back to my question: what are we bringing to the table? I doubt we will out-damage warriors, and yet they also bring potent utilities (I don’t even mention guardians). Sure, any additional member on a zerg can be an improvement, but why wouldn’t we stay backline where we already shine? I was just hoping that a bit of vampiric support could be a worthy addition and that a commander would ask at least one of the necros to spec reaper and join the dead zone

I think we can’t go much further until we put our hands on the reaper (which fortunately is soon). We’ll see how survivable we end up being, how damaging and ultimately how useful.

Sad most of us are probably not on the same server. Since I’ve never been frontline (I mostly play mesmer and necro, so never had the occasion before), I’ll probably die fast but it will be a nice experience

Silverkey.2078:

@Vydahr
You make a strong point. Your build is indeed probably more survivable than a BM one. In particular Unholy Sanctuary as an emergency “back to shroud” since I really suspect the shroud CD will be our biggest enemy.

But then it comes back to my question: what are we bringing to the table? I doubt we will out-damage warriors, and yet they also bring potent utilities (I don’t even mention guardians). Sure, any additional member on a zerg can be an improvement, but why wouldn’t we stay backline where we already shine? I was just hoping that a bit of vampiric support could be a worthy addition and that a commander would ask at least one of the necros to spec reaper and join the dead zone

I think we can’t go much further until we put our hands on the reaper (which fortunately is soon). We’ll see how survivable we end up being, how damaging and ultimately how useful.

Sad most of us are probably not on the same server. Since I’ve never been frontline (I mostly play mesmer and necro, so never had the occasion before), I’ll probably die fast but it will be a nice experience

Purely as a theory (when I WvW, I’m usually Roaming in the Borderlands taking camps and guards and in small fights now and then) I think the biggest thing we’d bring to frontline is chill. Yes, it no longer affects movement abilities. But it does affect the CDs of the enemy frontliners. Making them less potent and spacing out their bursts. And, actually, in addition to that, there are going to be a lot of people under 50% health. Gravedigger spam. Even if it is nerfed to three targets, that’s still three people (including downed) that gets blended repeatedly. Though a tanky Spectral Reaper wouldn’t have high damage, the perpetual AoE and chill would be potent in that setting. Executioner’s Scythe will be quite impactful, too, with the AoE chill. I think Reaper could see decent frontline use, if played to Necro’s inherently durable strengths. There will be a lot of death. There will be a lot of LF gain. And with the proper traits and utilities, a Frontline Reaper would bring a noticeable impact to battles

Further Note: Though condi cleanse is big right now, and GS AA is slow, in a zerg, people are still gonna get hit by it. And they’ll get hit enough that they have to choose between cleansing chill or cleansing (more) damaging conditions, thus sacrificing burst speed

I have a noob question: do nearby death regenerate life force even if you’re in DS?
What I am curious is how long will we manage to stay on DS. With the reaper shroud AA regenerating LF we probably will have more regen than in usual DS, but obviously we will take massive damage…

Silverkey.2078:

I have a noob question: do nearby death regenerate life force even if you’re in DS?
What I am curious is how long will we manage to stay on DS. With the reaper shroud AA regenerating LF we probably will have more regen than in usual DS, but obviously we will take massive damage…

While you’re in Death Shroud, you do not gain life force from deaths. This really should be added in. If not baseline, then at least changing Soul Comprehension to allow it instead of being useless would work.

Greatsword won’t have a place in WvW. The biggest reason is stability. We have foot in the grave which is 1 stack of stability and is a good trait. The reaper’s pulsing stability only pulses while in death shroud, so when you leave, you’ll have 3 seconds of 1 stack of stability.

Because of the stability nerf, necromancer cannot front line. Hell, neither can anyone anymore, really.

Maybe if they didn’t nerf stability, if well of power pulsed stability and spectral armor granted stability, then reaper could certainly be front line.

Currently though, why use greatsword or reaper? Medi guard is better. The only good skill on necromancer greatsword is the AOE pull which medi guard is better for. The other skills for necro gs are just damage and a lame pulsing blind. Chilling darkness was nerfed btw so that skill is bad now.

Greatsword will be a good PvE weapon.

Well we have a 120s CD, 2s activation skill which gives up to 10 stab for 10s….
Ok, I leave…

More seriously, as I indicated in my initial answer to OP, CC is my main fear. But if we try to compare to warrior
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Warrior_-_Shouts_Frontliner

the only usable stability I see is balanced stance, 5 stacks on 40s CD.

Our own stability is 8s pulsing stability from DS on a 17s CD + 1 stack from foot in the grave.

