Why does nobody play Reaper?

[Orangetai420]

If he got a charge on his jump he could be fixed and become OP at the right time.

Winston is still a good pick, this might put him over the top.

[stomination]

He is a good tank buster in a format with a regular amount of tanks, but since its a 3 tank stack meta, he would get obliterated by D.va and hog.

Plus soldier can burst down Rein's shield a bit better and self heal, allowing for a 1 healer group to be a bit more viable. Unlike reaper who must kill to get a heal.

So basically he can do what D.VA already does but not being tanky.

[Tribi]

4k, and triple tank is a must. The meta right now is, Rein, D.va, Soldier, another tank, and two healers.

[oikawa]

because reaper is boring

[Graeham]

I think Reaper would benefit from a slight speed increase during his wraith form to make it easier for him to escape and weave in and out of battle. He needs to be at close range to be effective but if there's multiple tanks it can be very difficult for him to get the chance to actually do his part. Pharah seems to do the job better in certain situations - especially now that she can stay in the air more easily.

[mickybrighteyes]

I think Reaper would benefit from a slight speed increase during his wraith form to make it easier for him to escape and weave in and out of battle. He needs to be at close range to be effective but if there's multiple tanks it can be very difficult for him to get the chance to actually do his part. Pharah seems to do the job better in certain situations - especially now that she can stay in the air more easily.

doesn't he already have that?

[Graeham]

doesn't he already have that?

Sort of, but I meant that he could gain a greater boost. He has a harder time dropping out of combat than Tracer, Sombra or Genji have. Heck, even Pharah can use her knockback to shoot herself into the air in a pinch or just jet upwards...or combine both abilities. 76 can sprint, heal and get back into the battle soon afterwards when he's healed up.

McCree doesn't have any escape tools either - but he dishes out a lot of damage from both near and far.

[AeneasBK]

Sort of, but I meant that he could gain a greater boost. He has a harder time dropping out of combat than Tracer, Sombra or Genji have. Heck, even Pharah can use her knockback to shoot herself into the air in a pinch or just jet upwards...or combine both abilities. 76 can sprint, heal and get back into the battle soon afterwards when he's healed up.

McCree doesn't have any escape tools either - but he dishes out a lot of damage from both near and far.

I kinda disagree with some of your comparisons; but mostly on a situational basis (plenty of times where 'wraithform' is far and away the best escape because all fucking hell has just been let lose. Or Zarya ulted).

Eitherways I agree that he feels clunky to engage and escape but rather than a speed increase I'd suggest halving the duration and cooldown; so the opportunity to use it both to engage and then retreat 4 seconds later; albeit not for nearly as far. Would be too strong maybe, but then either shorten it further or make the CD 5 seconds not 4. But you get the idea at least

[Rorke]

4k, and triple tank is a must. The meta right now is, Rein, D.va, Soldier, another tank, and two healers.

Wow that's pretty lame.

I guess I'm better off just staying in gold so I don't have to deal with that.

[Deleted]

Reaper exists now only to kill a Winston. Or a bad Roadhog who messes up hook. Despite Reaper being a tank killer, he won't win a D.va.

[Nadiru]

Because of the 5 tanks in the game, Reaper only counters one and only kinda counters another.

[Woobels]

Because of the 5 tanks in the game, Reaper only counters one and only kinda counters another.

This pretty much.

He doesn't bust the tanks he's supposed to bust.

However I do believe he's still a very solid solo queue pick.

[Tojara]

Better to just play 76. It's safer and does great damage.

Reaper doesn't bust shit when there are 2-3 (usually 3) tanks in every game. He's good against Winston and that's about it. The other tanks he's okay against, but it largely depends on if a tank like roadhog is bad at aiming both his hook and his gun. He can kill Reinhardt, but Reinhardt is with the group 100% of the time and putting yourself in a position to which you open yourself to their entire team is pretty stupid.

He does dogshit to D'va. If you wraith walk your'e dead unless you have support behind you. She will just chase you down and kill you before you kill her.

I'm not really sure how you buff Reaper. I think a better option would be to tone down some of the tanks so standard isn't seeing up to 3 of them per game. His DPS is still really high and realistically the only thing you could do is make wraith walk CD shorter, or make it's speed boost be a lot faster. I guess you could buff his health.

I mean, I suppose they could also limit how many tanks you can bring to a game, but that's kinda a cop out lol.

