Viper Suggestion - Give Reaving Fangs the Armor Crush treatment

**jonimated** · 07-31-2024 11:40 PM

Obviously people are mad at the removal of Noxious Gnash. Or rather I feel like they are mad at the removal of a mechanic that required even a minor amount of consideration when playing the job.

I think based on SEs job design the removal of Noxious Gnash was inevitable. I'm honestly surprised it made it passed testing to begin with. Seems perhaps the root of the disappointment with it's removal was that it was just removed. It wasn't replaced with something of equal value.

imo SE should have treated this like they did Armor Crush when removing the Huton speed buff.

Reaving Fangs should give 2 stacks of a buff to Steel Fangs, and Vicewinder should add 1 stack. This buff stacks up to 3 times. Make the potency of Steel Fangs lower than Reaving Fangs without the buff, but higher with the buff. This change would keep the feel of intermittently weaving Reaving Fangs into the combo starter with purpose, and keep the combo from feeling completely static. This also adds the utility back to Vicewinder to affect the base combo.

I feel like this change is easy and obvious and I'm not sure why SE didn't take this route. Maybe because it would feel too close to Ninja, but half the Viper kit is taken wholesale from other jobs so that doesn't seem to be a consideration.

I do hope they consider this, or something similar, to add back the feel that was taken from the basic combo. I don't think Noxious Gnash needs to be put back, but I do think something needs to be done. As it stands now the combo has become completely static and it just feels weird.

Edit: Since I know job homogenization can be a concern I came up with a different solution.

Reaving Fangs and Vicewinder add a 20 second buff to Steel Fangs only (stacks up to 40 seconds). This allows the buttons to act functionally identical to their previous iterations, and all but completely removes any repercussions for allowing it to fall off. the buff affecting a single button instead of all damage allows double Reawaken windows to be done without issue, and there's no danger with it falling off during a long disengage period while using Uncoiled Fury.

This honestly feels perfect to me. Thoughts?

**Embio** · 07-31-2024 11:56 PM

Honestly, I could get behind something like this. I think part of the reason the new change feels so awful is because it effectively removed half of your combo chains. 2-1-1, 2-1-2, 1-2-1, and 1-2-2 do not exist in Viper's current design. They spent all this time designing this free form combo system for Viper, only to turn around and make the rotation completely static. Wasn't that supposed to be the point of the job? What was the goal of this change?

But a stack system would help bring those combo strings back by making Dread Fangs a maintenance tool again. I think what they did with Ninja was an elegant solution. If timer management is too clunky, then replace it with resource management.

I don't think it's too big of an ask for the "free form combo job" they designed to actually have free form combos, lol.

**jonimated** · 08-01-2024 10:49 PM

Originally Posted by Embio

Honestly, I could get behind something like this. I think part of the reason the new change feels so awful is because it effectively removed half of your combo chains. 2-1-1, 2-1-2, 1-2-1, and 1-2-2 do not exist in Viper's current design. They spent all this time designing this free form combo system for Viper, only to turn around and make the rotation completely static. Wasn't that supposed to be the point of the job? What was the goal of this change?

But a stack system would help bring those combo strings back by making Dread Fangs a maintenance tool again. I think what they did with Ninja was an elegant solution. If timer management is too clunky, then replace it with resource management.

I don't think it's too big of an ask for the "free form combo job" they designed to actually have free form combos, lol.

I do think you've articulated something important here. Something many seem to miss or forget. Surface level what SE did was remove a simple management debuff. That had a cascading result, however. Not least of which being the removal of literally half of the Viper's potential combo paths. It seems like an insignificant change on the surface but it can be felt when playing the job, and has removed a huge part of the uniqueness of the branching 2-button combo design.

I do hope SE considers something to bring back the feel of the combo, either my suggestion or something else.

**Embio** · 08-02-2024 02:09 AM

Originally Posted by jonimated

I do think you've articulated something important here. Something many seem to miss or forget...

What's strikes me as odd about this is the fact that it's really hard to not notice the difference. It's easy to not realize the cascading effect only looking at the change on paper, but I barely had to play around on the dummy for about a minute to notice the substantial change to the combos. It's not like I live and breathe Viper either; I only used it to go through MSQ and prog some EX. On top of that, the job has only been out for a month anyways. Yet the change was massive enough for me to feel immediately, and diagnose in less time than it takes to microwave rice.

