Reaper has some big problems

[MagiusNecros]

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).

[Lyth]

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.

[MagiusNecros]

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.

[Lyth]

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.

[MagiusNecros]

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.

[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.

[Serpent1ng]

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

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

[Windwalker]

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

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

[MordecaiGalidonus]

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.

[MagiusNecros]

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.