Why viper doesn’t have any defensive skill?

All other selfish DPS jobs have a defensive skill, but Viper does not. In fact, Viper has one of the fewest number of assigned buttons to press compared to other jobs. Could SE not have included a single defensive skill?

It feels as though the Viper job was half-baked and rushed to completion. At the very least, it would be nice to give Viper a passive movement speed buff, similar to what Ninjas have, and call it a day.

Not all jobs have personal defensive skills

DRG, RDM, BRD, MCH and DNC also don’t with all but DRG amongst them having AOE defensives instead

VPR is just in a similar boat to DRG

Your point about the job being underbaked is totally valid though

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

VPR is just in a similar boat to DRG

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DRG still has a higher defensive stat and with Life Surge an additional self heal.

I'm sorry but the Life Surge thing is a bit silly to bring up. The heal is so tiny, you could remove it and nobody would even notice (as in, show the number but don't actually heal the Dragoon).

But yeah, Viper has Feint. If my Dancer is fine with just helps-both-me-and-others defenses, then so is Viper?

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Originally Posted by Tint

DRG still has a higher defensive stat and with Life Surge an additional self heal.

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Life surge is vestigial at this point and the difference between scouting and maiming is tiny compared to say scouting and casting

If anyone is going to blow up from lack of a defensive it’s RDM

maybe if this game's heal checks weren't mostly just mit checks RDM wouldn't have to worry about keeling over for having a vuln stack or two and a WHM in their party.

VPR's lack of a defensive I see as the cost of having a ranged attack that's a gain to use but not required in the 2m burst, making it easier to Greed less. It's still pretty common feedback so I won't be surprised if it eventually gets its defensive from PvP though

Because VIPER dont need it literally it really just dont need it, compare Bloodbath with Viper to the other Melees and you will see what happens, since everything viper has is physical and works with Bloodbath, pop Bloodbath and use Reawaken you will see your HP goes from 0 to 100


and if you die while not doing anything wrong its anyway the healer fault so viper really dont need any other defensive cooldown

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Originally Posted by Tint

DRG still has a higher defensive stat and with Life Surge an additional self heal.

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Life Surge is not used as a healing tool and even in that role it's lacking. It is extremely rare that LS happens to make a difference.

My only issue would be that the jobs without defensives should have something else as compensation but at the same time, not everything has to be the exact same with semi copy pasted abilities.

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Originally Posted by AvoSturmfaust

Because VIPER dont need it literally it really just dont need it, compare Bloodbath with Viper to the other Melees and you will see what happens, since everything viper has is physical and works with Bloodbath, pop Bloodbath and use Reawaken you will see your HP goes from 0 to 100


and if you die while not doing anything wrong its anyway the healer fault so viper really dont need any other defensive cooldown

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“It’s the healers fault”

This is why melees shouldn’t have feint

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

“It’s the healers fault”

This is why melees shouldn’t have feint

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thats why i said if you didnt do anything wrong which includes the use of faint and sorry to tell you but if i use feint as melee and dont eat dmg i shouldnt eat and still die then yea its the healers fault

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Originally Posted by AvoSturmfaust

thats why i said if you didnt do anything wrong which includes the use of faint and sorry to tell you but if i use feint as melee and dont eat dmg i shouldnt eat and still die then yea its the healers fault

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Or the tanks fault

Or the caster who dropped addle/magick barrier/tempra grassa

Or the other melee who drifted their feint

Or the dancer who didn’t press samba or flashed their improv wrong

In a world where everything is a mit check blaming the healer by default is just pointless

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Or the tanks fault

Or the caster who dropped addle/magick barrier/tempra grassa

Or the other melee who drifted their feint

Or the dancer who didn’t press samba or flashed their improv wrong

In a world where everything is a mit check blaming the healer by default is just pointless

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wrong, i dont know if you dont wanna get it

first it doesnt matter if the other melee drifts his feint if MY FEINT is on the boss and i die its the healers fault, there was not this tier, not the previous tier or any savage tier besides HH in M10 one raidwide which needed more then one or 2 mitigation if a healer needs feint + addle + tank + phys range mitigation to let the group surivive a raidwide then ITS THE HEALERS FAULT even the smallest shields in combination with a feint was enough this tier to let everyone survive

It's just my 2 cents but from having experienced that multiple time recently in Mentor Roulette
>Healer Die on the last boss of Yuweyawata field station
>On MNK I can just use Riddle of Earth on the stack and get 20% Mit + 500 potency regen + a 500 potency aoe heal for me and my teammates
>On RPR I can just Arcane craft on the stack that give me a 10% shield + 250 potency aoe regen
>On SAM I can just go "lmao" and Tengentsu for a 10% mit + a 600 potency regen which double as another 10% mit + give me gauge and all that for a CD of 15sec
>On VPR I just pray the tank share some mit with me and Bloodbath my way to victory
Honestly the only one that really need some sort of buff is NIN
90% of its kit is magical damage so bloodbath does nothing for it
It does have Shade Shift but I'd really prefer if they changed it back to its ARR version (100% dodge for 1 attack) because honestly a 20% solo shield does not freaking need a 120sec cooldown.

