Please don't change Viper

Viper is a great new addition to the roster of FF jobs, its easy enough to understand once you get the hang of it while leaving plenty of room to grow. Changing the class this early on in its lifespan feels like overreacting. Please reconsider making the class easier as many people right now absolutely enjoy it in its current state.

I agree, it's baffling that they want to change a brand new job less than a week from launch

I haven't had this much fun with a ff14 job in literally like 6 years.

PLEASE do not change viper, it's fantastic as it is right now

Seconding this! I've had so much frustration trying to figure out monk on one of my main characters, and viper's combos flow so well into each other! The positionals also make it super engaging and fun to play - it's perfect as it is already! I really hope the dev team will reconsider the decision and not make any changes to it.

I totally agree ! I know that every "issue" I ran through while playing VPR will be solved with training and muscle memory. I love everything about this job as it is
I don't see any rotationnal or positionnal trouble within the job, so please, as many people say, reconsider those changes.

I dont know who asked for these viper changes.

100% Agree.
Please Square, reconsider your decision and leave more time to players for them to understand the job isn't that hard once you get it. Everything is getting easier and easier. We finaly get an engaging job to play with and it's already going to get hit with casualisation.

Agree. Viper is currently my favorite melee job especially since they ruined Monk.

Just here to add to the voices of please don't change viper it being busy is what makes it fun and the positionals are things players will get used to.

The positionals are your main thing to even do sub-70 and flow really nicely, I don't know why they'd even consider removal

Heck, at level 50 the positionals are the only reason to keep a single braincell on.

I absolutely agree. The job isn't out for an entire week yet. Simplifying it to make it more popular is not the right way to go.
It's really sad to see such an overreaction for something that hasn't been out for even a whole week yet.
This job anxiety feels like a lack a vision and a want for acceptance from the Square Enix team.
As a passionate Viper player, I beg of you to change your minds.

Say Viper is hard, i laugh so hard!
So many other job was more difficult.
I was really impress to see a job (VIP) really easy to play, more easy then SAM and RPR
It's really funny, they can't know the old MNK or AST how hard it was to play (placement or what all the card do)

RING THE BELL !

Please don't take my positionals again, they made me love Monk in ARR; and this is enough for me to have fun again.

I'm going to hard agree with this. I quit the game back in 5.4 over the MNK simplification, when all of us were asking for MNK to go back to the way it was back in 4.4 with some streamlining and improvements since before 5.0 when some of us had the opportunity to play preview versions of the job at media events. It wasn't "fixed" until the end of the patch, and by "fixed" I mean outright neutered. I ONLY came back to see the MNK changes (it's in the worst shape that it has ever been in), and tried Viper on a whim. I had no problem quitting the game for Guild Wars 2 because the combat system has been mauled into oblivion.

Viper is literally a streamlined tornado-kicking MNK in scouting gear, with the wishlist of what we asked for since Stormblood; the demolish and snap punch combos consolidated to one hotbar button each to make room for more moves without taking anything away, unshackling it from Samurai with a different gear set, a greased lightning gauge with a guaranteed way of getting stacks up instantly (serpent's ire > anatman) and not tied to speed and power buffs, a chakra gauge not tied to RNG (no melee DPS should have random chance on a resource gauge), a Dolphin Flurry combo, a better and less boring AoE kit, a projectile that doesn't cost an all-or-nothing resource to use, and a version of tornado kick that isn't just a stack dumper (and hey, even has more oGCD weaving!).

Even then, it's too simple, and is pretty much "baby's first double-weaving oGCDs tutorial," but it's the closest thing we have to our main job since that was ruined. If they remove anything from it, I have no problem leaving the game again, review-bombing the hell out of Dawntrail and going straight to Guild Wars 2. I'm ONLY back because of Viper. Story jumped off a cliff lore-wise and Viper's current gameplay is the only reason I bother logging in now.

As much as I laughed at the entitlement of the "Healer Strike," considering how much the devs did not learn from people complaining that simplification is bad and they need to reverse course, I'm considering we need a DPS strike. In the meantime, I hope Viper-lovers start apologizing to us Stormblood MNKs because in spite of having a lot of buttons, it was pretty much this simple, though required a bit of executive decision-making that kept the job a bit more engaging. Now, we have hand-holding mechanics for people who don't want to learn, and this just makes people avoid learning more.

Leave Viper alone. Monk needs to be brought back to what Viper currently is, at the least!

I've never even logged in here in the official forum, but I had to now because I just saw these changes.

Viper is great as it is, I wanted a job like this since the beggining of this game, please do not change anything. Never have I had so much fun with a job in this game.

I literally registered my forum account just now after playing this game for 10+ years to add my voice to this. I just hit 100 Viper today and I LOVE how it plays, there's absolutely no reason at all to simplify it.

