Address current viper issues (PVP)

-Lack of cc. when compared with most classes, they have CC which can set up for higher kill potential. With viper, there is only one (tied to LB, and its a heavy which can easily be purfied)
-Lack of damage. you would think with lack of CC would come more damage? absolutely no. Vipers damage compared to other classes is severely lacking. most of vipers potency are around 8,000 for the GCD (3,000 o-GCD). but with the amount of movement, you find yourself rarely even being able to land most of those attacks. The 3,000 potency that can also go through guard break sounds good (in theory) but it rarely results in punishing bad guards. The LB, even though has shorter CD compared to other classes, has little value. despite being aoe, it requires a specific team comp (DRK specifically) to even work well.
-LB. The LB is very underwhelming, 80% of the time, I find myself asking, "Why do my attacks feel like a fly swatter hitting someone?". If you analyze the potencies, each generational hit only does 5,000 potency. even though it's aoe, its very under-utilized since everyone knows to spread. Its very niche, and makes you neglect even wanting to use it sometimes.
-Self-buffs. Viper has the most INSANE windup to even get 10% buff. It takes about 6s to even set up, but most people tend to target you almost immediately because of how free vipers are in PVP. What I don't understand, is why give a guard (reduces 50%? of damage only lol) but also reliant on buffs which forces you to be more aggressive?
-Visual glitches. There's currently a glitch that puts your character in neutral stance if you super sprint at the beginning of the match if you have dual blade attached.
-Action Glitches. During snake scales, its interrupted by whm polymorph and other abilities that go through snake scales despite having the same tooltip as guard. This is definitely a bug. As reasoned above, on top of being heavily flawed, it breaks so easily.

I'm not good at making posts, but these problems have made Viper incredibly unfun, and too reliant on team comps compared to other classes. Every class has great personal potential to do well in solo play, but viper is just the most underwhelming PVP class in its current state. I felt the want to post here since I wasn't seeing any other complaints, but it may just be a personal case of "git gud".

viper and pictomancer both do not have their final toolkits. these are just temporary ones in place until the annual sweeping overhaul in 7.1. both of them are janky as hell right now, but that's because these iterations are only gonna last a few months.

I think the damage numbers themselves are fine on viper, it's just that there's so many other gimmicks with the job that in my eyes it seems the weakest of them all right now.

I've done over a 100 games with Viper so far, but the whole concept of the job seems to be able to stick on targets, and if they have their LB up you better have guard up or are prepared to run away cause he's gonna slice and dice ya, but if anything the opposite happens more. Whenever a viper uses LB it seems like an easy target to focus down due to the way how his abilities work. Much like gunbreaker you have to weave in your twin(fang)blood in between your global cooldown, with the way how latency works in this game, it actively draws back your other off global cooldown abilities cause the game has to 'catch' up and completely finish the twin fan ability, trying to place recuperates etc inbetween your LB almost feel impossible unless you just want to lose out on damage and not use your legacy's abilities, which seems counter intuative. Getting that purify etc half a second later off is devastating in high ranked games, and often results in death because you just get chain CC'd or bursted.

Other major drawbacks imo are:

- Snake scales rooting you in place and being unable to stop it for at least 2 seconds, also for some reason polymorph and sleep completely cancel it, same thing with like reaper/monk LB, even if you absorbed like 50k damage and are on the brink of death and plan to heal a lot of that back up through backlash you can kiss all of that goodbye with any of those abilities.

- Swiftskin's coil being the second ability of your rotation, the opener of Viper to get all your buffs up and running feel incredibly long, not to mention I don't know if this has always been a thing but the buff of the swiftskin's coil doesn't go off until your 3rd global cooldown begins, so when you feel the effects of it for the first time 2 seconds will have already expired of the buff.

- When using Limit break you are unable to use the combo abilities of your LB right away, it like roots you down for half a second to a second.

- Your main abilities having only 5 yalms range. This wouldn't be so bad if the class had some sort of movement speed buff like gunbreakers dash, either that or a slight increase in range would feel way better as well, like both of the samurai's 20 seconds abilities which have 8 yalms. I'm not sure why they made it like that since nearly every melee job either has some sort of movement speed buff, or the range increase.

- Finishing potential is terrible, the last ability of the limit break seems like it takes 5 years before it finally hits and uncoiled fury is shared with your global cooldown, so if your enemy has recuperates left, good luck trying to land that final blow.

Besides all these gimmicks, I'm having a lot of fun with the job though, though it's unlikely I'll be playing it in high ranked the way it is right now.

