About Reaper.

[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.