How is the Reaper doing in dps?

This is a sincere question. I thought the reaper class was holding its own, but apparently, "in the dancer world", the reaper class is the bottom of the barrel, and the only class higher than a healer to partner with. I did a run of Aglaia earlier, which had two dancers in the party. There was a tank, the two healers, two dancers, a samurai, a ninja, and me as a reaper. My ilvl is 600 atm, only because I don't get to raid hard core, as I am going through a master's program, and that takes a lot of my time.

At first, both dancers dogpiled on the samurai. Then they separated with only one on the samurai. The other dancer chose to partner with the ninja. The ninja was dead at every fight, sometimes more than once, and my health pool was well over 5k more than the ninjas was. Finally, because the ninja died so many times, the dancer pulled the partnership off of him and didn't partner with anyone else from the Lions in the raid, to the end. It doesn't feel like I am swinging and hitting with a plastic knife, but maybe I am?? Maybe the dancers are far wiser than I am and I am existing in an illusional bubble or something, still having fun on the reaper. But in the real world, the reaper is really crap, and not viable in a group anymore for anything.

So, is the reaper really that bad?? I didn't think the reaper was that horrible. I know for sure I was doing more dps than that dead dps.

Max ilvl is 600.

RPR isn't bad, it's a bit lower than other melees and could use a few buffs here and there, but it remains a good job that brings value.
Don't pay attention to who the dancer is partnering, they may be friend or the DNC could simply make a wrong choice. They may have removed partner by mistake and forgot to re-enable it.
Especially in Aglaia, it really doesn't matter as players could play in the worst ways possible and still clear. Many people don't care about how they play.

How often a job gets selected for dance partner in a 24man isn't an accurate reflection of a job's effectiveness.

Honestly the fact they even remembered to put it on someone is kind of impressive in a 24man; I wouldn't read too much into not being selected.

I main Reaper and it definitely needs some buffs and changes in PvP but overall it's pretty good. The only thing that I see that needs buffed is are the Shroud abilities and add 2 seconds to arcane crest.

Dancer partner job selection is minor optimization anyway (at least between those you mentiond) and/or based how burst based the job is. Most Dancers in normal content never bother to switch after the start of the instance let alone mid-fight. It's the content where you are happy as long as your party can tie their own shoelaces, going above and beyond is mostly done out of boredom.

All the melees are in a couple percent margin anyway, stressing out over meta (let alone viability) in job selection is ridiculous. You don't need to feel insecure because you don't get picked among first for a video game buff, it's not a high school gym class.

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

Dancer partner job selection is minor optimization anyway (at least between those you mentiond) and/or based how burst based the job is. Most Dancers in normal content never bother to switch after the start of the instance let alone mid-fight. It's the content where you are happy as long as your party can tie their own shoelaces, going above and beyond is mostly done out of boredom.

All the melees are in a couple percent margin anyway, stressing out over meta (let alone viability) in job selection is ridiculous. You don't need to feel insecure because you don't get picked among first for a video game buff, it's not a high school gym class.

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Says you! High school is serious content!

But seriously, most dancers couldn't find their ass if you handed them a map and a mirror, so don't worry too much about who gets partners. Or they intentionally troll and give it to someone silly.

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Originally Posted by Rainydayz

At first, both dancers dogpiled on the samurai. Then they separated with only one on the samurai. The other dancer chose to partner with the ninja.

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I feel this on whole another level...

The Balance discord can provide optimized DP (Dance Partner) choices. Off the top of my head since I haven't checked it in a while it's probably as followed from top to bottom

• Ninja/Reaper
• Monk
• Dragoon/Samurai
• Summoner/Blackmage
• Redmage
• Machinist/Bard
• Dancer

PS: Do correct if I am wrong please.

In reality? On average, Dancers do not care about what's optimal, because your average content doesn't require optimization.

To know what's best you will need something like ACT which is a 3rd party tool, or FFlogs and choosing the one with the best track record that on average players won't use.


