Reaper has a few issues the ruin an otherwise amazing class.

I'm making this to see if other players agree with me and if we can get Square to actually do these changes for 6.3, if not, then 7.0, as the state Reaper is in, in the hopes of achieving a similar result that Nin had in 5.1. Yes, the buffs it received in the 6.28 patch are very nice, but the issues still lie with some of the actions they have and need to be changed. Here are my suggestions:

1. Harvest moon:
What even is this? Who thought how it functioned was a good idea? It's unique alright, but on the complete opposite spectrum and is acceptable at best and downright silly at worst. I would be happier if this was a GCD on a minute cooldown similar to Chain Saw on Machinist just so that it could be used more frequently...or make it function similar to Samurai's Shoha, where you need to build a resource to use it, though that could be food for thought for 7.0 at this point.

2. Arcane Circle, Bloodsworn circle and Plentiful Harvest:
Arcane circle isn't the main issue, but it does contribute to it. Bloodsworn circle on the otherhand is, for the lack of a better phrase, inconsistant and completely unnecessary for Reaper. Of course, as I said before Arcane circle isn't the main issue, but because of its small 15y range, if anyone in your party happens to be out of range when you use it, it will directly contribute in a DPS loss to Plentiful Harvest, not to mention that Bloodsworn doesn't allow you to use Plentiful Harvest until it drops off anyway, which even in a perfect world, you have all your stacks and still can't use Plentiful Harvest anyway until Bloodsworn drops off, and with the way Reaper's opener works, its nonsense, considering how the game is now designed around 2 minute burst windows now.

So, here are my suggestions; Remove the Bloodsworn Circle part in Arcane Circle. Get rid. It's such a weird and pointless added part to a 2 minute buff that its infuriating if someone happens to be out of range not to mention the huge damage variance on Harvest.

...or, instead of getting rid mid expansion increase the range of 2 minute AoE buffs in general to 20y or 25y.

On top of that, allow us to use Plentiful Harvest from the moment we get a stack instead of having to wait for Bloodsworn circle to wear off but add a recast timer so that we can only use it once still.


3. Enshroud.
Not really a lot to say, other than reduce the recast timer from 15 seconds to 10 seconds. You must know by now that our gauges fill up quite quickly, so we should be able to expend it when we're able to and not have to wait nearly 10 seconds to be able to use it again. That way, double shroud in burst windows will be way more consistent.


4. Soul Reaver stacks.
Same with Raiju's, just let us use stacks when we want to.

5. Last but not least...Death's design.
Just make it a 1 minute DoT. It would indirectly increase Reaper's DPS too as you'll have to press it less in your rotation, but also, convenience.

What do you guys think?

Harvest Moon, at least to me, feels very reminiscent of Forbidden Chakra in Heavensward.

At the time monks got that skill it was usually just something you were able to use one or twice a battle since there was no way of gaining chakra stacks mid-combat; you HAD to use the meditate action to build them up. So as a monk, if a fight had downtime, you would mediate spam so you could maybe get another use of the skill in. Harvest Moon is largely the same, if the fight has downtime without movement you can channel the skill to hopefully get another use. As such, I already anticipate that in a future expansion, maybe even the next one, there will be a skill added to give you extra uses of the ability without having to channel the skill to do so.

Arcane Circle's range is something I would say comes down to team coordination and maybe player skill knowing you need to move yourself slightly so you can hit everyone. The range on it is identical to similar skills like Battle Litany and Brotherhood. The inability to use Plentiful Harvest until the time runs out is clearly by design. They don't want you being able to use it more than once during its duration. This might be something they address later, but in this case, I think they're likely to keep it as is considering it gives you 50 enshroud gauge, and possibly would just be a one button skill spam during Arcane Circle if you weren't locked out of using it.

The recast timer on Enshroud, though, I do agree. This seems like a strange way of trying to gate you from doing the mode back to back, which I honestly don't understand the logic of.

Death's Design... it's an interesting attempt at something new. Rather than other DPS jobs that keep a personal damage up buff on themselves, reaper just puts an immunity down on the boss. Same ultimate effect, different way of dealing with it. I'm okay with it as is, and don't think they will change it to a DOT as they do seem to want to move away from damage over time skills in general.

