Reaper is a character who the community is torn over, some think he’s fine - others don’t.
I assure you, he is not fine.
Reapers primary role is to be a Tank-Buster and yet he fails abysmally at this role due to how severely impacted his damage is by armor. Due to the way the game calculates armor and the RNG damage of Reapers pellets (2-7 per pellet x 20) he fails at doing what his main purpose is - killing tanks and bulky targets.
:–Reaper has many flaws that make him not worth picking over others–:
If you want to bust Tanks Hanzo’s burst outclasses Reaper heavily.
If you want to quickly get in and kill a squishy Doomfist, Genji, and Tracer are hundreds of times better due to their escape potential.
If you want to get high damage from your ultimate Pharah, Genji, and Junkrat do more damage instantly than Reaper can do before getting absolutely punished.
As you can see Reaper doesn’t fill the role well as a Flanker or Tank Buster and his ultimate has infinitesimally more drawbacks than the other DPS characters who are similar in any way.
:–Here are some ways to help Reaper out–:
Change his Damage Calculation:Reaper is currently destroyed by armor because of the way armor damage reduction is calculated. Whenever armor takes damage, it halves the incoming damage of each projectile up to 10 damage. Projectiles that deal more than 10 damage gain a flat 5 damage reduction. This scaling means that firing multiple low damage projectiles (like a shotgun) will do less damage than firing one high damage projectile and so Reapers shotgun damage should not be calculated per-pellet but instead as one-whole. Aka if Reaper hits you with his guns you will actually take more than 20 damage from two shots.
Shadow-Step Rework:Shadow-Step is similar to a blink, but thousands and thousands of times slower than instant. I believe Shadow-Step should have a complete overhaul where the cast time is reduced to 1s and it refills your Magazine. This would allow Shadow-Step to be used like an evasive or to engage without getting yourself killed the second you even attempt to use the ability.
Make Deathblossom not :Deathblossom sounds powerful but in reality is absolutely horrible. Deathblossom should not have to be used like Tracers Pulse Bomb to get value (for reference the best Reaper player uses it this way). Deathblossom should do 100% damage to Armor and do a maximum of 750 Damage over its duration (or 250DPS).
For those of you who would try and say “Git Gud” I was actually ranked the 11th best Reaper player on overbuff earlier this Season (I know Overbuff is a bit of a meme but statistics matter).
Frankly it’s just sad how bad Reaper is against armor. I mean… he’s literally meant to be a tank buster. So why is he bad against armor, which all the tanks but two (Zarya and Roadhog) have?
I’m assuming you want to be able to kill tanks in 4 shots? Maybe you should use reaper on not armored targets and instead shoot stuff that doesn’t have this problem. If all the bad guys have armor, Reaper is probably not the right choice.
Shadow Step is a positional ability. I’m assuming you want to be able to use it in a very clumsy way and just pop onto point, deploy your ult, and rake in a teamkill right? If you are using Shadow Step and dying right away, you’re using it wrong.
I really feel like a lot of Reapers just run at Orisa and shoot her, then she just Fortifies and kills him and then the Reaper gets really sour about armor mechanics because now suddenly he can’t kill tanks.
I do agree he needs something done with his RNG spread though. Skill shouldn’t be robbed like that, it’s not right.
As a shotgun hero it’s just a fact that he’s better at killing tanks, as more of his pellets can hit. So why would you use him as a death ball DPS when there are better death ball DPS picks?
He’s not good at his supposed niche and not good at the general niche either.
Considering his role is Tank-Busting yes he should be good against armor - that is kind of the point.
Shadow Step is a GARBAGE ability that results in death 9/10. Please, tell me how to play my character some more! Seriously though this ability is atrocious especially considering half the time you get One-Shot the second you even try and use it.
I don’t think you understand whatsoever what using Deathblossom feels like. Anywhere above platinum you instantly get stunned out of it and even if you don’t people just walk away because of how slow you move during it. More often than not the optimal way to use his ultimate is to kill one target and only one who is slightly out of position.
I really do agree that Reaper srsly needs some help. He literally shoots cotton candy at any range past 10 meters due to his stupid big spread, and when he is shooting at armor he may as well be pressing a big useless red button because he literally does nothing against armor.
Reapers shotguns need to deal like 20-30% more damage to armor, and the spread needs to be decreased A LOT. Then its just fixing shadow step and you got yourselves a good hero.
I don’t mind the spread I just feel like you shouldn’t be tickling people with any semblance of armor especially considering Brigitte’s armor doesn’t decay and so each Rally she uses makes you more and more useless.
I think Reaper could use a passive buff against armor to keep him in line for what he is supposed to be.
