The new melee DPS job, Reaper, was released with Endwalker early access queues. Now, they’ve had a chance to try it out and see how it compares to the other DPS jobs.
Reaper was announced back in May at the digital FFXIV Fan Festival when Director Naoki Yoshida, more commonly known as Yoshi-P, took the stage decked out in full Reaper cosplay. The job’s dark, ominous aesthetic matches its lore. According to The Lodestone, the first Reapers were farmers who, driven from their homes, bound themselves to Voidsent creatures to gain power in exchange for the souls of those they would slay. The concept for Reaper is much darker than the rest of the jobs in FFXIV (except perhaps Dark Knight), and it’s unique in several other ways.
So far, for Endwalker's Reaper job has been very positive. The melee DPS job is intuitive and relatively easy to pick up, which is good news considering it starts out at level 70 with more than 20 abilities and weaponskills already unlocked. The animations are flashy (in a good way) and last long enough to fill the Global Cooldown (GCD) time, meaning the player’s character isn’t left standing awkwardly still between abilities. Each battle job in FFXIV has one or more gauges of different resources that must be managed for maximum performance. For Reaper, there are three gauges: the Soul Gauge, the Shroud Gauge, and the Death Gauge. The former two are filled by using various weaponskills, and the latter displays the remaining stacks of "Lemure Shroud" the player has after using the ability “Enshroud.”
How FFXIV: Endwalker’s Reaper Differs From Other DPS Jobs
It’s not yet clear exactly how high Reaper’s damage ceiling is compared to other jobs in FFXIV, but the speed at which Reapers have been able to melt through enemies is a good indicator that the job is holding its own in of total damage dealt. Players who feel their Reaper is underperforming in of overall damage may be overlooking a very important action on their hotbar: “Shadow of Death” (or “Whorl of Death'' when fighting multiple enemies at once), a weaponskill that, among other things, places a temporary debuff on the target that increases the Reaper’s damage dealt to that target by 10%. As long as players are consistent in applying and maintaining this debuff on their enemies, they shouldn’t have any problem keeping up with other DPS jobs.
Reaper relies far less on positionals than other jobs like Monk and Dragoon in FFXIV, which makes it a good introduction to the mechanic for players who are new to melee DPS in FFXIV. It doesn’t have very many off-Global Cooldown (oGCD) abilities, which means it doesn’t end up feeling as busy as jobs like Ninja and Machinist. Though it doesn’t offer as much utility as more ive jobs like Bard and Dancer, it does have the “Arcane Circle” ability, which boosts the party’s damage output by 3%.
Overall, Reaper is distinct from Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker's other DPS jobs both in aesthetic and in gameplay. While the job is relatively simple, it doesn’t feel slow, as it instead has a smooth flow that feels satisfying. Given how many great features Reaper has, players who try it out are sure to have a lot of fun.
