Reaper has some big problems

Like every reaper player I love the job but taking a closer look I see big problems that need to be addressed going forward. I don't understand hope people can think reaper burst is fine. During enshroud reaper uses four abilities void reaping, cross reaping, lemure slice and Communio. The first problem I see is that void reaping and cross reaping do the same damage as gibbet and gallows (which are outside of enshroud may i add). I feel that being in enshroud you should be doing more damage( your empowered by a reaper).The more damage that people think is because you do the abilities more often than normal but its still not more damage than normal. I would like to see a potency increase or a crit component while in enshroud. The second big problem is lemure slice that is a 200 potency. Why is the weakest ability for reaper used during enshroud. 28.5% of attacks during enshroud (2/7) is from lemure slice and its the weakest ability. To me this is 28.5% of enshroud wasted. The 200 potency is 100 potency weaker than harpe and shadow of death. I just dont see the point of having lemur slice with no effect and at that potency. I also want to have more uses of harvest moon. Outside of one use its a dead ability with that 5 second recharge. I would like to get more uses of plentiful harvest maybe as a one minute ability. Before I forget a thing that bugs me about enshroud is that it lasts 30 seconds but if you play it right you only use like 10 seconds to get out 2 void reaping, 2 cross reaping, 2 lemure slice and a Communio. The remaining time just vanishes. If would be nice if remain time gave a buff. Theses are just a few things I like to see changed or improved.

The difference is, that you need position without enshroude. You dont need position in Avatar Mode and make the higher dmg (it is like the combi with true north).

But, i agree that the transformed skills could have a little higher numbers. Because i fail to see differences in most cases, when i look at the skill

The drastic reduction in attack speed and the oGCD that enshrouded attacks give makes the enshrouded attacks' potency per second value dwarf regular gibbet and gallows. You're hitting at a 1.5s GCD, which is insanely fast for this game.

Also I'm not at the pc to look but Lemure Slice is the oGCD that enshrouded gives yea? Its a bit...extremely wrong to compare a GCD's potency to an oGCD's. Globals have opportunity costs; if you use harpe, you're not using any other GCD for 2.5 seconds. Lemure Slice doesn't trigger the global cooldown.

Not saying reaper doesn't need buffs, but I don't think there's a solid understanding of how FFXIV works in the examination of its problems.

Yes, they do the same amount of damage but when you are in your 20 second Arcane Circle + double enshroud window, you are doing 8 of them.

Also Lemure's slice is an oGCD you single weave between these void attacks twice, I wouldn't say there's no point of having it when it doesn't hurt to use since it does not take up a GCD slot. I think this is fine as a low potency oGCD considering the amount of potency you are pushing with the void attacks and communio, and it could also be buffed depending on what they do with RPR. Also you have 2x communio in these windows, one of the few 1000+ potency abilities left in the game

I'll agree with Harvest Moon and Enshroud. I'd like to maybe be able to build towards additional uses of Harvest Moon because you only get 1 use in fights without downtime which is kinda boring. I don't know how they would go about this, maybe having changes to proc this with the use of their 123 combo and give some sort of optimization uses such as slotting in Harvest Moon during double enshroud windows

Also Enshroud should maybe be changed to either a 10 second recast or 30 because I don't know if double enshroud was ever intended and feels kinda jank to use, but easy and rewarding to learn of course

I'm sure that they will simplify down the Double Enshroud window leading into the next expansion. I hope that it doesn't happen prior to this, because it's probably the only interesting melee dps burst and actually requires a bit of thought around your DD buff management leading into it. Part of the puzzle is figuring out how to get in as much potency as you can out of it. It's good for players to struggle with it, as it will encourage them to stop blindly dismissing the job without having any understanding of how it actually works.

I've said this before, but you don't actually want additional uses of HM. It's potency isn't all that high, and outside of AoE situations, it's really just there for disengages and as a recovery technique to give you a dummy GCD in place of DD. You generally don't want to slot HM into Enshroud because it displaces a more important GCD, unless we start getting encounters with multiple adds.

Please....no more auto crits.

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Originally Posted by Ransu

Please....no more auto crits.