Please do not change Viper, at least not without giving the playerbase considerably more time to become familiar with the job.

I don't post on forums or on Twitter at all, but the Viper changes are really disappointing, so I had to register my forum account after a couple years of playing to post this. I really hope we end up not seeing them. I agree with everything here in this thread and all the other threads that do not like the changes.

Viper is not that hard to position. You have two standard abilities that you will have to position often, big whoop welcome to melee classes. The Dreadwinder can be combo'd with True North 9/10 times, and every now and then you may have to do it without due to the 5 second difference that can cause drifts.

I don't mean anything rude by saying this, but if you can't position well on Viper and have to complain about it, you probably shouldn't be playing Viper in the first place. Either don't play it, or hush up and go practice some more with it.

Removing the positional on the dread skills I understand, you've got a single GCD of time to move into position each time etc (tho i guess True North is there for that)
But otherwise, please don't simplify it, it's fine. It's interresting to play.

Old MNK was never hard. Viper is literally just that with some of the 3-hit combos consolidated to fewer buttons to make room for newer moves and a better AoE combo, plus a lot of the wish-list items that MNK mains wanted (no RNG on the 5 chakra stacks, making greased lightning not an all-or-nothing resource and not tied to ramping up speed or power, etc.). It's the reason why so many old-school MNK mains love it so much; it's the closest thing we have to a return to what MNK should have been.

Us MNK mains require an apology from the people who understand Viper, because MNK was the first melee job to be simplified into the ground and basically paved the way for the current state of melee jobs as people at the time thought it was "too hard,".
Nothing, and I mean NOTHING in this game is difficult. It's "baby's first MMORPG,". But some people are loud and effort-averse, and don't want to have to learn anything, which makes the rest of the game boring for everyone else.

We tried to warn you that the people who advocate for simplifying jobs in the name of "trying something out" never stick with the job anyway, which just ruins it for the people who were maining it at the time and had no problems with it. We tried to warn you that this would happen game-wide if you allowed the precedent in the name of "accessibility,". I'm a disabled player (have nerve damage in my right hand and am forced to play all games with a controller) and I could still do it, and everything else in the game was too boring for me. I do NOT want it dumbed down further. The number of skills being "overwhelming" to the smooth-brained is not an excuse for players to not sit down with it, read the tool tips, try things out on a dummy and figure it out. I didn't read or watch a guide to learn Viper, I sat on the striking dummy, messed around with some moves and FIGURED IT OUT, then rearranged my hotbars for comfort and now it's even a bit TOO simple for me.

The game is a terrible teacher, and the tool tips and jargon definitely need some culling and reorganizing, but the job itself - once you sit down and figure it out - is perfectly fine, if not a bit too easy. The same goes for 4.4 MNK. Not difficult, but people don't understand good hotbarring practices or how to do their positionals properly, so they whine that it's too hard for them because they don't want to think or learn. Standing in one spot until the combo ender says it's time to take a step to the left or right isn't complicated. Literally "take a step to the left and do 3 moves, take a step to the right and do 3 moves,". Too many SAM/DRG players who don't get how to straddle the SE/SW intercardinal and make egregious 90-degree rotations around the hitbox whining about mechanics they don't understand. Us ex-MNK mains know what's up.

Agreed wholeheartedly, seeing that paragraph made my heart sink. I already love this job and dedicated to maining it for the expac, I really hope they walk this idea back. I haven't even seen anyone say what they're mentioning are the "problems" with it.

The positionals make the job engaging and extremely fun to play. It's something to keep track of and engage with outside of your burst window. Please do not change viper I love it how it is currently!

Viper has room for improvement.

* Ouroboros, Dreadwinder, and Pit of Dread should have a normal GCD, rather than an extended one. Since there's nothing to weave after those skills, it just makes those parts of the rotation feel oddly slow. Alternatively, those skills could just be made to proc Deathrattle.
* Twinfang Bite and Twinblood Bite could be made ranged, since being forced to drop those if the boss dashes away from you after a Coil GCD feels pretty bad, but this could just be something VPR players need to learn to deal with.
* Their progression should definitely be tweaked. As it stands, they have a two button rotation at level 50. Even just a hollowed out, one-charge version of Dreadwinder with no follow-ups would be something.

Removing positionals doesn't fix anything about the job, it just makes VPR simpler, and VPR is already pretty simple once you get it down.

Adding my voice in support here.

The only thing they should change is applying the color coding to the Dualblade skills to properly identify flank and rear positionals on them. That's it. Don't touch it otherwise, it feels outstanding.

I want to know who's having difficulty with the positionals when they even color coded the ones in your normal combos. I pray they don't change anything drastically as I currently love how the job feels to play.

I agree, Viper is hands-down the most fun I've had playing a job in several years. I really hope the devs leave it as is. There are plenty of other melee options for those who don't like the playstyle.

