I think Reaper is fine. I think he excelled in this meta due to the shields and the armor nerf. A lot of his counters couldn’t be played effectively, he’s a decent counter to doom, and he can ignore shields. This upcoming patch actually is a nerf to Reaper. Armor nerf has been reverted and shields have been nerfed. Snipers are probably going to come back that counter Reaper since they are long range. With the shadow step changes I think he’ll still be a viable pick even against snipers, but I don’t think he’ll be a meta pick anymore.
Honestly, I’d take a damage nerf if his spread got buffed. Slim heroes are nearly impossible for Reaper to kill.
As a tank main, the solution isn’t “get better.” The solution is “go Orisa or Sigma,” which isn’t healthy for the game. You try playing any tank that isn’t Orisa or Sigma into Reaper, and tell me what more to do. Reinhardt or Winston played to perfection is going to be little match for a Reaper played semi competently.
And no, he was run in STAGE 4 OF OWL. He’s a meta pick for a variety of reasons. Top reason: he’s way too easy for the amount of value he secures at every single rank. Why is this so hard for people to understand?
Ya. They all have methods of displacing him, outranging him, (Lucio ana zen Baptiste Moira and mercy all have weapons with better range) mitigating his Damage via healing targets, anti-nade…
Like c’mon how do you not think that nearly every Support hero can counter Reaper?? In QPC, the best answer to a reaper is literally four supports and a Pharah.
You heard it here first folks, Zen and Bap counter Reaper because they can shoot further!
A: No, it’s really not.
B: Because Overwatch isn’t played on huge flat wallless maps. Reaper can take flanks, move from cover to cover, and has 2 separate abilities to cover distance.
If Reaper closes the distance with you, as a Support, your realistic options are: Flee(provided you have fade, a boop or hit your sleep), enable your team to help deal with him, or die.
Yes, this is the win condition for Reaper vs Supports.
The win condition for Supports vs Reaper is “kill him before he gets close, or you’re a dead man because shotguns.”
Most supports have weapons that can beat Reaper before he gets close.
The beauty lies in the simplicity, especially when it comes to Baptiste’s weapon! Although, if reaper gets close…those hit boxes aren’t doing either hero any favors…
Your statement isn’t even remotely close to a logical equivalent to his. It’s not even on the same planet as his statement.
A good Reaper isn’t standing out in the open eating ranged shots from 30m while he walks in a straight line towards you. It’s such an unrealistic example, especially to use to claim “All supports counter Reaper!”
He’s taking a flank, approaching behind shields, or porting behind out of sight. It’s completely detached from reality.
I’m not saying he’s stupidly walking up the center of the map like central Temple of Anubis point B…
Cmon use your head buddy. A great support player should be able to identify traditional flank routes and not only anticipate Reaper’s approach, but also stay away when a fight breaks out on the objective and take potshots from afar (think Nepal sanctum as a great example of flank opportunities and open sight lines)
The way you’re saying it, it almost seems like you believe that Reaper can just teleport on top of any support and instantly win the fight without DB and then wraith away into the night…
We both play on the same platform, and I find it hard to believe you’ve never run into support players who can reliably outplay Reaper. If that’s the case, I challenge my support hero pool to your reaper, and vice versa. Because I’m good with reaper and excellent at support.
All this being said, we do play on opposite ends of platinum so maybe you see different side of the story.
Life steal is op and makes him a low skill hero… just run and press shoot… with that damage and spread you’ll be fine… what kind of balance is that?
Edit: think about this; when ptr patch goes online, what do you think will happen when brig sends all her armor heals to reaper? Reaper with insane amount of life steal and armor… yikes…
No, I’m not at all saying that Supports are incapable of helping protect their team from Reaper, helping to contribute damage to him, or that they just roll over and die the second he is selected.
I’m saying the statement “All supports counter Reaper” is objectively false.
Ok can’t get a good side view of Reaper without running a whole game and CBA to do that now so use this.
Anything past the tips of those shotguns you’re lucky to be doing 20 damage to and not fattie target (tanks other than Zarya and Sigma). And those characters have armor absorbing the first hit or 3. The shotgun’s spread is MASSIVE. The character’s whose primary fire IS A [ROADHOG] MELEE WEAPON have more effective range than Reaper.