From what I understand, the main source of stability is AOE stab from guardian: 5 stacks on 24s CD
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Guardian_-_AH_Frontliner

As a necro, we can benefit from the guardian stability obviously. So I don’t think it’s too bad.

PS: as stated above, I don’t play frontline so I may miss some important details.

If I do decide to prepurchase before the weekend beta event, this is the build I would most likely run.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBIhZakjGapxibw2G4vhh1QJDgQ+XphQMMpA-TFCEAB2s/Qc6DEUJ4kq/YwTAQLlfAcIAe4EAQGgltA-w

I’m not a fan of vitality, so I go more for toughness. The cele overall adds to sustain and increases our EHP alot in combination with reaper shroud autos and unholy sactuary.

I was debating whether to use blood magic or death magic, but I really love the tankiness that comes from death magic. If you have another necro in party, one using vampiric aura, your sustain just gets that much better.

As for the reaper traits, it would be best to probably take:

-Relentless Pursuit
-Chilling Force
-Blighter’s boon (more sustain) / Reaper’s Onslaught (more deeps and mobility)

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Silverkey.2078:

I have a noob question: do nearby death regenerate life force even if you’re in DS?
What I am curious is how long will we manage to stay on DS. With the reaper shroud AA regenerating LF we probably will have more regen than in usual DS, but obviously we will take massive damage…

While you’re in Death Shroud, you do not gain life force from deaths. This really should be added in. If not baseline, then at least changing Soul Comprehension to allow it instead of being useless would work.

Better idea. Gaining LF from nearby deaths while in shroud (at least 50% of normal regen) should replace that gods-awful 3 second protection bull of a Grandmaster Minor

Edit: This would actually give a pretty substantial reason (more so than now) for tankier builds to take DM. Sooooo…. Anet, get on this, please. Pleeease

Vydahr.4285:

Better idea. Gaining LF from nearby deaths while in shroud (at least 50% of normal regen) should replace that gods-awful 3 second protection bull of a Grandmaster Minor

Edit: This would actually give a pretty substantial reason (more so than now) for tankier builds to take DM. Sooooo…. Anet, get on this, please. Pleeease

No. Protection on leaving DS is fantastic. When are you vulnerable? after leaving DS. When is the protection uptime? Right after you leave DS. It’s perfect. With just the speed of shadows trait, you can have 42.85% protection uptime. That’s not including spectral armor, last gasp, and other forms of protection for an upwards of 100% uptime.

However, I agree that we should gain lifeforce from deaths while IN DEATHSHROUD. That should be a baseline QoL fix.

Malchior.1928:

Vydahr.4285:

Better idea. Gaining LF from nearby deaths while in shroud (at least 50% of normal regen) should replace that gods-awful 3 second protection bull of a Grandmaster Minor

Edit: This would actually give a pretty substantial reason (more so than now) for tankier builds to take DM. Sooooo…. Anet, get on this, please. Pleeease

No. Protection on leaving DS is fantastic. When are you vulnerable? after leaving DS. When is the protection uptime? Right after you leave DS. It’s perfect. With just the speed of shadows trait, you can have 42.85% protection uptime. That’s not including spectral armor, last gasp, and other forms of protection for an upwards of 100% uptime.

However, I agree that we should gain lifeforce from deaths while IN DEATHSHROUD. That should be a baseline QoL fix.

That works fine for Shroud Flashing builds, but not for Shroud builds. I think that that minor really should be more significant. Make it 3 seconds of invuln if they’re sticking to short duration stuff. If it stays protection, it should double duration and be shared to Allies (not just minions)

Using Soldiers armour with Trooper runes, Knights trinkets and Soldiers wep, with Accuracy & Force sigils, (all Exotic) IntoTheMists gives these numbers:
Primary Stats

Health 25662 (6450)
Vitality 1645 (645)

Armor 3060 (1140)
Toughness 2140 (1140)

Attack 3255 (1144)
Power 2088 (1088)

Critical Hit 34% (34%)
Precision 1490 (490)

Secondary Stats

Damage 1167 (+5%)

Defense 920 (+0)

How good would be Plague form in the middle of the enemy zerg? I would assume blinds and weakness to be quite strong there, would that on its own be a justification for necro in the frontline (despite long CD)?

Silverkey.2078:

How good would be Plague form in the middle of the enemy zerg? I would assume blinds and weakness to be quite strong there, would that on its own be a justification for necro in the frontline (despite long CD)?

A couple Plagues in your zerg can easily be devesating. A little less so now that Chilling Darkness is worthless, but even without that triat, the blind spam is highly effective.

