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.
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.
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.
spirit says reaper is probably the worst dps in the entire game and is awful again dive, goats, snipers, hitscan, pharah, and junkrat
for someone who has been top 100 with reaper for many seasons, spirit has an extremely negative opinion on the hero and is always critical of people in his chat who tell him to go reaper
even if reaper isn’t horrible he’s still in a mediocre standing regardless of meta
he’s a pubstomper at least
Not all heroes also can be nonviable for as long time as reaper
Very odd that they decided to buff Reaper to help deal with a tank meta if Reaper isn’t meant to be good at dealing with tanks.
Particularly when Reaper is awful against dps heroes. I guess he needs some major buffs then, as he shouldn’t be awful against everyone, right?
Well said, such a shame a character with a good lore and costume design gets a kit that doesn’t allow for much headroom. But, people forget, he is a one star hero… if we go by the skill kids then of course he shouldn’t do anything higher up… except, well, there’s Brig running amok at high levels … yes, Blizz, please do something to raise the skill cap with Reaper!
Imagine you finally find a nice position ready to pounce on someone out of position… You go in… Your entire clip gets Dm’d. Then you are like ok cool ill get them next time… You are creative and find a new position and WAIT for the DVa to fly onto your team then you pounce… get slept and brig stunned… OMEGALOL…
Thats the life of a reaper
Worst of all is that tank abilities alone make Reaper unable to do anything. Even without taking everything else into consideration.
Reaper should get a new weapon that maybe deals less theoretical damage, but goes though barriers and DM at close range.
This right here. Thank you!
The devs themselves have, one way or another, illustrated that Reaper was designed to be a Tank buster. I don’t need Reaper to make all tanks irrelevant, but it would be great, for starters, that tanks of all characters don’t make Reaper irrelevant.
Maybe some changes to his ultimate would be great. Change it to enforce Reaper’s role as anti-tank than have shotguns that do poorly against squishies and an ult that only works against squishies,
Reaper’s shotguns do not perform poorly against squishies, what are you on about? At the range he’s good at, he still deals an immense amount of damage to 200hp heroes.
Read this:
Read my first post. You seem to have forgotten about it already.
the thing with reaper is positioning it’s his biggest source of strength and his biggest source of weakness.
and on maps there is sometimes not allways a good stretch where he can survive so he has to get to good positions constantly from one position to the next.
where as many other characters have an easier time transitioning from different positions and not be as easily punished for it.
as i see it, he’s a slow deliberate character in a game where everything has to happen so quickly that he can’t keep up because he has to get around tricky positions of weakness to good positions of power for him which takes a while as he goes from point to point slowly.
and all of his abilities have to be used very deliberately, as he can’t just ult, he can’t just shadowstep, he can’t just wraithform without a really good reason for them.
many people just think he’s just walk forward and shoot people in the face and sometimes win and sometimes lose when he’s actually a lot more complex.
he has to read the battlefield like a tank does and from that extrapolate where he actually needs to be and can be and then device a plan to get there and then execute his kill order.
in my eyes he has to be big brain to be played constantly, the only reason why he can get away with being reckless in lower ranks is because he doesn’t get punished for it as easily and his guns are also really powerful as he doesn’t necesarrily have to have the best aim at certain distances to out shoot bad aimers. but as the battlefield becomes more complex so does reaper.
Hard disagree. A teleport offers plenty of advantage. Quickly relocating to another area while staying out of LoS is hugely beneficial to a flanker.
Also, high ground is always beneficial, period. Range limitation or not, having a higher field of view and the ability to silently drop onto enemies unawares is a benefit that cannot possibly be overstated.
And finally, if you’re using Shadow Step in combat with it’s current iteration, you’re either memeing or you’re bad.
It’s not the design that’s the issue, it’s the iteration of said design. The animation locking out abilities and movement, the duration of the ability, the mechanical limitations of the ability when dealing with tricky terrain or architecture, the fact that this ability’s sheer existence somehow denies Reaper an alternate fire or tertiary ability; these are the things that make it bad. If these things get fixed, Shadow Step as a design could be made to work in Overwatch, I think.
So literally what I said, gotcha.
