Lets talk Reaper

General Discussion
1

Okay, before Reaper mains come here angered and ready to give counterarguments and saying that he has weaknesses. I get you, personally, Reapers kit is one of my favorites in the game. The reason why I dont play him myself is exactly what I think is the issue: his flat shotgun damage.

Shotguns in fps games always are stronger than other guns, and good for taking out the big guys, and Reaper was made to be an anti-tank pick. But the issue is where he can take out 99% of the non-tank roster with 2 decently aimed shots from a safe distance. The flat damage on his shotguns makes his character too strong for most games.

Now, since I am obviously not just here to complain, how could this be altered without changing too much? I mean, him getting close to characters is risky and should have a pay off after all. So here is my solution:
after some testing, I found out that a tank dies with 3-5 full blows of his shotgun(2-3 shots if they are headshots). With a relatively safe distance(capable of using abilities to get away easily), it takes 6-8 shots to take them out. It takes 1-2 full body shots to take out the rest of the roster and 3-4 shots from a safe distance. The second one, ofcourse being my issue.
Now, if the flat damage gets changed for 25% of the enemies total health, the first instance stays pretty much the same. Why is this important? It allows for competitive to stay pretty much the same, while also able to balance out reaper in other gamemodes. Ofcourse the balancing mainly goes around the competitive scene, but sometimes we want to be able to play arcade without having to counterpick. Reaper is one of the bullies of the roster outside competitive that is used to mainly focus on people he can take out in 1-2 shots rather than taking out point defensive heroes. Changing the flat damage to percentage damage wouldnt change his counter pick to tanks, which he was designed for. He already has an ability to quite easily escape when he is into trouble and he has an ability to get across distances unnoticably.

If there still is any counter reason to this, I would gladly hear it ofcourse, but so far I can only see Reaper and Brigitte as the 2 bullies of the roster that can take out too many people on their own and have enough counters to deal with situations they have issues with.

So please, lets keep the tank buster mainly a tank buster, not an all-round butcher.

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He’s not an all around buster, he’s garbage and has been a trash pick the entire game except for one season because of an ultimate and he was still an off pick. You’re just bad at the game.

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There we go, first person saying I am bad at the game. Congrats!

He gets focussed in competitive, which doesnt make him garbage. Just focussed. I can camp a spawn with a Reaper and kill 5 out of 6 people walking out without dying. That is the problem. A Hanzo can do the same, sure, but at least you need a lot of hours into getting to focus headshots to pull that off. Same for McCree and Widow. He is in fact an all round buster. Give him an opening for a short time and he can take out 2-3 members quite easily. This opening is hard to get in competitive, sure, but its always there in non-comp games because they are not meant to be competitive. Which is what my post was about.

So really, rather than trying to be a troll and saying people suck at the game, try at least being a decent human being for once and adding info to the discussion.

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I agree with Attlus. Reaper is better than most other heros only in very specific situations. Check this if you think reaper is so good: Trickle down meta isn't real - #5 by JeffreyKaplan - General Discussion - Overwatch Forums

The enemy has to have at least 2 hard to destroy annoying dive-tanks to force me to pick reaper. In any other case its easier to extract more value from other DPS heros, my personal “all-rounder” is mccree.

This isn’t a problem. Some heros have lower skill floor than some others - this is intentional. Some people pick low skill floor hero like reaper because they don’t enjoy putting effort into some mechanical skills like aiming. On the other hand some people prefer more complex and difficult gameplay and might pick someone like doomfist or genji - these players would die of boredom playing reaper. It’s like the difference between people who prefer automatic gearbox VS manual gearbox.

Playing low skill floor heros in lower tiers where most people have terrible mechanical skills is obviously an advantage.

