Please don't change Viper

[JudahKresnik]

I have to agree 100%.

I've been a tank or healer main since 8/28/2013. I could never quite either find something in a dps role to enjoy in high end content or in general - or ever figure out how to play it well enough to hang with the savage crowd on a dps job.

Tanking and healing has left me a little wanting for more buttons to press so I thought I'd start Dawntrail as a Viper.

Most fun I've had in ten years. It's the perfect balance (pun not intended) where the job is busy, the positionals are not incredibly demanding but they're still there meaning focus and attention are needed. The timers leave room for skill expression and optimization. The job does not feel homogenized at all which so far these were all selling points and design social points of the job to begin with, right?

I mean even the Reawakened combo is SO satisfying to pull off while doing mechanics at the same time, love the visual and sound effects and having the Legacy oGCDs and Ouroboros finisher make the whole thing FEEL like you're playing well!

Anecdotally I have yet to hear a negative comment about VPR in game on Sargatanas (also not intended) so the fact that anyone has mentioned the job might be "too busy" is entirely new to me.

I'm adaptable to small changes but I'm genuinely hoping the core of the job stays exactly the same. I've been extremely satisfied with my new main!

[JudahKresnik]

PS: focal point, not social point.

Fat thumbs...

[Hastatus]

SE, please stop listening to impulsive, injudicious complaints. Please start listening to long-tested, critiques. Wait six months and send out an in-game questionnaire to players who have spent a couple hundred hours playing as Viper to hear what they think before making rash decisions based on impatient, loud people. Jobs in FFXIV should be treated like wine and allowed to age a little.

[ValStormbreaker]

snip

People complained about MNK before 5.0 came out, due to both pre-release preview notes and playable demos at various trade show events. SE's response? They not only refused to listen to the feedback, they decided they were not going to release patch notes anymore prior to the maintenance periods so people wouldn't be able to complain ahead of time, so they wouldn't have to implement the feedback when they had more than enough time to do so before the patch's launch date. This way, we'd be forced to play with the job changes they decided, in a bid to make us try it out first. Whelp, the feedback didn't change, and things were still not good.

The response? Claim that they were working on a REALLY BIG rework that would require so much time, it would have to wait a few extra patches to 5.4.

What did we get shown in the 5.4 live letter? Something that felt like someone thought it up last-minute 20 minutes before the live letter that completely gutted a third of the job's kit and DESTROYED its ability to deal with certain mechanics in Savage content without a 30% DPS loss due to Riddle of Earth changes nobody asked for, which was in a bid to preserve the "busy feel" of the job by taking existing oGCDs and just giving them multiple charges so we'd be pushing not quite the same amount of buttons since some of the remaining abilities were now useless, when the requests were "put the skills you took away back!" and "bring some of the unique PvP skills over as more oGCDs to fix the problems!".

They lied to us. They did not put in effort into that patch, and it made me so mad I quit the game over it. Shadowbringer's story was nearly over by that point, and I had no will left to get back into raiding.

How did they respond to the criticism about the RoE change nobody asked for? Did they change it back? No, they gave an extra charge to it, because 3 charges of a 10-minute effect = 30 seconds of the effect... right?

Wrong. Those mechanics were still impossible because you're supposed to take damage only once and then avoid the rest of the damage.

So, not knowing what else to do to make MNK mains happy (since very direct forum feedback wasn't enough), they decided to take a 30-minute ramble (which was so ridiculous I'm convinced was under the influence) from a certain content creator, treat him as an "expert" on the job due to his influencer status, and use that as the basis for EW MNK. And DT MNK is like EW MNK but for people who didn't understand how to hotbar Twin Snakes after Dragon Kick and True Strike after Snap Punch.

When I quit for four years in 5.4, I didn't even think it was possible for it to get THIS bad. I am ONLY back because of Viper being a return to form for us Stormblood Monk mains, since MNK has been thoroughly destroyed. I have no issues quitting again.

A great deal of the dev team should be fired over this going on for so long. We do need a Melee DPS strike at this point.

[ValStormbreaker]

I have to agree 100%.

I've been a tank or healer main since 8/28/2013. I could never quite either find something in a dps role to enjoy in high end content or in general - or ever figure out how to play it well enough to hang with the savage crowd on a dps job.

Tanking and healing has left me a little wanting for more buttons to press so I thought I'd start Dawntrail as a Viper.

Most fun I've had in ten years. It's the perfect balance (pun not intended) where the job is busy, the positionals are not incredibly demanding but they're still there meaning focus and attention are needed. The timers leave room for skill expression and optimization. The job does not feel homogenized at all which so far these were all selling points and design social points of the job to begin with, right?