This leads me to two hypotheses on how these changes even made it into the game:

1. The devs haven't playtested the changes, are oblivious to the effects it's had on the core of the job, and are only familiar with it on paper, or

2. They have playtested the changes, but weren't even marginally familiar enough with the job beforehand to notice that the combo system had changed at all.

There is also option three, which is that they are aware of the effect it has and are just that willing to compromise on their design, but I'd really rather not consider that possibility.

**W00by** · 08-02-2024 08:44 AM

Originally Posted by Embio

What's strikes me as odd about this is the fact that it's really hard to not notice the difference. It's easy to not realize the cascading effect only looking at the change on paper, but I barely had to play around on the dummy for about a minute to notice the substantial change to the combos. It's not like I live and breathe Viper either; I only used it to go through MSQ and prog some EX. On top of that, the job has only been out for a month anyways. Yet the change was massive enough for me to feel immediately, and diagnose in less time than it takes to microwave rice.

This leads me to two hypotheses on how these changes even made it into the game:

1. The devs haven't playtested the changes, are oblivious to the effects it's had on the core of the job, and are only familiar with it on paper, or

2. They have playtested the changes, but weren't even marginally familiar enough with the job beforehand to notice that the combo system had changed at all.

There is also option three, which is that they are aware of the effect it has and are just that willing to compromise on their design, but I'd really rather not consider that possibility.

In my opinion, I think the biggest problem is that they aren't confident in Viper. I mean, just look at Picto -- it's more complicated than Viper with a large playerbase, but no gameplay changes have been implemented there even though there's plenty of challenging stuff in its rotation, too. I think this is because they have faith in the design of Pictomancer, but with Viper, they just have no clue. If they were confident in how they originally designed Viper, they wouldn't have let 6 days of incomplete feedback determine how they are going to design the class.

In hindsight, it's kind of obvious. Looking at the Job Action Live Letter, the way they talk about Viper and Pictomancer are night and day differences. For Pictomancer, they go into detail, Yoshi P does a sample Opener, they hover over skill icons and names, explain the different parts of the kit. . .

For Viper, Yoshi P mashes out some buttons and explains that "I know it looks complicated but I promise it makes sense once you play it" and seems to deliberately avoid going into excessive detail because they feared it'd confuse people. They have thought, since designing Viper, that it was going to be too hard for the playerbase, so naturally, their immediate response to ANY criticism -- even ONE comment -- was to go "Oh god, we were right to worry, they hate it, rework it right away." This is the only theory that makes sense to me; they designed Viper afraid and not confident, and expected to have to change it to begin with.

That's why I believe it's important, as we protest the 7.05 changes, to also emphasize how much we liked 7.0 Viper. They had no reason to be worried! It was an awesome class! You could even argue it was TOO successful based on playrate numbers. I hope we can bring it back.

**jonimated** · 08-02-2024 10:03 AM

Originally Posted by W00by

In my opinion, I think the biggest problem is that they aren't confident in Viper.

This does put into words the feeling I get from the devs about Viper since it started being shown off. Almost seems like they don't believe in the class they designed and are scrambling to change it when there's even the smallest amount of feedback. Which I think has lead to an overcorrection. It was barely a week out of the gate before there was a post about incoming changes.

It's an incredible artist with low self esteem. They make a gorgeous work of art, get mostly amazing feedback, but one person is like "It could use a bit more blue". Suddenly they are apologizing and re-colouring the entire work blue.

**Embio** · 08-02-2024 11:44 PM

Originally Posted by W00by

In my opinion, I think the biggest problem is that they aren't confident in Viper...

Good observations, and I'm inclined to agree with you. How quickly the changes were announced says everything to me. They weren't just responding to a week of feedback; they already had these changes in the works from the very start, and were just waiting for the word. There's no way they could come to the conclusion that changes needed to be made and come up with a brand new design when, realistically, there's a group of people that didn't play early access and only had the job for TWO days. CBU3 already had their finger on the trigger, and someone in the playerbase happened to sneeze. They need to trust in their design more; I know they're capable of making unique feeling jobs. The PVP rework showed that last expansion.

**Lamarcy2699** · 08-02-2024 07:48 PM

Originally Posted by Embio

What's strikes me as odd about this is the fact that it's really hard to not notice the difference. It's easy to not realize the cascading effect only looking at the change on paper, but I barely had to play around on the dummy for about a minute to notice the substantial change to the combos. It's not like I live and breathe Viper either; I only used it to go through MSQ and prog some EX. On top of that, the job has only been out for a month anyways. Yet the change was massive enough for me to feel immediately, and diagnose in less time than it takes to microwave rice.

