Death Step was considered to be pretty much one of the worst powers in the game last season. While it hasn't got any changes itself the buff to his Strangle Step perk actually opens up a viable AP build, IF you do it right.
First off, Do not pick Death Step round 1. Without any strong ability power or survival items this power is pretty much garbage. You want to pick Strangle Step first, after the buff it now gives +30% shadow step cast speed and doubles your life steal for 3s after you teleport. This makes teleporting right next to someone much safer as you have a base 60% lifesteal after tp. So rounds 1 and 2 you build into weapon power and just try to make as much cash as possible.
Round 3 is when you pick Death Step, and you absolutely need to get the hero item Wreath of Ruin, which gives 20% ability power, 20% move speed during Death Blossom, and 25% Death Blossom Radius which is massive. If you sell all your other items you should have at least 10k left and you can get either Catalytic Crystal for 20% more ult charge from ability damage or Phantasmic flux for 10% AP and WP + 15% lifesteal for both, and lifesteal can give you 100 over health if you have full health. With Reaper's base 30% lifesteal and the double from Strangle Step, that's 90% lifesteal on your Death Step. You can use any extra cash to get more AP items. You might not get a kill yet but you certainly won't die before you can wraith out, and you'll be building ults very quickly.
Once you have all 3 of the hero items mentioned above, you can just keep building fully into ability power, and round 5 you get Spirited to Slay, which resets cooldowns on a kill. When you are constantly spamming AOE damage you get plenty of participation elims and can totally snowball fights. Really the only matchup where you can't do this build is D.Va.
I actually made a YouTube video about this build where I go more in depth if you are interested, I'll link it in the comments.
TL:DR Reaper's death Step can be a powerful tool to build fast and deadly ults if you combine it with Strangle Step and an AP + Lifesteal build.
My video on this build: https://youtu.be/sewhSFxGhIQ?si=QxUMgXmWRRXd6eAU
I’ve been wanting to give his death step power an actually chance and I like your write up. I usually play reaper as weapon damage flanker with silent steps. But I’ll have to give the ap build a chance again
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I went against this build as Sigma yesterday. I wasn’t having any issues dealing with the Reaper, but my teammates who insisted on staying stacked up behind me kept getting destroyed by it. Apparently the idea of spreading out a bit so the Reaper wouldn’t get such easy kills never crossed their minds.
Lol sounds like an average stadium team
pretty sure they did change it so you can cancel the ult. i might be hallucinating this short tho
You can cancel it by buffering a shadow step during your teleport but I think you could do this already. Once the ult starts you're locked in
The alt on teleport? Yes you take it first round, then second power is healing in wraith form, then third is faster teleport.
Death Step Blossom also does spherical AOE, not flat circle AOE. So don't just teleport into the middle of the team, go above or below if you can, get a feel for it in training mode.
It's also pretty bad against tanks in general since it's about AOE not raw damage but maybe that's what you need.
it’s an inflexible gimmick build that can get absolutely negated by certain teams but i think that’s fine. the problem is just that people both don’t understand when and how to build it and end up feeding the enemy team hard
Pretty much yeah. I wouldn't say it's better than a typical WP build pretty much ever but if you play it smart it is definitely very fun