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Why not? You don't want Xenoglossy to become a 380 potency that autocrits? Or communio to drop to 500 and autocrit? Exciting

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Originally Posted by Flashy

Why not? You don't want Xenoglossy to become a 380 potency that autocrits? Or communio to drop to 500 and autocrit? Exciting

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Yes...so very exciting -_-

I think to make Soulsow worthwhile during downtime it needs to build Shroud gauge every second OR recharges your Soul Slice/Scythe charges(I think this might be better for dungeons overall). In a perfect world I'd say charging Soulsow gives you 50 Shroud and instant Soulsow gives you your 2 Soul Slice charges. 50 Shroud off the instant proc would be too much. I think you could probably attach a 15 or 30 second CD to the skill for balance so players don't adopt bad habits.

Furthermore since building to Enshroud takes on average a minute or longer I do think you should be able to maintain the form until you fire Communio off or the duration ends. And I think to balance out the burst a bit you could probably reduce the duration to 15 or 20 seconds instead of 30 to align with the next Enshroud without having to worry about Death's Design. Or you could keep it 30 second duration and Double Enshroud would line up with a 1 minute Death's Design Duration damage up.

And since their Reaping attacks are Gibbet/Gallows/Guillotine they should buff your Lemure oGCDs to max Swathe and Bloodstalk potencies.

Since all of Reapers damage is frontloaded into their Enshroud form and Soul Reaver attacks I think the focus should be in being in that mode as long as possible to make them more impactful and fun to play for that OH WOW GOTTA GO FAST factor.

If building up to your burst takes a long time then it needs to either be strong or have a great deal of sustain.

But I do think the devs are just going to make everything auto direct crit because it's easier to do.

520 Potency with 1.5 sec GCD = 866.66 Potency with a 2.5 GCD

Can you say again that it hit the same with those value ?

Any attack in enshroud is literraly worth 340 Potency more than Gibet/Potence, but instead, it's almost twice as fast.

biggest issue with RPR is how easily its rotation will drift.

for a class that was "overtuned", that rotation is really god damn annoying to keep on the rails

the few issues i have with reaper are:

resource negative (let arcane crest give 10 meter if the shield is broken) (have harpe give 10 meter) (have harvest moon give 20 meter) (have shadow of death give X amt of meter when it expires) any, all, some but not all of these would be great

harvest moon feels disjointed from the rest of your kit (i would accept a nerfed HM if it worked like shoha or something where after X amt of communio casts or plentiful harvest casts or both it procs harvest moon)

thats about all i can think of that i think would improve the job as i think no other melee suffers from disconnects or downtime as much as reaper does

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Originally Posted by grinkdaboy

the few issues i have with reaper are:

resource negative (let arcane crest give 10 meter if the shield is broken) (have harpe give 10 meter) (have harvest moon give 20 meter) (have shadow of death give X amt of meter when it expires) any, all, some but not all of these would be great

harvest moon feels disjointed from the rest of your kit (i would accept a nerfed HM if it worked like shoha or something where after X amt of communio casts or plentiful harvest casts or both it procs harvest moon)

thats about all i can think of that i think would improve the job as i think no other melee suffers from disconnects or downtime as much as reaper does

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Considering how Harvest moon works actually, you can't use it properly into a fight without drifting your rotation by 2.5sec at least, leading to further ressource problem. One good exemple of such problem is P7S fight. The boss send you twice into the air during the fight, cumulating several seconds of stun. This will ultimately lead to a skip on an Odd minute Enshroud in the later part of the fight. We can say that using Harvest moon or Harpe will create the "same" situation. (considering you have a theorical 100% melee uptime on the boss)

Not only that, but having only one use of that through the fight is kinda "meh". Of course you can use it as a tool to keep attacking from a distance without loosing too much potency because of the downtime, but that's only 2.5 sec of break. P6S is a good exemple if you aren't lucky with the Exchange of Agonies forcing you to go outside instead of inside.

Unless you don't have the choice or you don't optimize the fight (which will be very specific) you don't want to use it.