1. I think harvest moon as it functions is fine. It's there as an instant cast relatively good potency ranged attack if we need it. The only problem is unless there's something that gives enough downtime you'll rarely see it 2 times a fight. I would rather be designed as it is, it being just another ability to use on cooldown is boring.

2. I agree that the range should be larger, I'm a fan of how it works it's just a pain if people are too far away because then you're missing out on potency that could've been.

3. I think this is more of a mild complaint that I have too, but I just use other stuff in my kit in my 2-minute (gluttony in particular, because it drifts as is)

4. I would like it to stay as is, because i firmly believe there should be consequences for messing up parts of your kit (although not to the degree of what monk had when they'd lose greased lightning stacks in shadowbringers)

5. Absolutely not. I like having something that I actually have to pay attention to instead of just pressing and forgetting for an entire minute or more. (i.e, living shadow). I know you can extend DD to a minute already, but you wouldn't really want to do that from the getgo anyway. The extension above 30s serves to help us not over-cap the timer on the debuff more than anything else

Harvest moon and deaths design are fine, i like that they're unique tools in reapers kit personally find it a shame most jobs just have a dot to maintain not debuffs so im glad it exists
However i do agree on enshrouds cooldown. feels like a pointless limitation

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ElenaL

What do you guys think?

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1. It's only good between trash packs and boss jumps. Other then that it's trash and a poor man's Chakra. Would be better if you could channel while moving or have it interact with the gauges in some fashion. It doesn't. Therefore garbage. It's worth 2 Harpes. You can do 3 in the time it takes to charge up and use. Or rather just use your more damaging GCDs.

2. It takes a minute to build 50 gauge. Circle is 2 minute CD. There is no reason why we can't snowball and use Plentiful Harvest twice for 100 gauge. Blood Circle is just gating Reaper from fun. I'd rather RPRs accumulate Sacrifice stacks outside of Circle with a 20% chance from Gibbet/Gallows/Guillotine to add a bit of variance. If they wanted to they could give PH a Sacrifice Cost of at minimum 2 or 4 stacks. A reasonable price to pay for huge gauge gain.

3. It is too short for how long it takes to build up. The gauge does not fill up quickly. The only time it does is perfect conditions of having Gluttony, both charges of Soul attacks and a capped Death gauge. If a fight only lasts between 4-8 minutes 1 minute of buildup is a long time.

4. Why give stacks if I can't hold them? Artificial difficulty.

5. DD is garbage IMO. It's only purposes are for large gauge increases in dungeons and trash pack fights. The 10% damage up is just gating damage from the Reaper for no reason. You only gain on average 400 points of damage with it.

It wouldn't be so bad if it couldn't be extended and it compiled a portion of damage and deals it all when it falls off.

It's last function is to be used to make for smooth transitions for double Enshrouds. 2 if you have Harvest Moon and 3 if you don't.

At the end of the day it's just Heavy Thrust from OG DRG with extra effects. I find it underwhelming.

I'd much rather have something like this over DD...

Death Warrant

Afflicts target with Death Warrant, causing you to compile damage you deal to that target.
When effect duration expires, target takes 50% of compiled damage.
Duration: 7s
Additional Effect: Grants Soulsow
Duration: 10s

※Action changes to Harvest Moon upon execution.

Dunno where I came up with that. *cough* PvP *cough*

*takes off the mask*

Wait a second thats just og wildfire!

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Originally Posted by SaberMaxwell

*takes off the mask*

Wait a second thats just og wildfire!

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Frustrating isn't it?

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

Frustrating isn't it?

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A little bit for sure. I miss StB.

I like the overall feel of the class, but I do think Soulsow would be better as an instant cast that has a long cooldown like Monk's six-sided star. That way it can be refreshed during boss abilities like devour or blazing footfalls. Overall though, harvest moon is an ability you usually want to avoid having to use, which is fine, since the class is supposed to be in melee as close to 100% of the time as possible.

I disagree with changing the Enshroud timing, since it really isn't hard to do the double enshroud window, and that serves as one of the only real skill indicators on reaper.

Death's Design is also completely fine and shouldn't be changed, in my opinion. It does functionally the same thing that every other melee class does by buffing damage, but it does it in a unique way that feels more reapery. We don't empower ourselves with buffs, we weaken the enemies and tear out their souls to feed our pet voidsent.

