Another long post from Yours Truly. If the forums ever remember my name it would be for making walls of texts.
That aside, it’s about time Blizzard finally takes a look at Reaper.
He is a hero who has been in the game since Alpha. Other than Tracer, you have had the most time in balancing this hero. As it stands, he is and has been one of the most underwhelmingly useless heroes in the entire game. There is no excuse whatsoever for why he is such a piece of trash other than poor, lazy balancing.
The Torb rework is the last insult–you made the Swedish dwarf a better shotgun hero than Reaper, the hero who literally has nothing but a pair of shotguns. Lord knows Torb needs a rework. But you have to be blind if you don’t see that Reaper needs serious buffs as well.
We’ve waited since season 2. We told you it wouldn’t change anything when you changed his passive in season 5. We told you it wouldn’t be enough when you changed his wraith form in season 10. We didn’t even bother with the Death Blossom QoL changes–nobody breaks barriers with it anyways. We’re now in season 12.
Is it going to take another 10 seasons for you to finally buff him, or are you guys actually going to do something to help this clearly underpowered hero?
Maybe a couple of good things first since season 2
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Buffed wraith form
Move speed, reload, and cancellable wraith. Currently, wraith form is by far the most powerful and usable ability in his entire kit. It is the only ability that I genuinely think is strong. -
Shotgun crit registration
Something that should have been in the game since the beginning, but it’s still great that the devs have gotten to fixing it. Shooting in the head actually results in shooting in the head. Nice.
But you know the number of problems that Reaper has since this post here??
Yeah, he still has a lot.
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Armor
Reaper still sucks against armor. Unfortunately, 90% of his main targets i.e. tanks have armor. Thanks to Brigitte, everyone has stacks of armor. I don’t understand how hard it is to deal with this, I don’t understand why they do not address it. It’s like giving Widowmaker a passive that prevents her from one-shotting anyone upon headshots. It’s like giving McCree a 20% damage penalty on a stunned target. Why the hell does Reaper of all people have something to inhibit him from doing his job effectively?
I’m fine with Torbjorn being the new armor counter. But at least make Reaper NOT SUCK against armor. -
Spread
This comment sums it up perfectly.
Nobody needs that much spread to justify anything, period.
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Sustain
A 20% hp drain is, simply put, woefully inadequate. At the range Reaper operates in and the spam he catches, a 56hps is insufficient, ignoring the fact that Reaper rarely gets 56hps. His targets need to be big enough to absorb all the shots with that ridiculous spread, needs to be healthy enough to tank enough shots to sustain Reaper, and needs to not have armor, which reduces Reaper’s heal. -
Ultimate
Reaper’s ultimate is possibly one of the worst ults in the entire game currently. Except for being deflected, defense matrixed, flashbanged, shield bashed, rocket punched, booped, EMP’ed, hacked, hooked, blocked by barriers, frozen, blown by death mines, slept, and blocked by Transcendence, Sound barrier, and almost Coalescence , Death Blossom also has the flaw of being right in your face when he ults. Anyone who has played the game for more than 20 minutes will know all you need to do is to walk up to him and pop him in the head, ignoring the fact that there are also 5 other people in your team who can do that.
His new passive can heal him more when he ults? Ha.
If Reaper is targeting 6 enemies, he heals for 170x6/5=204 hps.
If 6 people combined cannot outdamage 204 dps, your team sucks.
The key issue here is how little dps Reaper does and how vulnerable he is when doing it.
I’d love for anyone to justify this 700% difference here.
In addition, with Torb’s new ultimate, we can make new comparisons:
Torb:
130 dps, 190 for armored targets
Lasts 10s (130 dps x 10s x 10 puddles)
Cannot be deflected, matrixed, or otherwise countered once landed
Can be activated from range
Torb can move/attack while molten core puddles are in effect (thus higher dps)
Spread out over a far larger area.
Damage goes through shields
Reaper:
170dps, less damage against armor
Lasts 3 seconds (170 dps x 3)
Can be deflected, matrixed, or CC’ed at any point in these 3 seconds
Only useful at 8m range
Reaper is locked in animation, has minimal movement, and cannot use his primary
Extemely small area (8m)
Damage does not go through barriers
What is the point of death blossom and why does it even exist?
5. Shadowstep
Like…why is this ability still a thing? Is there ANY justification of this ability over Symmetra’s teleporter? is there ANY justification of this ability on the whole at all? It’s a “get out of spawn 2 seconds quicker” ability. That is NOT a reason for an ability to exist.
If anyone wants to justify any of the above points, feel free. Please do not tell me “He dominates lower ranks”. IDDQD can dominate gold games with Torbjorn. “Low rank seal-clubber” is NOT a niche for any hero, because all heroes are dominating in lower ranks where nobody knows how anyone works.