So, about reaper diff.

rabidfox

The People's Champion
So basically the idea is to grind reaper points for several lives while dieing to rng, so you can die to rng a bit less?
The gap is too much, i can solo elite without hirelings or losing health, and the next difficulty you either suffer through or play specific builds only.

P.S. 1-2 reapers per pull are not a problem, my toon is able to melee a carnage one without cc-ing it, the red crowns are.
Bring others along instead of soloing, makes them easier. Otherwise, there's plenty of builds that can solo as 1st lifer thru low skull leveling, but one will occasionally get killed; dying in a harder difficulty is a good thing, otherwise where's the challenge in the game?
 
You guys have some different ideas of fun, compared to me. I get dying to player choices, lag, overconfidence, but having to run several hundred quests when a regular whitenamed can just oneshot you and all you get is the ability to survive a single hit from a trashmob?

P.S. I managed to properly upload the initial screenshot.
 

Ped Xing

Well-known member
You guys have some different ideas of fun, compared to me. I get dying to player choices, lag, overconfidence, but having to run several hundred quests when a regular whitenamed can just oneshot you and all you get is the ability to survive a single hit from a trashmob?

P.S. I managed to properly upload the initial screenshot.
Different strokes for different folks i guess?

I like trying to beat the game at the highest difficulties and ya, i often have to run the same quest 10-20-30 times to do so.

Its not for everyone for sure.
 

PraetorPlato

Well-known member
So basically the idea is to grind reaper points for several lives while dieing to rng, so you can die to rng a bit less?
The gap is too much, i can solo elite without hirelings or losing health, and the next difficulty you either suffer through or play specific builds only.

P.S. 1-2 reapers per pull are not a problem, my toon is able to melee a carnage one without cc-ing it, the red crowns are.
For lower skulls, better movement is a big deal in dying less-not getting hit as much because you’re constantly moving is one of the big ways you can reduce deaths to just a few times per heroic life on r1 on newer characters without reaper points.

For higher skulls, yeah, you’ll randomly die sometimes. Soloing higher skulls is very hard. Group play in higher skulls is fun, because your party can get you back up.

I like reaper because I like mobs having a chance of killing me-that risk means I need to play decently well to survive, which makes the game more interesting to me than if my risk of death is near 0.
 

PraetorPlato

Well-known member
You guys have some different ideas of fun, compared to me. I get dying to player choices, lag, overconfidence, but having to run several hundred quests when a regular whitenamed can just oneshot you and all you get is the ability to survive a single hit from a trashmob?

P.S. I managed to properly upload the initial screenshot.
Below r10, well geared builds can survive a lot more than a single hit from a trash mob. even on r10, building to survive 2 hits or so before RP is common, but high skulls do encourage a style of play where you don’t get hit very much. I find that fun, because it lets me take advantage of DDO’s action combat.

The way you prevent the sort of death in that screenshot is not letting red named champs, especially the auto-crit ones, hit you. Dance around them, CC them, kite them, burst them down, run past them, etc.
 

Positive thinking

Well-known member
You guys have some different ideas of fun, compared to me. I get dying to player choices, lag, overconfidence, but having to run several hundred quests when a regular whitenamed can just oneshot you and all you get is the ability to survive a single hit from a trashmob?

P.S. I managed to properly upload the initial screenshot.
If you dont like dying, come try out EXTREME MORTAL VOYAGE PERMADEATH, we run almost all the content and we run lots of reaper, in fact there is a reaper 4 group that runs every wednesday night. Our epic groups run all epic content on atleast reaper 1 and this goes up as our character level increases.
This is all with every members toon starting as a forst life when joining the guild much like a hardcore server start up.

We run with no hireling, no ship buffs, no house p buffs, non twinked gear and run quests at a minimum of elite at adjusted quest level -2(we do adjust this by 1 level per reaper skull we enter the quest at).

Its a blast and its EXTREME!!!
 

vik

Well-known member
R1 is never easier than elite.
IMO, for a DC caster I would argue R1 is easier especially if you have a full thaum tree.

OP, since you have level 8 spells: have you tried opening your fights with some CC spells? Otto's is a great opener (depending on the mobs you're facing). If your DCs aren't high enough, you can always try web. If that fails, there's always sleet storm. Waves of exhaustion + ice storm can be handy too for getting out of melee range.
 
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IMO, for a DC caster I would argue R1 is easier especially if you have a full thaum tree.

OP, since you have level 8 spells: have you tried opening your fights with some CC spells? Otto's is a great opener (depending on the mobs you're facing). If your DCs aren't high enough, you can always try web. If that fails, there's always sleet storm. Waves of exhaustion + ice storm can be handy too for getting out of melee range.
But i am a melee character, i want to get INTO melee range.
 

vik

Well-known member
Getting out of melee range is more for when you take too many hits and need to heal a bit then wade back in. Slow the enemies down so you can get away then come back in swinging or establish a new CC AoE.

I'd say priority #1 is probably getting your defense high enough to avoid the one shots. CC will help too.

One thing that should help you as well: otto's irresistable dance. You could've used that on that champ that killed you in the screenshot...depending on what kind of champ he was. Some are immune to mind-affecting spells unfortunately.
 
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How many past lives is a lot? Your PRR is 40-ish, suggesting not a lot of divine past lives unless that 40 is ALL from past lives and none of it from gear. AC39 suggests not a lot of martial past lives. MRR of 8 is also a little low.

