Viper Changes Thread - Share your thoughts

[koko-on-da-forumz]

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 ..

I really do wish they'd have an option to turn off the dotted lines (and get rid of job gauges).

One, for clarity. Two, for pleasure.

[Erwann]

Day 2 of Noxiousless VPR

I've been playing nothing but VPR to accomodate to the changes and at least give them a chance.
It feels really bad, just as most people though it would be.
The dance between 1 and 2 combos along with Dreadfang for the debuff maintenance is gone, making the rotation extremely streamlined and boring.

[jonimated]

I know Noxious Gnash was difficult for some to manage (specifically around the double Reawaken window) but it feels like removing it has swung the basic combo too much in the other direction. Even if the debuff had to go removing it outright and replacing it with nothing makes the combo feel so weird and bad.

I echo some of the sentiments of people saying they would have preferred the positionals go over this. Honestly when I was saying I wanted the positionals to stay, if I had known the ultimatum would be removing the maintenence debuff, I would have opted to remove the positionals instead.

I created a different thread about this but I think the correct solution would have been to make Reaving Fangs grant a Ninja Armor Crush-like buff to Steel Fangs. Would have been a good way to replace Noxious Gnash maintenance with something that still required attention, and made the basic combo less static but was less annoying.

I don't know I'm just one player. What do I know.

[M1SF0RTUNE]

I saw that thread actually, and I kinda like the principal of the idea but I wasn't quite sure it was the proper solution as exactly as presented.

See, after just running an Expert roulette just now and doing Strayborough Deadwalk's second boss it kinda dawned on me. I hate this because I'm staring at hotbars far more often now and there's no "break" in the combo; you have to keep it consistently held up by following the glowing buttons or you'll lose massive damage. The debuff used to act as a visual queue of whether I needed to start with 1 or 2 in the combo or use Dreadwinder but it was a visual queue I had control over. With that step I only needed to worry about following 2 buttons correctly if Dreadwinder wasn't available. On top of that it gave *me* the choice whether I wanted to extend my combo that started with Steel Fang so I could start with it more times in a row or I wanted to continue alternating. The onus was on me how I wanted to set that up in advance, but now I have control stripped away if I wanted to stay optimal or I have to delay re-entering the endless combo by using UF, Vicewinder or Reawaken (but the button spam combined with the time in between can make it even easier to mentally lose track since you're focused in hitting the oGCD's or GCD+oGCD's in between those moves).

It's a band-aid without enough thought how it would cascade into the rest of the job's flow.

[Morr_Ar]

I’ll preface my thoughts with the admission that I am not a Savage Raider or even someone who does Extremes. Normal Raids and Alliance Raids are about as far as I go with Battle Content, barring stuff like Bozja or Eureka. So I’m relatively casual overall.

I think the VPR changes are a good case study in how a seemingly small change can dramatically change the feel of how a job plays (or substitute any other class or character equivalent in other games).

As pointed out by others, Noxious Gnash’s implementation meant that an attentive player would realise that Dreadwinder could carry the bulk of the debuff’s uptime, with only the occasional Dread Fangs being required. Thus there was scope to optimise to use as few Dread Fangs as possible while still maintaining the debuff, based on keeping track of the debuff timer vs your next Dreadwinder combo. Nothing requiring chess level strategies, sure, but you were rewarded for your attentiveness and forward planning.

Additionally, your debuff timer affected other aspects of the Job, particularly double Reawaken on even minutes and also uncoiled fury to a lesser extent.

When I was playing VPR from DT’s launch until now, what I found engaging (again, as a casual player, I’m sure this is trivial for experienced raiders) was that I was always thinking about the debuff. If I had to disengage to avoid a mechanic and use Uncoiled Fury, I was considering my debuff timer while disengaged and unable to reapply it. When coming up to a double Reawaken window, I know I need at least a good 24/25 seconds to complete both Reawakens and have enough time to press either Dreadwinder or Dread Fangs to not lose the debuff.

While the potency gain has been shifted directly into VPR’s skills, and we do have a another self ‘buff’ to the alternate combo starter, the job now feels more strict and uninteresting to play, due to there being less decision to be made on the fly, especially in the new Normal Raids where bosses do move and might not be targetable or I’m forced to disengage. Previously I felt rewarded for knowing those were coming ahead of time and prematurely increasing the debuff timer. Now that nuance doesn’t really exist on the job.

Noxious Gnash forced you to look at every skill through the lens of its timer and rewarded players who could plan ahead and optimise that timer.

Overall, I think it’s a shame and a misguided change to a job that felt very well designed on release.

[W00by]

I like the ideas, but honestly, I really think it should just be reverted wholesale.

Dropping Noxious Gash was losing 10% on, like, one or two GCDs until you go "oh crap!" and reapply it again. Losing Noxious Gash for even a Reawaken is still only slightly more catastrophic than one or two canceled casts on a caster.

Who cares if they can mess up? That's fine. 20s applications, 40s caps was fine and players who didn't like it would've gotten the hang of it eventually or landed somewhere else.

[Mondschnee]

I like the ideas, but honestly, I really think it should just be reverted wholesale.

Ya honestly Viper 7.01 was perfect but at this point I‘ve lost complete trust in the job dev team. I don’t know if they would roll it back…

[W00by]

Ya honestly Viper 7.01 was perfect but at this point I‘ve lost complete trust in the job dev team. I don’t know if they would roll it back…

There's only one way to get them to roll it back. Keep talking about it on the forums, and anywhere else anyone will listen. There was a Kotaku article about it published yesterday, our voices are being heard.

We've already won one battle for Viper's complexity, even though it doesn't seem like it -- they fully intended to remove positionals until we complained about it. We can win this war. I know it seems difficult, as things don't get reverted too often. But just this patch, they made Tsubame-Gaeshi a more flexible and engaging skill on Samurai after turning it into a meaningless looping tool, and restored Ice Paradox to Black Mage even though they intentionally removed it. And in the past, they added back Energy Drain after it was taken out of Scholar's kit, too. It was added back on a similar timeframe, too -- removed in 5.0, re-introduced in 5.05. We could see it again soon.

Square Enix is not immune to reverting things. If you give up, then it won't get reverted, but this is the time we need to make it clear how we feel. The Viper playerbase is in a unique position to take a stand for complexity in this game. There are a lot more of us than there are any other job, so we have more voices. Please lend yours! You're all doing great!

Let's see 7.01 Viper again. I really think we can!

And to any developers reading, this is a great chance to prove that you're listening. People are losing faith: what better way to show them you're listening than by addressing their concerns? A lack of communication is what got us into this mess, so let's do better on both ends.

[CKNovel]

Who cares if they can mess up? That's fine. 20s applications, 40s caps was fine and players who didn't like it would've gotten the hang of it eventually or landed somewhere else.

I wish more people would understand that getting a case of skill issue isn't bad. You just have to get better and it's not even necessary.
We need to be realistic with the performance we aim for.

[Morr_Ar]

Expecting players to rise to any challenge in this game is elitist and sweaty, don’t you know. As is expecting them to read their tooltips and understand what their abilities actually do and consider the order in which they should be applied.