If I were a true Terran player, I would need something to whine about, and that would be the Reaper.
The reaper. The unit you only make once per game to scout, and then never again. It’s a terrible unit that serves no purpose other than providing early game scouting, once. Or more if it survives, but in any case, you don’t make more than one.
No other unit in the game is so terrible that you only make a single one of them. Blizzard designed an entire unit around the idea of “Terran needs something to scout in the early game”. Might as well give Terran a free scan and overhaul the Reaper entirely.
It is my belief that Reapers deserve a late game upgrade to make them relevant and bring diversity to bio play, as well as some fresh, new exciting ways to play the game.
5 Likes
Sure, once reapers no longer decimate a mineral line in seconds
1 Like
When LotV was launched, 3-proxy-barrack-reapers was very popular among pro Terran players, especially in TvZ. Byun was such a master of mass reapers. However, after two nerfs, the KD8 charge only has 1/4 of original power, then reaper turned back to a pure scout unit.
As a scout unit, reaper do this specific job perfectly, but only in the few early minutes. Because of its high gas cost and long build time, building more reapers will delay other tech and real combat units’ production. Also, newer maps have fewer and fewer location reaper can use to scout. In a lot of new maps, the main base has only one cliff reaper can jump in, and it can be blocked by a single pylon.
By contrast overlord is faster and its speed upgrade is cheaper. Sentry’s hallucination cost less energy. After the reaper dies, Terran has few way to scout while the effect of scan is based on totally luck.
However, I feel that any change to reaper directly may make early mass reapers broken again. An unit fast, ranged, able to jump cliff and regenerate after each battle, is hard to dealt against in early game. (Remember a lot of people do not like BC harass with tactical jump?)
I do support to buff reaper, including such upgrade to reduce its gas cost, reduce produce time, or specific ability to fly a few seconds or throw a bomb after death like co-op Mira Han’s reaper, but these change must require a higher prerequisites to research, such as armory or even starport. It may make reaper still useful in mid or late game in directly front attack, but not too strong in early game.
3 Likes
To answer you question: unfortunately, Terran players won’t be happy until Reapers can carry some random Terran to a Blizzcon championship.
5 Likes
Give it usefulness at other stages in the game or remove it. As it currently sits, its a dumb unit.
4 Likes
Banshees feel like a worse unit than the reaper, they feel like their still stuck in hots even with that speed upgrade that takes forever.
2 Likes
Reaper and Oracle are the appendix units of the game that serves no real purpose
1 Like
Im not maybe the most srongest player out there but I recal recently losing many 2on2 games against 2 terrain who only makes a load of reapers. i wouldnt call them totally useless they are fast and the damage output isnt too bad.
Pretty much this.
Realistically speaking, not every unit needs to be viable at all stages of the game.
While bio oriented playstyles do require the typical MMM to be viable through each stage, they are a backbone which units such as mines and liberators/vikings are all supporting. Adding in a reaper as an alternate or giving it a late game upgrade really doesn’t do much outside of maybe potential worker hit squads further down the line, and honestly more harassment isn’t something that Terran needs - though I do admit to missing the building killing grenades from WoL! It was always fun going around sniping buildings with a hitsquad.
2 Likes
The reaper is one of the best units in the game. For a 1 time investment of 50/50, your 1 reaper pays for itself countless times over.
It forces your opponent to make defences against a reaper: it delays the third of a Zerg, it forces a chrono on the gate for Protoss, forces cyber before nexus (or gets a free probe kill), and can get counterdamage if the first gate unit tries to just walk across the map to harass terran. It forces 4 lings, which is 2 fewer drones, which is already more valuable than the reaper by itself.
And it does all this on top of getting a scout off, maybe 2, and sometimes killing a worker (2 in the case of nexus-cyber protoss), costing mining time, and keeping units at home.
4 Likes
I think Reapers could be buffed not by the balance team but by map makers, allowing more openings to not only the main.
The reaper is the result of the idiot designers trying to force a terran unit because they think it’s “cool”.
It’s a unit that is either horribly OP or just trash, but they tried so hard to make it work because of their terran b0ner, and this is the best they could do, an early “scout” unit lol.
SC2 unit designers are so bad.
5 Likes
If you have such strong opinions about the game why even bother playing/complaining in the forum?
1 Like
LOL, in order to kill that single reaper protoss has to build a Stalker or an Adept that are 2-4 times more expensive than the 50/50 Reaper…
3 Likes
as a mediocre diamond terran who has been messing around / trying to learn the other 2 races, the most obvious difference to me is the lack of scouting early game…
it takes soo much longer to get to know a build order inside and out while also trying to micro and scout / keep alive your reaper. as opposed to the other 2 races. But thats how the races are designed and balanced so thats cool.
and to be honest, even if i get a full reaper scout off, save it and send it back in at 4 minutes for a follow up scout, i still misinterpret it sometimes.
currently learning the 6min 3 tank raven marine marauder stim/combat/concussive plus 2 base timing attack BO. trying to scout and interpret my opponent with all the addon switching and trying to keep reaper alive while hopefully killing a probe or 2, requires soo much more attention and apm…
currently im happy with the reaper, my quick interpretation will get better over time and the extra reaper micro will transfer to my bio army control over time as well.
1 Like
Because I want to, obviously.
Any other dumb questions?
So then you enjoy the game and you also enjoy being a whiny baby.
Sorry for bothering, enjoy your sad life.
1 Like
Reaper’s only purpose is to harass and scout early game, so no I can’t imagine people being happy with it. I’d say the Reaper has just been accepted as a unit who only serves one purpose and will forever be useless beyond that. In fact, the Reaper is so useless you can remove its hotkey and not be affected by it.
Yeh in the wood league where you apparently are. It’s not 2016 since long ago.
Reaper is fine as is.
1 Like