Consider Summon Reaper skills to not consume Spectres and AG

So, i've been trying to make a Reaper of Revenants build on a Servant of Arakali for the event, and although i was able to get to T16 with some investment, the endgame scaling is pretty bad and the build plateaus considerably.
I get that the concept is making the Reaper the "the dementor" that weakens and consumes all others to buff itself (which i find really cool together with the art and animations from the skill), but i think this lack of scaling is mainly due to the inability of effectively having buffs from permanent minions like AG and any itemized spectres besides Dark Marionettes (since they get eaten and lost (issues with losing itemized corpses aside)).

Comparing it to a Vaal Absolution build i was playing on the Architect of Chaos that scaled up to 4 spectres + AG (that could survive wave 15 simulacrum, so essentially persistent):

1. Perfect Walord giving Vitality and permanent endurance charges
2. Perfect Guardian Turtle giving Determination and permanent 5% phys dmg reduction
3. Perfect Spirit of Fortune giving Wrath and lucky lightning damage
4. Perfect Forest Warrior giving permanent Onslaught + its culling strike

5. AG using Leer for +50% increased damage, party wide power and frenzy charges from Gravebind + Victario's Charity and explosions from Gravebing + explode chest and weapon + legacy of fury. And i could scale further with crown of the tyrant.

That is 3 auras, quasi-permanent all charges generation, Onslaught, %increased and lucky damage, damage mitigation and clear from explosions.

Besides maybe considering buffs to the downside of Reaper making your other minions do less damage/having less life, being unable to have these kind of buffs is a HUGE barrier to scaling. The obvious suggestion here is to make Reapers not consume Spectres (or just the itemized ones) and AG to be more on par with other minion builds.

Even the effect of reapers(skill gem) making your non minions have less life is enough to not want to play these with spectres.

The point of these ones is to play without spectre/ag support

And instead run them with other things like zombos/skeles or golems.


I dont see the attraction to this skill gem at all tbh.

Like I said just the -life to all other minions is enough of a nope for me.



You can make better reapers with summon spectre and using perfect dark reapers that dont have all the downside to them. And just run a full spectre build (what I did in settlers)

And get to keep your ag/warlord/warrior/turtle etc...

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Mashgesture#2912 wrote:

The point of these ones is to play without spectre/ag support

I get that and i think it is specifically the design choice that makes the skill sub par with other minion builds. Playing it only with zombies/skeletons/golems don't get even close to the same level of scaling.

Having to manage the non-reaper minions having less life/damage could be the appropriate downside to the powerful buff the reapers get, but it sure needs a little bit of tuning.

I'll maybe give the Spectres build a try, but i do like the Reaper gems.

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Mashgesture#2912 wrote:

The point of these ones is to play without spectre/ag support

I get that and i think it is specifically the design choice that makes the skill sub par with other minion builds. Playing it only with zombies/skeletons/golems don't get even close to the same level of scaling.

Having to manage the non-reaper minions having less life/damage could be the appropriate downside to the powerful buff the reapers get, but it sure needs a little bit of tuning.

I'll maybe give the Spectres build a try, but i do like the Reaper gems.

Reapers are meant to offer a different playstyle.
If they didn't consume minions, then every minion player would just put it in their build cause extra dps is extra dps.

There are specific playstyles that use this skill for this build, some are extremely effective. Which means it doesn't need to be effective in every build, because there is already a reaper build that dominates end games.
Having to manually aim and cast it's ultimate slash is not a playstyle for everyone.
And those builds are much stronger now that you don't need to be constantly using ensnaring arrow to access the bleed damage.

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Jixa87#1706 wrote:

Reapers are meant to offer a different playstyle.
If they didn't consume minions, then every minion player would just put it in their build cause extra dps is extra dps.

There are specific playstyles that use this skill for this build, some are extremely effective. Which means it doesn't need to be effective in every build, because there is already a reaper build that dominates end games.
Having to manually aim and cast it's ultimate slash is not a playstyle for everyone.
And those builds are much stronger now that you don't need to be constantly using ensnaring arrow to access the bleed damage.

Yeah, my suggestion is for them to not consume affliction spectres and AG only, so as to keep the playstyle while also making the possible builds more endgame viable.

Even that particular bleed build that exists can't really get to the same level of scaling as other minion builds because of this, especially on the defensive side. Also Reaper of Revenants don't have the slash neither the bleed, so it's another playstyle on its own.
I guess it can be made to work well for Sanctum, but my hope here is to suggest a way for it to be more broadly playable.