The only builds i’ve really tried to theory craft out for reaper all involve being full ascended, and since it looks like we won’t be getting to use our normal necros, but Beta ones with exo gear (like the rev tests) i’m not entirely sure what to run.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vRUQFA2ic0QLNWTjDchaWENRVAbzAoFopRb8sA-TVCBABKqDYLlIScBAwSZ0nq/AwDAILlGFt/gkKBDAgAczbGAG6QH6QH6Q7mD9m3co3sUAWs1C-w

That would be for ascended. Didn’t feel the need to stack vitality, it’s already pretty kitten high just off base. 3k Armor, 2400 power, 40% crit chance, 220% crit damage. Roll in a party with 2 guards a war and 1 other class or 2 Wars a guard and 1 other. Would run 2 wells you can toss down as you move in for engage (could swap those out for spec Armor and something else if you were so inclined, then pop RS and go in, drop chill field, pop stab, spin to win +some auto attacks, dash out for disengage.

Trait lines IMO would be Spite/SR/Reaper, but that’s just how i’d run it, you could swap stuff around as needed really.

W/ 25 stacks of might from Empower prior to engage you’d be hitting like glass backline, but wayyyy tankier and you should have plenty of stab to keep you rolling.

I’d still keep staff to help maintain AoE pressure between melee engages, and then swap out to GS before you reengage.

I guess if anything you’d kinda be playing sorta like a backline/frontline hybrid.

That of course is just my thoughts, we’ll just have to see how things actually play out.

So did someone try the frontline reaper?
I personally did and it was extremely fun, mostly because it was my very first time in the frontline. However, I cannot really say if it was efficient because I lack comparison point + I was on a rather unorganized zerg fighting other unorganized zergs and the highest number usually slaughtered the other (and my server, Vabbi, is usually the lowest number, with perma “outnumbered” buff)

Still my comments:

• Reaper shroud was great. Really the main benefit of the reaper atm. The pulsing stab on 3 is absolutely mandatory in the zerg, and I really hate when it runs out. 4 is super nice especially as I traited blood magic for some healing/rez. 2 is rather useful (having some mobility is a “leap” forward for necro ). 1 felt weak.
• when we managed to do proper push/regroup phases, the shroud lasted basically long enough for the push and blighter’s boon + nearby deaths allowed to refill most of it during regroup. That was really great…
• … because GS itself was not so amazing. I clearly preferred it in WvW than in PvP because more enemies + you usually hit at least a few with 3 to build LF. But I still tried to stay out of it as often as I could.
• can’t say much about shouts. The stun break is on one of the best shouts, which is nice. I had hope for the heal to regen LF, but it just does not heal enough and the LF gain does not make up for it.

So overall, I would say promising, but GS really needs some boost.

Frontline reaper don’t work. The reason warriors and guardians can hang in the frontline isn’t just because they have stab, high armor, and hp. It’s because they have access to invulns, reflects, blocks, long leaps, knockdowns, etc.. Reapers unfortunately don’t have the defenses allowing them to hang with the frontline. Sad to say, I did try it yesterday in WvW during reset on a T1 NA server, with full soldiers. Without the above defenses reapers just can’t take the heat properly. And sadly Reapers also don’t offer enough group buffs to warrant a frontline spot.

GS is not usable in WvW at the moment, you won’t be able to hit much with them due to the long cast times in laggy, fluid, environments where people don’t stand still.

I’ve been running reaper mainly in WvW. I’ve made 2 specific builds. One is a standard Power Reaper that runs double shouts with spectral armor. You take death magic, soul reaping, and reaper. Run Rise shout with death nova. The damage is absolutely ridiculous when the minions explode. Its a good alternative to wells.

The build I made for GvG is a chill build that runs Spite, Soul Reaping, and Reaper. I would run Curses for blind on chill, but I discovered that Well of Darnkess only chills one target hit out of the initial 5.

Yeah, GS is pretty horrid.

Tried it in WvW & some PvP. Dagger is so much better.

I even tried tagging mobs in a Cursed Shore PvE event… most died before i could even hit them.

Anyone found a good condi reaper build for roaming? Everything i tested went bad or super bad!

So far, I agree with both Silverkey and gavyne, it was fun but probably won’t earn a spot in a premade front line party.

I didn’t try it for reset, but I ran it this morning in T3 during the end of SEA time, in a PUG with no voice chat. I found myself camping RS and D/W. The lack of stab is a problem.

So far, my answer to what Reaper brings to the front line is nothing.

Well there is a good chance that GS damage and possibly RS damage will be increased a bit (because they currently don’t compete with non-reaper necro in any game mode). Already right now, I would not be surprised that the reaper has a higher damage than warrior: I had a look at it, the damage coefficients are about the same, but necro can take 50% crits (I can’t see how the extra 1 stab is better than 50% crit) which is 25% increased damage while warrior only has “destruction of the empowered” as a personal DPS increase from which you can expect maybe 12% increase?

