Thoughts on Viper?

[Palladiamors]

The point of a teaser is to... tease, not reveal the whole job.

FF XIV Viper seems to take some inspiration from Locke's Sky Mirage Dive.
With Zidane's weapon style, it really pushes the idea of what if Rogue was an actual job rather than a class.

I have good expectations

The point of a teaser is to get people excited with a glimpse. I'm not doggin' on it like some people but I think they could have given a liiiitttlllleee more.

[Taranok]

So, here's my thoughts on viper.

Cal Kestis and other various Star Wars glams are on the menu. Dual wielding swords and a saber sword, medieval style? Oh you better believe the PotD weapon extractions are coming with light saber cosplays.

More personally, if they can manage something closer to NIN gameplay from the era when I feel it was at its best (Heavensward,) I'll love the class. I used to main ninja before ninki, jank, and bloat more or less ruined it for me, and I'd like to see that style come back, regardless of my general ire towards melee positionals for my belief that they make boss design less interesting overall.

But, eh, FFXIV's generally bad modern encounter design is secondary to the possibility of having a melee DPS that's more NIN-adjacent than MNK/SAM. We'll see.

[Neoyoshi]

It's alright, i think at this point i'm more interested in the new limited job. And female thundercat. And more fishing.

[Kalaam]

Angry fisher limited job will be insane. Can't wait for the HunterXHunter collab

[VentVanitas]

As a person who loves Rogue/Thief archetypes and dislikes Ninja, I'm happy we finally have a Rogue/Thief JOB (not relegated to a class you just upgrade out of). Though I kinda dislike the whole "will be highly technical" thing. I thought that's what NIN was? Having a second Scouting Job that is also highly technical makes little sense to me...but whatever.

I would honestly not even worry about their comment about it being "technically demanding", I'm pretty sure they said something similar with RPR around its reveal too and that job is very beginner friendly (albeit with some very poorly worded tooltips that made things more complicated than they actually are). until we get more info on the job later on I'm going to chalk the comment up to relating to its GCD speed or possibly high APM, whichever way that ends up manifesting as.

Yoshida has gone on record stating that the development team intentionally designs new expansion jobs to be entry level and we can see that reflected in RDM, DNC, RPR, etc. I doubt they would suddenly want to change that philosophy now.

[Rufalus]

The problem is squares job design is so stale does anyone think there is a legit chance there is going to be something massively out of left field here

I’d say the chances are above 90% that we are going to get a 1-2-3 twinblade is the burst you can do once per minute based on gauge but there is a personal damage buff (blue aura) every 2 minutes that allows for a longer twinblade phase and a 2 minute CD you can do to increase the gauge by 50 with a few random oGCD’s for flavour

There is simply too many jobs for the small design team so at this point we are basically getting shades of the same classes rehashed over and over again, out of 5 melee we already really only have 2 (NIN/RPR, builder spenders and SAM/DRG/MNK, long loopers), when was the last time a class was introduced that actually upset the design philosophies of the game…………6.0 MNK if you stretched it if not……..maybe RDM

Yep everything you said there is my expectation. In terms of what they bring to the game other than aesthetic differences, probably nothing. The only thing to escape homogenisation will be the next limited job, albeit with limited access to content.

[Taranok]

I would honestly not even worry about their comment about it being "technically demanding", I'm pretty sure they said something similar with RPR around its reveal too and that job is very beginner friendly (albeit with some very poorly worded tooltips that made things more complicated than they actually are). until we get more info on the job later on I'm going to chalk the comment up to relating to its GCD speed or possibly high APM, whichever way that ends up manifesting as.

Yoshida has gone on record stating that the development team intentionally designs new expansion jobs to be entry level and we can see that reflected in RDM, DNC, RPR, etc. I doubt they would suddenly want to change that philosophy now.

If they could snap their fingers and redesign every job perfectly in a heartbeat, they'd probably make every job entry level. MMOs are at their best when everything is inviting, regardless of how easy or hard it is to play at its technical limits. The important thing is that making a class easy to approach doesn't mean making it equally as difficult to master. Or, to put it another way, maximizing SAM is very different than maximizing RDM, and that's a good thing.

Likewise, technical is also a term that can be applied to anything. Summoner, arguably the easiest job to play in the game, is a very technical job. Especially in ultimates where the exact order of skills can heavily swing the ease of the class.

To me, I interpret technical in this connotation as a job that has a relatively fixed rotation. Something closer to SAM, DRG, or MCH, as opposed to BRD, RDM, or DNC. I'd see it being only as freeform as BLM's standard rotation (explicitly) at best with the terminology 'technical.'

[Valence]

I'm not gonna defend RPR on everything for sure but here it's a job that actually checks a lot of marks: it's very accessible to new players, but it has also a good amount of optimization ceiling around the gauge and enshroud techs. Saying RPR isn't technical sounds somewhat ignorant.

[LoadedVirus]

It's cool however I'm not a fan of the dual blade fuse mechanic, if you want a dual-wielder then have a dual-wielder... no need to be all extra about it.

[Rychu]

Honestly I think a lot of the negativity is a bit misplaced. If we compared Viper's reveal to Reapers then yeah it is almost objectively a worse reveal. But we do have to factor in that Endwalker's Pre-release showcases were much different due to the pandemic. We only had two digital fanfests so they had to show more to compensate. If we compared Viper's reveal to Gunbreaker's, the reveal makes a lot more sense. Gunbreaker's reveal while cool conceptually, the reveal trailer showing gameplay was lame as fuck and didn't showcase anything cool about the job. Dawntrail's Pre-Release schedule is much closer to Shadowbringers so I think we should be looking at it from that lens. Would I have like more revealed? Yes. Do I think the community is being overly critical? Also yes.