Reaper PvP Guide for FFXIV

In patch 6.1, FFXIV completely overhauled the light party PvP duties, creating the brand new game mode of Crystalline Conflict. As such, Reaper's overall PvE kit has been significantly watered down for the PvP experience. Reaper has the unique bonus of using their Limit Break absurdly frequently - usually once per teamfight, minimum - and has plenty of skills to deal large amounts of damage very quickly to your enemies.

This document will mainly focus on the new Crystalline Conflict mode, so while portions of it may apply to other PvP game modes, it is intended to apply to Crystalline Conflict.

Strengths

• Very fast Limit Break generation
• Incredibly powerful burst window
• Strong mobility and defense options

Weaknesses

• Needs Limit Break to execute strong burst
• 60 second cooldown and cast time on two nukes
• Most strong skills locked to GCD

Underlying all of the fun buttons you have to press, you always have your core string of three GCD actions that you want to keep rolling whenever you have nothing better to do with your GCD and are engaged with an enemy:

• Slice → Waxing Slice → Infernal Slice

None of your other GCD-spinning action will interrupt this combo string, so ideally you won't drop it between uses, but you should never delay use of other actions in favor of maintaining the combo, due to its low relative damage output.

In addition to this, you have a 20s cooldown, Grim Swathe which grants Soul Reaver stacks, turning your combo actions into Guillotine, which deals significantly more damage than the base combo. As such, you want to use this for additional damage when engaging enemies.

Death Warrant is an incredibly powerful skill to initiate a sudden burst on a single target. The more damage you can pack into the 7 second window, the stronger the skill becomes. It can essentially turn your Plentiful Harvest into a 30,000 nuke or Communio into 24,000. Timed properly, you can absolutely delete even the beefiest targets. The Harvest Moon action unlocked by using it is also your main ranged damage option while also being a powerful crowd nuke and heal when used well.

Your core mechanic as Reaper in PvP is Soul Sacrifice. Gained by hitting enemies with Soul Slice or by killing them with any skill, these power up your single strongest action, Plentiful Harvest. You lose all stacks if you die, so always prioritize survival if you have amassed a sizeable chunk of them. Generally speaking, you hold your stacks until a time presents itself to burn down an unwitting target - generally a pesky ranged or healer. The additional effect of charging your Limit Gauge does NOT scale off of how many Sacrifices you have, so be sure to Harvest for the Limit Break generation as soon as you intend to prep your burst. Judging when to hold and when to burn is the most difficult part of maximizing your effectiveness on Reaper.

Your Limit Break, Tenebrae Lemurum, alters your buttons temporarily into stronger actions with more interesting effects. Grim Swathe is replaced with Lemure's Slice which gives you a bind. You only get one within the duration of the Limit Break, so make sure you make it count. It is, generally-speaking, best used just before you execute Communio, since it will lock the enemies in place and confirm the hits and/or kills.

An underrated part of the Limit Break is that it inflicts all nearby targets with Hysteria upon activation. This stops anything they are currently doing, including cast times and assaulting you or your allies. It also sends all of them running in random directions, potentially breaking up a coordinated group effort, if your team can react quickly enough.

With all of that said, there are many different ways that you can utilize your burst to great effect. As your GCDs are on a 2.4 second timer and the duration of Death Warrant is only 7 seconds, we can only fit a total of three GCD hits into that window... unless we use it in the middle of the Limit Break, where the GCDs are 1.5s long. As such, the burst begins right after we press Tenebrae Lemurum:

1. Void Reaping
2. Cross Reaping
3. Void Reaping
4. Death Warrant (ability)
5. Cross Reaping
6. Lemure's Slice (ability)
7. Communio
8. Grim Swathe (ability)
9. Plentiful Harvest
10. Harvest Moon (ability)
11. Guillotine
12. (Death Warrant pops)

You can also buffer this on either side (preferably before) with Soul Slice to pad the damage on your Plentiful Harvest in the middle there. Using all of the above with 0 Sacrifices (4000 damage from Plentiful) means that, in the 7s of Death Warrant, you will deal a total of 52,000 damage plus the Warrant popping at the end for 26,000 additional - 78,000 unmitigated damage on (mostly) the single target of your Warrant. With maximum stacks of Sacrifice (it scales +2500 per stack so 8+ stacks yields 24,000) those damage values scale up to 72,000 raw damage, 108,000 total after the Warrant pops for an additional 36,000. That is how you bust a tank.

You will, however, be using your Limit Break more than once per minute (when Plentiful Harvest is unavailable), and in those windows you just substitute in any of your 8000 potency actions in its place, generally a Soul Slice will be added, cutting to a (still respectable) 84,000 damage burst. The main loss is on the splash damage around the target, which does drop off a little.

The main downside to your burst is that it is 7 seconds long, which is quite a long time for someone to sneak in and pop you with a stun, so be cautious about those skills and try to bait them out earlier in your Limit Break so you can Purify to protect yourself during the burst. Remember, those introductory Reaping skills can easily be skipped if the opportunity to burst presents itself sooner. They are absolutely not necessary.

In addition to being able to absolutely nuke the heck out of whoever you want, Reaper boasts a rather substantial defensive upside if used properly. Harvest Moon is a splash damage AoE that heals you for all the damage it does - to every target it hits. While it requires you to burn Death Warrant outside of your Tenebrae Lemurum phase, surviving to maintain your Sacrifice stacks is well worth delaying your next deletion by a few seconds.

You also have crowd control effects built into some of your main skills, namely Grim Swathe inflicts Heavy and Lemure's Slice inflicts Bind. Both are effective means of preventing the enemy from escaping you, once you have signed their death warrant. Pun intended.

On top of all of this and the basic recovery options, you have Arcane Crest. Just like in PvE, this skill is absolutely incredible. It gives you a beefy shield which often allows time to escape and heals yourself and your buddies over the next 6 seconds once your shield runs out (and, trust me, it will). This skill should be used liberally, especially in concert with your burst phases.

And of course, never forget about Hell's Ingress. It functions identically to its PvE counterpart, making it both a powerful engage and disengage option. Of note, the portal it leaves behind lasts for 10 seconds, which is longer than your burst window. Food for thought.