So, Reaper. (20characters)

General Discussion
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LONG POST

Now that all these damage falloff heroes are buffed, can we FINALLY look at Reaper?

Even Mei got her niche as a sniper with insane survivability. Reaper has NOTHING. (P.S. If you think Reaper is legitimately an effective tank buster, I seriously don’t know what to tell you. Maybe I’m just super crap at the game)

Most of the time it isn’t even because the player is bad. Reaper is filled with bugs, obsolete abilities, and horrible gameplay interactions that render him among one of the least played damage dealers in Grandmaster, only surpassing that of Sombra, Bastion, Torbjorn and Symmetra (and 76 in the last month). When a hero is comparable to these failures of hero design, you know the situation is pretty darn bad.

Issues:

1) Headshot registration
If you’ve played Reaper for more than 10 minutes you should realize sometimes he doesn’t headshot despite aiming directly at the head. I tried the other day on a slow-motion Winston with my reticle directly on his head at around 5 meters, and it didn’t register as a headshot–TWICE.

The reason behind being, if I recall correctly, Reaper’s headshots don’t register by pellet. In other words, there is NO SUCH THING as “10 pellets dealing headshot damage and 10 pellets dealing bodyshot damage”.
It’s either all headshot or all bodyshot regardless of how many pellets hitting where, which gives rise to a TREMENDOUS amount of RNG and inconsistency.

2) Shadowstep
Why is this skill even a thing anymore? Other than a cool pose, this skill has LITERALLY ZERO value.
-It covers the same distance approximately 2 seconds faster than normal walking, which is absolutely pathetic.
-It is completely unusable in combat thanks to insanely long cast time and rendering one absolutely vulnerable.
-It is unusable as flanking due to horrible audio and visual noise
-It is entirely outclassed by Symmetra’s teleporter, which can be used by her team.
-It is the only ability in the entire game to be consistently countered by fences.
-It does not register vertical locations very accurately and can often teleport to locations that were not marked until the final one-millionth of a second before casting.
Can Genji live without deflect? No. Can Tracer live without recall? No. Can Reaper live without shadowstep? VERY MUCH YES.
It’s so blatantly pathetic an ability for a hero that I can’t think of anything more to elaborate. Its use, or lack thereof, speaks for itself.

3) Mobility options
The state of shadowstep makes Reaper a hero without ANY mobility options, much less a decent one, to engage a fight. This is particularly crucial considering how close Reaper needs to be to fight properly. 4/7 tanks have excellent mobility options to outrun Reaper, while the remaining have various damage-mitigation abilities that prevent Reaper from getting any noticeable amount of self-heal. Once again, another obvious problem that doesn’t require much elaboration.

4) Armor
Being a pellet hero, Reaper deals 50% his normal damage to heroes with armor, which, even if we ignore Brigitte, consists mostly of the heroes that Reaper SHOULD BE TARGETING. This is a blatantly obvious problem that should have been addressed, but hasn’t. The only explanation is that it is there to inhibit Reaper’s effectiveness in taking down tanks, which is also completely ridiculous–heroes are supposed to FLOURISH in the niche they were designed for, not to be restrained by various hidden factors. This is not even counting the fact that Reaper of all people does not need anything more to restrain him–he performs horribly enough already.

5) Sustain
Reaper’s sustain is completely dependent on his damage, which at the moment, with the inconsistency of headshots, damage mitigation of armor, and lack of engaging abilities, is EXTREMELY underwhelming.

6) Ultimate
As cool as death blossom is, it is horrendously underpowered. It is easily stopped by ALL the CC abilities, depowered by all knockback abilities and shields, or just outright burst damage on Reaper. This is not counting classic counters like DVa’s defense matrix or transcendence.

  • As a comparison, Pharah’s Barrage deals 3600 damage over 3 seconds (1200ps).
  • Death Blossom deals 510 damage over 3 seconds (170 dps).
  • Both ultimates have THE SAME AMOUNT OF ULT CHARGE REQUIRED.
    This is blatantly underpowered. Both equally vulnerable and counterable ultimates require the same ult charge, but one deals approximately 14% damage of the other ONLY.

Even the Reaper rank 1 player Spirit has said that Death Blossom is really “only good for getting one or two kills. Mostly you hope to trigger people and they make poor decisions”. That’s how horrible the ability is.

Edit: I’ve been told that the comparison is faulty or unfair. Allow me to clarify

There’s been a lot of posts discussing other heroes like Mei, McCree, Widowmaker, and so on, but a terrifyingly low amount of posts discussing Reaper, who is certainly among one of the more desperate heroes in need of buffing.

A couple of common arguments to refute.