I agree with this. DO NOT CHANGE VIPER! I've been a melee main in this game since I started. Part of the fun on Monk in the old days was positional uptime in Savage content. Making sure I was hitting the right side for every GCD was FUN and was the best part of the job for me. I hate that they mostly just died that part of Monk out. So when Viper had 6 different GCDs with positionals I was excited! I could get the feel of old Monk with a new job that is fun and engaging to play! So please, for the love of Hydaelyn Yoshi-P, do not change Viper! Do not take this away! Please stop making melee jobs easier!

This is my first time on the forum, and i'm here just because SE decide to make the game easier as always... Why you do that on a job that came out 2 days ago (if we don't count the Early Access). The job is not that hard, people just need time to learn it. I tried the job and it isn't hard at all, positionals aren't hard to understand since it's litteraly "Red = Back / Green = Flank", i'm still at LvL 82 with it but i want to play it as is it right now, with positionals. So please SE, litsen to the player and don't make a Monk 2.0 because some peoples can't read what an action do.

It's funny because I didn't even touch VPR and I'm here. As first post. Saying I do not understand the logic behind this decision. What happened to SE's promises of looking into uniqueness of classes when the first change that is being done 1 week after a class release is making it easier and more in-line with already overlysimplified melee group? 7.0 has seen flexibility taken from SAM and DRG. Instead what we got was handholding in playing the class by tying certain skills and buffs to each other. Why is goring blade for PLD now usable only after using FOF? It's not like you'd want to use it anytime else, so are we doing it because people have fat fingers and miscast this? We gonna do entire combos tied to skills soon to ensure they're performed in proper order? Where's the line?

From what I know and hear from most VPR players is that they ACTUALLY ENJOY the class when they've enjoyed nothing at the end of EW. And now once again they're being handheld by SE changes to it so that it's more in-line with other classes so that your average Joe who can play 19 classes but can't figure out VPR can play VPR too just the same way he plays his 19 other classes. By hitting 123 in order and nearly nothing else. So much for uniqueness.

Viper has been my most favorite job they have ever added- I would not like changes to something I already find so fun, it does not need simplification- let it have expression.

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Originally Posted by _onesummersday

I dont know who asked for these viper changes.

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Japan.
Every stupid change generated by player "feedback" typically comes from Japan.

+1 like many others this is my first post after playing nearly a decade.

Viper is in an incredibly comfy state right now and is far from being too busy, if anything I'd want more weaves to press in the deadzones after Dreadwinder and Ouroboros.
Positionals are easy to manage, especially since they are consistent in when they are performed.
The only change I want is to be able to detach our rattling coil stacks from the viper gauge so they can be placed in a more visible location.

Besides, not even a week has passed, a lot of players simply haven't had the time to learn and adjust to the playstyle of viper. It's far too soon to be implementing notable changes.
Viper is fun because its busy yet simple.

I don’t usually post but I want add another voice. Keep Viper as is, let what you cooked simmer longer than a week before changing one of the fresher additions to the roster. Balancing positionals while contending with Viper’s double weaves has been extremely fun to learn, and rather intuitive. Give the players more time instead of reacting to the knee jerk contentions of players who probably aren’t putting a lot of time into the job anyway

Look at that, you've actually gone and irked me to the point where it's made me sign up for the forums.
Please don't change viper, it's accessible enough and not every job as to be for everyone.

This mentality of "a few noisy people are struggling so we need to dumb it down even though it's been less than a week that they've had their hands on it" is the reason people have been complaining so much about monotonous job design for so many years now.
Some people instantly click with viper, some people struggle a little and that's okay, it's both fun and engaging to have a job that requires a little more commitment to perform with. Especially when so many of the others have constantly had so many things taken away to the point they're all one dimensional.

The only thing I ask is to have the option to horizontally flip a Job gauges for better HUD customisation.

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Originally Posted by Idkidc1233

I don't post on forums or on Twitter at all, but the Viper changes are really disappointing...

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Welcome to the MNK community. First time?

Seriously, though... as much as I laughed at the "Healer Strike" for being incredibly entitled, the point that simplification was viewed as bad for even the simplest of roles should have been a wake-up call for the dev team to reverse course. Instead, they're doubling down on the dumbing-down, so I've got half a mind to start a "DPS strike,". 5.4's MNK changes were so bad, I DID in fact quit the game. Viper is literally my only reason for coming back.

If they do in fact make this change, I say the DPS community should indeed not only strike, but outright riot. The game is already far more boring than it was in Stormblood. We MNK mains tried to warn everyone what would happen since we were the precedent that led to this.[/quote]

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Viper is not that hard to position...

