While Endwalker has been out for several months at this point, the new jobs added alongside the expansion are still going strong, with the Reaper being one of the strongest offerings in Final Fantasy 14. Furthermore, with Patch 6.1's substantial and groundbreaking changes to the game's PvP, the Reaper is in an excellent spot across most modes.

RELATED: Final Fantasy 14: Frontline PvP Guide

Though the Reaper won't be as formidable as a Dragoon, its damage output in PvP is quite impressive, allowing you to carry the haunting presence and devastating moveset over seamlessly to annihilate other players. The Reaper can be tricky to learn, especially in Crystalline Conflict, but it can be a rewarding and excellent job if you take the time to learn it properly.

Overview

The Reaper excels in many areas and is a solid Melee DPS job in PvE and PvP activities. However, when it comes to PvP, the Reaper is one of the few instances where it can prove challenging to transition comfortably from its PvE systems and adapt to its PvP playstyle. Your main objective is to periodically dish out burst damage to targets and finish them off with the help of your teammates or one of many combo routes at your disposal.

As your role implies, you are here to deal high damage at close range by chaining together various actions to achieve that goal. While bagging eliminations is important, your number one priority is to deal damage and help your party members out. In most cases, getting an assist is just as crucial as landing the finishing blow, and contributing mass amounts of damage to a priority target is an excellent way to help your team thrive. While it's okay to focus on opponents with a smaller than average health pool, learning when to switch your attention to enemies your team is targeting is essential to success.

While having a high kill count may seem significant, it genuinely isn't at the end of the day. What matters most is dealing large amounts of damage, assisting your team, and staying alive. And in the Reaper's case, they have several actions at their disposal that make that a reality.

Job Action Breakdown

Like its PvE counterpart, the Reaper's kit in the overhauled PvP has several tricks up its sleeve that allow you to wreak havoc on the opposing team. Being able to summon your Avatar to fight by your side -or offering it your flesh to act as its vessel- adds much devastation to your abilities that it's unbelievably difficult to deal with this job whenever it's on a rampage.

Default Rotation

The Infernal Slice combo is the Reaper's default rotation, allowing you to throw out three quick attacks with increasing potency. While this won't ever be your go-to combo, it is excellent to toss out at the end of your full combo, when helping your team take down a target with low health, or at the start of a handful of encounters. Furthermore, the Infernal Slice Combo will be particularly useful whenever you're waiting for a cooldown to resolve. But, for the most part, you won't use this rotation as your primary source of damage as that comes from the full combo, which we will go over next!

• Slice > Waxing Slice > Infernal Slice

Full Combo

The Reaper's full combo rotation presented below showcases everything that makes the job such a devastating force to deal with in PvP. The buffs allow you to increase your damage output drastically while simultaneously building up for a deadly closing series of strikes. Furthermore, the Reaper's ability to get out of harm's way in a blink of an eye, and jump instantly back into it, can make them hard to deal with from the opposing side of things.

• Arcane Crest > Death Warrant (Soul Slice) > Grim Swathe (Gibbet + Gallows) > Harvest Moon > Infernal Slice Combo*
  • *If you aren't actively being pursued by enemies and didn't eliminate your target with the full combo, finishing it with your Infernal Slice Combo will almost guarantee you the KO.

Full Combo Step-By-Step Breakdown

Kicking things off with Arcane Crest will allow you to absorb 12,000 damage. It will grant you a ten percent damage increase for ten seconds, with the bonus of supplying you and your teammates with a gradual heal that has a cure potency of 6,000 whenever the barrier goes away. While you can technically open up with something else, Arcane Crest is far too beneficial for us to recommend anything else. Being able to absorb that much damage while dealing ten percent more damage is genuinely one of the best combo starts in PvP.

Next up, after casting Arcane Crest, you should go directly into Death Warrant and follow it immediately after with Soul Slice. The idea here is to not only capitalize on the ten percent damage increase from Arcane Crest but to apply the effects of Death Warrant to the enemy on top of that, which accumulates damage dealt in a seven-second window. Your target will receive 50 percent of the compiled damage whenever the seven-second window expires, which will be quite a lot, thanks to Soul Slice. Soul Slice will typically attack with a potency of 8,000 but is now enhanced by ten percent because of Arcane Crest. Furthermore, you are guaranteed to do at least 4,000 damage after seven seconds but can do much more if you move fast.

After Soul Slice has been used, it's time to dive into the subsequent three actions immediately: Grim Swathe, Gibbet, and Gallows. If fast enough, you can land these actions before the seven-second window of Death Warrant expires, landing you tons of damage in a concise amount of time. Grim Swathe will deal 4,000 damage in a cone AoE in front of you and inflict Heavy on anyone hit by it for three seconds. Gibbet and Gallows deal a combined 16,000 damage, which is only enhanced by Arcane Crest. Furthermore, if you manage to cram all of this into Death Warrant's seven-second window, you will deal an additional 16,000 damage whenever the timer expires.

With your target more than likely below half-health, it's time to finish strong with Harvest Moon. On its own, Harvest Moon deals 4,000 damage but scales the lower your target's health is. In this case, the opponent is most certainly at or below 50 percent HP, making this action attack with a potency of 8,000. Additionally, you will also absorb 100 percent of incoming damage and convert it into HP, which is an excellent way to close out your combo. While unlikely, there's a slim chance you can fit Harvest Moon into both the ten-second window of Arcane Crest and the seven-second window of Death Warrant for significantly more damage. But, in most circumstances, this will be challenging to pull off due to the chaotic nature of the PvP.