This leads me to two hypotheses on how these changes even made it into the game:

1. The devs haven't playtested the changes, are oblivious to the effects it's had on the core of the job, and are only familiar with it on paper, or

2. They have playtested the changes, but weren't even marginally familiar enough with the job beforehand to notice that the combo system had changed at all.

There is also option three, which is that they are aware of the effect it has and are just that willing to compromise on their design, but I'd really rather not consider that possibility.

Funnily enough almost all changes they make seem to be only done on paper, never playtested. MNK in particular "tried to keep its old playstyle" but differed so much at DT launch that it was a completely different job, requiring an entire update to fix it. PLD 6.3 was a straight downgrade is damage from PLD 6.28, despite it being called a "buff" several times. BLM is never at an appropriate damage level each expansion release, and PCT was/is so overtuned it's hilarious. Everything they do just points to having 0 idea about how it is in practice. The developers really do not seem to understand their own game, let alone its playerbase.

I said this in a previous thread, but there's just little to no communication between the team behind job decisions and the playerbase of the game. They also only ever push things to live test and pray it works. They give 0 warning in patch notes before, which kinda defeats the point of having patch notes in the first place. Sure learning about all the new stuff is cool, but job changes matter just as much if not more than new stuff being added. In case of VPR they handled the changes EXTREMELY poorly as they changed it right before savage release, which made any and all learning up to savage completely pointless, even moreso now the job plays itself.

**Metricasc** · 10-25-2024 04:59 PM

Originally Posted by Lamarcy2699

Funnily enough almost all changes they make seem to be only done on paper, never playtested. MNK in particular "tried to keep its old playstyle" but differed so much at DT launch that it was a completely different job, requiring an entire update to fix it. PLD 6.3 was a straight downgrade is damage from PLD 6.28, despite it being called a "buff" several times. BLM is never at an appropriate damage level each expansion release, and PCT was/is so overtuned it's hilarious. Everything they do just points to having 0 idea about how it is in practice. The developers really do not seem to understand their own game, let alone its playerbase.

just want to point out for 6.3 PLD that the major buff really came to its mitigation kit and sustain more than its DPS output. tank DPS didn't really balance out till 6.4-6.5. they had under tuned the DPS in 6.3 only to bring it back in line (and allow for more flexibility around atonement afterwards) 6.4. this was still a better than just making band aid changes to a tank that was clearly underperforming in EW.

also worth pointing out that along with the removal of nash, they were also planning on removing positionals from Viper until there was enough pushback on SE to not do that. I think it remains a possibility something like nash return to Viper in 7.1 given that removing it made the class feel worse to play overall.

picto just needs a nerf, the 7.05 buffs to all classes helped a little bit, but PCT still largely shows as the best caster to bring in almost every situation imaginable.

**Leonus** · 08-01-2024 12:20 AM

Originally Posted by jonimated

Obviously people are mad at the removal of Noxious Gnash. Or rather I feel like they are mad at the removal of a mechanic that required even a minor amount of consideration when playing the job.

I think based on SEs job design the removal of Noxious Gnash was inevitable. I'm honestly surprised it made it passed testing to begin with. Seems perhaps the root of the disappointment with it's removal was that it was just removed. It wasn't replaced with something of equal value.

imo SE should have treated this like they did Armor Crush when removing the Huton speed buff.

Reaving Fangs should give 2 stacks of a buff to Steel Fangs, and Vicewinder should add 1 stack. This buff stacks up to 3 times. Make the potency of Steel Fangs lower than Reaving Fangs without the buff, but higher with the buff. This change would keep the feel of intermittently weaving Reaving Fangs into the combo starter with purpose, and keep the combo from feeling completely static. This also adds the utility back to Vicewinder to affect the base combo.

I feel like this change is easy and obvious and I'm not sure why SE didn't take this route. Maybe because it would feel too close to Ninja, but half the Viper kit is taken wholesale from other jobs so that doesn't seem to be a consideration.

I do hope they consider this, or something similar, to add back the feel that was taken from the basic combo. I don't think Noxious Gnash needs to be put back, but I do think something needs to be done. As it stands now the combo has become completely static and it just feels weird.

Actual constructive criticism. I like it.

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Viper Suggestion - Give Reaving Fangs New Additional Utility