I’ve been a bit snowed under with my crafting grind, but I’m coming back out to talk about my favorite DPS job: Reaper.
First, the things that stayed the same from Endwalker to Dawntrail. Reaper remains a slower paced job than most DPS, where the challenge of playing it comes from its baroque priority system and complex resource management that requires planning ahead. This suits me well, because I have a hard time dealing with a lot of rapid inputs but I’m good at planning ahead. And its former tankiness is still there, with the barrier and heal over time of Arcane Crest being a nice bonus in party content and a much bigger help when doing things by yourself, such as soloing FATEs.
And now for the changes. While I have mixed feelings about the changes to Sage for at level 100 and the Warrior changes had only a mild positive impact, I quite like what they’ve done with Reaper. Exactly like Warrior, Reaper’s burst phase has gained an extra OGCD attack and a GCD follow-up. Unlike Warrior, the Enshroud phase has a faster GCD and had more OGCDs to weave to begin with, but you still have one or two open weave opportunities if you need to jam in an Arm’s Length or Arcane Crest to respond to a mechanic. The big difference is the change to the follow-ups of Gluttony: Gluttony now grants stacks of Executioner, which powers much stronger versions of your old Soul Reaver spenders. This makes the Gluttony part of your burst phase relatively more important. Not to go into too many gory details, but because of the extra GCD after Enshroud the timing for a double Enshroud window is tighter, but because of the stronger Gluttony follow-ups it’s now nearly as good to just repeat your opener at your two-minute burst. The change to Plentiful Harvest, granting a free Enshroud rather than 50 shroud gauge so that it can never make you overcap, also supports this. The short of it is, Reaper is now a bit easier to play and you can get most of the theoretical maximum possible damage output using a straightforward, naive rotation — and I will be doing so!
In terms of the rest of the abilities, Harpe and Harvest Moon, your primary ranged attacks, now generate red gauge, so you don’t necessarily disrupt your resource management if you have to leave melee range. And that brings up one of the coolest changes to Reaper. As before using your teleports grants you Enhanced Harpe, which makes Harpe instant instead of having a cast time. But now, using Harpe under Enhanced Harpe also reduces the recast time on the teleports, so if there’s going to be much dodging Reapers are particularly encouraged to teleport out of danger, spend a GCD on Harpe so they can dodge again sooner — while still keeping up with their resource management — then re-enter melee range. It’ll take some time for me to internalize this change, but it makes Reaper more mobile, and I quite like it!
All told, Reaper was already my favorite DPS and has only gotten better in Dawntrail.