Now on what you propose :

The idea of a "Shoha-like" ability isn't really a bad idea. It can give some new life to the spell, and I think it will not be too much on the actual kit.

For the resource part, first of all, hard disagree with the arcane crest giving gauge. If we admit that the boss is actually doing a raid wide every 30 second, and that the reaper is using arcane crest 100% right this will give the reaper a mere 2.66 Potency per second boost (which means 6.66 for every GCD of 2.5). And that's for the very best in theory ! Which means that the true value of this will be consistenly lower. (Based on a 10 minute fight)

Imo, Samourai face the same problem and I think it's not normal for a class to have a ressource generated depending on what the boss do, affecting your performance overall if the boss isn't doing any raid damage. Samourai need to use third eye 3 time then 2 time (repeat with 3) correctly to unleash more shinten, which takes a minimum of 75 second for a 540 potency (through 2 attack). Getting something near 18 Potency per GCD (in theory), which is still 3 time greater than what the reaper could have.

Your idea on shadow of death could be of some use, if the general idea behing the RPR wasn't to keep it up all the time. And sadly, it's not the case here.

maybe if this stupid 2 minute burst meta just disappear, RPR will be in a good spot.

i dont think the BIG PROBLEM on RPR is really the job itself, but is easier to fix one job instead of the whole bad meta SE created.

The two minute burst 'meta' really has nothing to do with it. RPR's damage is largely dependent on correctly setting up burst windows. If you wanted to take that away you might as well just play SAM and do significantly more damage for significantly less effort (well, you can do that now anyways). No, the reason why we're doing less damage is because we've kept largely quiet while vastly more popular jobs have mouthed off about job difficulty despite having no basis for their claims. They really just need to forcibly dethrone SAM and rebalance dps jobs across the board, regardless of whatever preconceptions the playerbase has built up to this point. But this is just going to continue if you're willing to put up with it.

Reaper damage is low because we can't build resource fast enough. Either we need 15 seconds of Fell Cleave or we are given ways to build resource faster(stuff that gives Sacrifice stacks outside of AC for more Harvests) the damage is gonna be low since Reaper damage is reliant on Enshroud/Gibbet/Gallows.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

They really just need to forcibly dethrone SAM and rebalance dps jobs across the board

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Why? SAM is top dps because it only offers dps. "Dethroning" them would relegate them back to the problems they had in SB which was basically no one brought them into raids because there was no point. If they don't pump out high dps then why bring them when another job can pump out decent dps and give the raid buffs.

SAM output is fine. Its everyone else they need to address.

RPR also only offers dps. The tiny regen tick on Arcane Crest does not justify SAM having a free dps advantage for significantly less effort. If you put jobs on an even footing, then competent SAM players will easily still find their places in groups, just the same as everyone else. And if you're not, well, the same is true for everyone else. You shouldn't require an unfair advantage just to get picked.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

RPR also only offers dps. The tiny regen tick on Arcane Crest does not justify SAM having a free dps advantage for significantly less effort. If you put jobs on an even footing, then competent SAM players will easily still find their places in groups, just the same as everyone else. And if you're not, well, the same is true for everyone else. You shouldn't require an unfair advantage just to get picked.

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Arcane Circle: Increases damage dealt by self and nearby party members by 3%.
Duration: 20s

You apparently don't even know your own job. Also, what do you mean less effort? RPR is brain dead easy to play.

I'm not saying rpr should do bad dps, but sam doesn't have raid buffs. They absolutely should always be the top dps for this reason alone because if they are not top dps then why bring them? Being a "competent" samurai means nothing when another job that does equal dps also brings damage buffs to the table.

SAM does more rdps than RPR, even including the contribution from Arcane Circle. Do you really not understand how rdps is calculated and attributed to jobs? Raid buffs are irrelevant to this discussion, because SAM does more damage even when you attribute the damage generated by raid buffs to the jobs that bring them. That's the crux of the problem.

All classes offer DPS. SAM just provides the most by virtue of being the strongest. SAMs won't be dethroned because they don't have any damage raid buffs or defensive utilities to share with the raid. Reapers have a 15 second HoT and a 3% damage increase for 20 seconds.

