Would these changes make Reaper balanced?

General Discussion
1

Primary Fire:

  • Spread is made more consistent, pellets hitting the same spots each time
  • Pellet/damage ratio is changed. Now Reaper fires 10 pellets per shot at 14-4 damage, as opposed to 20 per shot at 7-2 damage. The overall potential damage remains at 140hp, but by changing the damage per pellet Reaper is stronger against armor. (Old build each pellet does half damage, 3.5x20=70hp, new build each pellet does (14-5)x10=90hp). The purpose of this change is to make Reaper stronger against the tanks he’s supposed to counter, since a lot of them have armor in their health pool. This suggestion is lifted straight from Titanium’s brilliant post on the old forum: “Let’s fix everything”

Shadow Step:

  • Cast time is reduced to 2 seconds (from 2.5 seconds)
  • Decast time is completely removed, the current animation is unchanged, but as soon as the Reaper player can see their new location they are free to use all other abilities
  • Standardised decay in damage taken during cast time. Pre-cast Reaper takes full damage, 0.5 seconds in he takes 75% damage, 1 second in he takes 50% damage, 1.2 seconds in just 40% damage, and so on. This change is to represent parts of Reaper’s body have already moved/are already in transit to the new position, so cannot be damaged at the current time. This will greatly increase Reaper’s survivability during Shadow Step.

Wraith Form:

I have 2 different builds for Wraith Form, each with their own additions.

Build 1 -

  • Wraith is now cancelable
  • Wraith now lasts 5 seconds (up from 3), but has an 11 second CD (up from 8)
  • Wraith now travels at 7.8m/s (up from 7.1m/s, a 10% increase)
  • Reaper can now move vertically during Wraith, making it similar to D.Va’s boosters both in terms of potential to reposition, and ultimate setup

Build 2 -

  • Wraith is now cancelable
  • Wraith now travels at 8.2m/s (a 15% increase)
  • Instead of a thin black stream following Reaper during Wraith, his coat billows out, creating a circle of black smoke around him. This circle is 3m in radius (for comparison Soldier’s Biotic Field is 2.5m radius), obscures the view of the enemy, but is transparent to allies. On decast of Wraith, there is a 0.5 second animation in which this shroud gradually dissipates, though it doesn’t affect the Reaper player in any way.

Other issues:

  • Reduce the volume of Reaper’s footsteps a little, currently he is one of the easiest characters to listen out for.
3 Likes
2

i feel like some of these proposed changes is just kinda going into too much for too little of adjustment

set pellet spread is a good idea imo, for all characters imo

faster teleport, also supported

maybe quieter footsteps

i think thsoe 3 things would be enough personally

3

I like the primary fire changes, and I love the first wraith form rebuild, especially with regards to the fact that he can use it to gain altitude. However, it seems that would render shadowstep completely pointless, since right now all it does is speed people out of spawn or take high ground. Canonically, reaper does have some sort of grenade device, and I think using those as a smoke bomb which hampers enemies vision would be a much better use of the “e” slot.