Then for utilities, I used blood magic so I have healing and rez power from RS 4 (I love this skill so much), vampiric aura… Also shouts clean conditions, which warrior and guardians also provide but at least we have it. We have some blinds, poison, chill and vuln (which even if it is cleansed fast still helps in the meanwhile)… So the might/fury we miss is partly compensated by high vuln uptime (I use “Unyielding Blast”, although “Speed of Shadows” is tempting). I also brought “Nothing can save you!” which makes party unblockable, good against guardians.

I don’t pretend it is meta-worthy, but I feel like it potentially is something which you shouldn’t feel to bad to take the place of a warrior when you have a sudden urge to jumping in the middle of a red-name sea to spin around (love that feeling).

If you use the trait that make your shroud drops conditions, and you use trooper runes with a good amount of shouts, the vitality isn’t really needed on all pieces.

I’d go gs/staff.
In another note can i just add: WTF THIS IS TANKY BEYOND kittenING BELIEF

Lynnie.7213:

Anyone found a good condi reaper build for roaming? Everything i tested went bad or super bad!

I too was trying condi reaper, but as far as condis go for reaper, you’d actually want RS with Spite/Curses/Soul Reaping instead of the Reaper traitline. Chill sucks. I feel like it would be far better if it were distributed in big hits rather than little bits. It would allow us to take the chill without forfeiting practically everything else. Also, Deathly Chill is unspeakably bad, and the master tier has no traits for a condi spec to use (Chilling Victory sucks because chill sucks). Personally, I think that if Deathly Chill didn’t suck, and Reaper had more chill, the most expendable line would be curses because spite synergizes far better with Reaper and it isn’t a hot mess.

Reaper has better stab than I thought. RS #3 provides stab.

Instead of trying to build a Reaper as a frontline melee, I tried building the Reaper around the current meta-wellmancer builds for WvW. Reason being I tried to hang with the frontline on reset night, tried it with both cele and soldiers. Problem is when things get very hot, when Guardians & Warriors pop their invulns, blocks, reflects, long leaps, etc.. we have access to none of those things. So you either get out before things get hot, or you’ll die. This unfortunately makes Reapers not quite frontline worthy at the moment, just as Reapers also don’t bring much by ways of group buffs & utilities.

So building a Reaper around the standard power wellmancer, I had pretty good success once I got used to understanding when to leap in & out of heat. First tried it with Blood Magic / Soul Reaping / Reaper, here’s the vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZIj0prE5MM

The idea behind the build is to have as much power as current meta-wellmancer, have the wells cd from BM and the sustain of siphon heals. You would bomb as a backliners, but when the zergs inevitably clash, you pop Reaper and cleave with it.

Then I felt the pop isn’t quite there with Blood Magic spec, so tried it with Spite / Soul Reaping / Reaper, and the results are here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaIk2dSRZes

Definitely more pop, higher spike damage due to Close to Death & Chill of Death. Better might stacking, which along with Blighter’s Boon resulted in more LF/hp regen. More vuln which also means it helps with your crit.

Gear is zerker with valk jewelry. Tried full zerker but there’s just not enough lifeforce with it. Playing up front in melee range, you really need the extra lifeforce or you’ll find yourself out of Reaper Shroud often. Unfortunately GS just isn’t viable in WvW at the moment, people don’t stand around like target dummies. Suggest to stick with Staff – Dagger/WH for now until Robert Gee hopefully fixes Greatsword. Also shouts are hard to use due to the cast time. I’d find it more useful if we could use shouts in Reaper Shroud. That or get cast time reduced, especially the elite.

I absolutely love the added mobility that Reaper Shroud brings. I think Blighter’s Boon is a must have, it’s our active and passive lifeforce regen that works wonders (we need this for death shroud). Also Soul Reaping seems to be required as well, I can’t imagine running without it. You can take DM if you want to tank up more and go more melee oriented. You can take Curses if you want to do more 1v1. There are choices out there, I didn’t get a chance to test them all unfortunately.

I find it hard to get used to standard necro now that the beta weekend’s over. It just feels so slow and normal now. I need the Reaper. Reapers have made the necro class much more interactive and fun to play. Please hurry up with the expansion, thanks.

Ahah, I have the same feeling. My poor necro will not get much love from me in the next weeks because I feel too restrained with it now

I just hope I won’t suddenly feel for jumping in the melee with my zerk necro (I just love that feeling of all-mightiness in reaper shroud when being in frontline).

Any new thoughts on this coming weekend?