who would win:
zantai + x amount of pretors polishing the patch for 3 months
or one <<< boi?
seriously though, how the fuck did that escape testing?
Reaping Arc will get nerfed, that’s kinda obvious.
Fixed it for ya! 
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apparently that wasn’t so obvious to the ones who developed the patch.
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I guess mad_lee got his wish regardless of how OP it is, Reaping Arc is actually “good” now 
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mmm, i’m not sure that you quite understand how much 500% WD (or w/e it was) aoe nuke is worse than 245% WD arc autoattack.
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“Regardless of how OP it is”. Anyone that looks at that knows it’s going to get nerfed so enjoy it while you can.
obvious you say, yet this thing got released.
apparently not so obvious for many.
You think Praetorians are able to test or look at every single thing? I wager most of them don’t. Some of them don’t even play at end game.
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I don’t think the change is as crazy as you make it out to be. Firstly, Physical + Bleeding is much, much more synergistic than Aether + Vitality Decay - like in a different universe of synergy. Vitality Decay is resisted by everything while the things that heavily resist Bleeding are going to get hurt by Physical damage. The knockdown factor could easily be fixed by moving it to the cooldown transmuter since the DoT’s will finish off the enemies while they’re knocked down.
In theory, it’s a nice compliment to classes like Apostate who originally had to stick with Beronath and tons of Elemental to Aether conversion.
In reality, it’s going to be a five-alarm showcase of why Spellbinders ruin everything that has to do with Aether damage.
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The only thing that looks off is the weapon damage. 245% is on par with a fully maxed skill with skill modifiers on top. And it’s essentially free.
Say you put a character together with 30k Aether or Vitality weapon damage - easy to do with the right 2-hander and flat sources, even on Krieg Battlemage. That alone is hitting 70k+ damage per hit from the weapon damage at least 2 or 3 times per second.
To my knowledge, I was the only one of the praes that made a polished end game build with it (aether binder with krieg ~40k wd). I said it was over performing a bit on discord and expected a down tweak on the weapon damage. (This was towards the end of testing though) It is entirely possible that my feedback was missed due to only being in the form of a blurb of a few sentences on discord. I wanted to try vit cabalist with huge weapon damage stack, but I haven’t had time to play recently. New dog plus being busier with work meant I’ve been lucky to get a hour or two a week to be on my computer.
It happens, enjoy it while it lasts.
2 Likes
I didn’t think this change to Reaping Arc will come to life when I was wondering “what if it was spammable?” back in November. I actually wanted it to have longer cooldown (like 5 sec), but increased damage and some extra utility in the first place.
But I think this course is also acceptable. WD should be cut down to 140% or something, though, that’s for sure.
That might be on the extreme end. Somewhere in 160-180 range would probably work
A relic slot with no chance to get useful completion bonuses (except if you’re Necro) isn’t exactly free - especially when Blade Arc builds get to use Deathstalker for free RR + good stats. Considering that you’re using it as a main attack, it’s supposed to be on the stronger side. After all, we’re comparing Blade Arc with Bloodragers + Mogdrogen the Wolf with super-buff Reaping Arc with either Krieg’s or Bonemonger’s + Aether devotions.
Then there’s Vitality but Aether to Vitality conversion isn’t as prevalent and you need either huge Weapon Damage or huge RR to make up for how heavily Vitality damage is resisted.
All in all, it would be a good addition to make more end-game class combinations like Apostate viable if it weren’t for a) Scion of the Screaming Veil & b) Spellbinders
Whats up with the immediate heavy nerf suggestions on Reaping Arc? I can see Weapon Damage is a bit high on paper (not flat numbers though) but can we not gut it into half as someone suggested?
I’m using it on my Deathknight with Blood Knight set for couple years now as a support damage skill. Now i can autoattack with it and it’s quite fun. For reference my sheet damage is 60-79k with it (Vitality), but i have quite a lot of damage with this character. Sure, it might use a bit of a nerf, but not something heavy please.
I would rather see a minor nerf on it, then remove knockback on non-cd Blade Arc and buff it slightly too compansate imo.
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Read back what I posted above as I’m not sure you’re following here. The skill isn’t free but is essentially free, the opportunity cost on taking Uroboruuk’s Reaping for anyone is far lower than picking Soldier, Blade Arc and a specific group of gear pieces to achieve the same result, and is more flexible for more than just Aether and Vitality as other relic spammables have showed they can adjust to more than the damage types they were intended for.
It’s a matter of stacking enough weapon damage and attack speed through the mammoth-level 245% weapon damage with everything else but your relic slot free to stack those stats on and far more than just Spellbinders or Screaming Veil builds can accomplish that. That is what makes it OP.
Your assumption that the patchnotes you see now have existed in the same form for 3 months is laughable, but I know for the sake of the memes that’s it’s better to simplify a complex issue like this so you can get those sweet likes 
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I know what you said. I just don’t agree with it.
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Even melee builds have to consider multiple factors outside of just stacking damage and speed. There’s devotion pathing to obtain useful procs, worrying about defenses, making sure you have enough sustain. Reaping Arc has the benefit of hitting 9 targets, but the downside is that you can’t use WPS to turbocharge that, so I can’t compare how Aether Reaping Arc compares to something like Aether Savagery + overcapped WPS.
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This may be an unpopular opinion, but I think the ease of conversions to get stacked damage is more OP than the higher numbers on Reaping Arc. You have things like Screaming Veil + MI Arcanist belt that gives Spellbinders 100% conversion, skill points which Arcanists really like to have and good defenses. You have the Gladiator’s Belt which gives 100% Vitality to Physical in one slot and gives you things like Scales for free. If that were cut to 50% and you had to use other gear slots to stack all that damage, it’d be much harder to get the needed damage.
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Your post gives the appearance that giving Aether combinations which have consistently underperformed - like Defiler or Apostate - a way to compete with Physical Soldier class is a bad thing. We all know that things like Spellbinders are going to be broken, so then we work on better balancing Spellbinders. Why are we acting like additional build and class diversity is a bad thing?
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If it becomes the case where Reaping Arc is better than other AA replacers like Savagery & RF, then we look at those and see how the other skills are performing. Can we get some tests and comparisons first before we knee-jerk and reduce a new viable AA replacer by 1/3 or 1/2 and end up screwing everything else? You’d think that after years of nerfing things into the ground (Storm Box, anyone?) that kneejerk cries for nerfs accomplish jack bupkis.