How Viper Feels in Older Content (Lv 80 and Below)

Honestly I just wanted to open a dialogue about how VPR feels to play in legacy content, like Palace of the Dead, Heaven on High, Dungeons, Trials, and older Ultimates. This may feel more like a rant than anything else and I apologize if it does; I just wanted to voice out my frustration about how this class' core kit was handled with older content in mind.

I have done my time to level all of my jobs to at least 90 (still working on 100), and I have to say Viper has one of the absolute worst growth from 1-80 that I've ever seen in the game.

To try and showcase this, I wanted to look at other melee classes and what they get at 10-level milestones, in comparison to what Viper gets:

• Dragoon - Lv 70: Nastrond / Lv 80: Stardiver - Two core DPS burst abilities
• Monk - Lv 70: Brotherhood / Lv 80: Six-Sided Star - It's hard to review Monk, since they got reworked and I haven't played them, but I know Brotherhood feels fantastic once your Chakras start opening rapid fire. Still, two very strong abilities.
• Ninja - Lv 70: Ten Chi Jin / Lv 80: Bunshin - Again, two strong abilities.
• Samurai - Lv 70: Guren / Lv 80: Shoha - The trend should be obvious now.
• Reaper - Lv 70: Gibbet/Gallows/Guillotine + Follow-ups / Lv 80: Enshroud Combo - Strong abilities, yes yes.

Now, in comparison, this is what Viper gets at those milestone levels:

• Viper - Lv 70: Vicepit, Hunter/Swiftskin Den / Lv 80: Twinfang/Twinblood Thresh
  So at level 70, we get the AOE version of Vicewinder, and at 80, we get the last part of our AOE weaponskill rotation...? In comparison to the other melee jobs, even Reaper which is only one expansion behind, this feels so miserable.

And in case anyone was wondering, Pictomancer doesn't seem to have this same issue:

• Pictomancer - Lv 70: Starry Muse / Lv 80: Holy in White
  Essentially provides Picto with their major buff and movement abilities on good milestone levels. I know Holy in White is still the "oh no don't touch this button" but in comparison to what Viper gets, it's still something strong.

All of Viper's burst tools and big numbers are put behind Lv 80+. Uncoiled Fury, Awakening, Serpent's Ire, Ouroboros and Legacy moves, all of Vipers big damage buttons and abilities are loaded in those final levels and you seriously feel it when you try to play the class in anything that isn't new. Viper has a fantastic feedback loop at-- and only at-- Level 85'ish+. Anything less feels foul to the class' core design.

Now, do I have a solution to this? No, not really. I guess you can move some abilites down to those milestone levels to make it feel better, but I don't balance games. I just like playing em. Just wanted to vent how I felt, and see if others felt the same.

What changes would you suggest, if any? Is it fine the way it is?

Thanks for reading; I hope you have a good day!

Honestly, I find discussions of how Viper scales down pretty pointless as any change would be wasted because of how terribly designed Viper is at level 100. Naturally to fix that, any changes down to downscaling would be redundant.

Agreed, both VPR and RPR should get more of their kit earlier, although I enjoy fast RPR at 70. Sadly, VPR doesn't benefit as much due to Vicewinder's CD not scaling with SkS.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

Honestly, I find discussions of how Viper scales down pretty pointless as any change would be wasted because of how terribly designed Viper is at level 100. Naturally to fix that, any changes down to downscaling would be redundant.

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I don't know about that; I'd like to believe it's possible to make changes to how and when Viper acquires their abilities without modifying their final kit.
Could you elaborate further on what you meant by "how terribly designed Viper is at level 100?"
I've done the full tier on VPR, and honestly I feel like the gameplay flow is fairly engaging, if a bit simple.

Viper feels really bad below 90, and basically unplayable below 80. Reaper is a bit better, likely because it was made when the level cap was lower. It feels pretty ok once you get Gibbet and Gallows at 70, and is pretty much feature complete by 80 after getting Enshroud. There are some other classes (like Ninja imo) that genuinely feel pretty fine even at 50.

