test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Forums > Home› Class Forums›
Why Reaping Strike?
zardoz007
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users Posts: 2 Arc User
Been thinking about Reaping Strikes over all usefulness and it is coming up lacking.
Reaping Strike is the 2nd at will you get as a GWF. You charge the move and deal a devestating aoe Slash. While I love the concept of a charge move and I began using it by charging through enemeies and charging it then unleashing it as enemies caught up to me. The move became pointless the higher level I got as a GWF fighter.
First because Wicked strike is also an Aoe At will, second because charging the attack reduces you movement speed making it useless against any enemy with ranged attacks. The passive of the power lets you build determination faster while you charge this is kinda pointless as tactically you want to use it when you are not getting you face bashed in. Third in higher levels you have so many encounters that are better than this at will attack without charging. Fourth Sure strike becomes a much better partner to Wicked strike as it is the at will to rapidly strike one mob while reaping strike lets you rapidly strike many mobs, and you can only equip two at wills.
Reaping strike needs to be replaced or buffed. What I would like to see is an AT-will for the GWF that is more for tanking, because the other two are great for damage.
If Reaping strike reduced the damage you took while charging, like a lesser block power and then marked targets you hit I could see it's use. Sort of a block and counter attack type power.
On other note I would like to see more charge up encounter powers and dailies like reaping strike. As this is more of a rare occurrence use power it is not effective as a weak at-will but a charge up devastating daily or encounter would be nice to have.
Reaping Strike is the 2nd at will you get as a GWF. You charge the move and deal a devestating aoe Slash. While I love the concept of a charge move and I began using it by charging through enemeies and charging it then unleashing it as enemies caught up to me. The move became pointless the higher level I got as a GWF fighter.
First because Wicked strike is also an Aoe At will, second because charging the attack reduces you movement speed making it useless against any enemy with ranged attacks. The passive of the power lets you build determination faster while you charge this is kinda pointless as tactically you want to use it when you are not getting you face bashed in. Third in higher levels you have so many encounters that are better than this at will attack without charging. Fourth Sure strike becomes a much better partner to Wicked strike as it is the at will to rapidly strike one mob while reaping strike lets you rapidly strike many mobs, and you can only equip two at wills.
Reaping strike needs to be replaced or buffed. What I would like to see is an AT-will for the GWF that is more for tanking, because the other two are great for damage.
If Reaping strike reduced the damage you took while charging, like a lesser block power and then marked targets you hit I could see it's use. Sort of a block and counter attack type power.
On other note I would like to see more charge up encounter powers and dailies like reaping strike. As this is more of a rare occurrence use power it is not effective as a weak at-will but a charge up devastating daily or encounter would be nice to have.
Post edited by zardoz007 on
0
Comments
I don't think it needs to be removed, but it's definitely not for everyone. Certainly not for me anyway, but if you can get the timing done just right it will dish a pretty nice chunk of burst. So I see it as a good choice for:
PvP
Bosses after level 30 when playing with a tank that can hold them
And that's about it.
And please no, no charge up powers. They are always clunky to use, require extremely good timing and almost always the cost versus reward with regards to activation time compared to damage isn't very good.
Maybe it scales better at higher levels, I didn't get too far with it.
Do people use a low charge Reaping Strike often? I tried minimal charge times to see how fast I could get multiple reapings off, but it's hard to measure effectively.
The benefits of reaping strike are a tricky to use tactical advantage on the charge time, I kinda see waiting for mobs to not be worth it when you are a GWF who has so much mobility and can easily run mobs down. And the other benefit is that you gain more determination while you get hit when charging it.
Perhaps if the movement speed during charging were higher, it'd have a decent niche as an approach skill. It feels odd to me to be surrounded by enemies letting them hit me while I hold my sword in place. But readying my sword as I approach a group of enemies and letting loose the moment they are in range seems perfectly reasonable.
Overall the damage output of the GWF seems to be lacking. All of those slow swings that seem to hit for not as much as rogues much faster hits. IMO the GWF needs a lot more damage to compensate for those super slow attacks.
I don't want to do the same damage as the rogue. If I had a wish list it would be something like this.
1) Do more damage. On average I put out 120k to 180k for a rogue. It is possible that I was doing stuff wrong so I am not necessarily putting this on Cryptic, it could very well be me. However I have a lot of end game experience from a lot of different styles of games and I am not one to just go with the flow, I tend to make better builds in most MMO's than the sites like Noxxic or Eliteist Jerks or MaxDPS or others come up with. So I am pretty confident in my abilities. I also understand the 4e rules a bit and have experience with the whole combat advantage mechanic. If 2/3rds of rogue damage is the intended mechanic then I will live with it.
2) Be less squishy. The rogue, with stealth, stun, and Bait and Switch is far more stout and survivable than the GWF. I took about 4 to 5 times the potions as I did on a rogue, and I had a cleric companion. My rogue had a dog. Luckily this is a known issue and is being addressed. Yay!
3) Have master strike be more useful. Right now it does pitiful damage as a base attack. I am fine with the buff mechanic, I just want it to be as viable, damage wise as wicked strike or sure strike. Either one, because that is the skills I will be taking off my bar to replace it with, or even for it to do as much damage as reaping strike. Any one of the three. But for it to do 1/4 to 1/3 the damage of them is just not cool. It is a freaking paragon path power, there should be no doubt as to how powerful it is, it should always be the most powerful option there. Right now that is situation / debatable.
