About Reaper.

[Vryn]

My thoughts are leave Reaper as is. The class is more than fine rn. Yall need to chill with the complaints for classes that ain't broke or well have a Sam 2.0 situation

No one asked for that change to Samurai. That's a situation of developers changing aspects of a job that people didn't want to be changed instead of changes people did, leading to the question do they even play their own game.

No one wants to play a fine class they want to good class or even better an excellent class.

[Alaray]

How the tables turn. At launch every melee wanted to be the all-rounder Reaper. Good heal for group, party wide attack boost, and good personal damage. Now that other melees finally got their own buffs Reapers are suddenly not adequate.

I wouldn't say tables turned, MNK did more rDPS than Reaper on launch. Mantra's kind of also been a stronger tool than Arcane Crest. Brotherhood also buffs for more. Just more people played Reaper, because it was new, and there were two fights available that were easy to pad on (especially for Reaper, due to the shape of it's AoE in Shroud that let it pad on three of the orbs during Zodiark).

It's rDPS was never particularly overtuned, but everything around it received buffs and NIN does better now after the recent changes - which weren't meant as a direct nerf/buff, I don't think, but the functionality of the abilities (Trick 2m, Mug 1m) did change it's damage output.

Not really a big deal, tbh, since it's completely viable in every piece of content in the game. But I do think the balance changes take community perception into account more than it ought to, sometimes (which, extends to healers -- such as WHM, which doesn't often receive gameplay alterations since the perspective is "Playerbase high = job good"). I'm not really saying "Reaper needs buffs" or "The other melees need nerfs" since I don't really care where a job I play falls on a FFLogs chart so long as the class is, itself, fun to play and is viable.

Not related to quoted post, just how I feel about Reaper w/r/t the thread:


Reaper is easy to pick up and learn quickly as it's not particularly finicky or has too many little tricks/as much button bloat as other jobs. Though, I don't really think it's ultimately much easier/harder than any other melee job in the game (as, frankly, they're all extremely easy once you learn the opener and get the muscle memory down. There's not a single fight released in the tier this expansion that really adds challenge and difficulty to the role, at all, and none of the jobs are particularly complex. Unless you want to factor in the tiny optimizations for relatively low potency gains, which is more a high-end optimization, but even then those optimizations aren't really difficult to actually do once you know to do them/someone solves them for you. It's just remembering to do it).

But I also don't really agree with what OP considers bad.

I do like the interactivity of the class's buff, since so many in this game is just a push and forget about it button. Sure, maybe it sucks if you get 7 stacks or w/e but tbh I like how it feels the way it is, vs. changing it into operating like Litany or something. I also don't really like the idea of bolstering higher potency into 1 ability, vs. spreading it out more throughout the kit so that the damage is overall more consistent. I didn't really pick up Reaper because "Communio Hit Hard", that's what Samurai (used) to be for with kaiten+Midare, so I played that job for the Big Number Dopamine Good feeling.

Though, most of the fun I find in it is the mixture of the animations in combination with not feeling like I'm just hitting basic combo actions for over a minute straight. The addition of using Gibbet/Guillotine after weaving Blood Stalk feels nice. I also kind of miss the heal from Arcane Crest being moderately more useful, as right now that little heal kind of feels borderline worthless (I think I felt the impact of it 1 time), esp. when a close counterpart in terms of tools, is MNK, where brotherhood is a stronger raid buff and mantra kind of outclasses the utility of Arcane Crest.

Death's Design I don't mind. I kind of like it to some degree, since it reminds me of having a DoT to manage over the course of the fight and since it's not automatically entwined with your basic combo actions, you do have to at least remember to refresh it. I wouldn't complain if it was something else that functioned differently, so long as it maintained some semblance of having to independently manage it and wasn't turned into DRK's "Darkside" buff which never falls off if you know Edge of Shadow does damage.

I haven't really cared to optimize or think about it much, but if it's true Reaper's burst phase does extend out of buffs (which, might be true, but gameplay-wise I don't really notice if Div falls off right before the gluttony after the last communio or something) -- I'd hate if they made it's burst phase shorter to compensate. I'd prefer if they just considered a different alternative.

[lAurasl]

Omg, please no. Dancer is already my most hated and less played job because of way too much aoes in his single target rotation, please dont bring this in even more other jobs.

When i am doing other things than normal dungeons or raids, there is plenty of cases where i want to hit only one mob, without aggroing all the other mobs who are nearby. Which is why having a clear distinction between single target and aoes is highly useful. And also why i dislike dancer so much, because i can't play more than 5 seconds with it without aggroing the whole world of Eorzea.