I do think some of this has to do with how Viper is just a weirdly (some would say badly) designed job from the get-go. It has so few buttons as it is that once you start to take those away you really start to notice the cracks in the design. On top of literally 50% of it's rotation being on just two of those buttons it really creates a problem unique to Viper. It's not really a problem you can easily solve without either overhauling the job, or waiting a few expansions for it to get more buttons then spreading them out over the levels a little better. But at that point the level cap will be higher so we may just be back at square-one. Not enough buttons to spread out to all levels of play.

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Originally Posted by jonimated

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Hard agree! Viper is exceptionally streamlined as a class, to its own detriment in this situation. Lv 100 Viper feels great and has a fantastic flow state to it, but that's essentially the only time it feels even remotely fun to play as well. There were a few ideas I was toiling with in my own head, curious to hear everyone's thoughts.

1. Move Uncoiled Fury to Lv 70.*
2. Move Reawaken to Lv 80, and modify its properties. (JUST Rewaken. Leave Generation at 90)**

* By moving Uncoiled Fury to Lv 70, it provides a resource to VPR at an earlier level that they get to manage and utilize as they see fit, either as a mobility tool or extra DPS. Maybe only make it so one charge is able to be stored? Not sure. What I would also like to see is a Melee-adjacent version of Uncoiled Fury that has higher potency, but the Viper has to choose between it or the ranged version depending on the fight. If you need to disengage and you used your resource, you suffer and have to use Writhing Snap instead; a huge potency loss.

** Reawaken would need to be modified in order for this to work properly, but my thought process would be to provide VPR with a self-buff once that increases their damage for 15 seconds once they use Reawaken. This buff expires either by running out naturally or using Fourth Generation/Ouroboros at Level 90/100 respectively. For fairness sake, I would also assume that the Generations and Legacy weaponskills would need to be modified with lower potencies to compensate for the self buff.

This would allow VPR to have a stronger personal DPS at level 70 and 80 respectively. In practice, I'm not sure if it would be properly balanced, but it's a thought process at least! Lemme know what you think!

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Originally Posted by VellAshe

Could you elaborate further on what you meant by "how terribly designed Viper is at level 100?"

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I feel it has no identity.

It literally - I mean, they confirmed that - exists only because Yoshi P thought it'd be cool for someone to have two swords.

But it's also clear that no further design work went into the concept beyond "has two swords". You can't even say it's the showcase job for autocombos, as Pictomancer does that more amiably, as do half the jobs in PvP already. It has... nothing. It feels so hollow, like a half-made job, like this is an early testbed for some technical stuff they are figuring out.

There are some signs that probably at some point during development, devs were experimenting with interesting features. The slower GCD when using 2H doesn't do anything since the +attackspeed buff mostly eats the difference anyways and even if not, they didn't design it to be meaningful. But there must have been an attempt at one time. Likewise, the left/right system, if it were genuinely random, could be an interesting component and given the UI element for it must have been trialed that way at some point.

But there's just no design there. It's just a job where you push glowie buttons with no mechanical identity, no unique elements, no lore, no visual identity and not even aural identity as their sounds are incredibly boring and generic, lacking something like the ASMR fwoosh of Red Mage Scorch at least.

It's a job that if it were removed suddenly, the game would not lose a single element of code for it, as nothing had to be mode to get it to work. That's what it feels like as a player at least.

Where are:

* Snake-y animations?
* Tons of stackable DoTs to put something "vipery" into it?
* A big mechanical difference between DW and 2H mode to put some interesting alternation system into that?
* Randomness/procs?
* Some mechanic where we rotate around the enemy, as if we were "coiling" it? Like, the 4-hit combo at least should have been rear->right->front->left positional or something! Absolutely stupid-basic take, but it'd be something at least!

There's just nothng there. To call the job "boring" would be an insult to other elements of job design that are merely boring. It's far beyond that.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

I feel it has no identity.

It literally - I mean, they confirmed that - exists only because Yoshi P thought it'd be cool for someone to have two swords.
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There's just nothing there. To call the job "boring" would be an insult to other elements of job design that are merely boring. It's far beyond that.

