Viper Changes Thread - Share your thoughts

[Kersplosion]

They finally add an upkeep oriented mechanic after years of removing them, and then ditch it after a month because feedback from *somewhere* pointed toward people not being good enough for "too hard."

I genuinely dislike this change, the job was better on release.

Melee hasn't been this fun for me since Ninja in Midas.
I've been playing bard since 2.X and was tired of it getting its upkeep mechanics removed, so I was happy to move to viper.

Overall I'm really tired of the nuance of status upkeep and maintenance getting removed, and that removal being celebrated while the people who liked it are told to move to another lane, when there pretty much aren't any left.

[Crafoutis]

I'm thankful Noxious Gnash is gone. I hate having to maintain arbitrary debuff upkeep, it's not fun or challenging, it's just boring busywork.

[Colt47]

The main things I'm noting right now is that the job got a bit more punishing on failing to hit the right ability, since without having the hanging dps buff like what reaper has most of the bonus damage has to come from the existing buffs and the combo bonuses. Also this is probably the first time I've ever gotten into a situation where it feels like there can be too many things lit up on the hot bar. Making viper a continuous dragoon combo is not a particularly great idea since the idea is to guide the player into using death rattle and would have preferred if they kept it loose.

[Amenara]

Eh I'd rather they didn't change it but it could definitely have been worse. I guess I just play it the same except when I use my basic combo I alternate.

[Erwann]

I really liked how Noxious made you put a little effort into which button to press next; it gave the class some rythm between Reaving Fangs and Dread Fang, a meaningful choice in damage that took into account self awareness of your own cds, the debuff timers and when you would reawaken.
Now, it's just a back and forth triple button rotation that can be cast mindlessly. If the job had to be simplified, i'd rather they take positionals than rythm.

[AddictedToWitches]

It's better now, I made a thread on it and I'm too tired to copypaste my thoughts on it, but TL;DR fundamentally viper plays almost the exact same. You don't have to worry about noxious gash anymore which makes it more flexible. Noxious gash was never a skill expression thing, it was an annoyance. The job was always ALWAYS easy and anyone who thinks it was at all difficult to play is deluding themselves, anyone who enjoyed having to upkeep the low 20s debuff timer of noxious gash is further deluding themselves

[Higashikata]

A completely negative change. Previously you were required to think for 0.5 seconds, now there is zero thought required at all

[Colt47]

A completely negative change. Previously you were required to think for 0.5 seconds, now there is zero thought required at all

It doesn't even solve the problem they were trying to address. The job is busy so they removed noxious gnash and add even more ability highlighting? The new design encourages tunneling during encounters since it makes Vicewinder look less important than death rattle, reaving fangs, and steel fangs. The new design also makes it much easier to forget using uncoiled fury, and I don't think I've had a point in time in the past month of play where I ever let my energy gauge go over 55 or 60 on the awakening meter, nor did I often forget to use serpents ire on cooldown. It might just be lack of experience on the new version of viper since I've only had time to do a striking dummy test and expert roulette, though.

[Username69]

Only made an account on here to say I hate the change.

The argument that it didn't take effort is just false out the gate, given the fact they removed it precisely because some people were claiming to have trouble maintaining the debuff. I myself managed to let the debuff drop off multiple times just because I got carried away with other abilities (Reawaken go brrrr). This is not a bad thing! The content was still cleared just fine, I simply made a mistake. I took a mental note of needing to make greater effort to maintain the debuff, and moved on.

It's a shame that a class that requires you to reach the level required to beat Shadowbringers (A few hundred hours into the game, three whole expansions worth of content!) had a bit of complexity taken away. It should be a given that classes unlocked at highers levels are generally going to expect just a bit more from the players. This is also an odd choice given the previous statements that they had gone too far with class simplification.

I hope they revert the changes.

[Mondschnee]

At this point, I'm just really mad. I was a Summoner main in Shadowbringers. They ruined it. Ok. I moved on to Black Mage. Then, they ruined Black Mage in the beginning of Dawntrail. Okay. I move on to yet another job, gear up Viper, I'm having massive fun, I want to main it. Now they change Viper after barely a month. The gameplay is missing something without the dot to keep track of. Honestly, I'm just disheartened, I don't even want to look into how to optimize the changes anymore. This is ridiculous.

Yeah, sorry, I'm frustrated.