Where is fun in 7.05 VPR?

[LoadedVirus]

I personally don't see the difference between 7.01 Viper and now, people are acting like Noxious Gnash was like Higanbana to keep up, it was a 40 second debuff that was applied by 4 moves with no combos to reach it. Viper was hit the glowing thing before the patch and its hit the glowing thing after the patch.

[KooriGraywolf]

I really wonder why everyone is so obsessed with that debuff. If having a debuff to maintain on your target on one of your two side combo is so fun for you you can't play Viper anymore, then, go play dragoon.

The chaotic side of the combo and its DoT to maintain on the target is there for your fun.

Sounds to me like sunk-cost fallacy. They spent so much time mastering their giga-brain 5D-chess debuff that now that it's removed, all that monumental effort was for nothing

[Tizzy_Tormentor]

Sounds to me like sunk-cost fallacy. They spent so much time mastering their giga-brain 5D-chess debuff that now that it's removed, all that monumental effort was for nothing

That's the funny part though, it was never difficult to upkeep, hell, Dreadwinder did most of it for you, this is something the devs decided was too strenuous to manage, despite the fact that I don't think I ever saw any criticism directed towards Noxious Gnash, but saw plenty directed to the high apm, double weaves and high rate of positionals, but these were largely unchanged due to feedback.

Personally, I'm sad its gone mainly because no we have a snake-themed dps that doesn't use any kind of poison/venom.

[fulminating]

Sounds to me like sunk-cost fallacy. They spent so much time mastering their giga-brain 5D-chess debuff that now that it's removed, all that monumental effort was for nothing

It wasn't difficult and few people are claiming it was. It's that the fluidity of the job was hanging off this single coathanger and it's now on the floor in a static heap. It's almost entirely about the feel and theming - most of the time for nearly everyone the easiest way to increase damage output is getting better uptime %, this change does not affect holding uncoiled stacks in the slightest. What it does do is lump a less cool sounding name on half the skills. Dread is a cool more intimidating word, vice just carries the stuffy religious connotations.

[Higashikata]

discourse I think is symptomatic of a larger sentiment where people are tired of them dumbing down jobs and the shiny new toy is already getting these changes after only having been out for two months. It sort of just didn't need to be changed-- For things like kaiten you could make the argument where your overall DPS could fluctuate as high as 20% if you didn't crit any of your midares while things like old twin snakes on mnk were actually difficult to optimize. NG wasn't either of those, it wasn't hard or remotely challenging to upkeep, all you had to do was make sure the number was above 30 before you did a double awaken and make sure the number was below 20 before reapplying outside of your burst. It was in no way broken or in need of repair, so why did it need to be "fixed"?

[Cynric]

discourse I think is symptomatic of a larger sentiment where people are tired of them dumbing down jobs and the shiny new toy is already getting these changes after only having been out for two months. It sort of just didn't need to be changed-- For things like kaiten you could make the argument where your overall DPS could fluctuate as high as 20% if you didn't crit any of your midares while things like old twin snakes on mnk were actually difficult to optimize. NG wasn't either of those, it wasn't hard or remotely challenging to upkeep, all you had to do was make sure the number was above 30 before you did a double awaken and make sure the number was below 20 before reapplying outside of your burst. It was in no way broken or in need of repair, so why did it need to be "fixed"?

I wish it had been at least two months. But it's barely been a single month since early access and they stated the want to change it about 2 weeks into the expansion. That is obscenely fast to start making changes like this. When they stated they were making changes a lot of the playerbase hadn't even finished the MSQ yet or hit level 100. So that's definitely part of it. I think the other part is that they had said they wouldn't be simplifying jobs more, and the first thing they do is simplify Viper, which was already the most popular job in the game.

The debuff wasn't like super complicated but it did make the rotation more interesting and now it's less interesting. The interplay between buffs, the debuff, and dreadwinder surprised me and I started to really enjoy that. It's just a shame really, there were a ton of options they could've done if they wanted to simplify the rotation a bit and they picked the worst one.

[LisseyCrowe]

I wish it had been at least two months. But it's barely been a single month since early access and they stated the want to change it about 2 weeks into the expansion. That is obscenely fast to start making changes like this.

It's scary to think the team that thought it necessary to make changes this quickly is apparently going to be working on Job Identity for 8.0

Even if you like what they end up doing to <Insert favourite job(s)> who's to say how long you'll get to enjoy them? Should I stay away from my jobs for 3 months until the waves of changes are over. Oh, what am I saying, that's a a lot of jobs they'll be working on, make that a whole year living in fear of "Is X job okay or have they simply not gotten to it yet".

[HEKnTEKn]

I really wonder why everyone is so obsessed with that debuff. If having a debuff to maintain on your target on one of your two side combo is so fun for you you can't play Viper anymore, then, go play dragoon.

The chaotic side of the combo and its DoT to maintain on the target is there for your fun.

The issue there is that dragoon's DoT maintains itself so long as you follow the incredibly rigid rotation, whereas viper does not. For viper, it was a mix of conscious decisions to ensure that you had the debuff >20 seconds before beginning your awakening rotation, and likewise to ensure that you held 1 dreadwinder to re-apply it for the following coils that you'd launch under raid buffs.

