The relic itself is great, but I have noticed that a lot of the times people use some other relic instead. Vit oppressors use Meditation, most of the vit/aether combos use Serenity or Impurity. Even when UR is used, the granted skill is neglected. Not only it is restricted to melee (which makes perfect sense), but also doesn’t seem to be very beneficial to interrupt your other melee attacks (unless it’s a vit decay build, I guess), as it’s a single strike every 3 seconds, albeit in an arc.
So why not give some extra incentive to use it constantly by giving it damage reduction? 10% sounds about right.
Now, I know that Necro already has two DR sources, but:
those require skill points investment;
need to be casted, which is not very convenient on attack speed builds.
Besides, if people decide they need MOAR DR, they still may want to use Ill Omen or RE.
Please consider this change in an upcoming update.
UR is good enough relic with decent stats but I guess I also find Reaping Arc a bit dull. Yes it’s a good nuke skill. It might be useful in a piano vitality build with BH but other than that any AA build won’t take it into their rotation since it’s already full. RE is a good skill also provides damage reduction but even non-caster builds uses it because it’s a great proccer. Omen mostly unwanted because it’s confusion but if one need high DR, Omen is also a good one, plus a good proccer too. So Necro has enough damage reduction.
If devs decide to change the reaping arc. My suggestion would be like this; make it like doomforce skill and add it some DA reduction since class has no other source of DA shred. Then people may use it.
Well, my point was that Reaping Arc is sort of an outsider when it comes to skills granted by relics. Some of them are toggles that don’t bother you in any way. Eternity, while requires an off-hand, finds it’s use in nuke based caster builds. Some provide utility or even RR (DA shred from Nemesis, RR from Ignaffar’s Combustion, Necrosis, Deathstalker, Reckoning). And some just deal damage, but on proc. Well, for the exception of Doom, which use is not resticted to melee only and also deals its damage to all targets in a huge area, and a couple of others.
Reaping Arc is pretty good for decay builds thanks to pretty big numbers, but on aether builds it’s pretty much useless. Adding some sort of utility to it would hopefully fix that. If not, well, then nothing will break either. If anything, it’ll add a bit of diversity in terms of DR methods. And who wants to use RE for DR will continue to do so.
I’m now making an melee Aether build with vitality>aether conversion and I thought about UR relic but I have already 5 active skills to use besides AA and that skill doesn’t provide me much except some AoE. And to use that relic instead of Serenity forces me to make some devotion changes so even though stats are good, flat vitality would be converted, AS and health is useful; skill means nothing to me and if I’m gonna use that relic, that skill should provide something more.
Are you, by any chance, talking about Bonemonger oppressor? Because I’m playing one right now. I find myself not using it, even though it’s on RMB. Reason is, it deals basicaly two times the damage of my default RF attack. And according to character sheet, it makes 3.5 attacks per second. So between Reaping Arcs we can strike ~10 times. Yes, RF doesn’t have AoE of its own, but we have procs and other skills for that.
The other way I was thinking for RA is to use it for procing devotions, but it was short-lived as soon as the skill has not long enough cooldown to do so reliably. So maybe increasing its CD (and, as a result, its damage to compensate) to, like, 5 sec would also be a viable option?
Nope, mine is a bit weirder. But I have RE, BH, Siphon, MoE, Movement Rune, AA + 2 more skills to use so that skill is not for me.
Not sure but it’s technically not just an Aether based relic. So devs can’t make a change just by checking one use of it but that skill is good nuke for any 2H build Aether or Vitality.
No, no, I didn’t say that. I said that aether part of the skill is especially lacking. On vitality builds you at least can make use of decay, but other than that, there’s no real purpose of that skill.
And I do like the theme of the skill, so I don’t ask it to become a generic proc - just want it to be more useful to any build.
I’ve been always saying that those kind of nukes do not exactly work well in endgame. Using this skill with its current damage scaling is a detriment to both melee and casters.
And don’t get me wrong, I am not hating on “fun builds” or “campaign builds” using underoptimized skills or/and items. It’s just a shame that Necromancer’s best non-pet relic is that weak. I would understand if that skill was somewhere else. But right now Impurity is a better (and cheaper) choice 90% of the time and if you don’t need Necro’s relic then both Occultist’s and Oathkeeper’s choices are far superior.
Huh, I wonder if skill’s damage would’ve been toned down and it became spamable, would it be viable? Use it with Wildblood maybe? It’s the opposite of what I wanted in the first place, but I personaly would be content with either option.
We already have Oblivion relic for this kind of niche setup. Either greatly increase the damage of the nuke (as well as the radius) or make it into a proc.
For high end endgame setups - for sure. For some fun underoptimized builds - maybe not. Level 26 BH with some help of transmutor and items and conversions hits like a train, and has great aoe. It also seems to hit big models two times, but I am not sure about that, maybe wrong here.
