His major perk “dire triggers” gives him the abilities to shoot two rounds about five frames apart and give him about half a second where he can’t shoot. Together, past twenty meters they do about the same damage as a Cassidy body shot.
It’s underwhelming as a perk, but it does give Reaper poke damage. Reaper is literally the only character without Poke damage. Even Reinhardt has poke damage with his two fire strikes.
This perk should be permanently added to his kit.
As for concerns on balancing, it’s anecdotal, but I’ve yet to run into any Reaper that even gets kills with dire triggers, and honestly his other major perk (three seconds of 70% life steal) is the far better choice.
Does anyone here oppose this? When’s the last time you even died to it or found it problematic? I think this could be added to his kit and his winrate would probably only alter between plat-diamond.
His damage output at close range is quite high, he lacks range for a reason. Not to mention he has the ability to reach close range and escape it.
The long range shot isn’t very high damage all things considered, but it gives him an easy way to finish targets that get out of his ideal range. It’s a finishing move rather than an opening move. Plus, it comes with the extra benefit of potentially oneshotting 250 hp characters up close, which Reaper can’t normally do.
He doesn’t need it full time, he’s balanced around not having it.
You never know, if and when they end up doing a major reshuffle of perks they could end up keeping certain things that seemed to work well as actual parts of a characters kit and replace the perk with something new. Felt like they hinted to as much in the AMA with one of the question/answers.
On paper it’s pretty impressive, but in actual gameplay is it actually that useful? I thought it wpuld he very good at fighting Pharah or maybe getting long ranhe DPS off my back, but it isn’t.
Also, I don’t think saying his close range damage is high means much considering that Sojourn, Kiriko and Torbjorn have very high close and long range damage.
As I said in my post, it’s best used as a finishing tool. It’s an accurate, long ranged shot that deals good damage. The cooldown, end lag, and only minor increase to the raw damage over ordinary shots makes it poor for use in a sustained fight. You use it when you’re certain your next shot will finish the target since the dire shot will be much more likely to actually do that.
And yes, Reaper has high close range damage. He’s also bulky, having 300 hp and a better hitbox than similar characters. He also heals himself by dealing damage, has long range teleportation, and invincibility movement that reloads his guns. Reaper can get to targets, pelt them with high damage shots with quick firing, and can leave freely or even dodge an attack and reload with wraith form to continue attacking.
He is balanced around his close range threat capability and giving him access to long range doesn’t make sense outside the perk.
Getting kills with Dire Triggers isn’t impossible, but it’s incredibly risky to put yourself in that lockout phase, so it’s incredibly situational. It also requires your opponent to be at least 1/3rds of their HP (squishies only) and within 20m.
I still think it’s his best perk because of how useless the lifesteal one is. You need a coordinated team for the lifesteal perk to even provide any value.
That being said, this would alleviate is inability to do anything beyond 5m. I still think it’s lazy and a more creative alternative would not be that difficult to create (if they would just bother to spend more than 5 mins on Reaper).
You and I keep disagreeing on this one, but I think that ravenous wraith is incredibly good. It gives you 70% lifesteal for three seconds, and that usually means you can kill off most tanks. That perk alone keeps Reaper’s pinky toe in “tank buster” category as otherwise many heroes like Mauga, D.Va, JQ and Ram out damage him with cooldowns. It also makes his ultimate less trash because he can actually use it between three enemies without being out damaged.
My personal recommendation is to have shadowstep do poison damage in a 5m radius where he teleports. This would encourage Reaper players to teleport next to enemies while usong wraith immediately. Right now teleporting next to most hit scans is basically feeding, but the rest of Reaper’s kit isn’t oriented towards stealth. Instead I yhink they should double down and have it so if he teleports next to an Ana or Widowmaker that they’ll be forced to either leave, or call for a healer by him simply coming in close.
It’s still lazy, but it makes Shadowstep useful as an engagement tool. I don’t mind using wraith and shadowstep as a combo if it gives me a high probability of getting the kill.
Conversely, instead of damage over time it could act like Ramatra’s vortex, and heroes next to shadowstep will be slowed and forced to stay on the ground. That way hitscan heroes can still kill him quickly with headshots, but it will give Reaper a slight edge in CQC that he is currently missing past 5m.