1) "Sombra/Bastion/Torbjorn/X Hero is worse"
Irrelevant to whether Reaper needs buffs

2) "He recently got a wraith form buff"
Which was more of a quality of life change. It hardly raised his pickrate above 0.4% in grandmaster, a truly pathetic number.

3) "Spirit can reach rank 1 with him…"
and there are Symmetra or Torbjorn top 500s as well. That doesn’t mean anything

4) "Poor tanks don’t need more counters"
Yes they do, actually. The meta sucks and playing tanks sucks, but half the reason why a triple tank meta or a double tank-triple support meta works is because there isn’t something strong enough to burst down these tough targets, something which Reaper SHOULD HAVE BEEN TO BEGIN WITH.

5) "You’re just playing him wrong"
Irrelevant. How good I am is not directly related to how well I play the game. My aim is hindered by hand tremors, but my knowledge of how the game works is not

6) "Reaper can easily be overbuffed"
Right. Like the last 2 buffs which sparked proclamations of how Reaper was now OP, despite sitting at a glorious 0.3-0.4% pickrate? The dev team has worried too much about making Reaper too strong that they have left him too weak for 11 seasons. Reaper needs some noticeable, serious, sweeping changes to even be relevant, much less overpowered.

I truly welcome the dev team to comment as to whether they think Reaper is perfectly fine in this state. Lord Kaplan has stated before that “Reaper is a hero that flows and ebbs with the meta”, despite the hero seeing only minimum action in 1/11 seasons (it also happened to be more of an Ana meta than a Reaper meta). Perhaps there is something that none of us are understanding about Reaper that only the devs are aware of. /s

Reaper is horrible in his current state and needs–has needed–buffs. For a long, long time. He is nowhere near balanced and you’d be a blind fool to think so.

P.S.
Personally, suggested changes can include:

  1. Reducing body and head hitbox size
  2. Reducing pellet number while increasing pellet damage. Armor bypass would be nice but potentially too strong
  3. At least cutting off 1s on Shadowstep’s cast time, reduce audio and visual noise, and 10-15 meter cast range increase (35 to 50). CD reduced by 2 seconds
  4. Reduce spread by 10-20%
  5. 10% passive heal increase
  6. Reworking of headshot registration
  7. Death Blossom as a transformation ult–it has enough counters as it is, it doesn’t need CC to become a counter as well

Honestly even with these changes, I doubt Reaper would become as “terrifyingly OP” as people claim or fear. He would still be massively countered by McCree’s stun, Brigitte’s stun, and any kind of range.

I am not interested in giving Reaper smoke grenades or allowing him to contest McCree at mid range. Reaper is a close range hero and that’s the hero I love.

But at least make him decent at the job he was designed for.

Edit: Other supporters

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Reaper is extremely strong.
You don’t just see it.

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I appreciate your elaborated, thought-provoking response.

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He is.
He just don’t have a great place on meta right now.

He’s a easy win if you play him properly and use him to indeed, melt their tanks down while your team focus supports. A badly adjusted tweak will make him the new Hanzo.

Don’t forget Reaper have been meta already, the exact same way he is right now. Maybe not the same way, cus now he regenerates his own health, so he’s even better.

OP… He didn’t provoke you at all.
He just stated his opinion. That’s not the attitude to get feedback at all.

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I don’t want to check people’s profiles, but out of curiousity, may I ask what rank you play competitive at? This statement is very much easier said than done. Tanks such as Zarya or Roadhog can fight Reaper face on. DVa, Hammond and Winston have far superior mobility. Orisa has far superior range. “Melting tanks” is hardly doable at platinum or above, much less in masters and grandmasters. Otherwise, people would have picked Reaper long ago to counter dive tanks, triple tank, or triple support comps.

FYI Reaper has been in the meta ONCE in ELEVEN seasons, during which Ana was at the height of her power. Even then, Genji could have substituted Reaper.

I appreciate his opinion all the same. I know I’m not a great player and I am fully welcome to people telling me I don’t see something. That’s why I’m not being sarcastic. At the same time, I can’t see the point of leaving a comment like that as feedback without giving more information or rationale behind his comment.

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You can check my profile, because it’s Public.
I play on mid-plat right now, but I’ve been in low Diamond for the last seasons :slight_smile:

Just make sure you select PSN and not my PC account, that’s played by my 9 year old cousin.

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The last time Reaper was meta was in Season 3 & 4, and he was meta because Ana’s Nano boost covered up the movement deficiencies he has always had. The game has really passed him by in the last 6 months with every new character having stuns, boops, or movement abilities that take them out of his extremely short range. Reaper needs some modernization. His Wraith Form buff was a good start in the right direction, now he needs a way to deal with heavily armored targets.

