Please don't change Viper

[ValStormbreaker]

This is my first post on the forum, and I had to get everything set up to also add my two cents:

Viper is fantastic the way it is. The whole point of the job is the unrelenting offense at the cost of utility. There are no raid buffs, no defensives, and your only cooldown is just doing your fast ability (Reawaken) for free. Removing positionals and potential "busy-ness" of the job would be such a waste and get rid of the main appeal to the job.

If anything the only changes I'd like to see is implementing the Crystalline Conflict defensive Snake Scales for PVE in some fashion, just to give it a little extra survivability for harder content. Every other melee dps has something to give smart players a reward for lessening the burdens on healers or some tool to help stay alive. DRG has Life Surge, MNK has Riddle of Earth/Earth's Reply, SAM has Tengetsu, RPR has Arcane Crest, NIN has Shade Shift. If they don't get that though, it's still fine and all around the most fun I've had on a melee job in a long while.

I wanted to reply to this yesterday but had the daily lockout on more posts. The game has always had unique PvP skills for the DPS jobs that would have been incredibly useful for immediately fixing job problems if ported over to PvE and just given potency adjustments, but the dev team never does this. SHB MNK could have really used the PvP skills Axe Kick and Somersault as oGCDs for reliable ways of managing the Chakra and Greased Lightning gauges, but that never happened. Instead the animations were aped for something hidden behind the beast chakra system in EW that was like a worse version of NIN's mudras and made no sense on MNK, and created even more problems.

This is another game-wide issue, and I agree that Snake Scales should be brought to PvE. Riddle of Earth in its current form is... not good. The previous RoE from SHB 5.1 was really good, and incredibly useful in context. I haven't bothered seeing how it works in PvP, but the current PvE skill brings with it a lot of problems and reveals issues with encounter design philosophy. That's a whole sermon, though, but the TL;DR is I do not think the cool and useful PvP skills should be exclusive to PvP when there has been a consistent track record of them always being super useful for solving job issues in PvE. They NEED to be ported over.

[Donze]

I second this.

I took 1 look at a Viper ability upon unlocked it, and its mouseover tool tip referenced TEN (10) other abilities, buffs, triggers, and stopped there, deciding to revisit it later. Bad tool tip writing/explain aside, I too think its too soon to make this kind of decision, and to leave the positionals as is, and let it cook longer.

[Kuromori]

I never post on the forums either, but I want to add my voice to those begging you to not change Viper.

I am colorblind and I have no issues with the positionals as I simply memorized the rear and flank icons. I like the busyness and speed of the class. It makes it more interesting and fun. Please don't change it.

[auesis]

Made my forum account just to contribute to this discussion.

Viper is by the far most fun melee introduced to the game in years. Everything about it flows incredibly well. Once you have gotten in to learning it, it is one of the easier melees, with just the right amount of buttons to press to stay engaging.

It makes absolutely no sense to me to streamline the job more than it is already streamlined. I am not against adding a bit more range to the oGCDs, like Continuation on GNB, but everything else is perfect.

I want to know where these complaints are coming from, because every Viper player I've spoken to *loves* it. Why do this?

[Zaredth]

I rarely ever get on these forums but today, is a day I also want my voice to be heard and echoed with fellow people who agree. Leave Viper alone, minor QoL is okay but stop dumbing it down! By all means, add slight potencies, making double weaving easier (I personally don't need it) but making them faster, but leave the positionals and the frame of the Viper being "busy" alone!

[Zephyraeon]

Chiming in to add my name to the list of people that don’t want viper to change. Never use the official forums and have specifically logged in to try and prevent this from happening

[pokemonpasta]

Made an account to add my voice, this is the most fun melee I've played in this game in a while. It showcases the general direction jobs could take in the future, has some level of complexity but is fairly simple to get into once you get the hang of it, feels satisfying and always has something interesting to do. It has quite a high chance of taking Warrior's spot as my main, but this will be less likely if it's gutted. I beg you Square Enix, please at *least* give it a bit more time, it's not even been a week.

[AlexRaines]

I'm dusting off my Official Forum account specifically for this. The job itself feels great at level 100. I've literally not spoken to a single person who has said it needs to be simplified. If there is any change that should be made, it's some slight range adjustments for the oGCDs and for the Reawaken combo and maybe increasing the noxious gnash debuff to 30 seconds with a max of 60, but even then, it's so easy to reapply it that it's not a big deal.

Besides, we're not even a week into Dawntrail, even from early access! Give the job some breathing room! It doesn't need to be changed now, and especially not at Savage launch.

[Rhael]

increasing the noxious gnash debuff to 30 seconds with a max of 60

This would significantly change the feel of the job. Playing around the Noxious Gash timer is a small but important part of the depth.

[_Midlander_]

Yeah I 100% agree, one of the funnest class i've played. It's nice to have a class that's not completely dumbed down. PLEASE don't change it!