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Originally Posted by AvoSturmfaust

wrong, i dont know if you dont wanna get it

first it doesnt matter if the other melee drifts his feint if MY FEINT is on the boss and i die its the healers fault, there was not this tier, not the previous tier or any savage tier besides HH in M10 one raidwide which needed more then one or 2 mitigation if a healer needs feint + addle + tank + phys range mitigation to let the group surivive a raidwide then ITS THE HEALERS FAULT even the smallest shields in combination with a feint was enough this tier to let everyone survive

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I don’t think you quite understand what a mitigation plan is

While Viper does not have its own defensive (getting one would be a great addition in its own right even if its a 10% or a small shield on a 60s or 90s CD), it probably has the best use of bloodbath between all melee DPS classes given it pairs well with the overall faster GCD for combos and the 1.5 GCD with weaves that reawaken has which is all melee damage.

primarily a personal or party mit on a DPS should generally be treated as a bonus mit rather than a requirement if its not related to role actions or on phys ranged which are generally meant to be more supportive than other DPS classes.

it is also why most DPS class mits are generally weaker by nature. though some like PCT are slightly too strong as is. (also a reminder how much times riddle of earth was reworked post 6.0 simply from how strong it was in solo content)

also just want to touch upon life surge. it is barely a personal mit/sustain tool and is mainly used to guarntee a crit on specific GCD's.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

I don’t think you quite understand what a mitigation plan is

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i have a really good idea what a mitigation plan is because sadly im usually the one in my statics which has to work out one thats why i exactly know when i can tell if its healers fault or not and i got a really good grip on what to use for mitigation in what for scenarios


but lets be real thats not really the topic of the thread fact is viper really dont need some personal mitigation, bloodbath for viper is better then anything else in the game for melees wait no, sams mitigation is way better but only because its free dmg

I think the ability to heal the fastest with Bloodbath is overestimated. If it was a situation where even with Bloodbath you're taking enough damage to still not reach full HP(maybe Deep Dungeons) then sure that's a clear advantage. In something like Savage I don't see how it shines. It's already an unlikely situation that self-mitigation would have been the difference between life and death. And I think it's even more unlikely that healing faster than the other melee with Bloodbath would be the difference between life and death.

Every job doesn't need to have all the tools of every other job. If anything they should dial back those tools to further differentiate the jobs.

It could use an extra skill or two just for flavor. Maybe a modified version of its PvP Snake scales. You get hit within 3-5 seconds, you get to deliver an attack with big lifesteal.

I'm also wondering why Viper doesn't have a defensive. Not every job has to be the same sure but it would be nice to mit a bit of damage from unavoidable aoes and be able to either give a buff to the party or a regen on self. Relying solely on second wind and blood fest is kinda lame considering all melee get those standard as well. A lot of healers also don't prioritize healing a dps who is low on health so any form of mit or regen is a plus. Also, scouting gear. We have less health and armor then equally geared melee.

The one thing in regards to utility/healing I could see for Viper that I'd personally like is if they first did a transparent (no gameplay/output changes, yet) retooling for the job to be entirely based on debuffs you apply/stack, including multiple DoTs and all that. The job is called a Viper after all and uses a lot of snake motifs.

Then once that is done, allow some form of passive "utility" "poison" to be applied to attacks, and this can take various forms. Debuffed enemies deal less damage to you, you heal with every attack against debuffed enemies, you got a slightly larger attack reach against enemies debuffed, etc. One of them can be active, they last forever until swapped out.

If you're really bothered by Viper's lack of personal mit in PVE content, don't look at its PVP skills...
https://i.imgur.com/cKjfBvl.png
(Okay yeah it's a textwall with about 10 other effects but the important part is that it's a personal mitigation)

That aside I do agree that it should have anything in the way of personal mit. Someone on page 1 brought up Red Mage and it's the same deal.
"Oh you have Feint/Addle/Magick Barrier" - that's a partywide mit and in higher end content is generally already fixed on a timeline, and the first two are useless for mitigating any damage that isn't coming directly from the boss. (And in the latter case, MB is useless for any sort of physical based damage so you'd better hope you can still survive to benefit from the healing buff... yeah this last savage tier was 'fun' for that job)
"Oh you have Bloodbath/Vercure" - those don't help very much if I'm already dead from lack of mitigation.

Welcome to pvp job actions, where they do actually have meat to them, are all very unique, and require skill to pull off properly. MNK's Riddle of Earth is another example, which works like a kind of personal Macrocosmos with a detonation bomb attached to it. DRG hits everything closeby with a debuff on any damage done to the DRG. Everybody has personal mitigation, casters tend to all have shields of various kinds, and even the squishier ranged physical jobs have shit like heals, Warden's (check it out, it's actually very good), or the damn bishop turret.

From what I've heard, and as far as I'm aware it's just a rumor so take this with a grain of salt: They're planning on culling sustain/mit actions across the board for non-support jobs in 8.0 onward. However true that ends up being, time will tell. But I'm dreading it. Melees with no Bloodbath/Second wind, no caster shields, possibly less to no sustain on all tanks, possibly no mits for healers beyond shields. It's worrying to say the least if it does end up being true. Using Addle/Feint/Phys ranged mits is a good chunk of the fun in high end.

Posts like these are why everything got made so samey, viper doesn't need a defensive.