Viper Changes Thread - Share your thoughts

[Carighan]

I enjoy the Viper animations and the speed of the Reawaken burst, but it definitely feels like something is missing to make it engaging. It's a very simple, auto-pilot job.

I call it "Boring Reaper", and to me that really encompasses all of it.

It has movement. But worse and importantly, with no unique identity.

It has core combos. But without any identity, and providing no job fantasy. Unless you count how spammy it is in the combat flyout text due to the spam of self-buffs.

It has no utility. None.

It has no support. None.

It has ... nothing, really. Being a fast melee job is far from unique, being a damage-only melee job isn't unique, it's just a big empty shell that someone could fill a melee job into if they felt like it. It's one interesting element, the swap between two different GCD timers, is neither unique (Reaper for example does that already, as do Ninjas and Dancers), nor done in a combat-flow-impacting manner.

There's not a single thing Viper does better than Reaper, and importantly it's also so boring that you fall asleep, so while it could deal higher damage, so could other jobs where you wouldn't let your group down by, well, dozing off.

It doesn't even have a randomized main combo, which could have been it's one saving grace! It could have been melee dancer. But noooo, that'd be too difficult, can't do actual difficulty of play!

[LisseyCrowe]

I call it "Boring Reaper", and to me that really encompasses all of it.

It has movement. But worse and importantly, with no unique identity.

It has core combos. But without any identity, and providing no job fantasy. Unless you count how spammy it is in the combat flyout text due to the spam of self-buffs.

It has no utility. None.

It has no support. None.

It has ... nothing, really. Being a fast melee job is far from unique, being a damage-only melee job isn't unique, it's just a big empty shell that someone could fill a melee job into if they felt like it. It's one interesting element, the swap between two different GCD timers, is neither unique (Reaper for example does that already, as do Ninjas and Dancers), nor done in a combat-flow-impacting manner.

There's not a single thing Viper does better than Reaper, and importantly it's also so boring that you fall asleep, so while it could deal higher damage, so could other jobs where you wouldn't let your group down by, well, dozing off.

It doesn't even have a randomized main combo, which could have been it's one saving grace! It could have been melee dancer. But noooo, that'd be too difficult, can't do actual difficulty of play!

I agree and disagree with this.

On one hand, it does feel like Viper at its very core was but a mishmash of other jobs (more precisely, Sam, Reaper and a bit of Monk). It didn't really bring anything necessarily new to the table, and in fact despite stealing ideas from those other jobs it did not expand on those concepts much.

But I disagree that the job lacked an identity, even if we can argue that it didn't nail it completely. Imo, the marriage of admittedly simpler mechanics and how easy it is for the job to be in a state of near-permanent aggression feels great in a way that none of the other Melee jobs can for me. Mind you, I'm not talking about APM here, but rather how Viper lacks a major mechanic dictating how the rest of its kit should play, going instead for a set of simple guidelines to follow which oddly enough did give the job rather fluid gameplay by forcing the player to adapt moment-to-moment rather than simply repeat the same song every 1-2 minute.

Which is also why I still heavily dislike the changes, as the removal of those guidelines has neutered that fluidity as far as I'm concerned. What used to be certain windows of time where certain abilities should and shouldn't be used (and how they shaped the next rotations) has now shifted to simply making sure resources aren't capped.