Viper Changes

Logged in this morning to see that they somehow managed to dumb down viper even more than they originally said. I was hoping they would just go back on making any changes as the class has literally only been out a month and thankfully many other people were complaining about this.

Now, instead of just removing some ogcds or positionals, they removed the only thing that actually kept the jobs filler interesting as there is nothing to manage.

- Dreadwinder has just been changed to an empty skill that you push on cooldown now instead of managing alongside your buffs

- the 2 minute burst is just push serpents ire, do a gcd and then go into 2 reawakens instead of doing any debuff management with NG to make sure it wouldn't fall off but also make sure you wouldn't overcap, i.e if it was at 23 seconds, use a rattling coil to delay reapplying it so it is not overcapped

It's not a lot but this was the difference between a good viper and a mid viper, and now this whole skill ceiling, even though it was already low, is now non-existent and the skill floor is hell at this point.

Really hoping they go back on this or add something new to manage as now the filler is just braindead

the Gash discourse I think is symptomatic of a larger sentiment where people are tired of them dumbing down jobs and the shiny new toy is already getting these changes after only having been out for two months. It sort of just didn't need to be changed-- For things like kaiten you could make the argument where your overall DPS could fluctuate as high as 20% if you didn't crit any of your midares while things like old twin snakes on mnk were actually difficult to optimize. NG wasn't either of those, it wasn't hard or remotely challenging to upkeep, all you had to do was make sure the number was above 30 before you did a double awaken and make sure the number was below 20 before reapplying outside of your burst. It was in no way broken or in need of repair, so why did it need to be "fixed"?

Changes like this speak volumes for how tone deaf the dev team is. They're going to have Yoshida come out and admit that job identity is in a bad place, saying that jobs have become too homogenized while saying the team is going to fix it but then immediately go begin making these same changes to the newest jobs? It's grim.

I'm going to repeat what I'm saying in other threads on this issue:
Viper is literally much worse now and here's why.

The short but easily reapply-able 20s debuff (With a 40s max) gave vipers something to optimize, as the other two buffs require almost no thought other than when coming out of your 2/6/8/10 min window.
Before going into your reawakening its its fun to plan how you're going to ensure you go in with atleast 22+seconds of this debuff. Also if you set it up correctly its very easy to just apply a single gcd of gnash inbetween the two reawakens should you have miscalculated the timer! Beyond this I have to wonder if anyone who is saying these changes are good ever played reaper, as reaper's triple enshroud was almost always not worth the effort and very clunky.

Dealing with EX1 Vali and optimizing when the boss disengages you for the application of gnash on the needles (first hit of 3 hit combo on needle one, then use dreadwinder on needle two) then spacing out snaps to allow the timing of the first returning gcd on vali to be gnash was a ton of fun to optimize, and even when it was difficult to do, it was not a big deal as you still had 16-8 seconds till reawaken! Enough time to apply the debuff twice!

Viper was always an easy job. Noxious gash was just the one thing other than uptime and positional you could optimize.
Gnash feels truly like a better version of reapers death's design. It almost makes me wish they would make it a alternate combo for RPR rather than being a single button.

For all intents and purposes, Viper plays very similarly. But the few plates that you had to spin have fallen and all you have now is uptime, and positionals.
If you're saying its better I doubt you've ever tried to optimize it in any content whatsoever, let alone EX+ content.

TL;DR it's the worse and honestly more boring, you did not seriously play viper if you think the noxious gash change is good.