Viper Changes Thread - Share your thoughts

My experience with Viper so far has been in the extremes and Savage fights. While playing it before 7.05, it was a simple job. Having cleared the Savage tier with Viper, I'd say it's a little simpler in the sense that you don't have to worry about a DoT, but it plays pretty much the same as it did. I will say that it has been very enjoyable to progress and clear with in Savage, specifically M3 and M4. Having cleared both of those fights, I don't believe I can say that I could push the other melee classes to the extreme and not lose out on even a single GCD. Perhaps this tier is just built for Viper, but I can't deny that it is fun to play regardless of how simple it may be. Initially I was going to play Samurai for this tier, but that didn't pan out with the changes to Tsubame-geashi all but ruining 2.15 GCD samurai for me.

Edit: Ultimately, I'm indifferent. I think it is silly that Viper got changed in the way it did so quickly. It takes time to adjust, learn, and optimize a class.

It's just so much less fun than it used to be - there's no tension on the job anymore at all which is what made it fun. It felt like it was MEANT to be a job with simple execution but fun little things to manage among the chaos of all its buttons. Now it is literally "press glowing button" with NOTHING else to think about, why even add a job if it's going to be changed into something so boring and uninspired?

I definitely think the debuff could feel too constrictive before but it'd have been such a better change to just extend the cap or something instead of cutting it outright

There's a lot to this forum thread that i'd like to read through but at the time I just want to put my thoughts down and it may be the same as others on the thread i'm not sure yet.

my personal history is i've been playing since ARR as a bard main, I've been playing on Gilgamesh the whole time and made an alt when the oceanic servers opened but still mainly play on NA cause that's where most of my friends are.

Honestly these changes were upsetting to read and having played it for a while upsetting to play through. The ONLY change I wanted to see with the job was the removal of positional requirements on Hunter's Coil and Swiftskin's Coil. I felt like it did not feel good trying to double weave and repositioning to around the boss for what amounted to a 50 potency increase in damage each way. I actually like Noxious Gnash, I wish it did something other than a damage increase (a DoT would have been nice or something interesting like as long as the debuff was applied it increased the potency of every oGCD attack or something along those lines but I digress) but otherwise I felt that the debuff could have been ok if its timer went up to 60 seconds (still only applying 20 though) but that was really it. I though out the gate the class felt a little rough around the edges but I truly loved playing it and the flow of it when positionals were turned off for fights.

the decision to remove Noxious Gnash and replace it with this very lukewarm forced alternation legitimately might be the worst decision i've ever seen SE make since they put cast bars on Bard in Heavensward. Like I've never felt like I'd seen a job gutted so badly since that expansion and that's knowing how much the dev team seems to like bullying Dark Knight.

If I could ask for one thing, please design team walk back these changes to Viper. the choices aren't fun the decision to remove the debuff ruins the core rotation of the class and truly ruins the theming of it in my honest opinion. Please remove the positionals from Hunter's Coil and Swiftskin's Coil and bring back Noxious Gnash or give us a debuff of some kind that does something interesting that requires the player to put more thought into their rotation and the decisions that they make. I know you all can do it because Bard came back with great design changes before. The class originally was imo overburdened with too many things to deal with, 4 positionals, about 20 oGCDs, a Debuff, a gauge to manage and that was before you factor in raid mechanics. Just take out those 2 positionals and increase Noxious Gnash's maximum debuff timer to 60 seconds and revert all the other changes back to pre-patch 7.05. Imho I think this will leave the class in a really good place that still allows some skill expression while making it a little bit easier to get into.

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Originally Posted by lugiaXD

The ONLY change I wanted to see with the job was the removal of positional requirements on Hunter's Coil and Swiftskin's Coil. I felt like it did not feel good trying to double weave and repositioning to around the boss for what amounted to a 50 potency increase in damage each way. I actually like Noxious Gnash, I wish it did something other than a damage increase (a DoT would have been nice or something interesting like as long as the debuff was applied it increased the potency of every oGCD attack or something along those lines but I digress) but otherwise I felt that the debuff could have been ok if its timer went up to 60 seconds (still only applying 20 though) but that was really it. I though out the gate the class felt a little rough around the edges but I truly loved playing it and the flow of it when positionals were turned off for fights.

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One of the changes I proposed was to make Noxious Gnash a target debuff that only increased the potency of Steel Fangs. Leave everything else the same, the 20 second application time, the stacking to 40 seconds, and applying with Reaving Fangs/Vicewinder. This would ensure the basic combo remains exactly the same as before they removed Noxious Gnash, but remove the danger of having it fall off during double Reawaken Windows. Turning Noxious Gnash into a simple DoT with the same application mechanics would have a similar effect as well, and I thnk that would be fine too. Honestly my preference would be that they just brought it back as it was to begin with, but if that's not going to happen then I think this is a good middle ground.

Regarding the positionals I could get down with removing them for the Vicewinder combo, while keeping them in the final step of the basic combo. I never really had a problem with them, but I also find that I'm using True North almost exclusively for the Vicewinder combo so removing them would basically have no effect for me. And I would have preferred that over removing Noxious Gnash.

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Originally Posted by jonimated

One of the changes I proposed was to make Noxious Gnash a target debuff that only increased the potency of Steel Fangs. Leave everything else the same, the 20 second application time, the stacking to 40 seconds, and applying with Reaving Fangs/Vicewinder. This would ensure the basic combo remains exactly the same as before they removed Noxious Gnash, but remove the danger of having it fall off during double Reawaken Windows.