It’s almost like people who play hero X love it when something gets added to hero X with zero drawbacks
Which honestly shouldn’t be surprising when you consider literally ANY forum balance discussion ever had (why I love them so much - “just make my hero the protagonist”)
The drawback to dire triggers is it uses up ammo, is on a 3 second cooldown and it doesn’t let you use primary fire for about half a second (which is important because Reaper shoots twice a second, so if you use it to start a fight you’ll essentially use your first two shots immediately, but you’ll have to wait to follow up.)
If we want to be pedantic, dire triggers does 130 damage upclose, so it does less than if you hit both primary shots as each shot is 108.
I’d say dire triggers has enough downsides. If it were truly broken it’d have no cooldown like Torbjorn’s secondary fire.
That’s only a drawback if you decide to use it up close (especially knowing that info)…
I don’t think the ammo thing is really enough to not consider it a straight buff to the hero…the benefit is much much better than the cost (imho anyway)…and who doesn’t like their hero being buffed (the point I was trying to get across)
The benefit absolutely outweighs the drawback provided you’re using the ability correctly. It’s a bonus attack on a character that wasn’t made to have it.
Bad habit of mine where I continue to state my opinion over and over out of concern that by not refuting something I disagree with, others may not be aware of the dissenting stance. My mistake.
It would be a nice feature, but I feel like the inherent flaw Shadow Step has is the 3 or so seconds of animation time that it takes to finally regain control of yourself. It makes it difficult to use, not only as an engagement tool, but as a disengagement tool as well.
It makes it incredibly easy to get CC’d or straight up just one-tapped. Lifesteal doesn’t do him any good if he doesn’t even get a chance to shoot. Even when you do get a chance to shoot, 95% of the time your target has moved out of your range and is capable of demolishing you with their more pinpoint form of damage (even if they’re long-ranged characters not meant for CQC, simply because of Reaper’s excessively short range).
The only way I can see Shadow Step being transformed into a useful ability as it is now, is for it to have some sort of decoy/fake-out mechanic. Something that punishes enemies who mistakenly shoot it out of panic/instinct.
They could lean into the stealth route if they want another stealth character. That could be done by giving shadowstep 0 sound unless you make visual contact with Reaper’s character model. They could also make it so the first shot after shadowstep is double damage. It would allow a quick way to give him added value if he successfully pulls off a shadowstep no one saw.
Is dire trigger the same damage as one primary fire, or does it count as 2?
Like, if you shoot point blank into their head from 3 feet away does it deal the same or more damage?
Just watching it, id assume 2 shots at once should be more damage up close, so could be used as finisher on close targets if one more primary fire would just miss the mark. Finisher Combo after primary. Especially if you primary fire down to your last bullet and need the extra damage before reloading, you can still use it with 1 bullet remaining.
So if you get a habit of counting/knowing your bullets, you could theoretically use it as a close range finisher if you need that extra bit of damage to net the kill on your last bullet.
I dont see 99.9% of people doing that but hey, someone out there is probably crazy enough to get good at it.
I reckon reaper should get a major perk to be able to use tp during ult. Just for the funzies.
And at the very least he should be able to cancel ult in his base kit for qol.
It’s shooting 2 shots, but they do less damage than if you were to actually shoot 2 individual primary fire shots. I also believe there is the slightest delay between Shot 1 and Shot 2 when using Dire Triggers.
You could do that combo, but if you’re already that close, you might as well just primary fire and melee. Saves you a bullet, a cooldown, and a primary fire lockout.
Also, since it’s a tighter spread, it requires more precision. By using it up close, you’re gambling with a lot more damage that you could lose very easily with twice as long of a punishment than you would normally have just by using primary fire.
You gotta play them differently. I’ve seen more reapers over the last few months, they used to be niche but now they’re just regular. I haven’t studied the replays but I noticed they wraith in place, getting healed and that gives them a second wind while staying in the fight. I used to be able to get them as they were teleporting but for some reason, now they are successful in them. Hard to say, at MOST, tweaks are fine but they’re in a decent state IMO
Dire triggers only works up to 25m (which is long range to people?). Theres alot of downsides to it, but its really needed against heroes like pharah, people on the high ground, etc. He doesn’t have a rhythm/ability cycle to his gameplay like venture does nor does he have something that helps him at a distance like torb’s left click or turret (shadowstep is still only a pre-fight/minor evade ability ).