[Selastan]

I play reaper a fair amount. But I think the problem with him is that he is encouraged to go off on his own in a team based shooters. A good reaper picking off the right characters at the right time will turn a game, but the problem is that they in turn do far less damage and get far less kills than a frontline offence hero like 76 or pharah. No real reward, no PoG. Reaper is the Saitama of Overwatch, the unsung hero.

Side note, hide close to the enemy spawn point and pick off loners to charge your death blossom. Synch your ultimate with a teammate like pharah or mcree. If it is successful, they will take out more than half the other team. So they spawn together...drop your death blossom right on top of them as soon as they respawn and more than double the enemy downtime.

[Guyviroth]

I've been "maining" Reaper since the Beta, and I've always had a lot of fun with him whether I was winning or losing. Though to be honest this is effectively because I can't aim for shit and I have twitchy hands that make me ineffective with other offensive heroes like McCree, Pharah and Genji.

But I think the issue is that a lot of heroes are getting reworks and balance changes left and right while Reaper remains pretty much as he was since the Beta. He's a fairly solid tank buster and back line hassler, provided you can get close enough/behind them to do it. But I think his only saving grace is the use of his Ult to clear out teams that stack up on objective points, which I like to call the "chocolate drop".

Hollywood defense and they're pushing the cart through the town? Chocolate drop off the building.

Volskaya second point? Chocolate drop off the back bridge or moving platform.

I've saved many games simply by Ulting a group of enemies and getting 4-6 kills. He's fun, but feels so outdated nowadays.

[Rorke]

I've been "maining" Reaper since the Beta, and I've always had a lot of fun with him whether I was winning or losing. Though to be honest this is effectively because I can't aim for shit and I have twitchy hands that make me ineffective with other offensive heroes like McCree, Pharah and Genji.

But I think the issue is that a lot of heroes are getting reworks and balance changes left and right while Reaper remains pretty much as he was since the Beta. He's a fairly solid tank buster and back line hassler, provided you can get close enough/behind them to do it. But I think his only saving grace is the use of his Ult to clear out teams that stack up on objective points, which I like to call the "chocolate drop".

Hollywood defense and they're pushing the cart through the town? Chocolate drop off the building.

Volskaya second point? Chocolate drop off the back bridge or moving platform.

I've saved many games simply by Ulting a group of enemies and getting 4-6 kills. He's fun, but feels so outdated nowadays.

Some good info here. Thanks.

[Naxere]

I'd like to see them buff Shadow Step a bit. Cut the cast time down to 1.5 seconds, make it castable on the move, and maybe an 8 second cooldown instead of 10.

[Borfl]

If tournaments are anything to go by, Reaper seems to be very good on certain maps but requires proper setup and coordination and even then he can get fucked really hard because he needs to be able to flank stealthily and literally get up their ass to do damage. Some Reapers get real cocky being Ana/Lucio'd storming the front but when they get into a good Rein's face usually results in you getting shit on by hammerdown or just getting darted by Ana.

Depends on map like all KOTH Greece except ruins I think Reaper is very good on. This triple tank meta also makes it very hard to gib people especially DVa being highly picked and being able to mitigate a lot of Reaper's damage with 500 armor ontop of being able to harass a flanking Reaper and find him/chase him/knock him out of position/matrix his whole ult, Zarya shielding people who are getting focused on for phat charge, Rein just knocking your shit all over the place; its really not a Reaper friendly meta imo. And with Symmetra rising in popularity for defense, defense team get an extra 75 shields making it even harder to gib people. So good, safe, and sustained damage seems more valuable in general, hence why Soldier is so popular, than trying to do risky 2shot gibs in this heavy tank defense favored meta.

Solo, even duo, queue you're probably not going to have a very successful Reaper vs good teams unless they're babysat hard. On top of that you'll probably have an easier time just being a Roadhog or even a Tracer for tankbusting/flanking. But even before 3x tank meta became very popular, Reaper's niche seemed to be on defense and some tight-spaced KOTH maps with good flanking avenues. Anything sub diamond you can literally play whatever you want tbh.

[Kujako]

If no one plays Reaper, who's that guy who keeps yelling "the" in German?

[minteK917]

The retarded overbuff to Dva happened. She did not need 100 extra armor afte the defense matrix change, not with the increase in move speed. She does reapers job, she does winston job, both at the same time, and is just as easy as winston to play, far easier than reaper.

Winston is inferior in every point now. He does less dmg, easier to kill, longer cooldowns. He even has to reload.