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Honestly I would be completely okay with it staying a 40 second cap if it worked something like that where the damage is given to the rest of the viper moveset and doesn't necessarily effect Reawaken. I will also say though that something I really enjoyed about Noxious Gnash as a debuff was that it was also baked into the rotation and toolkit of Viper so much better than it was on Reaper with death's design.

The fact that dreadfangs (now reaving fangs) was a combo starter and the fact that Dreadwinder (now Vicewinder) was a core part of the rotation and a net damage gain made the debuff actually feel good to maintain unlike with reaper where I found it more of a hindrance because I had to spend a GCD on a button that does nothing but apply the debuff. It's the kind of thing that after playing the class for a while I said to myself "Wow this part of the job is really well thought out and timed pretty well to make me think about keeping it up but also not getting to haphazard with Dreadfangs since Dreadwinder is going to come up soon and Steel Fangs does more damage as a combo starter". Sadly the team decided to throw out that piece of great design for something much more simple and overall not as fun.

Even after giving it a try in savage, it just feels so empty now. I unironically would have preferred positionals being removed than having a timer gutted, but the monkeys paw curls...

Not every job needs to be loved by anyone, why doesnt SE understand that? And I wouldnt imagine casual players cared about noxious gash since the job is already so simple to play, just hit the shiny buttons and youll do good damage. Who was this change even for?

The only change I was hoping from them was using the twin swords on the vipersight gauge to show timers on the haste and damage buffs, instead of what step you were on the 1-2-3 combo. just feels so redundant.

Tried the job again after dropping it post-changes and I can't help but find it more confusing to play than before. Things that used to feel natural just ... don't anymore.

• Vicewinder stacks have to be actively tracked now. Before I realistically only had to do so when refreshing Gnash.
• Permanently glowing combo. It feels like at every moment the main combo is demanding my attention. Even knowing the potency buffs are a full minute, the fact that it's glowing feels like it's constantly begging me to prioritize it.
• Tracking which combo starter I'm on is annoying and I can never stare away from my hotbar.

I feel like I hit this part midway through a boss or engagement where I don't know why I'm pressing specific buttons anymore. For some potency might be a good enough answer but I prefer jobs that give you more than that, which is why I really liked how Gnash tied the whole kit.

But even the timer changes to one minute feel weird to me. For testing purposes, I went out of my way to see if you could drop the one minute buffs if you went nuts with the other skills. The result it that it's possible but very, very hard. What hasn't been hard to drop however ... is the combo itself. More than anything, it now feels like I need to always finish a combo before starting any Awakening/Vicewinder/Uncoiled loops because unlike Gnash there is no possible way to track the combo timer.

The difference here vs before is that before Viper's resources had to be used evenly throughout a fight (or pooled for specific reasons), and so dropping the entire combo was rarely an issue. But with that need gone I find myself often needing to dump a bunch of those resources at the same time because I lost track of them all.

I know this is all skill issue, but let's not pretend managing Gnash wasn't either. I simply wanted to have my experience out there that went beyond my previous comments that all essentially boil down to "Previous Viper game design = Better". It's a shame I'll never really get that data, but I'd be curious to know if the people losing DPS to the debuff dropping aren't losing just as much DPS from wasting the combo timer/capped resources.

To reiterate again, I think literally no one saw the dot as a problem so this change is completely out of left field. I genuinely thought they were going to remove the positionals on the cd attacks, I literally didn't see the dot removal coming because it was so easy to reapply.
I haven't really played viper post change but honestly this change seems like it'll be more punishing for new players and will make the burst even more rigid and just as busy. Like genuinely who is this change for? The dot and buffs were something pretty much everyone instantly understood, the 2 button combo chains is what people found imposing initially.

I don't have strong feelings on the viper changes in isolation but I do feel like in this circumstances the changes felt very kneejerk in a very bad way. There was no time given for people to settle into the job. The design from what I played of it in extremes felt cohesive and fine there was nothing broken about it that needed some immediate fix and change in my opinion. Having this kind of swift reaction when I feel there is no way the devs actually had enough time to gather a wide range of relevant data to inform a change makes me worried for the general direction of job design.
It additionally looks bad when you've lived through jobs with actual issues sometimes even deeprooted design issues getting their problems ignored for years on years. Like for example what is up with MCH gameplay under ping not getting the reevaluation even after an extensive bug report in the forums on the network issues shining a highlight around what is causing that stuff? From that perspective this change feels like a bad prioritization of actual issues as well and felt like a waste of resources.

Not to get too cheeky but maybe if some of that viper attention and energy was actually focused on relevant things maybe monk and blm wouldn't have released in the laughable state they did before the patches fixed them up more. Like some of the oversights that have passed through this time I feel have been really bad on a level where you wonder is the job design team just stretched that thin?

What is confusing is that they mentionned going to remove positionals, community was against it so they removed something else...?
But at the same time RPR keeps Death Design. (Don't remove it).
It felt like they wanted take away the appetizers, didn't after we asked for it but took the chair.

I think the best solutions would've been to remove positionals potency and add a 20s dot you refresh up to 40/60s everytime you succeed at a positional.
This way, they lessen the impact and "pressure" on positionals by allowing to miss a few of them without dropping the dot.

They could even adjust the potency so that if you fail to refresh the dot you're heavily punished rather than today's almost unnoticeable gain on positionals.
Anyway, that's just an idea that would answer SQEX's concerns while keeping Noxious gash.