Viper Changes Thread - Share your thoughts

[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.

[M1SF0RTUNE]

Haven't been in the forum ring for a hot minute but I wanted to make my voice heard here:

In my opinion, I don't like these changes and I want them reverted.

As for my opinion to why, simply put: The job's already relatively brain-dead once you get the initial hang of it and go through the class quest, but these changes make this job much more brain-dead boring, autopiloted, spammy without any nuance, and even really patronizing in a way by trying to baby-proof the job for people that don't want to be pushed outside their comfort zone or challenged to engage with the game more. It also feels enabling to unskilled players who don't read their abilities to understand how their class works, which I think is overall dumbing down the game and the jobs in the long run.

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Viper is a combination of existing job functions (Gunbreaker's Continuation, Dancer's Follow-the-Lit-Buttons, Monk's free-flow combo and Samurai's double buff management) and so it already doesn't feel wholly original. It borrowed Reaper's debuff-marking mechanic to increase damage and incidentally added a bit more to the Viper theme since the designers didn't wanna go with any DoT's while also baking it into combo attacks or multi-utility buttons. But where Monk, Dragoon, and Samurai offer you the freedom of choosing which combo tracks to travel depending on your need and expected you to pay attention to succeed, Viper's became absurdly linear thanks to the transforming glowing buttons feature that already held your hand through most of the job. Even before the change it was relatively idiot-proof unless you were just plain bad at the game; every attack does damage but the glowy buttons show you how to get the top damage. The only main options for decision making or expression came in when to use Dreadwinder/Pit of Dread, Uncoiled Fury, or when to apply the point of contention, Noxious Gnash.

I know it's not popular re-upping a timer every 20 seconds, but where some saw maintenance, I saw a mini-game with mini-strategies involved. Noxious Gnash came with such a tight time window that also got re-applied by a common and better buff button (Dreadwinder/Pit of Dread) I'd use regularly anyway, it taught me to be efficient when to use it; do I wanna double up the time to get a big burst now or continue to alternate between the high and low damage starters? Or what if I open with Dread Fang, then use Dread Winder to really boost up the timer for an early burst? Do I hold onto Dreadwinder or spend it now before entering Reawaken? Or use it between 2 Reawakens?

That's where I felt some of the complexity lied with the job and the onus was on the player when to apply the debuff or plan ahead during a combo whether to start with it or not. It was a bit of micro decision making in a job that already throws away a lot of decision-making for the sake of glowing button accessibility (since it walked you through which personal buffs to reapply anyway, something that not even Samurai holds your hand through). If anything, Noxious Gnash was the one stopgap keeping the class from becoming as autopiloted as it turned into this patch. It wasn't perfect, no, I think a DoT would've been better over a damage increase, but it was still something.

So my stance? Let players who don't enjoy or learn how to figure out that nuance play the many more accessible other jobs on offer like Reaper, Summoner, Warrior or Bard, let Vipers have a little depth to chew on and turn into a fun puzzle as opposed to devoting my attention to Follow-The-Glowing-Button. You can't just sell us a "free-flow combo system you can weave in and out of" when the design of the job and the flashing buttons tell us otherwise.

...But that's my two cents.

[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.

[An_IRL_Rabbit]

Long-time player and Ultimate raider here. I'm far from the best player in the game, but I'm still pretty darn good at it, and I have enough feedback here that I can't fit it all into one post.


I hate the changes. Hate is maybe a strong word, but I very strongly prefer the version of Viper I was playing on Monday to the version I have today. At first glance, I thought I wouldn't mind the change too much. A big part of the reason I like Viper is the high CPM and higher amount of positionals compared to other melee, which I'm happy did not change. I can still mash my buttons 'till my fingers fall off in a hectic double Reawaken window, I can still scoot my way around the boss or figure out where I can triple-weave True North to hit all those positionals just fine.

However, after playing with the job a bit, I think losing Noxious Gash upkeep just genuinely makes the job more boring. Maintaining Noxious Gash wasn't terribly hard, you had multiple buttons that were part of your regular rotation that applied it, but there was still some level of skill expression in effectively maintaining it, not having it fall off but also not overcapping it either. And it rewarded you for doing this, maximizing your Steel Fangs usage was naturally a DPS increase over pressing Dread Fangs unnecessarily, and also lining everything up for a double Reawaken window during raid buffs without anything falling off felt really good. But even if you weren't super skilled at the game, the DPS loss from pressing Dread Fangs at an unnecessary time was pretty minor so you weren't really punished that hard for doing so; 60 potency isn't the end of the world, it's a missed positional on any other melee job. It was a well-designed system to me, one that rewarded skilled players for playing the job well, but also one that wasn't terribly hard for less-skilled players to still do well enough with.

That is now gone, and there's nothing new to take its place. The job is less fun to play for me now, even before we get to my other issue with the changes, one that I will fully admit is a personal problem.

[An_IRL_Rabbit]

(cont.)


Viper can spend a very, very long time outside of its regular 1-2-3 combo. Multiple Reawaken windows in a row, Dreadwinder combo, and even pressing Uncoiled Fury a few times in a row, it's easy to spend 20+ seconds not pressing any button in your 1-2-3 combo when you throw a few of those together. If you're not careful you can even cross over the 30 second mark and have your combo drop, and learning to not get lost in the sauce is another part of learning how to get good at the job. But because you can spend so long outside of your 1-2-3 combo, it's entirely possible to lose track of where you are in that combo, and when it's time to return to it, not knowing where you are in the combo can make it easy to miss Death Rattle.

With old Viper, I used the nature of being able to press either button for the first hit as an anchor point for keeping track of where I was in the combo. Neither button lit up? Cool, I'm on the first skill of the combo. A button lit up? Either this button or the next will have the Death Rattle follow-up and I can prepare for that.

New Viper always has a button in your 1-2-3 combo lit up (unless you make a mistake and drop combo), which weirdly enough makes it much harder for me to keep track of where I am in that combo. There's no split-second glance I can make to tell me how soon Death Rattle is coming up, and missing that button is a 280 potency DPS loss, which is very bad. Since the changes yesterday, I have found myself missing Death Rattle significantly more often than I did pre-patch because of how much easier it is to just lose track of where I am after doing 20+ seconds of other buttons.


So yeah. I don't really know why this change happened. I'm not going to say the job is completely ruined, there are still parts about it that I like a lot, but I also don't know anyone that asked for this to happen outside of people that are genuinely bad at the game, and their opinions on job design should largely be ignored. Even ignoring my second issue and just focusing on the first, to take something away from what was honestly my new favorite job and not give it anything in return just feels bad. The job to me is more boring and less fun to play now. I hate the change, and across both the EN and JP communities, it is clear I am far from the only one. The change even makes me less confident that the devs will be able to create interesting jobs in the future, if they're so willing to make this one more boring in the name of making it easier to play.

So, please make Viper fun again. It's all I ask. I almost never come here, but that I felt passionate enough about this change to type so many characters that I couldn't fit it into one post should count for something, shouldn't 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.