Viper feels incredibly boring.

[jonimated]

I mained Viper until 7.1, even after they gutted Noxious Gnash. I really wanted to like it but when I played Viper I just felt like I wasn't actually playing the game.

It's an incredibly bland job in pretty much every conceivable aspect. It has nothing going on mechanically. Reawaken may as well be a cooldown because gauge generation is static (though that can be said about nearly every job gauge). 50% of the GCDs you press in a given fight are on 2 buttons. It has no actual identity beyond "I have 2 swords". They are suppose to be hunters of dangerous beasts but nothing they do makes them seem like they are any better at doing that than any other job. Nothing about them is special. They don't even feel like they belong in the world.

The last melee dps they introduced, Reaper, got a whole backstory involved with Garlemald and being personal assassins for the emperor. We also got a whole dungeon dedicated to one of their old training grounds. They feel like they belong in the world. Viper just feels like it was thrown in because they needed to fill the second scouting spot, and for no other reason.

[Chasingstars]

I mained Viper until 7.1, even after they gutted Noxious Gnash. I really wanted to like it but when I played Viper I just felt like I wasn't actually playing the game.

It's an incredibly bland job in pretty much every conceivable aspect. It has nothing going on mechanically. Reawaken may as well be a cooldown because gauge generation is static (though that can be said about nearly every job gauge). 50% of the GCDs you press in a given fight are on 2 buttons. It has no actual identity beyond "I have 2 swords". They are suppose to be hunters of dangerous beasts but nothing they do makes them seem like they are any better at doing that than any other job. Nothing about them is special. They don't even feel like they belong in the world.

The last melee dps they introduced, Reaper, got a whole backstory involved with Garlemald and being personal assassins for the emperor. We also got a whole dungeon dedicated to one of their old training grounds. They feel like they belong in the world. Viper just feels like it was thrown in because they needed to fill the second scouting spot, and for no other reason.

I might be forgetting, but did we even get a proper origin for them? Not their current line of work, but how the fighting style even came about in the first place?

You don't have to answer, but this is mostly just me throwing this out there: Like what actually is reawaken? As I can only assume it must come from a snake tural vidraal and I guess it might've had blue flames. So whenever we reawaken, are we channeling the spirit of that snake? If so, are there "vipers" of other tural vidraal who can channel other vidraal?

[ovIm]

Keep in mind i started playing it yesterday and i know this might sound like blasphemy in the eyes of Viper mains, but it feels so incredibly boring and it feels like the job plays itself. It almost feels impossible to mess up on a rotation via single Target or aoe. And while the single target dmg is strong, it\\'s AOE damage on large pulls feel bad. I\\'m honestly thinking about switching to Pictomancer.

I said it in another thread once, the removal of Noxious Gnash has completely neutered any gameplay depth Viper has had, making it so braindead its mind numbingly boring. From my favorite class in the game to this within 4 weeks of release. That alone also shattered any trust I had in the job design team for this game.

[Cynric]

I said it in another thread once, the removal of Noxious Gnash has completely neutered any gameplay depth Viper has had, making it so braindead its mind numbingly boring. From my favorite class in the game to this within 4 weeks of release. That alone also shattered any trust I had in the job design team for this game.

Well not just that right but the change to the basic combo was also problematic too as well as the buff timer changes.

We went from choosing when to apply noxious gnash and choosing which basic combo starter to use based on whether you needed to reapply with dread fangs or could get away with waiting for Dreadwinder. Which meant you could get more or less steel fangs depending if you were trying to optimize and do a bit more damage while also managing buffs during reawaken.

To having basically permanent buffs and alternating the two combos. So them removing Noxious Gnash was like part of it but they just did an overall class simplification to it as well beyond that.

When the combos were more dynamic and buffs required management, using reawaken required some planning depending on the fight if you didn't want to lose buffs.

Then you also could argue Viper lost the only slightly poison resembling thematic it had with Noxious Gnash.

I understand why they made the buff timer changes because it could get really tight on the timing at some points, but when you add all the changes in together it just over simplified the job.

[jonimated]

I might be forgetting, but did we even get a proper origin for them? Not their current line of work, but how the fighting style even came about in the first place?