Harvest moon
i think Harvest moon is okay right now but i hope Soulsow can give us blue gauge like samurai Meditate.

Arcane Circle
please make the dancer step action can also give us Bloodsown Circle stacks, but tbh i think the amount of people receive the buff so we immediately get stacks are the best solution.

Enshroud
agree with reduce the recast time

Death's design
agree with become a small potency dot but i think 30sec are totally fine.



i hope Gibbet and Gallows can reset our basic combo timer so we won't lost our combo after the burst window.
please buff Soul Slice potency.
please give us a skill can gain blue gauge during downtime (Soulsow)

RPR should not be touched for the rest of the expansion unless there are further discrepancies in rdps. And as of the latest balance patch, all melee dps appear to be within 100 dps of each other.

Harvest Moon is just there as a downtime tool. You would not significantly benefit from more uses of it, simply because there are better options under burst. It's just a GCD filler ideally for when you're off the boss.

All buff-providing jobs take an rdps hit when teammates are dead. Plentiful Harvest does double tax you in this regard. That being said, it does a good job of capturing the fact that the Void operates around bargains. You make your teammates stronger so that you can draw power from them. You could make a case for extending the range on Arcane Circle, but Battle Litany and Brotherhood are both 15 yalm range, so this is not an issue unique to RPR, nor should it be treated as such.

With regards to DD and Enshroud, the setup of this window is what makes or breaks RPR gameplay at the moment. If you're a new RPR playing freestyle, it's relatively simple to keep DD topped off. This is not like Heavensward era Scourge where you have to refresh precisely every 30 seconds. You can stack it up to a minute and refresh whenever you're under 30 seconds if you really wanted to. Where it becomes interesting is in your double Enshroud setup, because you want to enter into your Arcane Circle window with 9 seconds or less left on your timer. And this happens naturally if you have an awareness of where you are in your rotation. Likewise, if you understand how the double Enshroud setup works, there's no issue with Enshroud's recast. The only thing that you may need to do is to make an adjustment on when you use Arcane Circle if you're playing at higher ping, but a simple check on a dummy will tell you how much you're clipping the end of the window by, and you just truncate a bit of the start to compensate rather than losing the Communio.

None of these are issues. Understanding how we address them is part of the skill in playing the job. And we'll see a lot more posts like this one as people maining other jobs start to discover how RPR gameplay actually works. And if you want something simpler, the balance is such that you can always fall back on what you're used to. Let the rest of us enjoy a job with some depth for the remainder of this expansion at least.

Lyth. They aren't going to change the way Reaper plays. I think you'll be fine until 7.0 where they might change something but their restrictive gameplay loop on Reaper is gonna be here a while. Thinking Reaper has any depth to it is cute though.

It requires the same amount of brain to play as Samurai and Samurai does more with less.

And I wager if they do anything in 7.0 it's gonna be everyone and their brother auto critical hitting capstone abilities all the time because their PvE battle team has no imagination.

I can only hope that they get some of the brains from PvP to make jobs unique to set them apart from each other and not be all the same but with different visuals.

Jobs are too restricted by poor job design decisions and gated by the 2 minute meta that prohibits job evolution.

At the end of the day the current iteration of Reaper is ok at best but could be much improved.

Arcane Circle already has big range. I dunno why crying about the range is even a thing. The radius of effect is huge. If you don't get every party member that's a player issue. Not a design issue IMO.

The job isn't terrible but it could be a whole lot better. And I feel this way about a lot of jobs. A lot of the jobs in this game are quite underwhelming. I'm seeing a whole lot of discount Fell Cleave Warriors masquerading as different jobs and it's quite insulting.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

Lyth. They aren't going to change the way Reaper plays. I think you'll be fine until 7.0 where they might change something but their restrictive gameplay loop on Reaper is gonna be here a while. Thinking Reaper has any depth to it is cute though.

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Even having to do this tiny bit of setup for double Enshroud gives RPR vastly more depth than not having any restrictions at all. If it didn't require any setup it would really just be warrior masquerading as a dps.