Limit Break Breakdown

While the damage potential of Tenebrae Lemurum is immense, you are still extremely vulnerable whenever you activate the Reaper's Limit Break. This can lead to many writing this ability off, especially when compared to other high-damaging Limit Breaks, but it does serve its purpose and, when used right, can be devastating.

Due to being vulnerable when Enshrouded, we do not recommend chaining this together with your full combo. Instead, we suggest using it in correspondence with your party and popping in whenever you are in good health. You gain five stacks of Enshrouded with Tenebrae Lemurum and have several abilities chance as a result. With Communio consuming every stack of Enshroud, we recommend using it last while using Lemure's Slice, Void Reaping, and Cross Reaping for the first four stacks.

Common Actions Breakdown

Common Actions are universal across every job in Final Fantasy 14's PvP. These Actions range from providing 15,000 HP to increasing your movement speed to cleansing yourself of many ailments.

General Strategy

When playing any PvP mode as a Reaper, it's essential to work in tandem with your teammates and use your high burst damage to your advantage. Since you will rarely use Hell's Ingress to jump into encounters, we recommend using it as a means to escape encounters, heal up, take a breather, and regroup with your teammates. Having such a helpful escape tool is beneficial for most jobs, but it works particularly well with the Reaper's playstyle and strong focus on burst damage.

It's also crucial to understand that your role is to do damage, not have a staggeringly high KO count. Snagging eliminations will come naturally as the match drags on, so getting too caught up in confirming kills or focusing too much on your K/D/A will ultimately be detrimental. If someone "steals" your kill, don't view it as a bad thing. You ultimately did your job by unleashing mass amounts of damage on them, letting your team take notice and help secure the elimination. Remember, earning eliminations, assists, and performing Soul Slice will accumulate stacks of Immortal Sacrifice, so assists are just as good for you.

Lastly, you should never charge headfirst under 99 percent of circumstances, especially as Reaper. While you do have the potential to wreak havoc and deal tons of damage, you are not a one-person army. Take your time, stay with your team, and strategically pick off targets while focusing on the high-priority ones. As your party's DPS, needlessly getting eliminated can severely affect the match's outcome, so getting too wreckless is never a good idea.

Crystalline Conflict Strategy

Crystalline Conflict is unique in the sense that you must work as a team in every facet to achieve victory, which can make things frustrating if everyone isn't on the same page. However, that shouldn't change your overall goal too much, especially as a Melee DPS. In this competitive 5v5 mode, your order of operations is simple: Deal devastating amounts of damage, apply suffocating amounts of pressure, avoid death, and stay with your team at all costs.

Another thing to remember is the thirty seconds of downtime you have after the pit opens. You cannot push the Crystal in these thirty seconds, which is a large oversite by many players. Our suggestion is to use this time to mark potential priority targets on the other team and view your team composition. Find which matchups you think will benefit you and your team, and use the chat to single the targets of interest out to your party. Trying to engage in combat during this phase should not be a thing you ever do, as it achieves nothing and can put your team in a rough spot to recover from early on.

Once the Crystal unlocks, you can finally put everything we've been going over into use. Utilize the full combo highlighted above to unleash loads of burst damage onto the enemy, help your party eliminate enemies, and stay on or near the Crystal at all times unless you need to regroup. Get in the action, unleash your combo, bail if needed, and regroup for another crack at it.

Furthermore, you should always use your Limit Break whenever available. Reapers build their meter up much faster than most other Melee DPS jobs and can frequently use their Limit Break, especially if you have a good match. However, please be mindful of how you're still vulnerable whenever using your Limit Break. Don't use it if you are near death or if you can get ganged up on by several enemies. Use it cautiously and strategically.

Frontline Strategy

If you aren't playing Crystalline Conflict, you are likely partaking in the Duty Roulette activity Frontline. This popular mode also received the 6.1 PvP overhaul, making it much more chaotic and fun than ever before. Still, while Frontline is more subdued than its competitive counterpart, you should go in with the mindset of working with your team to emerge victorious.

Since the Reaper is a Melee DPS, your playstyle doesn't change much, making your overall goals consistent in Frontline. Deal devastating amounts of damage, apply suffocating amounts of pressure, avoid death, and stay with your team at all costs. This is essentially the Melee DPS PvP mantra and will help you achieve victory if you follow it. Additionally, your playstyle will be unchanged across Secure, Seize, Shatter, and Danshig Naadam, aside from the different objectives.

Due to Frontline being much more casual, you can let your hair down and play a bit more carelessly. Just don't get too carried away. Your actions still have direct consequences for your team and the match's outcome, but it's not the end of the world or nearly as nuclear if you make a terrible decision, charge in, and die. But, much like the Ninja, Dragoon, and other Melee DPS jobs, your overall strategy is to Attack > Retreat > Regroup > Capture Objectives > Defend > Repeat.

Frontline isn't meant to be taken nearly as seriously as Crystalline Conflict, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't put any effort into it. Staying behind your Tank, jumping on targets with your full combo, and helping capture objectives is still what your primary focus should be. Just don't sweat the small stuff or get caught up on a death or loss of an objective. It isn't as detrimental as you think.

NEXT: Final Fantasy 14: Complete Guide