Here's a more realistic list on the Dance Partner priority based on personal experience from top to bottom

• Husband/Wife
• Their friend
• Their Static member
• FC member
• Their RPing Dom which could be a Paladin or Sage
• The hottest most revealing glamour player
• F/M Miqo'te
• The one with a very sexualized search info and adventure plate
• The most flirty person chatting in party/alliance chat
• Bun Girl
• Bun Boy
• BiS iLvl Melee player
• A very edgy Blackmage
• The player with probably the most experience doing the content they are in
• Streamer
• The DPS that so happens to be the danger dorito
• Ninja Reaper
• BIS Samurai
• Every other Melee with any iLvl
• Then the Ninja that is 9 levels below you
• DarkKnight for opener
• Mentor player
• Dying Mentor player
• Then BiS Samurai Lala

Scientific research done by totally just me, big nods.
I would type /s but... you know it kinda feels this way xD

Tbh I get the feeling that most DNC just throws it at a random dps.

Edit: Or a Tank lol.
I've even seen DNC throw it at Healers before...

I think players are gradually becoming aware that Reaper is the weakest melee dps in terms of output at present. That being said, the job was overwhelmingly popular at launch on account of it having fantastic aesthetics, the single best movement ability in the game, and just being all around good fun. They'll probably keep it on the lower end at least until the FotM players finish saturating SAM/NIN next tier. It's better for the job in the long run. Let them beg for buffs, as long as the margins between jobs remains relatively small it's just motivation to beat them by being smarter about uptime and solid on your fundamentals.

Reaper is fine IMO. Only caveats the class has is niche Harvest Moon use. Which if you wanted a single target gain in the same time it takes to charge up you can just Harpe 3 times for 900 pot.

It's utilities are Arcane Crest/Circle and requires liberal use of the Death Design debuff to maintain a 10% self damage buff akin to OG DRG Heavy Thrust. Not sure if stacking a truckload of Det boosts your passive damage further to get a permanent 15%-20% increase.

And your burst is primarily during Enshroud phases. So build up 100 Shroud and you can go Unga Bunga with your Shroud Skills, throw out Harvest Moon and 1 Harpe and use Communio and then re-enter Shroud and do the same thing except replace HM with 3 Harpes and if you did this during Arcane Circle you can use PH after your 2nd Communio to get 50 gauge for another Enshroud phase and do your Unga Bunga a 3rd time and you are pumping out a lot of damage in a minute once you build it up.

And the HM and Harpe and possible Death Design attacks should only be used to let the Enshroud recast end it's CD which when that happens you use Communio and re-enter shroud immediately.

TLDR : Reaper damage is primarily Soul Reaver stacks and Enshroud.

Reaper is doing alright. It is the weakest melee at this time, but it's still within a couple percent of other melee jobs. Furthermore, owing to its extreme easy of play and low-risk, high reward playstyle, it should probably remain slightly below the others.

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

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Most feelycraft discussions about 'job complexity' within a role turn out to be objectively false if you do a quick comparison of the jobs' IQR as a measure of skill variation. BLM is really the only dps job at the moment that really stands out from the rest in that regard. They've all been massively simplified since Heavensward.

I think reaper could use some minor potency buffs to keep up with the other classes. It does feel a bit low when I am for example soloing glamour runs, my bard clears those a lot faster. But overall I think it is well balanced.

The only thing I dislike is that on older content say lvl 50 roulette stuff.. You have like 5 buttons to use... Your 10% debuff, the 1-2-3 combo slice and the blood stalk thing. While the 1-2-3 combo is very, very slow. There is not much else to do. Sit around and wait for your GCD's. Not really something to weave in the rotation. This gets boring real quick. Reaper starts at level 70. So baseline should be all the level 70 skills in my opinion. Which gives you the gibbets and gallows for you to weave in and master. Other classes that start at a higher level should have that as a baseline level aswel. Dumbing down to far is not really helping you with your rotation mastery.

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Originally Posted by Magiqa

I think reaper could use some minor potency buffs to keep up with the other classes. It does feel a bit low when I am for example soloing glamour runs, my bard clears those a lot faster. But overall I think it is well balanced.

The only thing I dislike is that on older content say lvl 50 roulette stuff.. You have like 5 buttons to use... Your 10% debuff, the 1-2-3 combo slice and the blood stalk thing. While the 1-2-3 combo is very, very slow. There is not much else to do. Sit around and wait for your GCD's. Not really something to weave in the rotation. This gets boring real quick. Reaper starts at level 70. So baseline should be all the level 70 skills in my opinion. Which gives you the gibbets and gallows for you to weave in and master. Other classes that start at a higher level should have that as a baseline level aswel. Dumbing down to far is not really helping you with your rotation mastery.

