Build:Reaper - Power DPS

The community gave this build a rating, making it second-tier: Good

Focused on: Direct damage

Designed for: Raids and Fractals

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

TBD

This build was last updated on December 06, 2022 and is up to date for the March 19, 2024 patch.

Overview

Reaper is a self-sufficient AoE DPS class that gets better the less experienced its group is.

Reaper's niche is that it has a huge health pool for a DPS class, and sustains very high personal Quickness, Might, and critical chance. It also brings heavy CC and Vulnerability similar to Holosmith. This makes it one of the best "solo carry" DPS classes, and it's very strong in disorganized groups that don't have dedicated supports providing Quickness, Might, Fury, and so on. However, its effectiveness falls off in organized and experienced groups as its DPS is weak compared to other fully buffed DPS classes.

Apart from DPS, Reaper can provide some party support through Vampiric Presence, and can bring utilities like Corrosive Poison Cloud and Spectral Grasp to a dungeon/fractal group. It is also capable of stripping boons if needed.

Skill Bar

Greatsword

Staff

Utility

Weapon Variants

• Staff can be replaced with Axe/Warhorn. This deals lower damage and has less cleave, but better lifeforce generation and allows you to provide more Vulnerability.
• None of the offhand weapon options offer any DPS. Warhorn is the default choice for the CC from Wail of Doom, but other options can be taken if necessary:
  • Use Focus offhand for additional boonstrip.
  • Use Dagger offhand for a blind and condition cleanse. Be aware that dagger has no life force skill, making it more niche than the other two options.

Skill Variants

Healing

• Well of Blood - your biggest heal, that also heals allies.
• Summon Blood Fiend - better DPS than Signet of Vampirism when there are multiple targets.
• Consume Conditions - if conditions are a problem.

Utility

When swapping out utility skills, don't replace Well of Suffering unless it's absolutely necessary.

• Well of Corruption - better burst damage and cleave than Summon Shadow Fiend. Also boonstrips in an area.
• Spectral Grasp - AoE pull for easier cleaving. Also helps with Chilled uptime.
• Signet of Undeath - worth taking if Chilled uptime is good, but life force is a problem.
• Corrosive Poison Cloud - destroys projectiles.
• Summon Flesh Wurm - 1200 range teleport. Can also bodyblock certain projectiles (e.g. Old Tom's poison whirl).
• Well of Power - AoE stability and condition cleanse.
• "Suffer!" - transfers conditions and helps with Chilled uptime.
• Blood Is Power - if the party lacks might.

Elite

• Lich Form - better burst damage than Summon Flesh Golem. Also useful for soloing Thaumanova heat room with your massive health pool.
• "Chilled to the Bone!" - if area CC is needed.

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Specializations

Trait Variants

• Signets of Suffering for encounters where more burst is needed (usually in fractals). It can also be taken when running Signet of Undeath for encounters that have too much incoming damage to maintain life force otherwise.
• Soul Marks can be replaced with Unyielding Blast if you are not using a staff.

Specialization Variants

Blood Magic instead of Soul Reaping sacrifices significant personal DPS for sustain and party support. This is useful if your group struggles to stay above 90% health to maintain Rune of Superior Rune of the Scholar bonus or a lot of res power is needed.

Equipment

Head
Assassin

Shoulders
Berserker

Chest
Berserker

Hands
Berserker

Legs
Berserker

Feet
Berserker

Backpiece
Berserker

Accessory
Berserker

Accessory
Berserker

Amulet
Berserker

Ring
Berserker

Ring
Berserker

Greatsword
Berserker

Sigil

Sigil

Staff
Berserker

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x12

Infusion
x6

Equipment Variants

• Sigil of Superior Sigil of the Night or slaying sigils if you can benefit from the bonus (replacing Sigil of Superior Sigil of Force).
• If you don't have stat infusions, use Assassin stats legs as well.

Eagle Rune Variant

If you want to benefit from Sigil of Superior Sigil of Impact, you will either need to slot in a lot more assassins pieces, or you can swap to Rune of Superior Rune of the Eagle. You need above 90% uptime for Rune of Superior Rune of the Scholar to be superior, so you may prefer to run the setup below:

Head
Berserker

Shoulders
Berserker

Chest
Berserker

Hands
Berserker

Legs
Berserker

Feet
Berserker

Backpiece
Berserker

Accessory
Berserker

Accessory
Berserker

Amulet
Berserker

Ring
Berserker

Ring
Berserker

Greatsword
Berserker

Sigil

Sigil

Staff
Berserker

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x14

Infusion
x4

• If you do not have stat infusions use an Assassin stats headpiece.

Consumables

Food

Utility

• or slaying potions

Usage

Rotation

The logic behind this rotation is to maximise Soul Barbs uptime by entering shroud as often as is possible, while trying to time Nightfall, Well of Suffering and Well of Darkness with Reaper's Shroud so that their pulsing effects benefit from the extra ferocity from Reaper's Onslaught and extra critical damage from Death Perception. Other damage skills such as Gravedigger are used to fill downtime.

Opener

The opener is pretty flexible, but will determine which part of the loop to move on to next. In fractal CMs, it is useful to be prepared to vary the opener by when bosses open their defiance bars - if they open immediately (e.g. Skorvald or MAMA) then starting on Greatsword means you can immediately use Grasping Darkness, but if the defiance bar appears a bit later (e.g. Siax) you can start on Staff and spam marks before switching to Greatsword for CC into your burst.

