Reaper Guide for Lost Ark

Reaper is an insanely mobile and fast class, capable of dealing large amounts of damage while looking cool doing it. Reaper does have a higher skill ceiling than most classes in Lost Ark, so in some people's case, you may not be dealing damage but at least you'll be doing it with style!

Reaper has the option of being a more burst oriented class with a simple build-spend loop ( Lunar Voice) or a more consistent style of keeping your gauge maximum and constantly refreshing your self-buff ( Hunger). With your twin blades and playlist of Evanescence at the ready, you'll combat enemies while in Chaos Mode or Persona Mode depending on your class engraving.

While simple to understand, Reaper can punish players who cannot properly position themselves for back positionals, have lack of encounter knowledge, or are unable to maintain uptime which directly affects gauge generation. Bosses constantly move around, challenging players to use Reaper's toolkit to stay on target and land their skills. Gauge is not generated upon whiff, so missing skills means more adjustments within a damage cycle, which can push your Swoop finishers outside of the short burst windows and party member's synergy. When executed properly, Reaper has one of the most satisfying rotations in the game. Well designed sounds and visuals create a spectacle for your eyes to feast upon. The goal is to see that as often as possible along with big damage numbers. Reaper's aesthetic is attracting to the player, however, it's your job to be attractive to others and not just be hitting like a fancy wet noodle.

Reaper is an easy to learn, hard to master class. The base gameplay loop revolves around using your Dagger and Shadow skills to build meter and cashing in with your Swoop skill as finishers. All skills increase your Persona gauge which allows you to summon a Shadow Illusion and enter Persona Mode when full. When your Persona gauge is maxed out, Dagger and Shadow skills begin building Chaos gauge. When full, you enter Chaos Mode and gain a self-buff towards Critical Hit Rate, Movement Speed and Attack Speed for a short period of time. With its engravings, Reaper's gameplay focuses either staying in Chaos Mode ( Hunger) or constantly building Persona gauge and cashing out an enhanced Swoop skill when in Persona Mode ( Lunar Voice).

Reaper's synergy isn't really the most desired, Defense Reduction is shared with Artillerist, Destroyer and Gunlancer. Along with being an Earth's Entropy user, you compete with other classes like Wardancer that have better synergy with a job like Deathblade. That isn't to say Reaper's synergy is a reason to not take it into parties, but it may exclude you from groups looking for the perfect party synergy meta.

Along with Deadeye and Gunslinger, Reaper has very low effective HP. Reaper is very squishy and isn't the type of job to DPS without worry of taking a few hits. On top of doing good damage, you'll also have to manage your risk/reward to ensure you don't have an early departure from Arkesia by making the floor your newlywed.

Boasting fast, low commitment animations is one of Reaper's strengths. Whereas others may be stuck holding or casting skills, Reaper has fluidity in a majority of its skills that can move them around out of harm's way. Never afraid to be special, Reaper is the only class in the game that can Counter from behind an enemy. Using the Dagger skill Nightmare, you'll be able to go to the opposite direction of your current location. Absolutely juicing on the boss from behind and see it flash blue? Throw your dagger and press the skill again to instantly warp in front and make your party "ooooh" as you grin and do the same yourself.

Hunger grants increased Chaos gauge generation and +25% Attack Power when full. You'll be constantly refreshing the Chaos buff with Dagger and Shadow skills while also having the bonus effect from Hunger and using Swoop skills on cooldown. You only exit Chaos Mode when the self buff drops so prioritize using your Dagger and Shadow skills to refresh the buff. Dagger skills must land, while Shadow skills can refresh the buff on whiff, which is very useful if there is downtime. Persona Mode normally generates stacks of increased damage on your Swoop skills.

If using Lunar Voice, your Swoop skills' damage are increased by +160% immediately rather than being a stacking buff. Damage cycles with Lunar Voice revolve around building gauge, entering Persona Mode and using your juiced up Swoop finisher which ends Persona Mode.