You don't have to answer, but this is mostly just me throwing this out there: Like what actually is reawaken? As I can only assume it must come from a snake tural vidraal and I guess it might've had blue flames. So whenever we reawaken, are we channeling the spirit of that snake? If so, are there "vipers" of other tural vidraal who can channel other vidraal?

All we really got was that they studied the viper, as in the literal snake, for their fighting style.. The job quest was honestly so shallow when it came to lore for the job. I was so disappointed after what we got for Reaper.

To your last point there was actually a nugget of potential there if they had gone with a sort of Witcher-style hunter. The job we have could have been from the school/guild of the Viper. With other guilds around the world for different animals/fighting styles. They didn't even go that far though. It just feels like such a half baked job and I was so personally disappointed. There were so many cool inspirations they could have pulled from with regards to "hunters of strong beasts".

[Chasingstars]

All we really got was that they studied the viper, as in the literal snake, for their fighting style.. The job quest was honestly so shallow when it came to lore for the job. I was so disappointed after what we got for Reaper.

To your last point there was actually a nugget of potential there if they had gone with a sort of Witcher-style hunter. The job we have could have been from the school/guild of the Viper. With other guilds around the world for different animals/fighting styles. They didn't even go that far though. It just feels like such a half baked job and I was so personally disappointed. There were so many cool inspirations they could have pulled from with regards to "hunters of strong beasts".

Ah, that is a shame as I was kind of surprised it was over and done with that quickly. And defintely a missed opportunity to not hint at the past, even having a simple sentence of dialogue after being asked a question, like "There were other schools like mine when tural was less peaceful, yet now only the viper remains." At least would've hinted to a deeper story to Tural as a location.

[Yuella]

If you finish Dawntrail before unlocking Viper, the NPC says "Ah! You've been to Tural. So you've seen some of the beasts that we hunt." Something like that. I don't remember the exact wordings.

[ovIm]

Well not just that right but the change to the basic combo was also problematic too as well as the buff timer changes.

The change to the basic combo was because NG was removed, though. The removal of NG meant that the second combo starter had to do something different now. It also automatically meant that Dreadwinder (now Vicewinder) lost a lot of its interaction with the rest of the kit. Really, everything you wrote in your long post, which, just to be clear I fully agree with, is the result of the removal of NG. This is the sentiment I have about the changes.

Its just the fact that the devs wanting to remove NG has completely cascaded over the entirety of Vipers kit. Does not help that people claim it still plays the same, usually those are the people that played it wrong in the first place.

[jonimated]

The change to the basic combo was because NG was removed, though. The removal of NG meant that the second combo starter had to do something different now. It also automatically meant that Dreadwinder (now Vicewinder) lost a lot of its interaction with the rest of the kit. Really, everything you wrote in your long post, which, just to be clear I fully agree with, is the result of the removal of NG. This is the sentiment I have about the changes.

Its just the fact that the devs wanting to remove NG has completely cascaded over the entirety of Vipers kit. Does not help that people claim it still plays the same, usually those are the people that played it wrong in the first place.

This is pretty much it. They create a job with multiple mechanics that interact with a single debuff, only to remove the debuff but not replace the interactions with anything else. It had a cascading effect.

Pair all that with the significant increase to the buff timers making them almost completely inconsequential. They may as well not exist at all with how little you actually have to consider their existence. To think they were also considering at the time to remove the positional as well. I will never understand this simplification philosophy. The point of having meta-mechanics is to encourage player interaction outside of the main game mechanics. If the mechanics aren't going to require any interaction then why bother?

Viper may have the highest APM in the game, but it feels the slowest to play because you as the player aren't actually required to do anything at all.

[AvoSturmfaust]

I said it in another thread once, the removal of Noxious Gnash has completely neutered any gameplay depth Viper has had, making it so braindead its mind numbingly boring. From my favorite class in the game to this within 4 weeks of release. That alone also shattered any trust I had in the job design team for this game.

Because you dont understand that removing NG was the best step because with the removal it ADDED DEPTH to the class, no you have some optis, which goes above the "standardplay" and possibilitys which werent even possible with NG