Viper feels incredibly boring.

[Carighan]

That's one of the things I feel often precludes actually critiqueing Viper's untenable underlying design (or lack thereof), this "But it used to be so much better, just revert that!"-thing. Yeah sure it was better, but if I action the devs to do something, I won't settle for getting a 1.1/10 instead of 1/10 class, sorry.

Scrap the whole thing. Take some of the animations and some ideas like the semi-randomized ping-ponging autocombos, and implement a new class based on it. Sure, some people might like the current design and would feel meh if it were scrapped. I can agree to respect each other's opinion in that case, no matter how wrong theirs might be.

[Grimforth]

It was more fun in early access before they took away noxious gnash.

I'm not familiar with that ability, so I looked it up. And it says that the reason why they removed it was because it made the rotation harder or something and people had a hard time maintaining it.

[CKNovel]

Viper's gimmick is to be fast, that's it.
Once you get used to speed and positionals there's not much going on. You could play Reaper that has much more fun tools like Arcane Crest, the Portals and Harvest Moon.

I'm not familiar with that ability, so I looked it up. And it says that the reason why they removed it was because it made the rotation harder or something and people had a hard time maintaining it.

It was a debuff you applied by using Reaving Fang and the Vicewinder, if I'm not mistaken.
The "problem" was that when the boss had downtime you needed to reapply the buffs which could conflict with other priorities.

SQEX could have simplified the application of the debuff but they decided to remove it completely. Which is a core issue of their design philosophy, they don't do compromise.

[Carighan]

SQEX could have simplified the application of the debuff but they decided to remove it completely. Which is a core issue of their design philosophy, they don't do compromise.

I will say that due to how it worked out, it also just changes very little. Assuming there's no extended downtime, gameplay is unaffected as you got more application than time ticks down by a long shot on Viper. You're never wanting for your formerly-buffs-and-debuff-now-only-buffs. It was only during extended downtimes that you had to track whether to re-start differently or not, so eh, dunno.

I get the feeling it was much more about debuff limits, as always with Squeenix. And for some reason they never want to talk about it, either.

[Tint]

The problem with Viper is principally that it has no job design vision. It exists solely because some dev wanted "two swords anime meme guy". That's it. It has an asthetic they desired, and it ended there.

For me Viper is the combo job. Everything the Viper does are combos. Even the off-GCDs are combos. But of course just having combos feels a bit basic.

The job also feels like the adventurer job. Other jobs have a story behind it, often want to bring back an old fighting style or expand their fighting style to another country or have some sort of greater mission. As a Viper you are just yourself, a skilled swordsman, and adventurer, a sellsword. You write your own story.

[Valence]

I remember in SB when people were saying that SAM was easy. And then in EW they said RPR was easy and boring.

[Birdbrain]

Having a job called Viper with abilities named after serpents and not being able to poison your foes with debuffs is a huge shame. "Viper"? More like, "Milksnake"

[Chasingstars]

Having a job called Viper with abilities named after serpents and not being able to poison your foes with debuffs is a huge shame. "Viper"? More like, "Milksnake"

Yeah its kind of weird.

Bard? Oh yeah, it can have venombite arrow and caustic arrow.
Ninja? Oh yeah, it can have dokumori (poison serving) where it sends out a cloud of poison.
Viper, the job based around snakes? Sorry, no poison abilities for you.

[CKNovel]

I remember in SB when people were saying that SAM was easy. And then in EW they said RPR was easy and boring.

Were people saying that?
I remember a lot of people claiming RPR was the most complete job. But that could be me and my memory.
SAM, it's possible since you were already a midare machine and couldn't drop your buffs. It was also during Stormblood were we had many more harder jobs.
Remember people were also saying that RDM was the easiest of all casters and that was true. Currently, RDM is far from the easiest despite the job barely changing.

RPR and SAM both have a personal mitigation that allows a bit more skill expression on the defensive side. I wish VPR had something similar, maybe if you get hit, 5 second of lifesteal or something.

[Brandr]

For me Viper is the combo job. Everything the Viper does are combos. Even the off-GCDs are combos. But of course just having combos feels a bit basic.

The job also feels like the adventurer job. Other jobs have a story behind it, often want to bring back an old fighting style or expand their fighting style to another country or have some sort of greater mission. As a Viper you are just yourself, a skilled swordsman, and adventurer, a sellsword. You write your own story.

Agreed.

It feels a lot like Assassin Cross with a Sonic Blow Build, from Ragnarok Online!

We get two main combos categorized by speed.

Gear 1: starts with dual swords, finish with dual blades
Gear 2: starts with dual blades, dual swords twice in-between, finishes with dual swords.

And the special, the strongest attack. While for most classes it's a Fatality style, VPR has a Brutality:

Gear 3: Ouroboros sequence, mixing dual swords and dual blades in equal measure.

I love it!