Quote Originally Posted by LisseyCrowe View Post
  • Vicewinder stacks have to be actively tracked now. Before I realistically only had to do so when refreshing Gnash.
  • Permanently glowing combo. It feels like at every moment the main combo is demanding my attention. Even knowing the potency buffs are a full minute, the fact that it's glowing feels like it's constantly begging me to prioritize it.
  • Tracking which combo starter I'm on is annoying and I can never stare away from my hotbar.
This is interesting, and you're absolutely right. In attempting to make the job feel less busy SE actually ended up making it feel significantly more clunky and unnatural.

I do find myself staring at Vicewinder significantly more than before because my brain now sees it as just another DPS cooldown as opposed to a utility. So my DPS brain says "well if I'm not hitting it on cooldown every time it's a DPS loss." Whereas before the utility of the ability made it so I would not hit the button if Noxious Gnash had more than 20 seconds remaining. The cooldown was always up when I needed it and the stack never overcapped. It was fluid and natural.

Additionally, as you said, the permanently glowing combos and having to track the combo starters is at once both way less interesting and significantly more annoying. If the end goal was to make Viper feel less busy without removing the fun they couldn't have missed the mark further.

The changes don't feel thought out at all. It's as if when they said they were going to change/remove the positionals, and people said "no", they just decided to arbitrarily remove something else instead. It has "poor planning" and "reactionary" written all over it. And the fact it hasn't been address yet, even in a Lodestone post, is wild.

Also as someone above mentioned there are other jobs that required significantly more attention than Viper, yet this is what they chose to focus attention on. Viper would have been fine if left alone.