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I see!! Thank you for clarifying your point. I very much agree with you.
I agree that the design of Viper is incredibly simple in nature. As you said, there really is nothing that defines Viper as its own job. If you removed it, nothing of genuine uniqueness to the job would be lost.
(I don't think I consider the fact that the weapon changes between a Twinblade and Two blades to be of anything substantial beyond different GCD timers, and nothing more)
My original hope was that there would be significant moveset changes between the two stances, and that there would be a delicate dance between them of outputting raw damage vs buffs and debuffs.
The one 'unique' thing we had (a debuff tied to our basic GCD rotation that we needed to be mindful of) was sadly stripped from us too in favor of streamlined rotation.
(And I use unique there VERY loosely. Let's be honest; it was just the same thing as RPR's debuff.)

Honestly it feels like no thought was similarly applied to the growth of Viper either through legacy levels.
VPR very much feels like an afterthought in both it's aesthetic design and overall implementation.

My original opinion was 'well, we can't really make grandiose changes to VPR's kit right now, but is there a way we can just move some things around at earlier levels without completely remaking them?'
I see your original point now. Thanks for replying!

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Originally Posted by VellAshe

(I don't think I consider the fact that the weapon changes between a Twinblade and Two blades to be of anything substantial beyond different GCD timers, and nothing more)
My original hope was that there would be significant moveset changes between the two stances, and that there would be a delicate dance between them of outputting raw damage vs buffs and debuffs.

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This was one of the only two things that disappointed me about the job: the stances don't confer different game play options; e. g. being in twinblade does not mean being in burst or vice versa.

On the other hand, it's "fine" that the stances change all the time: oGCDs in dual wield stance are twinblade attacks and oGCDs in twinblade stance are dual wield attacks so it flows well in that sense.

The only other issue I had with the job was the lack of a poison DoT. Noxious Gnash filled that role, I guess, but then they removed it. Why remove poison from the job based on vipers? They're precisely poisonous snakes!

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Originally Posted by VellAshe

My original opinion was 'well, we can't really make grandiose changes to VPR's kit right now, but is there a way we can just move some things around at earlier levels without completely remaking them?'
I see your original point now. Thanks for replying!

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Yeah it's not that I disagree that lower level acquisition needs changes, it's more that I wish they'd instead sink all that dev time into bigger changes and re-implementation of the job which would naturally need to include changes to lower levels. I mean I know that's fairly utopian, but ugh can Viper need it. More so than Dragoons or Bards even.

This is a non-specific problem that applies to most jobs, either as a byproduct of chopping out and replacing old actions every expansion, or due to just being introduced at higher level caps.

The former category could probably benefit from a revision to the levelling experience, because you're expected to level these jobs from level one upwards. The latter would benefit from just letting players use the entire action set of a job once it has been unlocked, even in synced content. You should downscale the damage, but there's no reason why the rotation needs to be simplified down if you're a level 100 character doing level 70 content.

I'll also say that PCT doesn't actually feel any better in syncing than the others. It's just overpowered due to a broken muse/burst system, which leads people to forgive its 20 APM gameplay experience in older fights. That's right - PCT, the slowest job in the game, is even slower in legacy content.

Just let players use their level 100 rotations in synced content with the damage scaled down, and it won't be an issue.

Viper definitely feels the worst of any job I can think of below like 90. And honestly even 90 isn't great. You don't have your Uncoiled Fury weave oGCDs. Your Reawaken burst is only the Generation skills. No Ouroboros finisher, no legacies to weave in between so it feels way slower than at 100. VPR is one of those jobs that really is only worth playing at 100, and even then it feels very simple.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Just let players use their level 100 rotations in synced content with the damage scaled down, and it won't be an issue.

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It'd be super weird as out of necessity the same skill from a lvl100 player in a lvl40 dungeon would need to do significantly less per-hit damage than the same skill used by a lvl40 player. So the overall damage roughly balances out. But yeah this is probably the solution. And to be fair, it works that way in other MMOs, someone truly at the lower level has less skills but they do more damage with the ones they have than someone high-level that was scaled down. It works.

But now the problem: How does this work for tanks (who get more defensive tools) and healers (who get more emergency healing and even unlock some healing types to begin with)?

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Originally Posted by Carighan

Honestly, I find discussions of how Viper scales down pretty pointless as any change would be wasted because of how terribly designed Viper is at level 100. Naturally to fix that, any changes down to downscaling would be redundant.

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I like playing viper, it is fast but simple, the lack of skills in lower content isnt a viper exclusive problem, Ninja also felt miserable at 50 before they made Huton passive.