I think you might need some gear improvement or changes to enhancements

I recommend reading up on the various champion special abilities so that you understand which ones do what.

It IS rare for champions to have red stars and the high-tier abilities at R2 but it does happen and you need to be aware of your surroundings.

WHich past lives do you have?
 

Alco

Well-known member
At R1-4 champions are more dangerous than reapers, with the possible exception of plague reapers because of their heal debuff. After that the power starts to shift more towards reapers, although champions are still dangerous. Once you get to higher level reapers (R5+, I believe) you start getting different types of reapers (doom, despair, vengeance) that can do massive damage and/or greatly buff everything around them so they need to be handled carefully. For example, most groups will kill everything around a vengence reaper or kite it away from mobs before killing it because when it dies it gives a massive buff to all nearby mobs.

As for the fortification, it can be bypassed and at higher levels that is to be expected. Invest in PRR and MRR as they can't be bypassed.
 

Sarlona Raiding

Well-known member
R1 is never easier than elite.
The math proves you are right. The only reason why some feel this way is they get so many bonus hp from reaper trees the extra damage isn't noticed and if a caster they get spell point refreshes that can be situationally better vs. elite, but since you have to do more damage it's really only true if you are mostly one-shotting mobs where there is effectively no difference from elite in spell point cost.

To the op, it just takes practice and getting through the learning curve. My first life running reaper in 2017 I was playing an arti multiclass build and in the house d depths chain spawned about 6 reapers shooting splitting puddings. You die, but learn. I also didn't have ghost touch and had to fix that real quick.
 

Dielzen

Well-known member
Heroic completionist and some racial ones. Not doing epics yet. Also PRR drops when you are dead if you are Undead, its 80ish normally.
This right here is the problem, for three reasons
  1. Epic PLs are all defensive in nature, the benefits of these PLs are among the strongest and best to get early
  2. Reaper XP on level 30+ quests is DOUBLED. This, combined with the natural increase in reaper XP with quest level, means you can run a single R1 quest at cap and earn around 2k reaper XP (first time bonus), compared to getting 1-200 in mid-heroic.
  3. Groups are easier to find in epic, due to the relaxed levelling range, which allows you to join groups and get better rXP than you can solo
Also, I highly recommend not doing melee reaper until you get a few points. Ranged/Caster is so much better due to the innate desire to NOT get in melee range.
 

Dielzen

Well-known member
Also, and I think this deserves a separate post to emphasize....your current focus seems to end up with you having everything done but epic PLs? Is so, this is a horrible idea. The XP gained per quest drops significantly once you exhaust the FTB (First-Time Bonus)

The usual recommendations are to go to 30 twice a life, so you get either Heroic/Racial and 2 Epics, or an Iconic+Class and one Epic
 

vryxnr

Well-known member
r1 is not easier by default like many sometimes claim, but there are breakpoints. Note that this is just for r1.

R1 changes the following from elite:
Players deal only 76.9% normal damage (so, -23.1%)
Enemies deal 20% more damage
Enemy saves go up by 1.5 / skull
Healing during combat reduces to 40% (so, -60%)
Crowd Control duration reduced to 44% or 6 seconds, whichever is higher (-56%)
Death Timer 6 seconds
Reapers can spawn (basic 4 only)
Higher tier champions
Lost Souls can spawn (restores your SP by an amount based on skull level)

Reaper trees give you bonuses. These bonuses can eventually mitigate some/all of the above penalties.

I did the math a while back, so I'm going by memory right now... but for damage it takes around 32-36 reaper points in your respective reaper tree to theoretically match the damage penalty of r1 (assuming no other multipliers. The stronger you are, the less this helps, but at the same time the stronger you are the less the initial penalty will matter as well. If an enemy has 5000 HP and you do 10000 damage outside of reaper, reducing it to 7,690 damage inside reaper is still one shotting it. the +44 extra universal spell power at 34 points is huge if you only have 100 spell power to start with, insignificant if you have 1000+ to begin with)

For DCs, it only takes 6 points all going to boost your DCs and main stat to overcome the enemies increased saves. Instakills don't care how many HP the enemy has. This is the biggest thing many people gloss over. Attacks land more often, thus you do better damage more often, or simply bypass HP by instakilling everything more easily.

For defences, it gets more nebulous and complicated as there are small boosts to prr/mrr, dodge, saves, as well as the HP boosts vs what your character has outside of r1.

So in general (and ignoring some harder to parse factors like lost souls, reapers, champion abilities, etc), elite is technically and mathematically easier than r1 until you have accumulated 30-40+ reaper points, then mathematically it starts to become easier.

However, this is only for r1. The reaper scaling continues with more skulls, where as the reaper trees/points can only do so much.

I wish more people who make the claim that r1 is easier would temper that claim with "when you have X reaper points". So many come from the perspective of maxed reaper points even when talking to new players with zero reaper points, and it makes things painful, awkward, and unfun for the new (to reaper) player.
 
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Shear-buckler

Well-known member
In ~80% of the quests available I will have to disagree. Lost Souls + increased HP's + Increased Damage (once you are at ~30 pts) =a lot of power creep. Then again newer content seems designed for r1.
There is no way to get enough damage with 30 pts to make up for the damage penalty. Its not even close.
 
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