I’m still on the fence about it. Depending on how you play, it FEELS it has the potential to be very offensive. For the LB, made a simple macro:

/macroicon “World-swallower” pvpaction
/pvpaction “Serpent’s Tail” <t>
/pvpaction “Dual Fang Combo” <t>

for simple 1-button mashing. Snake Scales is. . .cute, because it functions like a second guard, allowing for a decent push or crystal hold (scales > Guard > Rattling Coil > scales) Not as tactically useful as Reaper’s shielding since you’re stuck in place, but it’s a nice baiter.

I dunno. After the launch fiasco they pulled (are still pulling) with reaper, I approached Viper with zero expectations. Dps wise, the numbers are decent (averaging around 800k for a decent match) but knowing the devs track record for watering down things as much as humanly possible, wouldn’t be surprised if they took stuff from it.

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Originally Posted by Capricca

- When using Limit break you are unable to use the combo abilities of your LB right away, it like roots you down for half a second to a second.

- Your main abilities having only 5 yalms range. This wouldn't be so bad if the class had some sort of movement speed buff like gunbreakers dash, either that or a slight increase in range would feel way better as well, like both of the samurai's 20 seconds abilities which have 8 yalms. I'm not sure why they made it like that since nearly every melee job either has some sort of movement speed buff, or the range increase.
.

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In all honesty this part is what really drags down the LB. The combo, it doesn't work well with the game's netcode. By the time you can use any, your enemies have purified and are sprinting. You always slow down with every strike, so even landing a single hit can be a trial in itself, which is why it's almost always just swing and pray, kinda anti-climatic for a skirmisher class.

By the time people get used to Viper's tricks, wouldn't be too shocked to see people sitting on the LB longer than most other classes do their own as it puts the Viper at way more risk. It's fun, but not particularly showing its merit tactically outside of a few niche situations. If the LB enabled like a temporary speed boost to help the Viper chase down targets, then yeah, it might work with the combo. Otherwise I'm not sure what would salvage it.

Viper basically plays like an all-in job, but doesn't have enough functionality to be an all-in job at the moment.

- Not enough mobility to get its combos off as it can't keep up if an enemy sprints away. (Thereby not reaching its supposed damage potential in any effective manner for a job with huge tradeoffs to having very little to no Crowd Control effects). Slither does not fix this issue as it cancels sprint. This will be increasingly noticeable as players feel any latency due to the interaction with sprint in PvP.

- Not enough survivability as it has to hard commit to combos and staying near an enemy or do less damage.
- Snake Scales immediately inhibits movement, which is counterproductive in both CC and FL as Vipers can immediately lose all its advantages by polymorph or Sleep without a counterplay. This skill is more like a last-ditch effort due to locking Vipers in place.
- LB shows the real problems as you have to hard-commit and stay in melee range to get your full damage out and ramp up LB timer, thereby becoming susceptible to taking huge bursts or losing out on damage. The applied heavy effect helps, but that can also be cleansed, which leaves you back into the same issue as before with the rest of the toolkit.

It's a fun class and concept, but in terms of balance, it's just not there yet.

Viper right now is 100% useless in any form of PvP. And this is not a Opinion its a Fact.

Reliable fast Mobility to stay on target AND escape as a squishy glasscanon ? Zero.
A limitbreak that Instant kills or Almost instant kills in someway or form like most other Squishy glasscanon Jobs ? Zero
Selfsustain and Selfdefense ? Zero
Range ? Zero
Some serious CC ? Zero

You can pop your limitbreak in someones face and he can CASUALY walk to his friends across half the map while your sending your entire normal burst and LB Burst rotation into his face and even more...
And in group fights you just instantly die without you having any chance to get out or survive the moment you get jumped.

The devs created a Kit for Viper that does not have a SINGLE tool out of the MANY necessary tools that is needed for a Job/Class to work in PvP not a single one.

Pretty funny that the counter to Viper is just sprinting.

I mean it can be fun but it does need work, hopefully when 7.1 releases they'll address it with a better design since its pretty weak.

Didn't use it in CC but it seemed effective at picking off squishier jobs that get separated. At least, in Bronze.

In Frontline it struggles for the reasons already mentioned. When the meta is DRK deathballs and endless stuns, a job that has to leap in, maintain 30s buffs, and weave like crazy doesn't perform as well as the harder-hitting non-weaving ranged jobs. And using Slither to buff Uncoiled Fury is awkward.

Snake Scales is especially weird since you need to take enough damage to pop it, but that typically won't happen if you're deathballing. It looks more like something GNB should have. Also, it uses the same sound effect as the shuriken warp from FFXV (LOL).

It's the only job to not even get a different name for its PvP LB, but perhaps that'll change too. Of course, that's still 4 months where it doesn't really function well as a job.

So after some testing in PvP.