If you put the jobs on even footing meaning no raid buffs Samurai will always win because of Fugetsu and Fuka giving the SAM a 13% flat DPS increase and a 13% reduced GCD and auto attack delay whereas Reaper only gets a 10% damage increase.

So buff Reaper I guess. It's a low performer among the 5 melee. And because it has raid buffs one of which is reliant on 7 players to empower a PH it's always going to be lower then SAM.

SAM and RPR take the same amount of brain to play. SAM just does more with less. And RPR does less because it has more.

And I'm sure SAM's auto crit helps it out quite a bit. Reaper has to hope it gets all crits on it's burst(it won't lol).

No, the reason why SAM won't be dethroned easily is because it's the most represented dps job and it offers higher damage than the alternatives for minimum effort. Not because RPR has a 50 potency regen. That's just an excuse for SAM players to justify their zero effort dps advantage. It's only when everyone else gets tired of the status quo and starts speaking out about it that we're going to see a change.

Then speak out beyond this minority forum about how Reaper sucks and needs to be changed. Devs only look at data and listen to the concerns of the JP playerbase. 6.3 if anything happens it's only going to be potency adjustments. I wouldn't expect any huge changes until 7.0 which is probably going to be late 2024.

And you are absolutely right. Samurai will be the king because it will do more damage for less work because it has less buttons to press and doesn't have to hope for a crit.

Which I can understand your frustration since Yoshi P is all we adjust who does more DPS based on difficulty so clearly the definition of difficulty to the player is different from the difficulty to Yoshi P.

And I'm sure the fact that Reaper has a 15 second regen(which was pretty strong at 6.0 launch btw) on a short 30 CD alongside a raidwide damage buff on a 2 min CD is the reason the damage is low.

Reaper from 6.0 did not get nerfed other then Arcane Crest but everyone got buffed to do more then Reaper which IMO is the same as nerfing Reaper damage.

And since Reaper damage is highly relegated to Soul Reaver attacks and Enshroud the overall damage is low and when they adjusted potency to increase their 1-2-3 filler combo which is hardly used when your Soul Scythe charges are up it did not make too much sense to me.

Likewise a enhanced Gibbet/Gallows does not carry over into Enshroud for you to do positionals and keep doing 520 potency attacks(your first Void Reaping will always do 460) and your Bloodstalk/Swathe oGCD during Enshroud is much weaker then it is outside of Enshroud which I find very odd.

So instead of doing 340/400 and 140 attacks you are only doing 200 and 100 potency attacks respectively so overall outside of the reward of no positionals some of your kit is actually weaker in Enshroud and if you want the most bang for your buck Communio has to Crit and if it doesn't it hits for like 20k or 30k while a crit is gonna hit for 40k or higher.

Reaper would be in a better spot if you could build gauge and Enshroud more often but right now it is where it is. I'd prefer some fun engagement of building Sacrifice stacks for more PH's or if the buildup is long the time spent in Enshroud needs to be longer as well.

All that's going to happen in the near future is PLD is going to get fucked and in 7.0 the same thing will happen to DRG. And maybe AST.

Going be an interesting couple of years.

I don't think the dev team has any strong opinions on job balance, unfortunately. Most of the views that they express are simply a function of what's being shrieked the loudest on this subforum. Even the parts about casters deserving to be top dps because of the larger hitboxes that happened to be present this tier essentially was pulled right off this subforum. The concept of 'difficulty' equating to more 'damage output' is similarly a completely new one, and one that was pulled off of complaints early this expansion. SAM are simply in a privileged position because the players spent the past 8 months shouting everyone else down in here over Kaiten. They really don't have a vision or consistent design philosophy. They're just trying to mollify everyone, which leads to everyone being unsatisfied.

My own preference is that jobs get a level rdps playing field across the board, such that player skill reigns over job selection. Otherwise you end up with overpowered jobs, like 4.2 era WAR and current SAM, filled with swathes of absolutely mediocre players who are completely carried by their job selection. And those jobs end up staying in positions of power because everyone knows that if things were equalized, those players wouldn't cut it on anything else.