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Check this if you think reaper is so good: Trickle down meta isn't real - #5 by JeffreyKaplan - General Discussion - Overwatch Forums

I agree that he needs some fixes and I have to say again, my complaint isnt based on competitive. If I have to talk about Reaper competitively, I’d say he needs a quicker teleportation animation and DEFINITELY make his shots percentage based rather than flat. I’d even say his shots would need to be between 27,5-32,5% to change him competitively. The issue is that in non-comp play, people play him like its comp. Example: I was playing arcade with my friends today and in near 100% of games, a Reaper was there picking off everyone who was trying out something new or something they havent played in a while and because of that making the game essentially a 2 v 6. Balancing isnt just about making someone competitively viable, but also keeping the fun things fun.

Some heros have lower skill floor than some others - this is intentional.

Yes, but you know who else shares these skill floors? Torbjörn, Mercy, Lucio and Bastion. None of them are as dangerous or deal as much damage to heroes as Reaper does. They all have something to compensate their skill floors, like Torb being basically a walking headshot, Mercy needing to stay at a safe distance to be able to keep helping because pretty much anyone can kill her, Lucio takes time before they can move around properly and you literally learn in the tutorial that Bastion in Sentry mode has a large point with a blue light that screams “shoot me”. What does Reaper have to compensate the low skill floor? Slow teleport animation? Point being, a low skill floor isnt an excuse for easy kills. A low skill floor means you dont need hours of practice to contribute to the team. Achieving a kill with low skill floor heroes and actual low skill requires teammates, later on they fare well in a 1v1, but rarely are low skill floor heroes capable of doing better than that without aid. Reaper and Brigitte fall outside this definition.

Hell, Doomfist is even considered to have a low skill floor. His ceiling is a lot higher than Reaper, sure, but he doesnt take much to be able to contribute to the team. His fist deals as much damage as Reaper can do in 2 shots with the exception that Doomfist requires an object to pull that off. But now I am starting to stray away from my original point. The changes were to make Reaper less of a bully outside competitive play. I love his kit and I really wish he gets the love he needs, but his flat damage needs to change.

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You can’t balance a hero for arcade and playground games. And keep it balanced for comp.

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Reaper isn’t currently a very scary pick and as people have said, he’s very situational. Reaper is a rock to tanks scissors and that’s pretty much it.

It doesn’t have to be this way though, they could expand the scope of his use and the obvious one is by making him more viable as an assassin of enemy supports. If Reaper had a charged shot like Zen, he could teleport into the back lines, line up a charged shot on a support and then shadow fade out of there.

If I were Blizz, I’d consider giving him a charged shot and maybe tinker with the cast time on his teleport.

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Reaper can really easy be dealt with, if the right heroes (long range, sniper, hitscan like mccree) is used.
If he’s miles away from you, like uf you’re phara he does no dmg. If you are winston and jump in his face he will shoot 2-3x

I feel it sometimes with tracer, getting a little bit to close to him
 One shot.

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Reaper is terrible.

Here’s a nice simple list to highlight why.

Damage:

–Inconsistent Spread—Makes him useless against anything smaller than a Zarya beyond 5m. It can take 2 or 5 shots to kill a standard DPS hero from 10m and that inconsistency is infuriating.
–Horrible Falloff—Embarrasses him as a pick compared to Tracer and Doomfist
–Terrible Range—Making playing him effectively claustrophobic as hell–especially with the crap 103 FOV

Survivability:

–Reaping is terrible and does absolutely NOTHING compared to Doomfist’s Armour or Brigitte’s self-heal

Mobility:

–His mobility is an embarrassment of design–Wraith Form is better than it was, but he can still be hit before he can fight back, and the ending animation for the ability is highly telegraphable and slow.
–Teleport is actual gaming cancer–It’s SO SO SO SO obvious. Enemies can see VERY CLEARLY which direction you’re travelling in. It flickers between destinations when there are two levels near its limit. It’s slow, and can NOT be used in a pinch–Reaper will not cancel a reload to Teleport whereas Soldier will Sprint, Tracer will Blink, Genji will Dash, and so on. Reaper is TOO VISIBLE when Teleporting. Because when he teleports to higher ground he can only ‘see’ the very edge, he can’t hide well and enemies can damage him way too early.

