Summon Reaper

Make the player transform into the reaper.
I have played on my level 90 necro and any other minion perform better. Its just not a good concept to only have 1 minion when its bad.

It needs global use. Aoe permanenet taunt, be unkillable. Or be a transformed player with new abilities.

I've tried several build types to try and make reaper play as GGG intended. Unfortunately all has failed at just hitting yellow maps.

This is when the passive points become far to spread out. The builds I've been trying are ones that the reaper is the main minion. My current one, for Archnemesis, is awesome by concept but fails due to needing far to many passive points and sockets. Even went Scion for more and needs 2 six links.

The current one is where I fight with the reaper. I kite and the reaper chases and bleeds. We both dash around and I stay at range with Ethereal knifes.

The design of reaper is great. I love the idea that it runs around and acts like an ally with its own array of abilities. The ability to command it to dash slash is great when you pair it with a kite focused build. I'm using Spiritual Aid so I can scale with it. Now keep in mind, my builds are for fun and will never be top builds. I go for fun game play while being able to boss and get red maps done. If it hits red maps, I count it as a success.

The issues with reaper is the design concept doesn't match what GGG wanted it to be. They said "It wants to be your only minion", witch is awesome. I need these types of skill gems in my life, but here's the thing. Why does it need other minions to perform, to heal, and obtain a buff? I've tried several ways to make it feel like its the only minion I have, but the design falls short and just looks like another minion spam build.

An idea or solution to better fit your design would have it gain that buff from stuff that dies around it, Or give it a culling strike where it absorbs the soul of a weakened creature around it buffing it and healing it. To keep people from slamming it into any minion build and have it stay true to your design, have it have a damage decrease for every minion you have out, Forcing the idea that its not gonna put up with you cheating on it. Its number 1 and it will be treated as such from you.

Another idea would be have it give you a buff as well if its the only minion, This would make it feel as though you have a contract with it, a Partnership.

This I feel, would better suit your idea and would open some more interesting and fun build concepts. Even fix the current one I find is what you, GGG, was after.

A few minor things is that its hard to scale minion resistance and accuracy. The nodes are very far apart and hurts Reaper. It needs to be as Tanky as you. Maybe another idea would be apart of the "contract" with you. it shares those 2 stats with you, maybe even gain your HP to its own as well. I'd Love to use one of your new Linking skills with it but atm, that would be suicidal.

Thank you for your time.

Reaper really needs a more clear and effective means to scale. It wants to do way too much and spreads your points way too thin to be really effective.

It wants to be your only minion, but also needs a constant feed of other minions to eat and buff. This also makes it impossible to run an Animate Guardian or Specters, hampering its power and quality of life compared to other minion.

So we have to scale up minion damage. This is expected This forces our points in a certain area of the tree to boost the damage and to give our reaper any degree of durability.

But what then? Reaper doesn't do enough damage with just minion damage investment. You have to invest further such as to scale up the bleed damage. However, to get the two major bleed wheels you'd have to travel a pretty large distance away from your minion wheels. And then the bleed damage is low on bosses and such without a source of Ensnaring Arrow like other bleed builds, so now you have to work THAT into your build along with minions since it can't apply bleeds fast enough for Crimson Dance.

Reaper's dash attack also requires a way to patch up mana sustain or takes up a flask slot for an eternal mana pot in order to sustain it.

You just end up stretching yourself into some weird build that's all over the place in gear, passives, and playstyle and it's numerically weak even if you jump through all the hoops.

please, can you do something to Summon Reaper this league? :(
i really like the concept, but in it's current state is no more than a meme.

- what about making it not eating permanet minions? at least we could use support minions like charges spectres or carrion golems comfortably.

- removing the hp and dmg penalty to non-reaper minions. (maybe is too much? but you could do something to nerf reapers AOE and just make it a single target button while AOE is done by the other minions.)

i dont know, all i can say is that is a button that feels SO GOOD to press, but any build with it is pretty much a meme. please do something for it.

There’s been some positive changes to Summon Reaper this patch but also a nerf to minions in general. I wonder how it’s going so far when it comes to performance?

*Freshly bakes Vanilla Wafers and waits for them to cool down; then eats them*

I really enjoyed the concept of this skill gem, reaper has appeal as a minion.
However, it's hard work keeping minions alive as it is combined with the reaper devouring them, it's insane. I went from zombie/golems/skels to reaper/golems/skels and the only difference in gameplay is i went from calmly summoning skels to furiously summoning them. Occassionally a golem would die, often a golem would be devoured. It's just intense work to keep the reaper satisfied. The reward for maintaining this furious summoning?
An unnoticeable difference.

Just ran some tests on my necro on Standard.

Reaper performed rather poorly, compared to literally any other minion that I've put the same investment in...

And then there are people out there who have made it work with a jugg...

The new minion jewelry is a right step for summoners, but the amount of hoop jumping is downright ridiculus.

DPS is nonexistent without ensnaring arrow, so you have to pick up a bow. Clear is not good without Asenath's.


I went back to the original video in which the Reaper was introduced, and the concept it's introduction made has absolutely no correlation to what efforts are needed for a build to function, and not even on a Necromancer.

I don't like to sacrifice immersion for the sake of functionality, and I am disappointed in this skill in it's current state.

Please rethink the concept of "The ultimate minion" - a monster under the player's control that doesn't need golems or anything like that... Perhaps make it scale off of the player and remove our own ability to deal damage, but make the reaper immortal. Or like, give it a secret buff where link skills work 100% more effectively on it.

I just want to run around, commanding the reaper and giving it buffs ever so often, without thinking of micromanaging a small community...

been trying it out in 3.20, I think the damage is good, clearing is pretty lackluster without some type of on death explosions. Having to use a bow because ensnare only exist for bows is a bit too limiting on what you can do with it.

Reaper should stay summoned on logging out and in. I had some disconnection issues and had a few near death experiences because I jumped right back into a map without my only source of damage summoned.

Chance to bleed should be enabled to work with it like chance to poison works on every other minion skill its honestly strange that it does not.

Overall I like the skill and how it plays.

Like all minion and spell skills in poe having + to gem levels being the best stat for damage makes gearing not very exciting.

having some type of disposable minions for the reaper to eat is mandatory, after extensive testing I settled on the amulet jorgin bench craft summon spectral wolf on kill. I still summon a few skeletons in boss fights but mapping got a lot better.

I believe that the problem with the "consume other minions" could be resolved with an Alternate Quality of this gem, just like the Phantasmal Summon Skeletons, which: every 1% of the gem's quality gives it a 5% of chance to summon a Skeleton Archer instead of a Skeleton Warrior (100% chance at 20% gem's quality).

With an Alternate Quality of the Reaper gem, like a Phantasmal Summon Reaper (which does not exist yet), you could have something similar, like: every 1% of the gem's quality gives the Reaper a 5% chance to consume a corpse instead of consuming your other minions (100% chance at 20% gem's quality).

It would still have the Life and Damage debuff, but it wouldn't end up consuming your other buff minions, like Specters, Golems and Animated Guardians, without even mentioning that: players who play with a single Reaper minion build would be able to give it the Empowerment buff, from consuming, even without having to summon any other minions.

Why don't the transfigured Reaper gems share the physical gem tag like the original?