Viper is not hard, and does not need simplification.

[Router]

they're changing it because it was too busy, not because it was hard

It has the same APM as NIN, and NIN has more complex burst. Where's my NIN simplification?

[Melethron123]

It has the same APM as NIN, and NIN has more complex burst. Where's my NIN simplification?

ask yoshi p

[TheMaxwewll]

Please don't give them any more ideas D:

[Darkstride]

Give it a damn mit ability like Shade Shift, even a minor one. Games are allowed to have hard jobs, and high skill ceilings. For the love of the Great Serpent of Ronka don't make Viper easier than it already it.

I actually feel like I am missing an ability from Viper because it has no defensive skill. It's probably because I'm so used to Reaper's Arcane Crest. It's hardly necessary, but I just like having that little bit of extra functionality to break up the DPS tunnel vision. It might be interesting to have a short defensive like Samurai/Reaper that refreshes Noxious Gnash when you get hit.

As for the overall complexity, I do feel like the tooltips and naming are cumbersome while also being too vague. I usually go through and set up my hotbars to max level based on tooltips and then make adjustments for playstyle as level up. Viper took me some time to get it right. While the "just follow the dotted lines" approach is an interesting implementation, I still like to actually know what I'm doing when I press my buttons lol.

[Taliriah]

As a ninja main I love how busy viper isn't, you have more than enough time to press button, move, press other button.
It could use a self mitigation button like all the other melee, something like arcane crest or tengetsu would be nice

Bloodbath is super effective on viper compared to ninja because all the damage is physical. Do it during reawaken or while AoEing mobs and watch you hp go up up up

[Gilihere]

Bloodbath is super effective on viper compared to ninja because all the damage is physical. Do it during reawaken or while AoEing mobs and watch you hp go up up up

yeah I can see that happening, but in raid setting it might not work as well. Anyway might as well try it

[Battler-Ushiromiya]

It has the same APM as NIN, and NIN has more complex burst. Where's my NIN simplification?

While I'm very happy with Viper being further simplified, the truth is that they're letting interns do the job design now

[Virnea]

It is fun to play, it is fun to finally being busy and having to press a lot of buttons since every single other job has been oversimplified to the point of boredom. If some people think it's too busy, fine! play something else, they've literally made every single other job easy to play. Let us have fun with at least one job.

[Yuella]

Viper is easier to play than Ninja

[Myon88]

I think I know why the feedback on viper has been so polarized. It comes down to how comfortable a player is accepting UI assistance when playing a job.

You see this from the first moment you unlock it, the pop-up explanation doesn't attempt to explain the big picture logic of how the job works (mainly that you'll be alternating between options a lot to play into the dual blade theme). It simply tells you to follow the cues from your job gauge and hit the button that lights up.

When I first unlocked the job, I thought I was having a stroke. I'd be testing the same button sequence and different combo options would light up each time. Was it dynamically choosing based on buff timers? Was it just plain random like old dragoon? Remember the game doesn't explain anything. You have to examine the tooltips, which keep taking turns to disappear from your hotbars because they transform, to figure out there are 4 different kinds of similarly named venom buffs that the job wants you to cycle between.

Flanksting Strike Flanksbane Fang Hindsting Strike Hindsbane Fang, try saying that 10 times really fast lmao. I imagine if you had dyslexia you'd just shut down your pc at this point and call it a day.

But back to the UI, ultimately the job is designed on the assumption that you'll be relying on cues from there. If you just do what the game says and follow the lights, you'll certainly be able to play the job almost perfectly even without knowing anything. From that standpoint, the job is certainly 'easy'.

I don't consider that competence though, that's barely treading water to me. It means you'll be playing slowly and reactively, one gcd at a time, with very little situational awareness let alone when difficult mechanics are happening. Some people see no issue playing the game that way even if it means relying on other people solving mechanics, but to me that's unacceptable.

The moment you try and graduate from needing the UI as a crutch, the job actually takes a disproportionate amount of work to become comfortable with. I can see how other people would view the job as overly complex in that regard.