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Solution would be to not play it at such a low level then. But I agree that a lot of the newer jobs are garbage when synced down.

I'd also argue that, at least so far for me, as I've only started to level rpr recently, that it isn't meant to weave much of anything at all until you have gauge. Because so far at base 70, only the avatar skills are oGCD.

SAM is the easiest melee and one of the easiest in the game imo and is top dps.

I think that it should matter and that skill floor should affect damage output, but it rly doesn't.
Which imo is unfair.

I rly dunno how anyone could fail at SAM how it plays in EW.

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Originally Posted by Rainydayz

This is a sincere question. I thought the reaper class was holding its own, but apparently, "in the dancer world", the reaper class is the bottom of the barrel, and the only class higher than a healer to partner with. I did a run of Aglaia earlier, which had two dancers in the party. There was a tank, the two healers, two dancers, a samurai, a ninja, and me as a reaper. My ilvl is 600 atm, only because I don't get to raid hard core, as I am going through a master's program, and that takes a lot of my time.

At first, both dancers dogpiled on the samurai. Then they separated with only one on the samurai. The other dancer chose to partner with the ninja. The ninja was dead at every fight, sometimes more than once, and my health pool was well over 5k more than the ninjas was. Finally, because the ninja died so many times, the dancer pulled the partnership off of him and didn't partner with anyone else from the Lions in the raid, to the end. It doesn't feel like I am swinging and hitting with a plastic knife, but maybe I am?? Maybe the dancers are far wiser than I am and I am existing in an illusional bubble or something, still having fun on the reaper. But in the real world, the reaper is really crap, and not viable in a group anymore for anything.

So, is the reaper really that bad?? I didn't think the reaper was that horrible. I know for sure I was doing more dps than that dead dps.

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It depends on your Gear starting with iLvL weapon and then the rest.

Secondary stat and meld, the beginners of 1 month or 10 years, always forget their importance and it shows whatever the job. Fragile tank, low dps, low heal.

Every time I say it in a dungeon, I get kicked 60% of the time, but you can't catch noobs...

And it's a service he does me to kick me, because better to be alone than in bad company


Then the skill.

It's not enough for any job to just make a faceroll to dps/tank/heal well. You were lied to.

RPR DPS is exactly where it should be.

That said, DNC's giving dance partner to SAM right now is honestly not the best choice, but I think most DNC's just throw it on any random melee DPS and don't really pay attention.

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Originally Posted by Ransu

RPR DPS is exactly where it should be.

That said, DNC's giving dance partner to SAM right now is honestly not the best choice, but I think most DNC's just throw it on any random melee DPS and don't really pay attention.

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I see DNC throwing it on Tanks even in Savage lol...
I've seen cases of them throwing it on Healers even.

Usually I just say something like '' DNC partner? '' or '' Why DNC partner on Tank? ''.
And I've had people flip the hell out on me before.
Probably the worst case of this was when they had made some kind of an agreement before-hand because the Tank wanted it for some reason... And refused to Tank otherwise.
And I got a ton of shit for asking about it even tho I wasn't in the group when they had agreed on it.

Some people basically think you're some ultra elitist if you have literally any questions or point out anything that's wrong.
If you put DNC partner on Tank or Healer then you should expect people to notice and mention it, might even be a genuine mistake and people are trying to help but nope.

Pretty shit, honestly. Brings very little buffs and is bottom of the melee dps totem pole.
Not really any reason to play it unless you just enjoy how it plays that much. Even more so if you have high ping because of clipping.

It's in an ok spot but I think it needs a small buff to RDPS, because every other melee job has pulled ahead considerably now. Reaper also only has one damage buff, where as all the other jobs have 2 or more (excluding Samurai), although not all have party utility. It's a fun job that I enjoy the flow of and it's fun to adapt to different fight designs but it doesn't have a whole lot going for it. I'm also not huge on how the raid buff works because although you wont really feel it, not getting all 8 stacks does suck. I think it's a good job for learning to be a better melee player but it's ultimately left me feeling like I want to play ninja more because it does more for the team on top of having disgusting dps, honestly the current balance of melees is really whacky despite what people say about the number gaps being tiny. At least Reaper is higher up the list for dance partner now lol.