New Heroes:

Sombra hacks him very easily (because if the aforementioned ‘can’t fight back’ moments.
Doomfist can one-shot him just as easily as any other hero.
Brigitte embarrasses him and Stun ruins Blossom.

The trouble is that you can’t have a hero only be good at ONE THING 


IF
 IF you’re going to have other heroes like Tracer and Brigitte be good at everything. Even if they’re not good at everything they’re VERY VERY good in many ways.

Blizzard go on about Reaper needing a TERRIBLE range and a HORRIBLE bullet spread because of his role. But Tracer has the MOBILITY to get in and deal damage and she has a Ranger of up to 30m!! And a MUCH NARROWER SPREAD than Reaper.

I know heroes are different. But When you have Hanzo in his current state, with two Environmental Movements, ridiculous Burst and VERY FAST Ult charge, why would you take Reaper?

At least McCree has some decent range.

I would be fine with Reaper having his limitations, but he’s just too ineffective against the VAST majority of the roster. He loses fights IN HIS OWN 10m SPACE to heroes like Brigitte, Hanzo, Roadhog, etc.

They need to fix HOW his damage is applied. He needs TWO bullet spreads. An inner circle (with half his bullets) and an outer ring (with the other half) so that less of his pellets miss the middle of his reticle.

Trust me. Shoot a plain wall with Reaper from 10 and OVER HALF of your pellets will hit OUTSIDE his circle.

He needs to be much better against thin (dps) heroes (when in his 10m range) to be even considered half-decent. The fact that Hanzo is a better short-mid range brawler than Reaper (whilst also having UNLIMITED RANGE) is pathetic.

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10

This, in its entirety. Reaper is garbage and his counter is walking backwards.

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Reaper is too good against other DPS to be honest. He is supposed to be a tank buster, is he one, no. But he shouldn’t be able to dominate in a 1v1. That wasn’t his character design. He was made to counter triple-quad tank comps. He doesn’t succeed with that right now but that’s a debate for a different topic. What the OP is bringing up is that Reaper is killing all the DPS while failing to kill the tanks. I totally agree with this statement but I do believe that he could use some changed. #1 he needs to have a tighter spread. Reason, too much times are there when a Reaper can be looking about a meter away from me and still 1 shot headshot me. Tighter spread should solve this issue but his range must remain the same. #2 he should do more damage the higher health the enemy is. Ie, tanks.

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If what you said wasn’t compete bull s@#$ then he would be getting picked in pro matches exclusively. You’re both wrong.

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Im still shocked after reading the OP, how someone can make so many wrong assumptions and the only explanation is 
 the rank? Playing in console bronze/silver?

False. His skills are for flanking, not for tank busting. In fact shotguns are WEAK vs armor and guess who has 100+ armor.

Flat out lie.
“Safe distance”.A safe distance is 20mt and at that range (where you are safe from tracer, hooks, damage from road, zarya, dva etc) reaper does 2 damage per pellet. Assuming he impacts all of them ( HAHAHA 
 no ) he does 40 damage, 80 per second. And thats assuming a highly unrealistic scenario.

False. Junk, Pharah, DF and even Brig are more consistent and reliable than Reaper. Outside a surprise, if you have aim and awareness, reaper has literally 1.5 sec to kill you. If he fails he is toast and has to wraith away.

Ending with a quote that will serve as an analogy.
Just because the blade of a butcher knife is dull and can be used as a blunt weapon, doesnt mean the knife is fine.
Reaper is a bladed weapon without an edge. Only works “decently” as blunt damage. If you take it out from him, he is ultra trash.

PS: Reaper has one of the lowest ingame pickrates from plat and above. Even below Sym and Torb. Give it a thought.

