Reaper Ability Idea! (Better at High ranks!)

General Discussion
21

He is definitely underpowered. For all intents and purposes, I consider him to be a weak alternative to Hanzo.

I think the greatest thing holding him back is shadowstep. With Reaper, you have the advantage against tanks if you can get close, but with shadowstep it feels almost impossible to get close to the enemy often times.

If I use shadowstep correctly them I will end up 25+ m away from the enemy, but walking up behind them gives me away because of how slow he wals and how loud he is. The best option currently for making contact with the enemy is to either play with a Lucio and speed boost in, or stay in your backline and protect your supports.

It boils down to this:

  • If you want a tank buster then choose Hanzo
  • If you want an assassin then choose Genji
  • If you want to get up in people’s face and blast them then choose Tracer

Currently, I would say that Reaper suffers a lack of reason to choose him over obviously superior choices.

There are a few situations where Reaper is the preferred choice, however:

  • When fighting Doomfist
  • When fighting D.Va
  • When fighting Winston
  • Orisa (though, Hanzo and Junkrat are equally viable qgsubst her)

What I consider the greatest slap in the face is that Reaper players have been asking for greater consistency from his shotgun for a very long time, but now TORBJORN of all characters will get a better shotgun than Reaper! The character with a long range option, close rabge option and flanker option will get a superior shotgun to the character that only has shotguns as an offensive option!

That said, I’m hoping that Blizzard has either already seen how ridiculous the new Torbjorn is compared to Reaper, or they will see how crazy the match up is and they will buff him in the next six months.

If you want to know what I think shadowstep should be then here you go:

Bottom line- is he viable? Yes.
Is he the optimal choice in most games. No. For the most part, he is kind of an obsoletecharacter.

I’ll use the following analogy:

In WWII a lot of countries used bolt-action rifles. In the modern world, armies everywhere use select-fire rifles that can shoot in full-auto. Could you still use a bolt action battle rifle on the modern battlefield and be effective? Yes. Is it the preferred choice when you could have a full auto rifle? No.

In that analogy, Reaper is the obsolete bolt-action rifle and Hanzo/Genji are the state of the art select-fire rifles.

Ironically, if you main Reaper, then chances are you’re doing it for the aesthetic. We would all hate to admit, we’re all basically hipsters. We are all hand grinding our coffee, starching our collars, using suspenders and putting on our velvet ties while Genji, Hanzo and Tracer players are all embracing the modern conveniences readily available to us.

One day, hopefully we won’t be edgy hipsters, and just edgelords.

1 Like
22

So once I saw this comment I got real curious because it did occur to me that I should not depend on solely the reported numbers of a wiki. So a friend and myself did some custom map testing. I recorded the tests and broke down the numbers by tick. I went frame by frame in my editing software.

You are not going to be able to guess what I found. The wiki was correct but only on enemies themselves. But even then there is a abnormality. I am going to list the tests and the damage done per tick. The numbers will be the health shown per tick on the target.

Roadhog (and other non-armored targets) takes 34 damage a tick for 15 ticks over 3 seconds. Total damage is 510. Abnormality found where on occassion will take an extra tick of damage for 16 total ticks over 3 seconds. Theory on extra tick is that it is based on server tick where if timing occurs at a specific point allows time for another.
566 - 532 - 498 - 464 - 430 - 396 - 362 - 328 - 294 - 260 - 226 - 192 - 158 - 124 - 90 -56
566 - 532 - 498 - 464 - 430 - 396 - 362 - 328 - 294 - 260 - 226 - 192 - 158 - 124 - 90

Orisa shield takes 17 ticks over 3 seconds. Damage per tick varies. Overall damage 512 damage. Winston and Sym Numbers are identical.
897 - 867 - 834 - 802 - 769 - 736 - 704 - 671 - 638 - 606 - 573 -540 - 508 - 475 - 443 - 410 - 388

Reins Shield takes 31 ticks of damage over 3 seconds. Damage per tick varies. Takes a Total damage 1022. Hypothetically Brigs would take the same if did not break.
1963 - 1933 - 1899 - 1866 - 1832 - 1800 - 1766 - 1733 - 1699 - 1666 - 1632 -1600 -1566 -1533 -1499 - 1466 -1432 -1400 - 1366-1333 -1299 - 1266 - 1232 -1200 - 1166 - 1133 - 1099 -1067 -1033 - 1000 - 978

The last one was the most interesting to me because for some reason Rein and possibly brigs shield have the potential to take 14 additional damage ticks then the other barriers in the game.

