Viper Changes Thread - Share your thoughts

[Chrali]

Well, never thought I'd end up posting anything, but here we are. I don't like the changes. Tend to bounce between half a dozen jobs, or more, per expansion, as none have felt fun enough to keep playing for extended periods of time. Then in comes Viper and changes that, until it too is changed. This sucks.

I know maintaining the debuff might not feel like much to some, but it honestly was the one thing you'd actually have to pay some attention to. It sure makes it far less annoying during big trash pulls to try to apply it to everything, but for single target, the job has lost a part of what made it engaging to me.

[TheAmazing3]

I finally set up my forum account so that I could contribute to speaking out against this change.

I enjoyed VPR when it came out. It was a simple but fun job. I liked the marginal but engaging decision making of whether I should refresh my noxious gnash in preparation for future burst or do more damage with my other combo starter. The class had very little to think about but it was just enough to keep the brain turned on.

After the changes, VPR no longer has anything to think about. It's like a blank slate for a melee that hasn't had anything added to it. Like being synced down to level 30 and only using a 1-2-3 combo on other melees. I was scared when I read the job changes, then I went and tried it once the servers were up. It's not the same, it's boring. The fun is gone.

The worst thing is I don't understand why. Players who do not care about playing properly would have just not kept their debuff going anyway. How does this improve anything for them? What is now the point of the second combo anyway? Alternating your 1 combo and your 2 combo is not fun, or engaging, just look at monk, which, in my humble opinion, was completely ruined once the free-flowing design of the combo system was removed back in... Shadowbringers, I think? But I digress, the end result of this change is that I will no longer play VPR and at least one thing that I thought they did a great job with in Dawntrail is now gone.

Dev team, please revert this change. Viper, as it was at launch, was great design for a simple but engaging job that a more casual player could enjoy because of how active and flashy it was. The change has done nothing for the casual player, it has exclusively ruined it for the rest of the players. It has gone against the design of having two combo buttons to flow between, there is no difference between the combos now, the second one may as well not exist. It was not necessary to make this change four weeks after the job launched.

[CallusFrompt]

I figured I'd try and make my voice heard here rather than into the abyss that is reddit and twitter. While I'm not a dedicated melee player I found Viper really fun to play and while I still do, taking away it's debuff is the wrong move, I'll be honest I think I would have much preferred taking away positionals than fundementally changing the way the job plays. I think reverting the removal and just upping how long the debuff lasts would be a better solution than just taking it away wholesale.

[HeroIgnis]

I'm disappointed with the changes, it feels like we're being hand held through the rotation. If a player can't manage reapplying Noxious Gash then let them fail, it's okay to have consequences for your lack of attention or focus.

I don't like this approach of having the game coddle the player on which button they should press next in terms of which buffs to apply, it feels insulting.

[LynxDubh]

After trying it out in an old raid unsynced, these changes feel awful. With the rotation being so static, you really don’t have to think about your starters or your positionals. All you need to do now is 1-1-rear x then 2-2-flank x repeat ad nauseam. I thought I might have a chance to keep Viper as a side class since it shares accessories with phys ranged. But now I’m dropping it unless the Noxious Gash changes are reverted. It triggers painful boredom for me now.

[GalaxyRhythms]

Long time player, first time poster; I've been here since stormblood and this is the first time I've felt something so strongly as to want to make my voice heard here so I'd like to add it to the viper changes pile. I think they're bad and set a worrying precedent.

I got into dawntrail a bit less than a month late, finally picked it up maybe a week or two ago, and I've been slowly leveling viper alongside my two main pickups because it seemed like a fun DPS. I think the pressure the noxious gnash timer added was small but vital to job feel, and the ranged-lite feel of the job now is still fun but antithetical to the idea of melee as far as i'm concerned. More importantly though, I think making a sweeping job change to a new job the same day as your savage drop is weird and kind of upsetting. I simply haven't had time to level the job to max and get my hands on the full rotation, I got viper to 90 30 minutes before the maintenance lockout and thus when I logged on to see what all the fuss was about I'd quickly realized I don't even know how much of the rotation at 90 is new and how much is just new to me. I haven't had time to play with Viper. A month to get the job to max might seem like a long time, but I have a life outside of xiv. Many people do. I haven't had time to level this job, both because I came in late and I've been juggling story progression with roulette leveling and FATE grinding. I'm sure I'm not the only person, and it frustrates me to no end to feel punished for not spending enough time on a job I didn't even know was going to see these sorts of changes this quickly, because it's never happened before. The fact it's happened once means now I'm going to end up worrying about it happening again.

It isn't even like I think you can't do rework level updates in a patch, this one alone I think the willingness to listen to fans about black mage and meet them halfway is commendable; the samurai changes seem interesting too. In a similar vein, I don't feel frustrated to play summoner right now and feel as though I missed out on Old SMN because I didn't play it back in stormblood or shadowbringers. Things change over time. However, I think this is too much too soon for a month old job. Even if the changes to Viper were unanimously adored, I'd still think it was too soon. I hope that the dev team listens here in the way they did about black mage.

[Wyssahtyn]

for me, they made the job even more boring than it was at its starting levels (80s), so i'm not sure i'll even bother to finish leveling it.

[AsiTsurugi]

I wish Noxious Gnash wasn't removed and wish it came back.

[ClayyLmao]

Oh man, that single debuff was too much for me to keep track of. I'm glad they removed it so I can just mash my single target combo buttons brainlessly now and never have to worry about anything! I can't wait until they actually just remove every single damaging ability except a single one so I can just push that one button over and over and over and over again! It'll be so heckin easy and beginner friendly!!!!

In all seriousness, Squeenix is just appealing to the absolute bottom of the barrel player who can't keep track of one(1)((Singular)) debuff timer. I'm unsurprised.

[Komarimono]

I will say I do hate the new Christmas light show now though. I didn't notice it before, until was streaming some stuff on discord and a friend asked why I wasn't hitting the glowing button at times. I don't look at my bars so was confused and started to watch it as farmed fates for stones. For some reason at times, it recommends the wrong button press. Telling to to refresh the 32 seconds still damage buff over the 17 second left speed buff. What the heck ..