I think I know why the feedback on viper has been so polarized. It comes down to how comfortable a player is accepting UI assistance when playing a job.

You see this from the first moment you unlock it, the pop-up explanation doesn't attempt to explain the big picture logic of how the job works (mainly that you'll be alternating between options a lot to play into the dual blade theme). It simply tells you to follow the cues from your job gauge and hit the button that lights up.

When I first unlocked the job, I thought I was having a stroke. I'd be testing the same button sequence and different combo options would light up each time. Was it dynamically choosing based on buff timers? Was it just plain random like old dragoon? Remember the game doesn't explain anything. You have to examine the tooltips, which keep taking turns to disappear from your hotbars because they transform, to figure out there are 4 different kinds of similarly named venom buffs that the job wants you to cycle between.

Flanksting Strike Flanksbane Fang Hindsting Strike Hindsbane Fang, try saying that 10 times really fast lmao. I imagine if you had dyslexia you'd just shut down your pc at this point and call it a day.

But back to the UI, ultimately the job is designed on the assumption that you'll be relying on cues from there. If you just do what the game says and follow the lights, you'll certainly be able to play the job almost perfectly even without knowing anything. From that standpoint, the job is certainly 'easy'.

I don't consider that competence though, that's barely treading water to me. It means you'll be playing slowly and reactively, one gcd at a time, with very little situational awareness let alone when difficult mechanics are happening. Some people see no issue playing the game that way even if it means relying on other people solving mechanics, but to me that's unacceptable.

The moment you try and graduate from needing the UI as a crutch, the job actually takes a disproportionate amount of work to become comfortable with. I can see how other people would view the job as overly complex in that regard.