Thanks for ignoring Reaper

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

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  1. 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.
  2. Spread
    This comment sums it up perfectly.

Nobody needs that much spread to justify anything, period.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.

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Nice post, unfortunately it will land where every Reaper post lands, in trash…
I feel like Devs put fingers in their ears, close their eyes and start singing “old mcdonald” whenever someone mentions Reaper to them…

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As least as a Reaper main I won’t be accused of lack of trying for my hero

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Good thread there is all in, I’ll help keep it alive.
Maybe you should make the thread-headline a bit more interesting.

Thanks for putting all the bad things together. Maybe we should open Reaper mega thread. I dont know when these hero get the buffs he deserves and do the tank busting job he supposed to do. -but no lets make Hanzo and Torb better at that job while we created a character just for that-

#stop ignoring reaper and making other heroes do his job

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Sounds good, this thread would have all in it.

This thread is good keep it up please

So hog will get changes, too.
RIP

Reaper should have 50 armor as part of his health and should get a spread reduction like 5 percent to his shotguns. Simply changes here for him.

I agree with every point except the armor part.

Reaper still continues to shred through armor on TANKS. If you get in a decent range against a Tank, just watch as their health just falls apart. It’s because their bodies are actually able to take all of the pellets due to their size.

Heroes like Brig are why his efforts against armor is overlooked because not only does her medium size make getting rid of her armor super difficult (along with getting past a shield) but her ult combined with it going to her allies make playing Reaper in those situations unbearable since other enemies who are possibly of even smaller size (Ana, Tracer, etc) then become almost unkillable.

Yeah the armor part is maybe not needed.
But still, he needs something.

Agreed. There is a huge chance that Reaper’s spread is the one that is killing his ability to aim properly and headshot against armored targets. Either way, his spread certainly needs changing.

People say Reaper sucks against armor, but tanks are the only people Reaper can effectively fight. I guess that must mean he is really bad against everyone else.

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I think that Reaper’s bigger issues are mainly due to external factors, not so much his kit. His kit definitely has some issues, but they aren’t as bad as the problems outside of it.

Shadowstep NEEDS something done with it. It really doesn’t work in the fast paced game that OW wants to be known for.

Also…armor piercing shots for Death Blossom? I saw that brought up many moons ago here. Sadly since I’m not a Reaper main, but I do enjoy playing him, I thought it might be a nice touch to it.

I mean give it something other than being ONE OF the easiest ults to stop.