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we do not need to buff this easy mode character where all you do is hold left click. no thank you

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Well, you do show a nice point and you might be right.
He’s maybe out-shined by other heroes.

But personally, I play him, I like the way he plays and he’s one of the heroes I’d like to see the way he is. He’s just not in the meta anymore, but that’s how it works. The game is evolving, and you can do a lot of stuff with him, still.

But if you main him, you’ve for sure much more consistent balances for him which I can’t suggest. What I really want is to see Reaper on a good point, buffed or not :slight_smile:

I’ll have to agree with you on this one.

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I think the main thing Reaper needs is a way to deal with armor. His Wraith Form change was a very welcome boost, but unfortunately came at the same time as Brigette entered the meta. Her Reaper interaction is the hardest counter I’ve seen in the game, her passive armor generation, ult-stopping stun, burst healing all counters everything Reaper is trying to do.

If he is going to be a good hero again, he needs a way to deal with armored targets. I’d suggest a simple change: headshots from his shotguns bypass armor. This would raise his skillcap at the same time as giving him some counterplay to Brigette’s passive armor generation without negating her ultimate.

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An easy mode hero who does not see action beyond 3500 SR.

I’m all for increasing his skill floor and ceiling. But his current state is purely unacceptable.

I’d also like to point out heroes like McCree and Soldier also largely involve holding leftclick. That doesn’t mean they are skill-less. All heroes have skills that are not clear to bystanders. The reason why Spirit reached rank 1 wasn’t by mindlessly holding M1–His CQC aim is off the charts albeit inconsistent at times

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While I defended the other guy, this one is just bait.
Don’t take it. Just move on :smiley: don’t waste words and energy with hate bro.

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I agree with reaper not being as good as he should be but he still can be used in some situations. I love using him to delete brig, RH, and a few others but I feel we should be able to use SS while in wraith to give him some form of mobility in combat besides what little his wraith does.
The HS thing is also a huge issue which shouldn’t even be a thing. It would be nice if his pellets aren’t reduced by armor per pellet if he HS doesn’t work like that.
I also agree with his ult needing something to actually finish its use when near cc heroes. I’m fine with being charged by rein but other stuff bugs me. Be nice if after the cc ends he goes back to it but then that would make it different than other heroes so idk.

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That would require fixing of his poor headshot registration to begin with. Otherwise, it would only increase his inconsistency, not his skillcap.

In addition, while that would be a very welcome buff, it is still somewhat luckbased considering Reaper’s spread, and does not address his lack of mobility options.

A hero with no tankiness, no mobility options, short range weaponry, and huge hitbox is a horrible, horrible combination

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They actually have to aim… you cant miss with reaper. Don’t compare a shot gun to a regular one, that’s just ignorant.

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Wrong. Season 3 was a tank meta and Reaper wasn’t played a lot in that period. He hasn’t been meta since season 2 and that was because Ana nano had a speedboost.

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I might be misremembering exactly which season number it was, but I agree with you he was played only because of Nano’s speedboost. That’s the important part. He was not around at all during the Triple Tank Meta.

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I agree that they need to address how his shotguns register normal hits and critical hits, that is a basic bug that has been around since the beginning of the game.

I do think his biggest problems are two: poor gap closing ability, inability to deal with armor.

Wraith Form has been fixed and is now a great retreat and dueling option. If the designers address Shadow Step and make it into a useful ability he’ll have fixed his second problem. The last change he’ll need is a way to deal with armor. Brig is his biggest problem in the current meta as she cuts his DPS in half with her passive armor generation. He needs a good way to deal with that problem or he’ll never be useful.

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I am always afraid of this combo change.

If they reduce his pallets and his spread the amount of pallets hit will still be to random.

20% reduction is not gonna cut it. His spread should be reduced from 20.1 to 10. A 50% reduction if the pallets are also reduced by 50%. The second biggest spread after Reaper and Roadhog is D.Va right now with 4.15

Pallet damage increased from 2-7 to 7-12. If they are reduced by half and give armor penetration. Otherwise just leave the 20 pallets and give armor penetration.

Also the falloff buff would be great for Reaper as well. So his range with a smaller spread would increase

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You made a lot of good points there and you can add a sad one : Reaper vs Sym Turrets. Spoiler : He loses.

Its absolutely sad seeing how turrets trigger in 10-12 mt and if they are properly positioned, you CANT literally kill them with reaper due to spread inconsistency and brutal damage fall off before they left you with 80hp or dead. You have to walk towards those turrets or otherwise you die lol.

Yeah Reaper NEEDS a rework for Shadow Step, a tighter spread, less damage dropoff and an ALT fire that does “Soul damage” (no headshot, goes through armor).