Lvl 100 Ritualist (Shaman/Necro) and I just can’t get myself to like the Reap Spirit. The biggest is in numbers. I have 17/16 points in it (so can summon 2…) but one Reap Spirit does less damage than even an individual skeleton summon… Seriously. Whittled down my skeletons to one skeleton mage and it was doing 3400 - 3900 damage to the training dummy per hit and one Reap Spirit was between 3100 - 3600 dmg. The skeleton mage attacked faster too…
I have the skeleton line maxed as well as Reap Spirit maxed. But with these numbers, each skeleton is more valuable than a fully maxed Reap Spirit… for a lvl 50 mastery bar skill…ugh, this seems like it shouldn’t be.
Other comparable factors. The skeleton sticks around full time, Reap Spirit doesn’t. Skeletons don’t require enemy targeting to cast, Reap Spirit does… (even if I could shift+click it out there…).
Conjure Primal Spirit…owns. A well respected lvl 50 temporary pet, but my briar… and blight fiend… both not maxed, do far more damage each than my fully maxed Reap Spirit. Just doesn’t seem like the Reap Spirit should be this weak, am I missing something?
Yes, this skill is kinda underwelming. Direct dmg is as joke as full mastery single-targed nuke and the spirit show agression level of lobotomised labrador.
Something need to be done to fix it. Buff dmg. Or buff spirit. Or Add AoE, or something>_>
Actually yeah, that bugged me too, like it’s occasionally open-hand slapping the enemy. But cosmetics are just that, and I don’t really care as long as the mechanics are sound.
Playing for a necromancer’s pet build and just a necromancer - a caster, I considered this skill from that and from this side, and I have 3 ways to improve it:
Significantly increase the aether damage (make this skill essential of the doombolt, so to speak), increase casting speed (no, but really, aether tentacle flies too slow), remove the spirit or make it skaling from player’s damage
Make the skill mechanic more like to conjure primal spirit - increase the life time of the spirit (from absurd 10 seconds to 30), increase the spirit’s damage.
To increase the number of spirits that can exist simultaneously, by 16/16 two, by 24-26 / 16 three, to increase their speed and aggression. Perhaps (it will be too good, probably, although the blight fiend does the same) add to them some damage (vit/decoy) that they could cause at the time of death.
Honesty the whole concept of the skill is broken so long as pet and player stats are still separate. Its is far to inefficient to focus on both. Either you’re a pet build and the skill does pitiful damage to summon a pet that is subpar compared to other pets or you’re a caster that focuses on spell damage and the pet is worthless and other skills will likely do more do more damage.
The skill should either focus on the pet or the spell damage not both. For a pet build they could change/add a debuff to the spell + increase the stats of the pet. For spell damage they could up the damage and either change the pet the scale of player stats or add a debuff(or some other useful skill) to the pet.
Or throw it out altogether and give us a Skeletal Monstrosity that tanks, cause honestly… I’m an embarrassed necromancer who doesn’t have access to all the underworld if I can’t bring up a skeletal monstrosity. Seriously, how does a necro not be able to call one of these up if he can access dozens of skeletons? It’s like my lvl 100 hero is not as powerful as every stray chest in the steps of torment…
Actually, that could be fun. To make it even more interesting you could have a skill that causes all your skeletons to join together for a short while. Increasing their durability and damage greatly for 15/20 seconds. Could have it look like Nito from Dark Souls.
It would be great if the wraith scaled with player stats, would fit thematically and make the skill useful for non-pet necromancers. They have very few skills to use anyway.
There’s little reason to go over level 32 in necromancer the pay off really isn’t there.
Lets talk about facts the offhand caster item that gives Og’Napesh gives you a permanent summon like your blight fiend with high health; the blight fiend itself has crap health in comparison to the similarly placed briarthorn; there is literally no reason why we should not have it as a permanent summon with health stats at the average for permanent pets available at class level 15.
If you don’t want us to have ‘another’ pet then it shouldn’t even be there and should be replaced with a high tier utility skill.
Yeah I tried out maxing the Reap Spirit out and it’s pretty horrible. If you try to make it work you end up up with lackluster player and pet damage… In addition the wraith strikes very slowly and is pretty dumb.
I really like the idea, that it should scale with player damage. It would make a great and cool addition to Aether/Vitality builds.
Reap Spirit’s current state reminds me of the original Devastation. Not in its function but in its underwhelming-ness.
A couple ideas I’ve had.
Make it shoot multiple beams and summon multiple spirits as it levels up. That way it’s more of an impactful cast and you get more value out of the ghosts. Maybe increase their duration, the overall damage, and increase the cooldown.
Or, someone in my chat recommended this during a stream, have each subsequent cast buff a single spirit. So, first cast brings the ghost out, second cast adds a damage stack to it, then you increase the stacks as you cast the ability. If you don’t cast it enough, the stacks go away, then the spirit goes away.