4) Side note here not related to GWF directly as a class, but more as an overall choice for a GWF. I don't really feel the whole "human versatility" thing going on here. It is pretty clear that a Half-Orc is a better choice for an offensive play style. It is pretty much not in the whole human versatility line of things to make them a "tanking" race by buffing defense by 3%. But a minor issue and I can deal with it. I just have a concern that I am going to be looked down upon for not being the "optimal" build based on race choice. IMO human should always be a viable option, it is in every iteration of DnD I ever played, yet in this game human seems like a guardian only kind of choice.
As for playing it wrong, I fully understand the concept of 300 dmg x 4 targets is 200 more dmg a swing than 1000 dmg to a single target. I also understand that I will adjust, learn, and change a lot from one play weekend on beta to several weeks of live. I was just sharing my experiences and thoughts from my initial play through.
Edit: By some of the slow swings I mean stuff like wicked strike. Often times you never get to the third, more powerful strike. So you have to weigh doing more damage to being a burden on the healer. With the main dynamic of combat being movement, the actual usefulness of Wicked Strike is severely limited by making you go through three full, very slow, swings to achieve it's damage potential. At the very least it should be a two swing mechanic, if not just a flat AoE swing with a base damage. IMO they got too fancy and out smarted themselves. It sounds all sweet in theory, but there is just too much movement for this at will to be as good as it sounds. There are other examples as well but this reply is already too long :P
I'ts not a great attack, but imo it's better than wicked strike which just feels slugish once you get sure strike. I think wicked needs to get buffed up to sure strikes speed (speed it up and add 1 more light hit so it's identical to sure strike but horrizontal) and then buff up reaping strikes damage by about 20% to compensate for the charge and crawl or as someone else metioned, give it a defensive buff (dmg reduction) while charging. Either way, all three at wills should be equally viable just with different purposes and not just 2 good ones and one wayward step child.
Not to go too far off topic but I wanted to address this statement.
Go with the dog on your GWF.
There are two ways to really play with companions, pro and anti-cyclical. By picking the dog or control wizard companions you actually give yourself more of a buff and better survivability because you can kill or control mobs faster than your cleric can heal damage done to you.
I didn't invest in the GWF companion, but I think it would also be a good choice though I think you get better results with a companion that can control the battlefield - even slightly - like the dog can with their single target knockdown.
Agreed. It would be much nicer if it had more up front damage, but then again I think it's hard to measure how much help the debuff can be. Also once you get the paragon buff that allows it to effect your encounter abilities as well I think it'll shine nicely.
Dude. Really? Um, you did notice that ALL the characters on the loading screen when you pick your race come dressed in armor of the class that they'd best represent right? So half-orcs have a big axes making them a GWF, half-elves dressed as clerics, humans and dwarfs as guardian fighters, elf as control wizard, all that?
Anyway, my point is that you're overthinking things. I went half-elf for my GWF, worked out fine, especially taking the constitution buff since it increases your armor penetration as a GWF. Racials are great, but they aren't game breaking, you're not going to be denied a guild invite or dungeon invite because you picked a "sub-optimal race!" This is going to be a fun action combat MMO, not the race to the world first hardcore WoW game.
Anyway, to the topic at hand. Reaping and charge attacks in general aren't that fun. Yeah, I could go in, knock back with roar and charge up. Or I could go in, hit "not so fast" for huge AoE damage and then follow it up with a few hits of either Wicked or Sure and move on. Though really that's just a difference in playstyle.
To me reaping has too high an activation cost for damage done. Maybe if all the bosses were just stand there and beat on the tank it would be more useful, but when bosses randomly drop aggro or teleport to someone or blitz through you then it's just not worthwhile to be sitting there charging up an attack only to have it miss completely because the boss is now across the room beating on the wizard/cleric/rogue.
all our stuff cuts in wide swaths, all are pbaoe you have to target the guy though
1. you can hold down mouse on alot of attacks in this game to get alot
2. put autorun on when charging reaping and you can position your BIG PBAOE while you charge it
3. Go beserk then use reaping WHILE using daily WHILE using encounter; run into a big group of mobs and do this. Have a potion handy.
I will not greeble mean things as im still learning this class; its been the greebliest 4 days so far though:)
Targets Hit Over Time
Determination Gain
The reason I say this is because Wicked Strike will hit more individual targets over time, even if the damage might be a smidge lower than RS. (Which it probably isn't, but lets just assume they're on par when hitting three targets.) When combined with WMS, which hits 10 targets in roughly a second, to WS which hits 5 targets once every rough second, you'll be hitting 15 or so targets every two seconds. Reaping Strike can not come even close to that number. It relies on burst damage to debuffed targets less often.
Reaping Strike is great for building determination if you have any aggro, and is basically the at-will when you want to 'chain' Unstoppable. It's very useful in that regard, and lets you speed-spam WMS a whole lot on trash groups (As it hits more targets faster) and you wait to use Reaping Strike for when you either need to chain your unstoppable or when there are 5 or less targets left alive. (Who should be deeply debuffed for a big hit after an unstoppable full of WMS spam.)
I don't know if the determination gain is higher when cancelling WMS/WS as a combo when you have the Destroyer cap or not. It might. Maybe Sentinel's would get more use out of Reaping Strike than the Destroyer, as they should have better defense/deflect stats to help you survive long enough to really make use of chaining Unstoppable. Executioners Strike is just a bad feat, you feel like you should always be using Reaping Strike since you spent those points, but Reaping Strike is probably not useful in every fight. Kind of lame, but probably true the further into T2 you get.
I personally use Weapon Master Strike as my AoE attack even over the recently buffed Wicked Strike as WMS with the Defense debub and the fact it can attack twice in one swing gives it a higher DPS than Wicked.
I think it would take some experimentation, but I think it has it's purposes.... but is most useful if you're getting hit. I think it's more of an off tank ability, really.