1. Nightfall
2. Grasping Darkness
3. Weapon Swap quickly to cancel the aftercast
4. Reaper's Mark
5. Chillblains
6. Well of Darkness
7. Well of Suffering
8. Reaper's Shroud

Reaper's Shroud

Each time you enter Reaper's Shroud you do the same rotation.

1. Death's Charge
2. Executioner's Scythe (only below 50%) - you can queue this during the cast of Death's Charge to ensure no autoattacks sneak in. This skill deals extra damage when the target is below 50% health, but you can also use it for CC above 50% health.
3. Soul Spiral - you can queue this during the cast of the previous skill to ensure no autoattacks sneak in
4. Life Rend ⇒ Life Slash ⇒ Life Reap
5. Death's Charge
6. Life Rend ⇒ Life Slash ⇒ Life Reap x2
7. Death's Charge
8. Life Rend ⇒ Life Slash ⇒ Life Reap
9. Exit Reaper's Shroud

Staff-to-Greatsword

1. Mark of Blood
2. Chillblains
3. Putrid Mark
4. Reaper's Mark
5. Weapon swap
6. Gravedigger
7. Death Spiral
8. Dusk Strike ⇒ Fading Twilight ⇒ Chilling Scythe
9. Gravedigger
10. Nightfall
11. Well of Darkness
12. Well of Suffering
13. Grasping Darkness
14. Reaper's Shroud
15. Repeat Reaper's Shroud Rotation

Greatsword-to-Staff

1. Gravedigger
2. Death Spiral
3. Dusk Strike ⇒ Fading Twilight ⇒ Chilling Scythe
4. Gravedigger
5. Nightfall
6. Weapon swap
7. Reaper's Mark - the order of marks doesn't strictly matter, but if you drop Alacrity then Reaper's Mark might not be off cooldown in time when you exit Reaper's Shroud. Thus we use it early just in case.
8. Putrid Mark
9. Chillblains
10. Mark of Blood
11. Well of Darkness
12. Well of Suffering
13. Reaper's Shroud
14. Repeat Reaper's Shroud Rotation

The full loop cycles between Reaper's Shroud ⇒ Staff-to-Greatsword ⇒ Reaper's Shroud ⇒ Greatsword-to-Staff ⇒ Repeat

Video example

Rotation Explanation

Above 50% health, the rotation boils down to the following:

• Every time you swap to Greatsword (or exit shroud to it), use Gravedigger followed by Death Spiral.
• A full auto chain resets Gravedigger, so after one chain use it again then use your burst skills.
• Every time you swap to Staff (or exit shroud to it) you spam all your marks and either weapon swap or enter shroud.
• Always whirl inside the boss so you hit with every whirl finisher from Soul Spiral.

Below 50% Health

When the boss is below 50% health, your rotation changes due to Gravedigger having no cooldown. Follow the rotation as above, but replace the Greatsword auto chain with a single Gravedigger.

• Your life force generation is lower below 50% health, as you no longer use Greatsword autos.

Notes

• Never interrupt your Reaper's Shroud autoattack chain.
• In real fights, you won't always be able to make full use of Reaper's Shroud because taking damage in Shroud will reduce your remaining life force. Anticipate this and break your rotation if needed so that you can build up enough life force to resume the normal rotation.
• Try to make sure you are above 90% health before going into Reaper's Shroud so that you benefit from Rune of Superior Rune of the Scholar. This is because you can't get healed while in Reaper's Shroud. It's worth delaying your shroud by a little bit if you know that you're going to be healed soon.
• Whenever you Exit Reaper's Shroud you can use it to cancel the animation of the last autoattack for a slight DPS increase.
• If possible, bind a key to Stow Weapon and use it to cancel the animation of Gravedigger immediately after the damage number appears. This shaves 200-300 ms off the activation time, which translates to a big DPS increase when the boss is under 50%. You can do the same by quickly queuing an autoattack and then cancelling it with Gravedigger. Both these methods take practise, so feel free to skip if you find yourself struggling.
• Grasping Darkness is a DPS loss if the aftercast is not cancelled. You can cancel the aftercast by entering Reaper's Shroud or weapon swapping. Feel free to save this skill for CC or the pull.
• The casts of Well of Darkness and Well of Suffering are easy to interrupt by entering Reaper's Shroud, so don't be too quick with it.
• In fights with adds or trash mobs, you can reset Gravedigger's cooldown by hitting adds under 50% health. Take advantage of this to push out more Gravedigger casts while the boss is over 50% health.
• On some bosses, you can prestack marks with a staff for slightly better burst damage when the fight begins. You can do this on Siax, Skorvald, Viirastra/Artsariiv, Mursaat Overseer, Slothasor, Samarog, Gorseval, Vale Guardian, and Keep Construct.

CC

• Grasping Darkness
• Executioner's Scythe
• Charge (necromancer)
• "Chilled to the Bone!"
• Wail of Doom
• Terrify

Miscellaneous

• Use Unholy Feast or Spinal Shivers for boonstrip.
• Since Infusing Terror has no cast time, you can weave it in during your shroud rotation for stability and damage reduction. The damage reduction will also reduce the loss of life force.
• You can jump as you cast Death's Charge, then Exit Reaper's Shroud for a long jump.