Harvest Moon could use something, whether it generates a resource or becomes an ogcd or gains multiple uses or can be procced by other abilities; there's nothing really wrong with it, it just feels a little icky sometimes and could certainly be better. In dungeons you generate so many resources from trash Harvest Moon feels out of place, on a boss you usually get one use and it's fun thinking about the best time to use it but it's also just underwhelming because it doesn't do that much more damage than your other abilities on a single target and you're probably just going to use it when you have to go out of range for a mechanic.

Enshroud's recast going down to 10s would be nice I guess, trying to pull off a triple shroud with a 15s recast is kinda gross and 10s would allow for more flexibility and forgiveness but with how on rails the job currently plays this isn't needed at all. If Shroud became a toggle with more varied usage and the 2 min burst meta went away then a lower recast would be far more appealing. Until then, meh.

Being able to cast Plentiful Harvest sooner would mean having to watch your stacks before using it which imo would be slightly more annoying but not a big deal either way with how it currently works. Now I wouldn't be opposed to going harder on the stack mechanic making it another resource to manage in a way, I like me some resource management. That would be a fairly involved change though that could cause timing issues.

Soul Reaver and Death's Design require a non-zero amount of thought which is a good thing, I'd much rather have slightly annoying mechanics that allow for some amount of optimization than braindead button mashing. The only time I find these mechs actually annoying is with dungeon trash which doesn't really matter buuuut there could be some interesting possibilities there, for example spending extra Soul Reavers after a pack is dead (or a boss disappears) on Soulsow to stack additional charges of Harvest Moon and then having Harvest Moon generate a resource and then having a way to spend resources faster without wasting them.

The main thing I'd like to see changed is Arcane Crest. Specifically it's HoT. In group content healers are already preparing for raidwides and even tanks have some sort of group mitigation. As others have said on the forums, most healers won't even take Arcane Crest's healing into account rendering it useless. Either it should be an upfront heal or (what I'd prefer) not a heal at all. Maybe instead it buffs allies for a short duration in some way or debuffs enemies near you. Could be centered around RPR so enemies take additional damage from the RPR on top of DD. Not really into the nitty gritty of numbers and balance, but the heal just seems inconsequential at best.

The heal on Crest is IMO no longer substantial enough to be good or noteworthy. It should be changed to either give gauge or proc Harvest Moon or both.

Or revert the change into it's original heal.

The problem with buffing Arcane Crest is that other melee dps mains were already using it as an excuse to justify them having a significant rdps advantage before the last balance patch despite the fact that the heal is laughable. You don't want to give them any more excuses to put us at a disadvantage. You probably could buff the personal heal component in isolation, as that's much harder to argue as 'raid utility'.

I think the better thing to think about is how the addition of three new actions next expansion (let's say from 90 to 100) would change up the gameplay. We're just around the halfway point now, so they're probably partway through designing those actions. That's where I would aim my feedback.

1. I honestly disagree with you. I love Harvest moon as it is. Having the ability to use something on downtime and prep a skill up feels better when you have to disengage for a long period of time.
2. No opinion. Larger range for Arcane circle would be nice to have, but I have no complaints for the most part.
3. Enshroud having a slightly shorter cooldown I agree, mainly because you can build up excess gauge really fast. It can lead to overcapping situations.
4. I thought about this too, but have to disagree. Being able to hold Soul Reaver stack would be nice, but then you start getting to "let me hold this for burst window" kind of playstyle. For a job that feels pretty barebones, I would dislike the flow of the job if we were allowed to hold it. Being punished for not managing the gauge is actually a good mechanic to keep engagement since there isn't much other thought otherwise.
5. No. Having a 30 second timer is so much nicer because if you have to drift your rotation, you can still reapply Death's design with flexibility. Making it a DoT is the worst and bland method with job design, and locks the DoT to a very static placement in your rotation.

1. My only problem with harvest moon is the fact that it doesn't give 10 soul gauge, otherwise having something unique on a class is great.
2. having more range on arcane would be nice, id argue that this would be a welcome addition on other raidwide buffs such as battle litany as well to avoid frustration such as p8s centaur first pattern.
3. double enshroud is fine, even triple enshroud if you plan ahead a bit.
4. no opinion
5. Death design is fine as it is


I do hope however that harpe and soulsow grant 10 soul gauge just like your basic skills.