He’s least picked hero this MONTH in GM.
“Reaper ebbs and flows with the meta” kappa
Can we get to fixing him at long last?
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I’ll just repeat what I say in every Reaper thread.
Reaper has the character depth of a kiddy pool. His design philosophy is essentially “shoot gun, many damage”.
He has next to no combat interactivity, and he is a weapon based hero using SHOTGUNS. Compare him to other weapon based heroes like Widow and McCree, and you’ll see why he struggles. Both of those excel at far better engagement ranges, and have ways to circumvent mitigation. Reaper has to be point blank, and absolutely no abilities beyond a passive to help him do that.
Shadowstep does nothing as an ability, Wraith Form is very limited in terms of functionality, and his dps output is so absurdly high that he needs so many negatives tagged on to him.
Reaper will never be good unless he becomes numerically overtuned, or gets reworked.
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Oh I mean, I totally get why he is useless, my 390 hrs taught me that much.
I just found it funny that when it first happened, people were like “It’s just the Bastion changes, once the hype for the buff dies off Bastion will sit back down”
Nope.
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Yeah, Reaper’s problem isn’t with other heroes.
That said, I think he’s an important part of the OW rank ecology. He is very commonly picked in lower ranks, and seems to even find success there, in the same way that Junkrat and Bastion are far more commonly found lower down, where teamwork and hero pools are at a minimum.
It’s the reverse Tracer. Tracer has historically been a terrible hero in lower brackets, but becomes exponentially stronger as player skill increases. Reaper just doesn’t have a character design capable of supporting player growth in the way that heroes like Tracer and Widow do. Even the best players can only do so much against increasingly coordinated frontlines, and ever aware supports who peel for each other. Tracer gives the player ways to simply outmechanic those teams; Reaper does not.
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Not all heroes can be viable I guess, I mean every Multiplayer game there is always underpowered characters.
tfw reaper is so bad that spirit, the highest ranked reaper in the world that has consistently made top 10 with a one-trick reaper account, dropped him because he’s so bad
reaper needs a major rework
he’s insanely simple with basically no abilities in combat, a huge hitbox, and a mediocre ultimate that absolutely destroys players with bad awareness
his kit is so limited and easy to outplay that he gets worse and worse as you go up ranks
torb is almost like a better reaper
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can I have a source? I am pretty sure there are heroes that are less picked.
It’s kinda sad, Reaper should thrive in this meta. Just rework Shadow Step already and give him something actually useful.
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Just search on Overbuff
inb4 “Overbuff is no longer accurate”, nothing really states that there are more or less Reaper players with hidden profiles than Bastion players, so while the data is not holistic, it should reflect the general trend
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I stand by the idea that Dva is the biggest thing holding reaper back from being viable. That being said, he does feel a little clunky compared to some of the newer heroes (probably due to him being one of the older heroes in the game) so some slight adjustments to his flow would for sure be welcome.
I think that reaper is probably a good pick for less aim capable players. A bit of sneakery and point in the general direction.
After you can aim, use that sneakery with Tracer.
Well he’s kinda built to be mediocre because he’s built to be awesome at tank busting.
Why they decided to make him also awful at his one strength by halving his damage against tanks remains a mystery to me.
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Reinhardt’s armor: 100 (or 20% of his total health pool)
Reaper’s damage per shot: 140 (so, 70 on armor).
Reaper’s damage per second: 280 (140 on armor).
That’s with zero headshots. He’s guaranteed to be hitting every pellet at his preferred distance due to the size of Reinhardt’s hitbox, but he will most likely also collect some crit pellets which further increases his damage, to potentially higher than 100 per hit on armor.
As such, tank armor has little impact on Reaper, due to how easily it is removed by him.
“tank busting” is not an actual thing in Overwatch. I can’t for the life of me understand why people think a character should single handedly invalidate a role with nothing but sheer damage output. Reaper is a close quarter ASSASSIN, but he has no mobility and nearly no in-combat input outside of left click. He has the second highest damage output in the entire game behind Bastion.
He’s not a “tank buster”, he’s garbage design.
PS: If you want “tank buster”, look to Zenyatta. He causes more trouble for tanks than any other hero.
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Spirit hasn’t dropped Reaper because he’s bad. He’s gotten nothing but buffs for the past year and a half.
He’s just bad against goats.
Probably because “Tank buster” isn’t a role and the term come from the community not the developers and reaper suppose to flank squishy as well other than focusing on tanks.
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It has a lot of impact because it increases the time to kill on a hero that should be using his shield to survive direct dps fire.
Reaper has historically been described by the devs as being great at killing tanks so idk what to say. Tank busting was clearly intended. He shouldn’t make the class invalid, but he should make it a bad idea to pick three tanks at once.
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I mean, I agree with the rest of your post to a point…but this is just plain hyperbole.
It literally teleports you to another location. It sucks as an ability when compared to the flow of the game and the tools in other kits, yeah, but I’ve learned how to get creative with it. It’s not useless, it’s just bad.
Well off the top of my head, Reaper has been cited by the developers as being amazing at killing large hitbox enemies, and D.Va stopped this with armour so they nerfed her armour. They also said his viability fluctuates with Winston’s due to his ability to counter Winston. And lastly they buffed him and Mei hard due to them expecting the tank meta.
So… Yeah I would certainly hazard a guess that he is built to tank bust.
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And it should be very obvious as to why. Shotguns are better on larger hitboxes.
But what you’re not understanding is that tanks are not tanks because they have large health pools. And “three tanks at once” doesn’t properly convey the situation. It’s not three tanks. It’s one main tank and two offtanks. Main tanks are typically the more sturdy tanks with strong frontlining capabilities, and offtanks make up for their lack of durability with stronger damage and cooldown oriented mitigation.
Reaper does large damage to large hitboxes, but he falters against MITIGATION. This is why the presence of more offtanks makes him WORSE, not better. No amount of changing to his primary fire, be it damage buffs or spread reduction, will change that.
And even then, “tank busting” is not the same as “having a weapon that’s significantly more reliable against larger hitboxes”. Reaper can literally one shot 200hp heroes. Is he a “dps buster” as well?
I should have been more specific. Shadowstep offers next to no advantage because it’s very telegraphed, and doesn’t help Reaper fight as he doesn’t benefit from highgrounds due to his range limitations. In combat, it is next to unusable outside of very niche situations like dodging a D.va bomb because no one happens to be shooting at you at all while teleporting. It’s not good design.
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Tracer doesn’t have the damage consistency nor the sheer team wipe capability as Reaper does at optimal ranges when used at the same skill level. Reaper is far more resilient as well with the higher health pool and self healing.
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