Reapers of Eorzea, What is your wishlist for the 7.0 for the class ?

[TabrisOmbrelame]

Hello everyone.

As the time passes, the 7.0 is approaching. We still don't have any clue on what change we will see on different classes. I've seen many post about other class, but very few about Reaper.

Here's the question : What would you like to see added on the reaper game play ?

You don't have to be correct with math, this is just to throw a bunch of idea and see where we can go.

One thing I'd like to see would be some of Zenos move set he had in the final battle, but remastered slightly of course like Wyrm's Tongue (When Zenos says "Mine for the Taking !" the first time) which is a Large Conal AoE. The animation consist of the Reaper backing off a little, then rush forward. I don't know where to put that tho...

Maybe a Single target version of Communio which ressemble the "A Test of your reflexes !" line of Zenos, where he throw the scythe into the air, jump to grab it and slam it downward

And why not the sort of combo Zenos do when he force you down one time after his fusion with the avatar called "Thorns"

I don't ask for everything at once of course.

I think that "A Test of your reflexes" would be a good counter part of Communio.

Thorns could replace two attacks of our base combo when we are in Enshroud phase.

Which would lead to something like Cross Reaping -> Void Reaping -> Thorns 1 -> Thorns 2 -> "A Test of your Reflexes" (That's only an exemple, and attacks could be unleashed in whatever order you see fit, giving a stacks of "Shroud Reaping" up to 4 stacks. You won't get a stack if you use the same attack twice. Each attack give you 1 stack and hit stronger with each stack. The final attack use the 4 stack to deal more damage, like a true Finisher

That would make the combo "non repetitive" and grow in strength.

So what's your ideas boys ?

[Lyth]

Thank you for posting this, I was thinking about resurrecting the Reaper Megathread for a while now to discuss 7.0 ideas.

I think the core gameplay needs to remain relatively intact, because the decisions around double/triple Enshroud are interesting, and the tuning around gauge generation is really well done. Reaper is one of the few jobs at the moment where the resource management doesn't feel like just a glamorized timer, primarily because you have the gauge space to 'store' a one-minute burst window for later for things like tincture or specific mechanics like Everburn. As such, there aren't a lot of changes required here, it's more about refining the existing gameplay.

It would be nice if there was a way to improve the strength of the opener to allow for an early double Enshroud, to bring it on par with the subsequent Arcane Circle windows. Timer-dependent jobs don't really have this 'ramping up' issue. I'm not entirely sure what the solution to this is, however, because you'd need an adjustment that affects Shroud generation in the opener and nothing else. Adding gauge to Harvest Moon is a possibility here, but you don't really want a situation where it's more beneficial to channel Soulsow than maintain uptime directly.

Harvest Moon itself is a bit of an awkward one. It's fun channeling it during downtime mechanics to generate extra casts (i.e. limit cut), but it seems to be of marginal benefit because most fights are designed with full uptime in mind. Maybe it just needs to be an oGCD rather than a Spell.

There's probably some benefit to allowing charges on Gluttony for drift purposes, but you also don't want to end up with a double Gluttony opener with like six positionals in a row. Perhaps have the action start on one charge on pull and have it tick up to a maximum of two.

I'd like to see actions that relate to space-time effects in Void magic. E12S provides a lot of good inspiration for this, with delayed effects (Spell-in-Waiting). It might be fun to have a multi-hit attack that lets you teleport around multiple times. I'd also like to see them play around with the idea of partially merging with your avatar. Perhaps sprout some wings to temporarily increase your base movement speed or glide around the arena. Additional movement abilities are always welcome on melee, and I think a lot of the fun of this job comes from it having really enjoyable movement.

If they get the time when they're doing the graphical overhaul, I hope they also fix the ears on Enshroud. You really need to have ears on the hoods for the Void Rabbits.

Lastly, I'd like them to do something purely for flavor and not have it count towards the total new action count. They played around with the idea of having you transform into a flying mount for the Rising, and it's a nice idea. I'd like to be able to transform into a Voidsent and just fly around, just as a job-specific out of combat action.

Summary:

• Keep core rotation relatively intact.
• Build in an additional 50 Shroud into opener only to allow for early Double Enshroud.
• Make Harvest Moon oGCD.
• Give Gluttony a second charge but make it start at one charge on entering combat.
• Multi-hit attacks featuring more portal magic.
• Movement speed buffing action featuring partial voidsent transformation with wings.
• Fix bunny ears on Void Rabbits.
• Out of combat job-specific voidsent transformation that lets you fly around. Doesn't count towards the new action total.

[TabrisOmbrelame]

snip...

