[GW2 WvW] Power Reaper in World vs. World -- A Boon Corruption Build Primer (Check Comments)

-- If this patch was supposed to reduce the boon corrupts and boon removal in World vs. World, somebody forgot to tell Reaper. While most people are familiar with the profession from a damage perspective, it's now the absolute best source of boon corrupts in the gamemode, and competitive with Chronomancer on overall boon removal, as long as you're willing to mix it up in melee with an enemy group.
-- Eventually a gw2skills link will go here, but in the meantime, just ask if anything isn't clear.
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-- Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:35 Weapons, Armor, Runes, Sigils
01:25 Spite Talents
02:09 Curses Talents
02:55 Reaper Talents
03:06 Rotation and Skill Usage
04:20 Outro
-- Housekeeping:
I tested this with Devouring Darkness as well, giving up Greatsword for Scepter/Warhorn. It also felt fine...and using Scepter instead of Greatsword helps with your ranged damage profile a little bit...but at the end of the day Greatsword is just too fun. Plus, GS4 is a massive source of boon corrupts, getting four per pulse.
Also, if you read all the way down here -- here's the logs for the fight at 00:35. dps.report/Pypr-20230702-0019.... I log virtually every fight that shows up in a video. Would you be interested in seeing the logs themselves, alongside footage? Let me know in a comment, or in the Discord.

[@sheffplaysgames]

Edit 2: With the release of Secrets of the Obscure, I would suggest that you use Relic of Fireworks for this build. Greatsword 4, Greatsword 5, Focus 5, Shroud 4, and Shroud 5 all trigger the Relic, which should give you +10% strike damage pretty much all of the time. Rune of the Scholar is still fine, for your armor. Cerus is simply not good enough when coupled with the cooldown of Necromancer elites, despite this being a build that focuses on boon removal. Edit 1: As noted by Arete in my DMs, and /u/Oxbivious on Reddit, I haven't correctly described Death's Charge here. The boon corruption from Path of Corruption only applies on the LAST hit, not on EVERY hit, so you're only corrupting ten boons at maximum when you use it. Still a perfectly fine build overall, as you can tell from ArcDPS and the attached log. But I want to make sure that I'm providing correct information, and in this case, the video narration is not mechanically correct. Big thanks to both of them for pointing this out.

[@dharkbizkit]

i feel like, getting the maximum out of this build and the playstile, will be my ondoing, due to having focus on hitting the zerg from the side, which would lead me, to stray of my group to get a better angle and thus not getting heal. works way better in a full meele zerg, which we rarely play

[@sheffplaysgames]

Absolutely. It's not going to work for every group, and if you're spending a lot of time at range, Scourge is still very good at ranged boon pressure.

[@markuslinneweber5890]

A very nice and enlightening video, very well done! I have just one question: What's your timing of the elite as I didn't see that covered. How about switching that elite for "Chilled to the bone!"?

[@sheffplaysgames]

Best time to use your elite is the same as the Advanced Reaper build elsewhere on the channel -- right after you use "Nothing Can Save You!", to grant unblockable to your projectile-based Lich 1 and Lich 2 skills. It's especially powerful for generating and converting downs, so I'll use it if my commander calls for a damage spike, and I don't have wells available. You don't see it getting used here, because we haven't had very good fights this week, and the weapon/shroud rotation is very, very active. So I just spent all my time doing that. Chilled to the Bone would be fine, if you're having trouble finding the time to enter Lich Form. I've been pretty unimpressed with it in the past, but the appeal that it has for this build in particular is that it doesn't replace your weapons, so you can fire it off once and then get back to your normal stuff. Really good question.

[@markuslinneweber5890]

@@sheffplaysgames Thanks for the detailed explanation ;) I think I'm getting it now, your video inspired me to try out reaper and it went pretty well for the first try ;)

[@sheffplaysgames]

@@markuslinneweber5890 Good to hear!

[@Kaospattern]

How do you deal with condi pressure?

[@sheffplaysgames]

You have someone in your squad to cleanse you. These builds are all primarily oriented around group play, so I'm assuming that you have people in your party who are able to provide stability, cleanses, heals, et cetera.

[@Kaospattern]

@@sheffplaysgames Just wanted to be sure we're more on a zerg build. Thanks, going to try it while still weeping about my lost scourge 😞

[@sheffplaysgames]

@@Kaospattern Put my tombstone at the very top of the "Scourge Isn't Dead" hill, because I'm going to die on it. Run Sandstorm Shroud and put on a li'l bit of Warhorn where your Dagger used to be, and you're good to go. It could be much worse -- you could be a Spellbreaker, for example. :)

[@Kaospattern]

@@sheffplaysgames Already switched to warhorn... Still... With some EOD elites boosted to an absurd level, the scourge lover that I am feels a bit cheated

[@Durzza]

dude 10 second cooldown ICD on the absorb is rough as hell.

[@sheffplaysgames]

It is, but the boonstealing is good, and Reaper's well-positioned to generate a lot of interrupts, both through corrupts and actual sources of hard CC that the profession has access to. If you want to run Nullification there it's totally fine, hell, if you want to run Force there it's *also* totally fine. I just think Absorption is neat. That's a bit of a personal preference choice though.

[@Durzza]

@@sheffplaysgames ok, take signet mastery trait. and signet of locust instead of ur shout. i know, but trust

[@Durzza]

its poggers

[@sheffplaysgames]

​@@Durzza not saying I won't try it, but you gotta show your work beyond "its poggers" :) The shout is an unblockable 10 boons per 16 seconds (and gives unblockable to other strips), and the signet w/ mastery is 10 boons per 25 seconds, and can be blocked by aegis. That seems strictly worse, unless I'm missing something about how good movement speed is.