In reality, that isn't even the only issue that arises from the removal of NG:

1. The requirement that your first hit of the fanged combo always alternates now means that your main GCD rotation will now almost always be 1-1-1-2-2-2-1-1-1 with the occasional 1-1-2 or 2-2-1. There will now not be any diversity in needing a 2-1-2, or a 1-2-1, which makes the auto-combo less engaging.

2. The true intention of enabling Dreadwinder to re-apply NG was specifically to allow Winding Coils to be launched immediately after dreadwinder and before the dreadwinder combo, allowing it to be re-upped after double awaken while still dropping your hardest hitting GCDs. The removal of NG implicitly dulls the uniqueness of the interaction between Dreadwinder and the Coil-combo.





I was down for removing positionals from the job when that was what people were suggesting, but to lose Noxious Gnash is literally to strip Viper of what differentiated from a class like Ninja, which has a comparable APM and even a comparably more troublesome debuff (Suiton? Trick Attack?). Viper was the class that canonically and mechanically MARKED it's much larger, tougher prey and danced around them while unleashing bursts of damage opportunistically, the removal of NG literally removes its intended niche and makes it even more homogenized than its existing Scouting counterpart for no reason other than to appeal to a playerbase that wished it wasn't what it was.

[FuwafuwaMii]

Do devs even understand what fun is? How 7.05 VPR is fun? HOW? Could you explain to me where the fun is in 7.05 VPR job? WHERE??

I left WoW forever when devs stopped understanding what fun is, I think I am moving in the direction of leaving FF14 forever too.

Can I have your stuff?

Most Vipers I talked to ingame found the change good.
Smearing a DOT on a target every x seconds is hardly "fun".

[M1SF0RTUNE]

I really wonder why everyone is so obsessed with that debuff. If having a debuff to maintain on your target on one of your two side combo is so fun for you you can't play Viper anymore, then, go play dragoon.

The chaotic side of the combo and its DoT to maintain on the target is there for your fun.

I think you're missing part of the point. The debuff acted as part of the puzzle/micro-choices you'd make as a Viper which gave an already hand-holding job something a bit of a mini-game to upkeep while landing their big hits. It was what encouraged some agency when choosing how to free-flow through your combo whether you make one of several decisions to hold Dreadwinder, reinitialize with Dread Fang or pop them now and save up Uncoiled Fang. It acted as a bit of a connective tissue to using Dreadwinder and the timer being so low meant you had to be very deliberate in when to re-up it. There was choice in *how* you re-apply it and *when* thanks to Dreadwinder management and tracking your combo, which made some of the optimization fun to figure out fight to fight. Finally it's what gave Reawaken more impact because you set yourself up to make the big hits hit the hardest and give it a lot more power thanks to the micro-decisions you made to that point. It's an improvement from Reaper's Death's Design too thanks to it being baked into combos and a button that also offered major utility in starting or re-upping buffs quickly.

What the change ended up doing was disconnecting Dreadwinder (now Vicewinder) and even Reawaken to some degree from the rest of the kit making them almost redundant outside the opener, and removed the only safeguard that made the combo as automated as it is now while replacing it with nothing and completely cratering the skill floor and skill ceiling. What was pitched was a free-flow combo you had some choice in choosing how to travel down the tracks, but now it's "either hit the flashing button or you're not just incompetent but blind." With no expression or variation, you just do what the glowing buttons say, brainlessly, with no thought or strategy. It's mindless Reawakening spam which is not what the job was advertised as, and it's boring.

Heck, take Red Mage for example. You're just building gauges with that job and then spending them, but you're spending them within a buff and Manafication and you had to do the job correctly to set up double finishers within the buff. There's nothing like that for Viper now outside of Pots (but when are you using Pots outside of Savage?). Rattling Coil doesn't do anything like that, it's just a free use of Reawaken spam which also requires no thought or expression.

Edit: Something I'm continuing to notice after doing my Expert Roulette on Strayborough Deadwalk. Now that the game converted the moves into an endless combo that you have to maintain without breaking, I'm noticing it's even more awkward to manage now and I'm having to stare at the hotbars a lot more often which is making it harder to focus on mechanics (especially the second boss of that dungeon). With what we had before there was at least a *break* in the combo or one you could set up for longer (like you set yourself up to start with 1 twice in a row by extending the timer, or even 3 times in a row), and the debuff ended up serving as a secondary visual queue that I can safely start with a 1-start combo, or whether I needed to get ready to start with 2 or Dreadwinder. I feel like I overall lost a lot of flexibility just in that dungeon alone, and the job just feels extremely rigid.

And no, using Vicewinder (man I hate that name) or Reawaken or Uncoiled Fury doesn't act as a "break" in the combo, you still have to re-enter where you left off to maintain maximum damage so once again it's more reason that I have to go stare at a gauge or a hotbar. This feels like far more of a chore than upkeeping a debuff if I'm being frank.