I like your ideas overall. It's true that Harvest Moon is an awkward skill with mostly only one use in a fight. Although it does 600 Potency damage, it not really a loss if you don't use it over a fight of 10 minutes (You don't see any big difference cause that would be a 0.5 Potency loss over 600 seconds if you pull with Harpe instead, which is not worth mentionning). Using Harvest Moon as a oGCD seems a good way to boost up the RPR a little and make it even more aggressive, I like that.

As for the opener, I don't know how you could double shroud right off the bat without breaking balance somewhere... That will be troublesome to fix.



And for a special note, the out of combat Job-specific transformation could be almost done with every class. So I'd prefer to have a "mount" that allow us to transform (Just like the 10th Anniversary Phenix) but without blowing inside our horns. Maybe something more "Transformation like". But that's for another thread. I will surely open one for Mount maybe ?

[Taranok]

Snip...

The most important part about harvest moon.

This is the third time you have added it devs. The third time this godawful ability has been put on a class. First it's Chakra on Monk. Then Shoha on Samurai. Every single time, you've had to add a way to use that stupid ability as part of the normal rotation, because it's not fun to have a button you use once during an entire 12 minute fight.

Stop making abilities like old school chakra, shoha, and harvest moon. If the ability is not used regularly during combat, just stop your design process right there and go back to the drawing board.

Make harvest moon something reapers can charge passively while playing reaper so that the ability is actually used. And then we'll hit the trifecta on this garbage ability of the devs constantly adding it, the ability being awful, and them just baking it into the core rotation anyways.

Also I'd be mostly okay on giving all classes with resources built up over the fight more resources at start. Working on TOP right now, Dragoon is just garbage in the opener because it can't use life of the dragon, and while not nearly as bad on reaper, it's still a valid concern. That said, I don't think reaper has it bad enough to truly justify giving more bar to do a double opener. I'd rather attention went elsewhere in the class, such as potentially removing the 2 'of death' abilities because they're just boring pseudo-dots that is more annoying than interesting. That and it would make room for a redesigned harvest moon right then and there.

[Lyth]

Death's Design is interesting because of how it interacts with Double Enshroud. Because you need it for filler GCDs in the setup, you can only enter into it when you're under 8 seconds or so on the timer, or else you lose potency. That interplay itself makes it significantly better designed than most of the single issue DoTs on other jobs. That's one of the parts of the job that I don't want altered unless they want to add additional layers to it.

Your post does bring up a really simple solution for Harvest Moon that I hadn't considered, though. Just give Soul Sow a timer. When the timer elapses, it turns into Harvest Moon on its own. If you press the Soul Sow button to channel the ability as before, it accelerates the timer so that it ticks down faster. Now it has a set number of uses in a fight, but if the fight has any downtime mechanics you are rewarded for weaving channel time to generate extra uses. You could probably even attach some gauge to the action then, and perhaps allow for a Double Enshroud opener.

On the earlier point about out-of-combat actions: I think they would add a lot of additional flavor to the jobs, and would be fun as long as they don't count towards the total new action budget. They don't have to be mount effects necessarily, and you really only look to Dungeon and Dragons' cantrips for inspiration. It's also a way of getting some of the more unusual Final Fantasy spells into the game, like Float and Warp. You could even have something to evade combat, like perhaps bringing Smoke Screen back as a way of reducing aggro ranges on mobs out of combat. That could have impact on Exploratory content and Deep Dungeons.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

EVeryone here has really good ideas, so I honestly got no ideas I could provide at this point, but my only criticism is for this one:

Maybe a Single target version of Communio

I find it incredibly lazy to add ST versions of AOE skills that you already use in your ST rotation / flow. The general formula when designing them like this is:

• Add new ST skill with higher potency but with shared restriction / cooldown / cost of a former multi-purpose skill (instead of decoupling them)
• Add new AOE skill with potency only worth at 3+ targets but with shared restriction / cooldown / cost of a ST skill (instead of making the ST have cleave, see Expiacion)

There was a novelty with such skills when they were 2-target efficient, which gave additional ways to optimize in fights like The Epic of Alexander (in ShB) depending on the strat you used to position your two bosses. Since Endwalker, the amount of 2-target efficient skills has dwindled immensely, half intentionally and half unintentionally (I assume the Xenoglossy buff on BLM did not keep Foul in mind) and the amount of fights even making use of AOE skills went down the gutter. Because of this, AOE skills have basically become trash-only with rare exceptions like twice per expansion. This a short list of skills that are affected by this game design:



Making Enshroud more interesting, I'm game with that. But ST "Communio" is just peak lazy that I hope SE doesn't do.