Viper does not even have good sustained damage compared to a Glass Cannon Machinist that has a Range advantage and a HARD CC and a instant kill LB under 50% HP if timed right that ALSO recharges prety fast....
So this also can be added to the list...

Viper either needs an entire PvP kit redesign or some CRAZY levels of Buffs at this point.
its not good at anything and lacks in everything lol

Any analyze on current PvP is pointless due to the fact this is not what we are going to get for Dawntrail expansion
It is patch 7.1 that matters as that is the real toolkit we are getting

While everyone knew that 7.1 would be the real kit, just dropping it like that for 7.0 is underwhelming, but it's on par with the rest of the expansion so...

Haven't really tried it in CC, but I honestly think it's one of the better melees in FL. Having 3 charges of slither with the occasional snake scales makes you really difficult to kill and you have pretty decent sustained AoE with your LB. Combined with the fact that VPR gains BH really easily makes you a decent frontliner job IMO. I went on a lengthy 7 games win streak and topped my team's damage a couple of time playing VPR. Is it as good as DRG? No lol, But DRG is a gross outlier.

I would assume gauging VPrs performance in CC more beneficial than in FL. For melees, it’s the equivalent of dancing between the raindrops there.

Viper is pretty fun in Frontlines. The fast building AoE LB is pretty good when you can get a coordinated dive. Uncoiled Fury is a nice ranged snipe. Slither provides good aggressive and defensive positioning. Snake scales? Better off pretending it doesn't exist in Frontlines as you will die very easily through it. Though Snake Scales feels a lot better in CC with the ability to combo two Snake Scales(with Rattling Coil) and Guard for a decent stall. And I enjoy that all their oGCD's go through guard. I'm genuinely fine with most of it's kit as being a fast paced, damage focused, dps. Though changes I would want made are:

- Snake Scales to actually block all crowd control(Sleep and Miracle of Nature still get through) minus crowd control from LB's that goes through guard anyway(MNK, DNC, RPR).
- oGCD's extended to 7y instead of 5y as a third to almost half of VPR's damage comes from their oGCD's and between netcode or people just sprinting, feels weird that they can easily out range a follow-up oGCD hit with sprint.
- LB at minimum should be Bind, not a Heavy. Firstly, come on, snakes? Binding? Makes way more sense(yes I know vipers aren't the constricting type but just go along with it). Second, more importantly, the fact that the LB is supposed to be an all-in on a single character with the Noxious Gnash debuff, and they can still use movement abilities to get away without even taking Purify into account feels bad. 90% of the PVP roster has movement abilities to easily slip away without ever burning their Purify, and it just removes any lethality from the ability not even taking into account how they can just out heal the damage over time with pots.

When I first read the kit, it was obvious to me that this job is going to have a hard time killing someone due to the lack of hard CC and low debuff duration. In theory, this job can deal almost 70000 damage in a full LB, but it is not effective for reasons.

First, the heavy debuff has 5 second duration. For a job that has to press 5 GCDs + 4 OGCDs back to back in quick succession with minuscule range, people can and will outrun Viper. Gap Closer with LB can be good, but due to the lack of hard CC on Viper, your target can easily heal through your whole LB. It should at least be a Bind so Viper can be effective against people with no purify. This doesn’t change the fact that people can still guard or heal through the LB in the best circumstances. This should balances it out.

Second, for a job that prioritize speed, the Swiftskin buff is on the second combo on both Sting-Fang and Coil. 15s buff duration is ok, but please move the speed buff to the first combo of both Sting-Fang and Coil. This will make Viper go from 0 to full buff a bit faster. This will also charge the limit break a little bit faster too.

Third, 20% damage received debuff lasts for 10s, which is around the full LB combo. This is not effective because the opponent will waste the debuff by simply running around. Even worse, use any reposition tool. The effectiveness of Viper LB plummets significantly without this debuff. This stems from the first problem of having 5s heavy on LB.

I use Viper exclusive for Shatter as the crystals are, you guessed it, completely stationary. This means Viper LB will be at 100% effectiveness almost all the time. I often find myself at the top of total crystal damage with almost no damage dealt to players. It is as if Viper was actually designed for this mode as the Crystal Devourer.

I notice now playing VPR I get picked out in a group ON SITE and the only defense ability snake scales can easily be nulled with an enemy RPR. Right now it feels like an AoE Glass Cannon which is a terrible combination in my opinion.

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Originally Posted by joansbones

viper and pictomancer both do not have their final toolkits. these are just temporary ones in place until the annual sweeping overhaul in 7.1. both of them are janky as hell right now, but that's because these iterations are only gonna last a few months.

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Oh how our hopes were disappointed...