Viper Changes Thread - Share your thoughts

[An_IRL_Rabbit]

So, then what do we do instead? If the dev team really wants to simplify Viper a bit, how do we do that instead of this? I have heard a lot of people float the idea of making the application of Noxious Gash 30 seconds and the cap 60 (instead of 20 and 40), but I don't quite agree. I think this also simplifies it enough to the point where it becomes too easy to maintain and then we find ourselves back here when they remove Noxious Gash in 8.0 because maintaining it was so free. But I think those people are on the right track.

At first, I floated a 25 second application with a 50 second cap, give the job a little more wiggle room. This would work, but I do think it would miss out on some of the high-end optimization still, so what I instead propose is:

Dread Fangs and Dreadwinder would still apply 20 seconds of Noxious Gash to the target as they did pre-patch, but instead of a 40-second cap, the cap would instead be 60 seconds. This would let high-skill players still get the same rush of figuring out how to optimize the job, while giving lower-skill players extra wiggle room by letting them apply it a third time, giving them a much larger window to work with if they make rotation mistakes.

[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.

[Baeo]

As someone who moved from Warrior to Viper in the hopes of finally playing a class that asked players to pay attention, Square's decision to completely walk away from that here has basically destroyed my hope that they'll ever deliver a new class kit that's actually engaging (or one that asks that players manage literally anything) ever again.

If not for Dawntrail finally introducing a modicum of difficulty back into the game with these new trials/fights, I'd have quit this patch. The moment encounter design goes back to being class designs' level of braindead, I'll just drop the game until 8.0.

[ovIm]

I honestly can not, for the life of me, understand how people can say "Viper still plays the same". At this point, I guess everyone who says that has been playing the job wrong, and should not have been catered to anyhow.

And to those that say it still "feels" the same to them - cool beans, but then it would not have changed for you if it remained the same as in 7.01, no?

[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.

[Gugnir]

YOU KNOW WHAT. IM GOING TO SAY IT. DPS STRIKE. ENJOY YOUR 80 MINUTE DUNGEONS AND WOE ENRAGE BE UPON YE. A MILLION TIMES OVER.

[Lyth]

The changes were announced six days after EA launched (two days after the main release). I doubt this was genuinely due to player feedback so much as player performance not matching up with what they predicted. It's not surprising, because historically players have tended to struggle with debuff upkeep. That being said, they definitely should have taken some time to let people learn the job and develop habits around it before drawing conclusions.

The timing was really poor as well. Rotational changes shouldn't be released alongside new raid content.

They need to hold a Live Letter soon. There's a lot the dev team needs to answer to the playerbase.