Also BH is very much ranged and Reaping skill only hits in melee.
Yeah, but which builds have such low cd on bone harvest that reaping arc couldn’t also be used. The relic skill doesn’t cost skill points, only time; so it needs to be worth weaving in to a builds skills. What values do you suggest? and can you provide examples of builds where reaping arc lowers damage?
I don’t doubt it could be underwhelming, but the values are not as bad as former skills were (e.g Annihilation, Oblivion).
There are more examples, of course, just the ones I remember of the top of my head
The problem is that melee builds put out more damage by hitting with AA + WPS (or just AA, like DK Krieg Cadence where you don’t want to miss Cadence charging). Casters that have this in rotation are generally less pleasant to play since you have to be in a melee range for a very weak nuke and you already have a heavy rotation on Vitality casters that you really don’t want to miss as well.
I mean lackluster nature of Uro’s relic skill has been known for a long time now, it’s nothing new. And since Impurity has been buffed to a very decent state Uro has become even more irrelevant.
But again, I am talking about high end endgame min-maxed stuff. From the point of view of casual gamer that reaches endgame and dabbles a bit in SR 50 ish and maybe has like two lvl 100 geared characters the only problem I see is that skill is on the most expensive Necro’s relic. I would move it to some low tier level 40-50 relic and put a nuke on Uro worth ~500% weapon damage with like 360 degrees ~10 metres aoe kind of like Acid Abomination.
Everything is not bad when used “casually”. Even Scourge relic, I guess. Kinda wanted to bring it up too, but not exactly sure how it can be improved. Can’t remember any build that uses it either.
There are lots of passive skill on vitality relics and meditation have buff which is used by both Acid and Vitality builds time to time. There is Necrosis for the builds who can sacrifice skill points. Impurity is better for most Aether builds with Necro mastery, and there is Agrivix and Eternity for Arcanists. So imo UR relic should be revised to be a buff skill like meditation with flat Aether/Vitality damage since there is no Aether buff relic and melee Aether builds are mostly mediocre. It can also bring some light to the melee vitality builds. Ofc this kinda buff requires some stat chopping on the relic.
It’s not really a relic designed for casters though is it; it is a melee skill with high WD% and so it does most damage on a vitality melee build. The vit decay from Reaping Arc, by itself, does more damage than Impurity.
I always viewed the relic as niche because Vit melee isn’t particularly common, and aether builds miss out on a large portion of Reaping Arc damage.
However, even on some of those caster you linked; it could be used. Bone Jovi, Reaping Arc does more than Storm Totem, shift points into something else, maybe foul eruption and/or blood pact. Yes, probably less efficient as lower AoE but still decent enough.
On an auto-attacker like cadence edge of death build, I don’t see how Reaping Arc is a loss (unless it only hits once with dw?) as it does more than a cadence hit.
That is not always true. If you are a Vitality caster with an off-hand 100% wd is usually 75 Vitality damage, so 300% would be just 225 Vitality damage - less then a third of what BH does for example. And it’s once in every 3 seconds plus the inconvinience of getting into melee range and mixing caster’s piano with melee attack (that requires attack speed which casters have none off, so it’s extra slow).
Melee Vitality build usually suck unless they are some kind of hybrids. And most of them are Oppressors that should always pick up Meditation overanything.
That would be pretty terrible both for dps and survivability. Totem is a passive cast and forget kind of damage that also procs Bat amazingly well. For Reaping Strike I will have to interrupt my spells rotation (which is already not smooth because of lack of casting speed and lack of CC res which is typical for Ritualists) to hit with a mediocre damage in melee range with very low attack speed. And yes, I have tested Uro on that build long ago.
That would be a waste of skill poinst on that build tbh.
Cadence hits with higher weapon damage with both hands. Reaping Arc hits with one hand iirc. And you delay your Cadence hit too.
As I said, it’s all been tested by quite a few builders, most of the times Reaping Arc has no place on endgame builds unfortunately.
Cadence only hits once, with the chance of a basic attack or wps on the other hand. It seems you are right though; Reaping Arc is either a loss in most situations or a negligible damage increase. What a shame it is dw unfriendly…
DW edge of death example: Average wd% of a melee hit from a Cadence build: 494% wd (average rank 19 cadence damage) x 0.4 (chance of cadence occurring) + (308 x 0.58 x 0.6) (rank 19 MA and RS wps) + (280 x 0.26 x 0.6) (rank 12 NE wps) + (150 x 0.16 x 0.6) = 362% wd
So Reaping Arc deals less significantly less than an average melee hit (~13% less). The vitality decay is discounted because of the cost of being an active skill; Impurity damage only adds to damage rather than replace melee hits/other actions so the extra “impurity damage cost” is discounted.
This would make the Relic too godly imo. I trust Z will do something useful with it, either make it dw friendly or adjust the values to be respectable.