I mean even the Reawakened combo is SO satisfying to pull off while doing mechanics at the same time, love the visual and sound effects and having the Legacy oGCDs and Ouroboros finisher make the whole thing FEEL like you're playing well!

Anecdotally I have yet to hear a negative comment about VPR in game on Sargatanas (also not intended) so the fact that anyone has mentioned the job might be "too busy" is entirely new to me.

I'm adaptable to small changes but I'm genuinely hoping the core of the job stays exactly the same. I've been extremely satisfied with my new main!

You missed out on Stormblood Monk then. It's what Viper is a consolidated version of, except I'd argue it was a bit more fun due to having more deliberate executions on various maneuvers. Viper is a step forward in some places but also a step backward in others. If MNK gets the fixes it truly needs and gets a proper return to form, you'd really like it. It's terrible in its current state though, don't go anywhere near it for now.

[Zytoryu]

Just throwing my comment in the thread so SE might rethink changing it. I love Viper as it currently is.

Please don't change it square, I've waited years to have a proper Dexterity melee like Viper.

[ValStormbreaker]

Just throwing my comment in the thread so SE might rethink changing it. I love Viper as it currently is.

Please don't change it square, I've waited years to have a proper Dexterity melee like Viper.

IMHO Viper and SAM should be swapped so Viper is on Striking and SAM is on Scouting.

This would solve a lot of balance problems and issues that result from MNK and SAM sharing a gear set, but having polar opposite styles of gameplay. Since SAM's introduction, whenever MNK has been in good shape, SAM has been in terrible shape, and vice versa. One of the requests since Stormblood was to unshackle them and give SAM its own gear set, or move it somewhere else. With VPR being very similar to Stormblood MNK, it would help out balancing a whole lot.

Both jobs would also benefit from better glamour options that are more fitting for them. Striking was originally exclusively for MNK until SB, when SAM was introduced, and since then, the gear attempting to cater to two drastically different power fantasies has been pretty bad, with the only exceptions really being Stormblood's Scaevan and Omega gear sets from when Alphascape launched (the striking gear for both of which would look OUTSTANDING on Viper). Everything else looks terrible. Scouting gear isn't very cosmetically fitting for NIN either, but would actually look a lot better on SAM for that ronin-esque power fantasy.

The attitude was "well Striking already has two jobs and Scouting only has one, so we have a vacancy" but they didn't consider a lot of the issues that might come with that. It's easier to fix MNK and balance it with Viper than it is to fix MNK and not have SAM be in good shape. It'd be easier to synergize SAM and NIN than SAM and MNK unless you reinvented SAM to play at the rhythm and pace of VPR or a 1.85 GCD speed MNK, which isn't happening. MNK, meanwhile, should not only be ideally MORE like VPR, it should technically be the more advanced version of it, with more oGCD double-weaving and a much faster GCD speed.

[pumkincakez]

Viper is a great new addition to the roster of FF jobs, its easy enough to understand once you get the hang of it while leaving plenty of room to grow. Changing the class this early on in its lifespan feels like overreacting. Please reconsider making the class easier as many people right now absolutely enjoy it in its current state.

Probably too late after the lodestone post, but this community is getting embarrassing at this point. From Healer “strikes” to repeating the trend of forcing changes that nobody actually wants. Complaining about Viper after it releases for 5 minutes is why WHM doesn’t have Cleric or why role responsibility hardly exists outside savage.

They need to let us sit with the job as is for at least a month after savage releases. People who are upset about Viper need some more time with it, it hasn’t even been out a week from official launch. If Viper gets watered down and people complain, it’s our own fault. I implore SE and the dev team at CU3 to hold off and for us collectively to be patient and apply a little more dedication to understand the job as it is.

[remiff]

Once again, the devs at Square Enix are making a quick and incomprehensible decision with barely a week's perspective on a job.

This is particularly surprising since this job is popular with many people, unlike the bland rotations they implemented with the monk in Dawntrail.
It's unprecedented to make hasty decisions about a job that has just been released,
especially when they could simply wait for the savage battles to gain more effective feedback instead of listening to a vocal minority of players who want all jobs to be no-brain and without any flavor.

[HeroIgnis]

I couldn't agree more, I've heard people complain that Viper is too busy in terms of its rotation but I'd argue that's what makes it fun and unique. Viper is the first job in a while that's actually requires my brain to be active and attentive to my decision making. For the people that don't enjoy that kind of play style there a plenty of other jobs that will fill your needs, we don't need another homogenized Job. Leave Viper alone for the moment we need more time to see where it cracks before requesting adjustments.