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Reaper is terrible right now because of snipers. If you’re genuinely struggling that much with him, pick mcree, hanzo, widow, brig, pharah, junkrat, d.va, lucio, or even hog if you’re feeling confident in your 200 iq plays.

15

We obviously can’t be playing the same game.

I genuinely can’t help but feel absolute confusion over Blizzard’s design philosophy.

How does a person go from saying Reaper is okay when, after getting to within 10m from a Hanzo, it takes FIVE shots to kill him (because of his cancerous spread), and then–on the other hand–redesigning Hanzo to be JUST AS GOOD at close range whilst MAINTAINING HIS ‘INFINITE’ range, INCREASING HIS ARROW SPEED–and giving him RIDICULOUS BURST (effective on ALLLLLL TARGETS IN THE GAME) and then



 having the AUDACITY TO NERF GRAV instead of Dragons.

I don’t get it. Maybe that’s why I’m not on the design team.

But I’m embarrassed for Reaper players. Maybe I’m just embarrassed when, despite doing everything ‘right’ with Reaper and co-operating with my team, I just get laughed at by mid-long-range heroes WHEN FIGHTING IN MY 10m SPACE.

I just refuse to believe that unless there’s two tanks on the enemy team, that people shouldn’t play Reaper. And even then, they’re probably dive tanks (Meta, or something) so they have MUCH BETTER mobility than Reaper, D.Va shuts down Blossom. Winston bubbles it. Both of them can chase him down at low HP because Wraith form is still low tier.

Reaping is absolutely useless. And they know what they’re doing with ‘damage-to-heal’ mechanics because Doomfist works. The same Doomfist that gets his shield regardless of what he hits. So why is Reaper’s Reaping so useless?

Reaper needs a redesign of everything apart from his primary.

Wraith Form should allow him to ‘fly’ rather than be pinned to the ground. Teleport (which would be obselete) should be replaced with an ability that lets Reaper choose when and how he absorbs his Reaping healing.

Balance it, sure. But in his current state, he’ll always stuggle. For a place in a standard DPS pack, and against twitch one-shot heroes, and against Brigitte teams that kill him within the stun timer. Oh well
 I give up. haha

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I think reaper is one of the worst heroes in the game and not in the underpowered, overpowered sense of the word, just how simple he is.

The hardest part of his playstyle is using shadowstep and that’s incredibly easy.
The idea is he is a tank buster, which can 1-2 shot 200hp heroes as well, doesn’t add up, his damage could scale based upon up targets total hp or something like that, so people who have additional health from shields or armor, would be increasing his damage.

I can play him and do pretty well, you teleport to some obscure location and drop down on the enemy, hold RMB for a few seconds, wraith away and probably die but have taken out a few heroes in the process but I just don’t pick him as it’s unrewarding and somewhat too easy but this is QP I speak of.

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Reaper was NEVER made to be a Tank buster! And he never was! Sure he destroys Winston but thats about it. D.va makes getting a ult of a nightmare, Hog can 1shot him, You don’t apply any sheild damage vs a Rein and Orisa has armour + Fortify and can sheild dance him for ages.

Reaper is a flanker with shotguns NOT a tank buster. I conmstantly see people suggest that “Oh just make his guns ignore armour” NO! its the exact thing armour was made to counter. Small chip damage is why tanks have armour.

Reapers acuall problems are that his spread is VERY RNG based wich makes him unreliable in a competitive shooter and his range is to short to be off any help against large parts of the roster.

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I’m not trolling, I’m being blunt, you’re awful at the game and I shouldn’t have to dignify your uninformed ideas with a response.

I’ve spent the majority of my time in this game helping really support for a hero that underperforms in higher tier fights only for everyone like you to stamp your feet and say he’s overpowered because you died to a good one.

His flaws are numerous and his state in the game is awful, which you would know if you did any research on him at all. If you did that though this thread wouldn’t exist.