[TabrisOmbrelame]

Snip

I've never said that all idea are good. I do believe, in fact, that some I propose are completely stupid, flat or lazy as hell.

But sometimes, stupid idea can give other people a great idea because they can base their own on that. That's why this subject is here.

Your sheet on those 5 jobs is great. And it's a great argument you brought up here, allowing even more idea to avoid that kind of pattern once again.

To continue on the subject, how about we get something like an upgraded basic combo 1-2-3 based on Gluttony who provide 3 stacks of Soul Reaver instead of two.

Allowing for an improved 60 sec mini-burst maybe ? (I do understand that could be too much inside the Two-minute burst window tho...)

[Taranok]

snip

Eh, I mean, using the terrible DoT as filler for a double enshroud could just as easily be replaced with literally everything else. Using a bad ability in an 'interesting' way doesn't make it anything but a bad ability. It's like looking at Black Mage, looking at the UI3->transpose->firestarter proc and thinking that's interesting. It's inventive, but the class would overall be better designed without it. The most important part is maintaining the 2 GCDs per minute that 'of death' offers. And there's 3 real ways this could be done.

1, it could be that every 50 blue gauge you build, you get a harvest moon. 2, every 100 red gauge you get a harvest moon. Stacking up to 2 times. It could be a timer, but I think that would be boring. 3, it could have charges but I think that's a bad workaround. Red gauge would have it used too often at 50 since you'd get at minimum 6 per minute without accounting for enshroud. Enshroud itself is whatever. It could be tied to the 1-2-3-gibbet-gallow buttons, where you press them enough times you get a stack (a bit boring as well.)

Getting 2 charges that reset 1 every 30s lets you strategically save them for getting zoned out, which is its primary purpose anyways, and it replaces a boring ability with a more interesting one, so it's probably the 'best' option despite calling it 'bad' as well.

As for double enshroud in general, I'm not sure what my opinion of it is. On the one hand, I like when players create stupid designs and nonstandard rotations. On the other hand, it presents a serious (enough) balance concern and makes it harder to actually balance the class, as well as potentially boosting the damage well above what's expected. My favorite example of this is demi-bahamut from stormblood, where players found out using things like addle or swiftcast would allow you to go from 8 expected wyrmwaves to 11, and the dev's response was nerfing wyrmwave damage by ~30 potency, simultaneously necessitating nonstandard play and harming anyone not using it.

Such a change would take a little off the top of the skill ceiling, but also lower the skill floor enough to make it at least like Kaiten, where mains grumble but the class is in a healthier state overall. Especially when the class appears to be intended to only single enshroud the 2m burst, as evidenced by the 15s cooldown on an buffs that last 20 seconds and ~8 seconds to fully cast. If anyone has seen me on black mage, I despise nonstandard play in general for its serious balance and class design concerns that nonstandard brings up, but I would rate such a change as: "This is low priority, work on other things first," since the gain isn't in the same order of magnitude as summoners abusing snapshotting in HW.

[Lyth]

There's nothing wrong with Death's Design. If you don't like upkeep effects, that's just a personal preference, and perhaps the upcoming DRG rework will cater to such an audience. Death's Design would be perfectly fine even if it didn't interact with anything else. But it does, and I'd like to see that interaction stay. You can use HM as a filler GCD even now, if you mess up the timers. I don't think that this needs to be simplified further.

Double and Triple Enshroud are part of the job design. Older jobs were designed such that your gauge capacity only allowed enough space for a single burst window. This meant that jobs with resource-based burst were functionally just timer-based burst jobs in disguise. The Shroud gauge didn't ever need to be more than 50. The fact that it goes to 100 is what allows for more situational control over how players execute their burst, depending on the encounter. I expect that a lot of newer jobs going forward are going to incorporate ideas from this.

And if it's not your thing, you can still always play freestyle if you're looking for a more comfy experience. As long as the skill differential doesn't translate into a big performance differential, that's fine. Skill gaps are more a 'balance' problem on jobs like BLM, where there's a sizable dps gap between skilled players and weaker ones. I expect that that should be a much bigger focus for the dev team's review, rather than going out of your way to break a job design that the community is actually positive about.

[Flana]

Double enshroud maybe, but there is no way triple enshroud is an intended way to play the game and is absolutely going to get axed in Dawntrail. It's very obvious this is a not-intended way to play the job giving the shenanigans involved and SE has repeatedly gone out of their way to lower skill ceilings resulting from janky or unintuitive play. It's why I'm 100% expecting them to tack on a Communio follow-up as Reaper's level 100 ability. It doesn't completely break getting 2 Communios under your own buffs but it will block 3 from happening.