If they don’t want to do that then could they possibly change how E works, but people have asked for that for a long time so I’m not sure Blizzard is willing to give ground on that.
Hanzo still needs some nerfing too because as you say Hanzo is generally a ranged Reaper atm in his current iteration as far as how good he does for tank busting.
I just figured changing the calculation method for Reaper alone would make him more viable against heavily armored targets. It feels so bad to shoot an Ana or Zen and watch as they tank 20 shots from you nonchalantly.
They can’t change the way bullets deal with armor though without affecting too many other heroes.
Reaper would need a specific exemption to this, not sure if that can be coded in with the way the game is though? They might have to rework reaper’s guns if they ever want to accomplish what we think is a simple task lol.
They had to rework Reinhardts Earthshatter due to this, I believe they had to rework Roadhogs hook entirely too? I could be wrong on Roadhog part.
He’s still hell for tanks trust me, all 3 maintanks are outmatched to the point you NEED help to get him off of you short of landing a sick outplay pin. But you are right that he is severely outclassed by Hanzo. Hes a ranged reaper who doesn’t suffer vs armor with the same tankbusting dps at all ranges with better in fight mobility.
I think reaper needs to not have shadow step as one of his abilities for one, they could make it a point to point rush where he is in the same state as wraith form, since he will always be outclassed without some form of in fight mobility even once hanzo is drawn back into line with the rest of the DPS category.
But his main problem is just “Why pick reaper when there are so many other BETTER choices”.
But I would rather deathblossom not be 250 dps. Maybe add a small burst shot at the moment you press Q in an aoe that does between 50 and 100 dmg depending on how close you were to the targets upon the activation of death blossom to give it a bit of impact. A consistent 250 dps would be A LITTLE BIT broken. But right now all it’s good for is stomping new players :s
But those are just my thoughts. As a tank main you would probably wonder why I want to see him buffed right?
Shotgun pellets aren’t considered different from bullets in terms of how damage is done is what I am saying. They would need to categorize them entirely different to adjust to this as a possible change is the problem. Could be a big task, we would never know.
I still think he should totally have armor penetration or maybe just make him have a damage bonus on anyone that is in the tank category? Potential work around?
Honestly I don’t think he’s too good against tanks especially in higher ranks. I get that he’s supposed to be somewhat of an entry level character but he just doesn’t do anything well.
If you do even slightly good as Reaper expect the enemy team to get a Hanzo or Brig in around 3 seconds lol
Well, perhaps the issues you are having with Reaper and armor are more of an RNG based thing than a plain Reaper needs a buff or something.
At your tier of play, it is easy for the average player to leverage a Shadow Step’s weakness resulting in order to secure a pick. I will say, i’m not trying to tell you your Reaper game is poor, i’m merely pointing out that if you’re Shadow Stepping and immediately dying once the button is pushed, there’s probably something different that could happen there.
I don’t main Reaper, and i’m not considered a high level player, so no not really. I’ve used his ULT a few times, and i’ll admit, it wasn’t that great. But then i’ve also played against really obnoxious Reapers and i’d say his ULT wasn’t hold them back.
Maybe it’s more of a situation where Reaper is basically forced to use hit ULT at bad times which gives the impression that it’s just not that great? I do note, however, that both Skill and CC are neither in short supply, so I could only imagine what playing Reaper would feel like in higher ELOs.
I get ya though. It’s like what can a Reaper do that a Honzo can’t now?
Well yeah ofcourse he isn’t that good against tanks in higher ranks, it’s harder to sneak past the enemy team without someone calling it out, and usually the tanks always get the help they need at the top tier. In a 1v1 though vs the 3 main tanks reaper is almost impossible to beat out, and they would need assistance >.<
But that is how it should be.
Hey Reaper was amazing in Season 2 though and during the “Dawn of Nanoboost”.
He had a little lime light, but he isn’t a"garbage" pick either like some suggest. Many still use him and play him well in Masters but I think GM is a smaller pool because, as others have stated, the refinement of positioning and how to play other heroes in meta can do a lot of damage to his potential. I think he mostly suffers power creep because I used to think he was the example of a perfect DPS in the game with strengths and weaknesses.
and yet he fails abysmally at this role due to how severely impacted his damage is by armor. Due to the way the game calculates armor and the RNG damage of Reapers pellets (2-7 per pellet x 20) he fails at doing what his main purpose is - killing tanks and bulky targets.
: Deathblossom sounds powerful but in reality is absolutely horrible. Deathblossom should not have to be used like Tracers Pulse Bomb to get value (for reference the best Reaper player uses it this way). Deathblossom should do 100% damage to Armor and do a maximum of 750 Damage over its duration (or 250DPS).
because he literally does nothing against armor.