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Positionals were never hard, most of the community just does them wrong. MNK mains know what's up. You straddle the edge of the double-line on the SE or SW intercardinal, and literally just take one step to the left or right. It's meant to simulate the Muhammad Ali rope-a-dope "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" kind of movement. You are just bobbing and weaving one step to the left or right once every 3 moves in a looping pattern that's so easy to learn, you'll do it unconsciously even when you don't have to. NOT doing your positionals and standing still was the hardest part of MNK!

Viper has the same positional setup. They don't tell you to do positionals on anything other than the combo enders for two of the buttons, but the general principle is you stay put until the combo ender tells you to change positions. The flow of the buttons is also the same as MNK's Demolish and Snap Punch combos, with each just consolidated down to one button each to free up hotbar space. MNKs asked for this back in Stormblood.

It's usually SAM/DRG players who think they ONLY need to be in the right spot for their few positional moves, and move way too much. They don't sit still and straddle that intercardinal, they make big 90-degree movements that get their teammates killed.

Re: the Dreadwinder combo, it's literally "gap closer in, stand still and let the tank turn the boss, and the positionals hit themselves,". After that, it's literally "no positionals > take a step to the left > take a step to the right,". EZPZ.

Correct re: True North, that's what it's for!

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I don't mean anything rude by saying this, but if you can't position well on Viper and have to complain about it, you probably shouldn't be playing Viper in the first place. Either don't play it, or hush up and go practice some more with it.

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Welcome to the MNK community. First time?

We warned you this would happen if you allowed us to be a precedent... two expansions ago.

Adding my voice into here. I literally just started leveling it and all this is doing is making regret putting the few levels I did into it so far. I was actually looking forward to capping Viper. It's not even a week into launch yet and you're already dumbing it down for complaints I have seen exactly 0 of.

For the love of the twelve please do not change viper, all you're going to do by doing this is make it feel worse. It's already accessible enough for people who spend more than 5 minutes on a striking dummy.

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Originally Posted by Sephyrit

+1 like many others this is my first post after playing nearly a decade.

Viper is in an incredibly comfy state right now and is far from being too busy, if anything I'd want more weaves to press in the deadzones after Dreadwinder and Ouroboros.
Positionals are easy to manage, especially since they are consistent in when they are performed.

The only change I want is to be able to detach our rattling coil stacks from the viper gauge so they can be placed in a more visible location.

Besides, not even a week has passed, a lot of players simply haven't had the time to learn and adjust to the playstyle of viper. It's far too soon to be implementing notable changes.

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Man... all the people here who really need to apologize to Monk mains for all the crap we've been through... Yes, yes and YES! For weaving more oGCDs, I'd love more double-weaving, and would actually like it if the gap closer wasn't just a teleport but did some actual damage. Same with MNK, the teleport needs to become Shoulder Tackle again so we could have a damage-dealing oGCD to weave after Dreadwinder, though it seems that's also when you'd use a True North. I'd prefer the traits not include role action buffs and they'd just fix role actions; that tells me they really didn't know what to do with the job since it was too simple and needed to toss in Feint and Second Wind buffs to fill the gap, instead of giving more oGCDs. But I'd be fine with more Twinfang/Twinblood oGCDs after Dreadwinder, too.

And yeah the sword gauge really has to go. The 3 red gems (what I call "Greased Lightning 3.0") are the only important parts of it. The swords don't actually tell us anything useful and even the simple mode for it has these extra bars that are outright pointless. The only reason I entertained them was under the assumption that maybe they'd be useful for something next expansion, but until that happens they're just visual clutter.

I want to make my voice heard in the forums since its supposed to be the place to do it.
I have specifically made an account in the formuns just for this alone.
So please dont change Viper, its busy rotation and positionals are what define the class to me and what in my opinion makes it fun.

The Job hasnt been released since a week and it doesnt feel right to already change it without giving the players time to adjust to its playstyle.

Thank your for reading.

Another one adding to this. Viper is fun as it is, it's busyness keeps it's relatively simple rotation engaging. Positionals are a very large factor in keeping it fresh and the skill ceiling high. I'm so tired of high APM jobs being gutted in this game. Don't change it.

Where do they keep getting this "feedback?" It's certainly not the forums.

I have also made an account on the forums because Viper is the most fun I've had with a melee DPS in this game so far.
Please don't simplify it when it hasn't even been out for a week.

Not every job needs to be easy for every player to pick up. By the time someone is able to unlock Viper, they likely went through Shadowbringers already where the difficulty starts to ramp up. It hasn't been a full week, many people are still leveling the job, many who have already finished the story are still mastering it. Viper has been the most fun Ive had in a DPS class in a long while, and there hasn't been nearly enough time to let it settle and see how it turns out.

Please, hold off on any thoughts of rebalancing the job until there's more data to work off of, this is a wild overreaction to a brand new job in a brand new expansion