Also I think Arcane Crest needs the nerf to be undone, but it doesnt need to be rebuffed back to it's old potency, it just needs to be somewhere in between because as it is right now, it's barely noticeable.

Speaking for myself, I just do a quick scan of all the other DPS when I play dancer, and I pick the player with the highest item level weapon. If someone has a Pandemonium weapon, or an upgraded tomestone, for example, then it makes me think they're more likely a more skilled player since they're clearing savage. Then beyond that if people are tied, I tend to favor monks since their higher speed means more procs for me, and devilment means more forbidden chakras for them.

But as other stated, I wouldn't take it too seriously in the 24-man. I've seen people leave dance partner on someone who is lying dead on the floor for >50% of the fight. I've seen people dance partner the astro (probably hoping to get more cards?) I've seen people forget to dance partner anyone until the 3rd fight in. A lot of players don't always make the most optimal choices (heck even my own methodology might not be optimal)

Reaper doesn't need buffs, the jobs are relatively close together in practical dps as most reapers do around the same damage. Some of the other jobs have a lot of variance in their damage by comparison. Like even if someone parses 10% on reaper on FFLogs, the difference between 10% and 50-60% on it compared to like, ninja, feels way lower. And FYI it is very rare to see a reaper parse that low to begin with unless it is a fight like P4S or maybe P3S.

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Originally Posted by xAFROx

Solution would be to not play it at such a low level then. But I agree that a lot of the newer jobs are garbage when synced down.

I'd also argue that, at least so far for me, as I've only started to level rpr recently, that it isn't meant to weave much of anything at all until you have gauge. Because so far at base 70, only the avatar skills are oGCD.

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Well, thats the thing. You only get your tomestones from roulette when you do them on a max level character. I would love to do low level stuff on alt jobs, but then I don't get the tomestones... Or they should change it to whenever 1 of your jobs is max level you can unlock this for alts as well.

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Originally Posted by Colt47

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When you compare NIN's IQR with RPR's, the difference is less than 50 dps. All of the melee jobs have a near identical degree of performance variation with player skill. It's hardly surprising; I would expect that if most of that player skill variation comes from uptime alone, rather than job-specific rotational considerations. Who would have thought that staying on the boss makes you good at melee?

I am starting to see RPR player numbers drop off though, which is good given how saturated it was last tier.

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Originally Posted by Magiqa

Well, thats the thing. You only get your tomestones from roulette when you do them on a max level character. I would love to do low level stuff on alt jobs, but then I don't get the tomestones... Or they should change it to whenever 1 of your jobs is max level you can unlock this for alts as well.

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If it's tomes you're after, the better method is to run expert a few times. The 90 dungeons give more than doing the dailies would do in total, even without the daily reward.

Roulettes are better spent on leveling an alt job.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I am starting to see RPR player numbers drop off though, which is good given how saturated it was last tier.

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That happens with every new job around 2 to 3 months after release of a expansion. At this point most players will have tested what Job they prefer playing as after testing out the changes to current jobs and the new jobs.

It is very normal for new jobs to be at a high population during the first 2 to 3 months due to that is the time when most players are just testing out the new jobs based on their own time to play.

I 100% dance partnered a healer in a dungeon when the other random dancer I grouped into refused to partner me because devilment doesn't overlap and threw it on the tank. Principles.

Don't take dance partner as a sign of anything.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

When you compare NIN's IQR with RPR's, the difference is less than 50 dps. All of the melee jobs have a near identical degree of performance variation with player skill. It's hardly surprising; I would expect that if most of that player skill variation comes from uptime alone, rather than job-specific rotational considerations. Who would have thought that staying on the boss makes you good at melee?

I am starting to see RPR player numbers drop off though, which is good given how saturated it was last tier.

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Rpr was the flavor of the month so a lot of people tried it out. I personally like it since it has a lot of similarities to machinist and the burst phase is basically a better version of the machinists own burst phase. They really should give machinist charges rather than be based on a timer window considering it's the same issue that warrior had to a degree.