A Call to Action: Please Explain WHY You Like Viper.

[W00by]

Hello hello, Viper fans. Let me begin by saying that, as someone who has been deeply concerned about the proposed changes to the Viper job, it has been immensely heartening to see the amount of people coming out in protest of the changes, including here on the forums, on Reddit and Twitter, and other media outlets. I am unsure if our feelings will reach the developers, but it nonetheless makes me feel better that so many people feel this way about a job we love.

However, I believe that, while many of us have voiced our desire for Viper to remain the same, very few of us are explaining why we enjoy Viper as it is right now. This is a problem, because it doesn't tell the developers anything useful, nor does it explain why the current version of Viper would be better than a hypothetically new, reworked Viper.

Most of us are making comments like this: "Please don't change Viper, because it is really fun."

This is a true statement, but it provides very little actable feedback regarding how they should approach the job in the future (either changing things or keeping them the same). Simply saying "please stop dumbing jobs down!" also isn't entirely helpful, because it implies that we are resisting the "dumbing down of jobs" only because we value complexity for its own sake, when the reality is that we want Viper to remain fun, which comes from an engaging kit, not difficulty for its own sake.

Also, consider that the developers definitely want Viper to be fun, so if they feel like the new Viper will also be fun, then they won't be as worried about taking what we currently enjoy, since, if our only reason is "we think it's fun", they believe that will be accounted for by their new version of the class.

Therefore, in order to most effectively make our voices heard, we should also be explaining the specific things about Viper we enjoy. Anyone who listens to game developers talk about feedback will know that player feedback is often vague and nonspecific, so I implore you to be as specific as possible about what you enjoy about the current Viper and how that enjoyment would be hindered by the proposed changes to Viper. Plus, a thread of "why current Viper is good" rather than "why a changed Viper would be bad" can help bring some positivity to the table and show the developers that may see our feedback that they genuinely did an awesome job with Viper and we're having a lot of fun with it.

In the spirit of cooperation, I'll start. What I most enjoy about Viper right now is its engaging execution, both in terms of high actions-per-minute and higher positional count. Whereas other jobs get their complexity from their rotations (sometimes), Viper's complexity is more rooted in execution, which I personally find to be a niche the game is lacking.

The lessening of directional requirements threatens to hinder this level of enjoyment, since the execution barrier could be reduced substantially (assuming positional actions are removed).

Furthermore, the "busyness" of the rotation is extremely engaging, from the occasionally-tight buff timers that require you to be on top of managing things like your enhanced combo finisher buff or your Swiftscaled/Hunter's venom buffs, to the double weaves that follow the Dreadwinder Coils. It gives you the feeling of being a fast-paced, skillful hunter that is not only integral to the class fantasy but also pretty darn fun.

I think removing any of the oGCDs from the rotation would dampen this enjoyable feeling, so I'd like it to stay the same.

Those are just a few of my thoughts on the matter. I implore you, if you have been making posts in favor of keeping Viper the same, use this space (or space in any of the other myriad Viper threads) to discuss the specific reasons why you like Viper, so the devs (if they read this at all) know we're not just shouting in the wind in the name of faux elitism (which many of us have been accused of already).

[Cynric]

I personally like that it keeps me attacking and moving most of the time. I love how busy it is and the high APM perspective of it. I mained Monk in ARR/ HW and this is the first time since then that I've had a fun job that I really enjoyed. Reaper was close to something that I would like but it was a bit too simple and the filler phase was boring and didn't have many postionals.

Meanwhile viper has positional bonuses on so many skills that it keeps me actively engaged in fights and I actually enjoy playing even lower level content where I don't have reawaken because I still have postionals to try to hit.

I also absolutely love the double weaves, I honestly wish there was a weave between dreadwinder and the followups but I'm super happy to have the twinblood/twinfangs after hunters/swiftskins coil. I also really like always having an ogcd to press during the end of my combo. The combos themselves are also quite a bit flexible in terms of where you put dreadwinder, all of that makes it a super fun experience.

Finally I like that as i'm doing my rotation I'm building up the ranged attack which lets me use it in place of positionals, as filler before refreshing or doing something else, for ranged damage when disengaging, or as regular strong damage, but using it puts me in a position where I actually need to look at my buffs sometimes so it requires some thought. This is excellent and is the first class I've played in years that makes me feel that way at the base level without going into hyper optimization.

Which means it'll be even more fun to optimize. Also I really really love that Reawaken has so many buttons to hit at such a fast GCD, this level of apm is something I've wanted in the game for years.