Shadowstep specifically is not just “a teleport” it’s a cast time teleport that leaves you stationary at both ends of it. Obviously teleporting around the map is useful. A teleport that you basically cannot use in combat is not great for a close range hero like Reaper. You’re putting way too much emphasis on “sneaking”. That isn’t what the word “flanker” means. Generally speaking, any flanker can reach the highgrounds Reaper can, except they take the long way (which Reaper also has to do anyway if he wishes to remain undetected).
I really don’t know why you’re picking up on this so much. We agree that shadowstep in it’s current situation combined with Reaper and his design philosophy does not make for a great hero.
Because the language you have used to describe the ability is inherently fallacious or misleading. I’m simply correcting your interpretation with what I feel is a more accurate, if not more succinct, description.
Adding additional descriptors doesn’t change the fact that it’s a teleport, and I’ve never used the term “sneaky” to describe it. It makes far too much noise and is far too visible from a distance. The player, however, must be sneaky when using it to avoid detection and maximize their chance of successfully flanking.
Plus, to simply say “Reaper has to take the long way to avoid detection” when utilizing Shadow Step, as though there is never an out-of-combat opportunity to do so, is completely ignorant of the fact that you’re assuming a great deal of other information that you realistically can’t without discounting nearly infinite other possible situations where it would’ve performed just fine.
All this is to say yeah, I agree with you that Shadow Step is flawed, and yeah, Reaper as a whole could stand to be tweaked here and there to perform better, but the way you frame your arguements makes Reaper out to be some useless hero that can’t do a single thing well, or even properly for that matter. That just isn’t true.
This is my thoughts on that. Reaper’s statistics in higher ranks suggests that at level he cannot, in fact, do a single thing well enough to be a consideration.
I mean, you’re not wrong in suggesting that Reaper’s skill ceiling is quite low. It’s literally capped at how well you can aim and how well you can keep aware of your surroundings so that Wraith Form can save you long enough to hit a health pack or reach your healers.
However, I’m of the opinion that Reaper’s lower usage and success is more a factor of ever increasing power creep, new mechanics introduced with new heroes and new metas that simply don’t favor Reaper’s kit. I don’t disagree that Reaper is kind of antiquated, but I also don’t think he needs a complete rework like Symmetra got.
To suggest that a highly skilled player can’t use Reaper at higher ranks simply because other players are also highly skilled is to completely ignore the fact that the current metas are leaden with supports and tanks and that only specific dps heroes really shine against those comps. You yourself said that Blizzard themselves haven’t even suggested that Reaper is a tank buster, so why would you think Reaper would do well even with an improved, or more comprehensive, kit?
Should we completely question the design of every other hero that gets low pick rates as well because of the current meta?
I personally think changing Shadow Step to perform better and to add another ability or alternate fire to Reaper’s kit would do loads to improve his viability. What should that ability be? I don’t really know. Perhaps a smoke grenade of sorts? I also think reducing his damage and tightening his spread while giving him more ammo, and perhaps a faster fire rate, would also help to improve his kit.
Wouldn’t have to be complete. I think wraith form is a very good ability that fits him thematically.
Ehh. He fell off the face of the earth after the only reason he was consistently being played was nerfed (The beyblade enabling nano boost). At launch, he was much in the same boat as Torb and Mei, whom were both considered massively overpowered by a majority of the community. They weren’t overpowered, of course; it was just a new game and everyone were bad and had no idea how to play.
Because he’s a weapon based hero that wields shotguns. The meta is not the reason for his failings.
As above.
I would put that under “rework”. Symmetra received a “rework”, which redesigned her E and added a new ultimate on top of her old one, but changed nothing else.
The Symmetra rework, including the most recent changes, have redesigned nearly her entire kit. Her teleport went from an ult, to a dual purpose ult, to a cooldown ability. She got a new ult. Her primary and alternate fire have both been drastically changed. Her turrets have been changed in every conceivable way save for how they look and interact with terrain.
If you’re willing to compare the complete and total change to the ways Symmetra functions to a numbers tuning to Reaper’s weapon and teleport (plus bug fixes to the way it interacts with the game itself), and the possible addition of another ability, then ok? Night and day differences there in my opinion, but alright.
I’m beginning to question your ability to diagnose problems if that’s where your thought process takes you. You completely ignored important information in favor of picking the bits and pieces that support your position.
Seems like we have a difference of opinion on what makes Reaper “bad,” but we both agree he needs help in some form or fashion.
That is the best thing I’ve read on these forums