If you think that there is too much buttons in jobs who have single target and aoes similar skills, just use a single key to switch between the two. Like 1-2-3 for single target combo, and ctrl+1-ctrl+2-ctrl+3 for the aoe one.

The next Deep Dungeon is coming, and i am pretty sure that you absolutely do not want tons of unwanted aoes in your bars when trying to solo the last floors where you have to carefully pick mobs one by one if you don't want to fail the whole run.

good thing pretty much everyone has a single target ranged pull, including reaper and dancer, right?

this is probably the least valid reason anyone could have argued against my criticism. seriously.

[Avidria]

Job needs to have positionals. If you use TN even in full uptime you only have to do an actual positional like twice a minute or something insane and you kinda get to pick when you do those positionals. Could use slightly more dps too.

Personally the relative lack of positionals is one the things I like about the class. If they had none at all I'd be even happier.

[MoofiaBossVal]

Reaper has the best animations/spell effects and has the most engaging gameplay (by FFXIV standards, that is). Sadly there are dragoon job items I cannot glamour as a Reaper which prevents me from using my dream glamour and thus keeps me from maining the job.

[Xirean]

Personally the relative lack of positionals is one the things I like about the class. If they had none at all I'd be even happier.

Same. /5char

[hagare]

where's the necromancy ffs

different kind of reaper entirely.
14 reaper is basically a botanist going DoW route lmao

[IkaraGreydancer]

No one asked for that change to Samurai. That's a situation of developers changing aspects of a job that people didn't want to be changed instead of changes people did, leading to the question do they even play their own game.

No one wants to play a fine class they want to good class or even better an excellent class.

Guess you missed where I said more than fine. Not sure how as its not a long read.
And my point is well end up in a situation where a class gets gutted or changed for the worst when there's nothing wrong to begin with.
Never said it was a 1 to 1 situation. That's you assuming tbf

[Euphares]

My thoughts are leave Reaper as is. The class is more than fine rn. Yall need to chill with the complaints for classes that ain't broke or well have a Sam 2.0 situation

Reaper is my favorite job quite handedly.


None of the changes I listed would alter the job in warping ways, just what I think could be done better.


It is pretty logical that I would want my favorite job to be the best that it can, even if it is viable in all content right now (it is.)

[Shougun]

They've stated before that they won't make Necromancer or Thief a playable thing because they border on the bad/evil side.

They literally said it about why a company would be housed in a city if it was evil / immoral sounding, they didn't literally say it about the WoL - at least to the level that /no one/ has been able to show that in quote format but they can show (and I've shown) that they said that it doesn't make lore sense for a shady organization to be housed in a city like "thieves". As this was said around the time that all jobs had to have a class- but they've done away with that too.

A level of googling I'd say where I used much of the tools to narrow down time frames, languages, and went multiple multiple pages deep (20) - finding multiple times 10 years ago discussions of CITY morals but never WoL morals. Again noting if such things were even said, 10 years ago... We've seen many many times where something that was said one way is no longer true now.

In fact direct proof against this point is that they said, verbatim, Rogue is Thief, they just wanted it to make lore sense- and this discussion was in context of THE CITY. Not grand morals for the WoL. As far as SE sees the situation we do have a thief in the game. All of this makes sense, why would a city openly support necromancy for example. Why would a city openly support an organization dedicated to stealing when it's trying to claim a new leaf (Limsa, that discussion in and of itself exceptionally muddied water if you pay attention to past and present lore). Yet "WoL can't be Thief because it's evil" was never said by SE. Furthering because our Rogue, which is a spy like job, upgrades into an assassin essentially.... "can't have a thief that's bad guys, but upgrade into an assassin" that's a big rofl from me.

Until someone can provide actual proof this is just a very annoying unproven way for people to attempt to kibosh ideas. Classic "we can't have that because lore" (which has been proven wrong quite a few times, most recently with people on about a Reaper like job).

I would add if proof was even providable, I'd would take the position that it's a very silly point of view given all the other nonsense we've been up to. Which isn't to say WoL should be evil- but it's along the lines of "murder is kay, but YOU BETTER NOT STEAL". Or the classic American "guns, violence, drugs- it's all good!!! Yet- KEEP THE BOOBS OFF THE SCREEN YOU DIRTY PERVERT".

Very strongly imo it would be a very silly position to take, if it was actually even taken rather than people shifting the meaning of the only quotes we do actually have, which is to say that it would be evil for the WoL*, to a degree that I feel does not have a sincere level of balance or nuance. *One may argue 'what about npcs perception of WoL' fair but there are also many ways you could address that without having to have npc perception subsume the WoL (speed bump, not a wall), to an extent has been done a few times in our game for jobs that are taboo, obscure, or basically illegal already.