The regen/support argument is also likewise an excuse. There is no reason why certain jobs like SAM and BLM should universally be in a privileged position. If these minor support flourishes are such a big deal, give the 'selfish jobs' flower growing powers that have no dps relevance and nerf their damage output accordingly in line with everyone else.

RPR's gauge generation is actually pretty close to mathematically perfect, once you're comfortable on a given fight. The real problem is the damage weighting, as you said. Raising the average GCD value on a burst focused job doesn't work out so well, because you're weighting the part of the rotation that has the least value. If there was a way to get a second Enshroud on pull, that would be nice, but it seems like a deliberate decision to place more emphasis on the 2 minute burst and onwards.

Given that Circle and by extension PH is on a 2 minute CD I would see no problem with having PH just give you 100 gauge for 2 Enshrouds and call it a day if they wanted the Reaper kit to stay the way it is.

Arcane Circle might be more fun to use if we could just keep getting sacrifice stacks and it's a team effort to give the Reaper orbs for constant PH's for some great AoE cleave but also big Shroud gauge gain.

I'd live with the ability to get 2 Harvests off just to top off the gauge even.

But I agree with you that it's become bring the job not the player when it should be bring the player not the job.

I hate the debuff skills on reaper, only reason i don't play it, lame to keep adding a debuff to increase your damage.

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Originally Posted by Windwalker

I hate the debuff skills on reaper, only reason i don't play it, lame to keep adding a debuff to increase your damage.

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The debuff is just the same as all the other melee applying a buff to themselves to increase damage.

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Originally Posted by Serpent1ng

The debuff is just the same as all the other melee applying a buff to themselves to increase damage.

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Not really, every other job got buffs included in their combos instead of using seperate buttons.

But it has that so you can realign your buffs and gcd if you happen to mess up 1-2 times in a 1-2min. period.

It's just Dragoon's Heavy Thrust with the extra effect of +10 Red gauge if something dies. I've fooled around between using it and not using it and you could probably live without the extra 300-600 points of damage.

It's only useful in trash packs when it comes to building gauge.

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Originally Posted by Windwalker

Not really, every other job got buffs included in their combos instead of using seperate buttons.

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Arguably, a lot of the classes have their buff as a separate button, since they tend to be the final part of a combo but do less damage, meaning you want to hit them as seldom as possible.

Ninja's Huton is a whole ninjutsu, and then maintained through a different button at the end of their combo.

Warrior's Surging Tempest comes from a separate button at the end of their combo.

Monks get Disciplined Fist from Twin Snakes which is a weaker raptor form option than true strike.

Dark Knight's Darkside comes from a separate ogcd button, samurai's get their buff in the process of sticker collecting, and dragoon gets it as they proceed down one of their two combo paths. These 3 are the only ones whose maintained damage buff isn't a separate button.

The only difference with Reaper's ability is that it can be used without needing previous actions. It's still a dps loss if you're using it without it being necessary, same as the other buttons.

DD is a fairly critical part of RPR's burst setup. If you don't understand why it's there, you don't understand the job, period. If you want a simpler job that you don't have to worry about burst setups and filler GCDs, SAM is a much better alternative, giving more dps for next to no effort.

Caster and ranged balanced should be addressed before melee “issues” are addressed.

At least you’re not getting locked out of parties.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

DD is a fairly critical part of RPR's burst setup.

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Curious. Does Determination interact with DD at all?

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Originally Posted by Sequora

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I can't say that I've encountered any groups locking out caster and ranged players, given that there's a mandatory raid spot for each subrole. If anything, I've seen groups sitting waiting for a dedicated ranged slot to fill. And they are giving a global dps increase to both ranged and caster players.

All DPS jobs should have parity on rdps. There's no good reason not to, outside of players acting on their own self-interest to secure extra raid spots for themselves.

Am I the only one who wishes Reaper could just become a selfish DPS job? Aesthetically, it always made more sense to me, and they did talk about before how they wanted Reaper to have personal damage closer to Samurai, anyway.

It should be the most selfish. It's the Zenos job. Buff Reaper. Gimme the Zenos damage.