I think the word you’re looking for is “subjectively.”
Reaper is a design problem as well as a balance one.
Balance problem because the amount of effort versus value. I don’t even mean mechanical skill, I’m not one to say “muh skill”, that’s not how Overwatch works and a dumb argument. By effort I mean map affection, team synergy and demand for certain tank/support picks, not the personal individual mechanical skill.
For instance, Pharah can be an outright devil for tanks, just as much as Reaper. She, however, cannot do that without a Mercy and will not work on every map. So right there we have 1) A demanded support pick, 2) Map dependency and 3) Some amount of team synergy.
Bastion as well, the turret bot can be a pain in the butt to deal with, but good luck playing the bird-lover without tanks and supports tailored to enable Bastion.
So when you look at the tank/sup relationship to those heroes, the amount of effort to pull off is somewhat comparable to the amount of effort needed to counter it. You need to come together as a team, switch up and synergize well enough to deal with it. That’s fair because to execute said strat, the enemy had to go through that effort themselves, and to a certain extent, wins whoever got the best plan and/or executed it the best.
Reaper however, cares naught about any of that. Does he need a specific support pair like Pharah? Nope. Does he care for a tank pair like Genji would prefer a dive? Negative. Does he need any special amount of synergy to pull off? Nada. You can play Reaper in any map, with any tanks, any supports and stay off voice chat. Reaper gives no forks.
Meanwhile, 4 out of 6 players, the tanks and sups that have to deal with Reaper, are utterly limited in their counter player options, afterwall this is a category locked game. That happens because 1) Tanks have severely limited synergies, 2) Tanks are map dependant, 3) Tanks are support dependant as well.
So to deal with 1 Reaper you are potentially switching up to 4 heroes, executing their synergies and investing their resources into the enemy Reaper.
That disproportionate amount of effort to deal with means Reaper gets free guaranteed value. Even if you arrive at the perfect lobby where everyone is cooperative and agrees with the plan instead of bickering about what medal they have, you’re still giving Reaper a lot of value because you are spending a ton on him, while his team didn’t invest anything special on Reaper themselves.
“but all you need is one McCree/Pharah/Widow/Ashe/Hanzo/Mei/Doom/whatever DPS counters Reaper.”
Well, it’s a category locked game now. If I queue as tank/support I can’t switch to DPS, can I? A hero should not single-handedly counter an entire category in a category locked game. Wondering why DPS queue time are that bad? Well, one reason is that who the fork is going to volunteer to be at the mercy of others?
We don’t need to diverge from the obvious: It’s the life steal. First thought is to nerf it, 20 or 25%, tops, so Reaper would need more support from his team to do what he does.
Second thought would be to change its mechanics. Make it so it gives healing per second rather than a instant burst based on damage. Have Reaper accumulate and charge a pool of “damage done”, and that pool is constantly spent in the form of some limited amount of HP/s, maybe 12 HP/s, maybe higher, whatever number works.
With that said, that’s all on live. PTR is drastically different. The armor revert helps, it’s <14% DPS cut to Reaper against MTs and Dva, and all the tanks’ changes make up a less limited tank scene, and that may be enough to fix this issue, so I would refrain from changing Reaper for now.
1 Like
No, it’s really not. I used objectively intentionally.
If we’re going to use the phrase “counter” so liberally as to include all supports, then literally all characters counter all other characters since you can kill, avoid and damage anyone with anyone. The phrase counter would lose all meaning.
Instead, I’ll continue to go with “have a serious innate advantage over another character as a whole, either through being highly favored in a fight, denying massive value, or preventing said character from fulfilling their primary role/objective.”
Let’s just agree to disagree, since we clearly don’t see eye to eye on this matter.
My duel offer still stands, however. 
Works for me.
Go ahead and add me, I’m always down for a challenge.
1 Like
Imagine being this guy
1 Like
Yea I would love for a hero that counters my entire role take a bunch more skill. That would be very nice.
The thing I dont like about this post is … Its so cosmetic in feeling, like it doesn’t feel like youre playing Reaper because of his abilities or how he fits into a Comp… you’re playing Reaper cause of the way he looks or you just like the name, or because you have… When in all honesty no one should be a one trick right now, in 2-2-2 you need to be flexible … In comp do whatever in Arcade or qP