I am unsure why this is and cannot for the life of me explain. This does however put a hitch in the explosive rounds idea when talking about shields. Anyone have any theories why these numbers are like this?

Why are the numbers so steady against hero’s but vary so wildly against barrier’s themselves per tick? Why are the number of ticks so much higher on Rein and Brig’s Barrier then that of Orisa, Winston’s and Sym’s?

23

hitreg being glitchy is probably the issue

24

I don’t think it would be. I ran through several seperate pieces of footage and the numbers listed above are exactly the same everytime. The same amount of damage per tick is done in the same order.

If hit registration were a problem you would think the numbers would vary wildly and be different in each test.

Not to mention I think Reaper’s ult deals damage as an area of influence and not projectiles being flung out. It seems to be guaranteed damage as long as the target is within reach. As we also tested (and reviewed the footage) of him ulting at different angles and at differing distances from point blank to the outer edge of it.

Each time the numbers in the sequence are identical and in the same order. No variation save for the abnormality with roadhog testing where on occasion another tick would occur.

25

hmmm. I’m gonna have to think here. It can’t be hitboxes, can it? Maybe a certain hero can only get hit so many times in a tick, but a shield doesn’t have this limit? Although it definitely feels more like an aura than a bunch of bullets. How about when somebodies on top of reaper? I’d imagine that would determine for sure whether or not it is an aura

Edit: im sorry for making you potentially end up testing this

26

It was one of my initial thoughts on it. However, If it were hitbox based you would think Orisa and Especially Winstons shield would take MORE damage because of the sperical shape.

Not to mention Brigs shield seems to take the same amount of damage as Reins and it is not even close to his size where as Sym’s is the largest in the game now and only takes as much as Orisa and Winston’s.

I even tested both outside curves and inside curves of both Orisa and Winston’s shields and both produce the same number results.

Did not go into to much testing on this but we did have Roadhog stand on reaper and the numbers were the same. We even got the same tick abnormality I mentioned.

Edit: It occurs to me that I can test if any other damage type ults have the same disparity as reaper’s against these barriers. I am about to test Coalescence against it. Not certain of any other ults like this I could try.

Edit # 2. Tested Moira’s ult. No such abnormalities found. This seems to be a unique interaction between Reaper and barriers.

27

Lighting may have just struck my brain. Just spotted a commonality between the barriers that take more damage.

Only non-deployable barriers take the normal amount of damage. Shields that are held by players take the extra damage.

Theory: Is Reapers Death Blossom targeting both the barrier being held by Rein/Brig AND the hero that is holding it and doing the ticks of damage from both to the barrier? Rein’s shield is taking 14 extra ticks of damage. Which is only one tick off from what a player would take normally from death blossom. Not certain what is happening to the other tick if this is the case.

28

While Reaper is my favorite character in the game, Torb is in my top 3. In fact, Torb was the first hero I played in the game. And to be fair, Torb did deserve a buff. But so does Reaper. The new Torb just makes that fact clearer.

2 Likes
29

Reaper shoots both the shield and Reinhardt so that deals double damage to the shield. If there were three other people behind Reinhardt while the shield is up then Reaper would theoretically do quintuple damage.

It was a buff he recieved a while ago.

30

Funny thing is I just came to this conclusion myself as well. Don’t remember seeing the patch notes for this at all. Some how got passed me.

The way I discovered it was that I realized that 14 out of the 31 ticks of damage he was recieving were 34 damage a piece which matches how much damage a hero would take if hit by deathblossom. Not to mention 14 is the exact difference between how many ticks winston, orisa, and sym’s barrier takes in comparison to Rein’s.

What still strikes me as odd is why the other ticks of damage to the barrier are so varied. They are a strict sequence but still varied instead of a single static number across all ticks like the ones that target hero’s.

31

Check it out, honey.

2 Likes
32

I don’t have a horse in the race, but i think this change would be fun. I feel like reaper of all levels is barely an Ult factory if that, because his ult is relatively easy to negate. Junkrat pushing, ana sleep, blah blah blah.

So, yeah. I am interested in allowing another shield breaker that isn’t junkrat or hanzo. Lord knows we could use less hanzos.

33

Never thought of that, wow.
I will try with Mei to help Reaper in QP.

35

Thanks for this. Will make me a better reaper understanding this change.

1 Like
37

Would be great to have Reaper be good at killing tanks instead of being deleted by Roadhog himself. (Lol)

Tired of being blamed for bad dps even though I was doing most damage.

38

Great suggestions in here.

39

Lol, all to true. The question of “Why do we have a reaper?” Hurts my soul when i hear it.