Reaper - Celestial Reaper Roamer

The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great

Focused on: Hybrid damage, Sustain and Boon removal

Designed for: WvW Roaming

Difficulty:

Easy

This build was last updated on June 28, 2025 and is up to date for the July 18, 2025 patch.

Overview

A Cele Reaper build for WvW roaming focusing on survivability and condition pressure. The build excels at quickly applying and maintaining a wide variety of conditions, especially Chill.

Skill Bar

Staff

Pistol/Torch

Utility

Skill Variants

Utility

For a less shout focused build you could pick up some of the following skills. If you're giving up at least 2 of your utility shouts be sure to also change your relic to something else, like Relic of the Demon Queen:

• Summon Flesh Wurm - ranged teleport and stun break, useful for disengaging or chasing down targets.

• Corrosive Poison Cloud - this is both a defensive and offensive option. The damage is solid, but the true value lies in the AoE Weakness application and the anti-projetile zone. This can be used to defend against both ranged and melee builds at the same time by standing inside the ring.

• Spectral Walk - stunbreak and mobility tool that's great for escaping enemies, often by baiting them to chase after you (or even jump off the highground) but the long CD kind of makes it necessary to take a 2nd stunbreak with this.

• Spectral Ring - great CC that makes it hard for enemies to reach you or escape your damage.

Template Code

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Specializations

Variants

• Reaper's Onslaught makes the build a bit more bursty, pushing the Power angle over Condi.

Specialization Variants

Taking Blood Magic over Death Magic is an equally viable option. Both are sustain focused specs, the key difference being that BM focuses on restoring health while DM is all about damage mitigation:

Equipment

Head
Celestial

Shoulders
Celestial

Chest
Celestial

Hands
Celestial

Legs
Celestial

Feet
Celestial

Backpiece
Celestial

Accessory
Celestial

Accessory
Celestial

Amulet
Ritualist

Ring
Ritualist

Ring
Celestial

Staff
Celestial

Sigil

Sigil

Pistol
Celestial

Torch
Celestial

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x18

Relic

Consumables

Food

• - passive damage mitigation and great stats.

• - active damage mitigation.
  • - budget version

Utility

• , , or .

• Budget: either from Canned Food Crates found in WvW s or purchased from the Permanent Portable Provisioner.

Usage

General

• Build Life Force by killing critters or any PvE mob before fighting players. Spamming "Your Soul Is Mine!" while out of combat also works.

• Both weapon sets offer a decent mix of defense and offense.

• The Pistol/Torch sigils Sigil of Superior Sigil of Cleansing and Sigil of Superior Sigil of Energy are defensive. Between this and Putrid Mark you'll have some cleansing access on both sets.

• Staff, while being your more defensive/utility focused set, has Sigil of Superior Sigil of Geomancy and Sigil of Superior Sigil of Doom. The AoE ring from the Doom proc will always apply the Poison from Doom too if you're in melee range of an enemy, turning weapon swapping into an instant source of burst damage.
  • The Pistol set has 2 CC skills, namely Vile Blast and Oppressive Collapse. Weapon swapping to Staff in melee range after landing a CC is a good way of instantly putting pressure on your target.

• Weapon swapping isn't the only way to proc your on-swap sigils - entering and leaving Reaper's Shroud can also do it. This is important because ideally you'd get 2 procs per swap out of your sigils. You can see the weapon swap CD to the left of your skill bar even while in shroud, the 10s swap CD almost perfectly lines up with the 9 sec sigil proc CD. If you're in shroud, simply try not to exit until weapon swap is ready - this is your signal that enough time has passed for your sigils to proc again and you're free to exit shroud.

• "Chilled to the Bone!" has a very distinct animation which makes it easy to avoid, if you feel like that's going to happen then stow your weapon to cancel the channeling. This is also great for fake casting - you can use the skill, cancel it immediately with weapon stow (the whole animation will still play, potentially baiting out dodges or other defensive CDs), and send it only on a CD of 5 seconds.
  • Using "Suffer!" right before CttB goes off could get rid of Blind on you or Aegis on nearby enemies without having to cancel the skill. Sometimes it's worth using this shout at the last moment even if you're not blinded, just to make sure that the elite connects even if you happen to eat a random blind in the last split second.
  • "You Are All Weaklings!" could be used the same way as Suffer, being an instant skill. However this is less ideal, because while Suffer can transfer the blind and you get to reap all the benefits of landing that skill, YAAW actually misses. You basically sacrifice this skill to land your elite.
  • Casting "Nothing Can Save You!" before the elite could further increase your chances of landing it, because it'll make the elite unblockable.

• On Staff try to use Putrid Mark after Chillblains whenever possible in order to combo AoE Weakness. These are also your two most dangerous skills on this set.

• Staff is more of a utility weapon, low damage but it has a condition transfer, a CC, snare, and adds much needed range to the build. The Chill and Fear are useful both for keeping distance when you're waiting for CDs and preventing enemies from escaping when they're trying to flee.

• If you're using Death's Charge only for the mobility you should consider dropping out of shroud near the end of the animation. The very end of Death's Charge brings your character to a halt, we can cancel this by cancelling shroud.

• Entering shroud acts as an instant defensive measure:
  • Transfers conditions to enemies on your next attack via Plague Sending.
  • Procs Lesser Enfeeble for Weakness from Weakening Shroud which strikes foes after a small delay. If Lesser Enfeeble connects it'll immediately transfer conditions with Plague Sending. This is a really powerful interaction that could save your life even if you're stunned, as shroud can be activated while sitting in a CC.
  • Shrouded Removal removes one condition when you enter shroud and keeps cleansing you every few seconds while in shroud.

Shroud

• Most of your burst comes from Reaper's Shroud, where your damage is further increased by Reaper's Onslaught (if taken).

• Opening with Infusing Terror is very common, as it helps getting your damage off uninterrupted while the damage reduction helps you stay in shroud longer.
  • Terrify is the chain skill of this slot. This should only be used when either A) you need an emergency CC, or B) Infusing Terror is about to expire.

• Death's Charge should be used in the field created by Executioner's Scythe for the Frost Aura whenever possible.

• Soul Spiral should primarily be used on CC'd or downed targets (as Poison reduces the resurrection healing coming from their allies), but thanks to the permanent Quickness while in shroud this skill is now much easier to land without any real setup.

• Executioner's Scythe's a single target skill for the most part, as it only stuns one target. Terrify can Fear targets long enough to prevent enemies from dodging this skill.

• Use autoattacks when eveything else is on CD, or drop out of shroud.