Viper Changes Thread - Share your thoughts

[LisseyCrowe]

Hello 'tis i, someone who started leveling it after 7.05. Why is babbys first melee job allowed to deal SAM/BLM levels of damage?

Also, Viper has to be the worst playing job below 90. Its a lv50 job at its starting level.

It's not only horrible to play pre-90, I also wonder how much of the early criticism of the job stems from people trying it out and getting a bad first impression. Speaking for myself, I initially thought the job was annoying and even disappointing to play since it felt like it was pure positional spam. Of course people would complain about positionals and busyness when your only gameplay is constantly shifting around for Combo enders and Dreadwinder positionals all while managing a debuff at the same time that, for many players, is probably still going to be all the way on top of the screen under the enemy's HP, and let's not forget reacting to mechanics.

Reawaken and the Uncoiled combo do wonders to the general pace of the job, giving you time to readjust and it's criminal that Viper starts without these. I'd be very curious about the Job's reception if it started with Reawaken and Dreadwinder was the late unlock.

[GartredZW]

I only really tried viper in one level 80 trial before 7.05, and I just finished leveling it to 100 yesterday. And I got a couple runs of the first EX trial in too just to see how it plays when in something high end, even if it's one that I've farmed a lot.
I really like Viper right now. It's still probably going to stay my Melee main, in no small part due to the aesthetic of the job gear, and how cool the weapons are. (I've been hoping for a dual wielding sword user for kind of a while now)
At this point though, I feel as though I've pretty much squeezed as much optimization as I can get out of it. With Reawaken lasting about 12 seconds each, all you need to do to maximize burst windows is to just have 50 gauge before the 2 minute mark, Unless you have a pot buff you want to fully max out too. And even then, all it takes is just having one Rattling coil saved before Serpent's Ire. (I'm no raid buff wizard though, so tell me if I'm off-base on this. I'm a Black Mage main, I don't pay attention to those.)
It does feel nice to have Vicewinder combos interspersed between the standard 1 and 2 combos. I feel like they could have done something more creative than just making it a 40 second cooldown though. It works though, and I'm not about to start complaining about that when there's something else to complain about in the room.

Noxious Gnash was something I never really got the hang of, but as I already stated, I only tried it in actual combat against a level 80 trial. It's all just an hour total on a striking dummy besides that. Even as someone who never learned to properly use it, and especially not in between Reawakens, I thought it would be really fun to optimize. Knowing now what I know, that Dreadwinder doesn't really need to be saved for bursts, I liked what kinds of decisions it would encourage.
Each of your three part main combo had a different use. The first part was different depending on how much Noxious Gnash you had left, and whether Dreadwinder was coming off cooldown soon. The second determined which buff you got re-applied, and foreshadowed what positional the next part would have, and the third part did the most damage while giving you a boost to a different finisher in sequence. Now there's no reason to not just pair 1 with 1 or 2 with 2 for the first two hits of every combo. It's to the point where I'll intentionally take the DPS loss when I hit the buttons wrong just to not have to do any 1-2-1 or 2-1-2. Not that I'm suggesting anything other than an all out reversal of these changes, but they could have at least made Vicewinder swap your Honed Steel for Reaving Steel so you'd have to occasionally alter the carefully laid out pattern.

The loss of Noxious Gnash also just makes Vicewinder feel weird. It just does damage, and re-applies the buffs that you most definitely still have up. There's no reason to not just chain two of them together every 80 seconds, and spend Ratts to not overcap.

I find it really funny how they went "we're going to be making positionals on Viper easier" and were met with overwhelming "What the heck. That's a terrible idea. Don't." and they went "oh, ok I guess." Then in the same breath just gave us a whole ass rework on a class that has existed for less than a month without any chance for us to even play it in a savage tier to give informed feedback on.
Let's all collectively pray for 7.08 so hard that we summon an Eikon to fix this situation.

[Lamarcy2699]

I find it really funny how they went "we're going to be making positionals on Viper easier" and were met with overwhelming "What the heck. That's a terrible idea. Don't." and they went "oh, ok I guess." Then in the same breath just gave us a whole ass rework on a class that has existed for less than a month without any chance for us to even play it in a savage tier to give informed feedback on.
Let's all collectively pray for 7.08 so hard that we summon an Eikon to fix this situation.

Sadly I really do feel we're talking to deaf ears. We need a statement or something because the knee-jerk reaction level to job changes needs to stop. Changes should be explained beforehand so players of those jobs are able to give input into them. I'm tired of not having my voice heard and I'm even more disgusted that their take away from VPR mains saying "don't change the job" when positionals were going to be made easier was taken as "let's remove the one thing players had to manage/think about". I'm so sick of jobs becoming hollow versions of how they were previously.

I'm saddened by how, even with the apparent "difficulty spike" of dungeons and normal raids, jobs being as easy as they are is making the game awfully boring to play in 90% of the content available to me. I don't even have to think a lot of the time because I know I have said this once before but if I truly had 0 commitments to other players by being in a static I would have left this game for good. This level of change doesn't even deserve my attention, let alone my money.

[Leonus]

Still okay/unbothered with the removal of NG.

[CaedemSanguis]

It's trash

revert it

before the nerf it was the most busy/engaging melee to me, now it's less engaging and fun

[CaedemSanguis]

it feels like a low level job to me even at max level now.

I hadn't looked at stats for savage but wow, viper is at the top when it comes to median performance. That's... pretty disgusting.

meanwhile, he's parsing green on m4 normal

[CaedemSanguis]

Why is babbys first melee job allowed to deal SAM/BLM levels of damage?

maybe cause no raid buff, no utility, no shield ?

but im not sure yet tbh

[Mecia]

maybe cause no raid buff, no utility, no shield ?

but im not sure yet tbh

I know, it was rhetorical.

[Mondschnee]

Ok folks, apparently we have our answer. I pulled this quote from a recent interview with Eurogamer.
The community said „we don’t want these changes“ and the developers apparently did it anyway because idk, duh.
I don’t know what to say.

According to Yoshi-P: „Don‘t worry about it.“

“With regards to the changes for Viper, we had adjusted right until the last minute and we did have in mind the possibility that some players might provide feedback that it was too busy to play. We did release the job in that state, and then we found a lot of players say it was very busy to play to the extent that they were not able to see mechanics.

The battle team, right until the last minute, were considering whether to make any adjustments to the job. The battle director actually consulted with me because he was quite torn about whether they should go through with an adjustment or not. We announced that we were considering making adjustments to the job, but the response to that was a lot of feedback from players who had already reached the level cap and were already used to playing with the job, and they were happy with the way it played. However, we had already identified some actions which would inevitably be a cause of stress for players. Eventually, we just went through with adjusting what we had initially planned, and that was unrelated to the community feedback. However, I believe probably there was some misunderstanding on the community's part.

I do remember on social media, especially in North America and in Europe, some people were saying, 'Hey, Yoshida, you're listening too much to community feedback', but that was only a little bit so really you don't need to worry.“

[ovIm]

Ok folks, apparently we have our answer. I pulled this quote from a recent interview with Eurogamer.
The community said „we don’t want these changes“ and the developers apparently did it anyway because idk, duh.
I don’t know what to say.

According to Yoshi-P: „Don‘t worry about it.“

Here is the interview in question, in case people want to read the full thing.

I am not just speechless, I am actually pretty mad. Same thing that happens to healers, or with DRK feedback - a wonderful "You think you do, but you don't" mentality on the developers part. The disconnect is real.