Viper Suggestion - Give Reaving Fangs the Armor Crush treatment

[jonimated]

Obviously people are mad at the removal of Noxious Gnash. Or rather I feel like they are mad at the removal of a mechanic that required even a minor amount of consideration when playing the job.

I think based on SEs job design the removal of Noxious Gnash was inevitable. I'm honestly surprised it made it passed testing to begin with. Seems perhaps the root of the disappointment with it's removal was that it was just removed. It wasn't replaced with something of equal value.

imo SE should have treated this like they did Armor Crush when removing the Huton speed buff.

Reaving Fangs should give 2 stacks of a buff to Steel Fangs, and Vicewinder should add 1 stack. This buff stacks up to 3 times. Make the potency of Steel Fangs lower than Reaving Fangs without the buff, but higher with the buff. This change would keep the feel of intermittently weaving Reaving Fangs into the combo starter with purpose, and keep the combo from feeling completely static. This also adds the utility back to Vicewinder to affect the base combo.

I feel like this change is easy and obvious and I'm not sure why SE didn't take this route. Maybe because it would feel too close to Ninja, but half the Viper kit is taken wholesale from other jobs so that doesn't seem to be a consideration.

I do hope they consider this, or something similar, to add back the feel that was taken from the basic combo. I don't think Noxious Gnash needs to be put back, but I do think something needs to be done. As it stands now the combo has become completely static and it just feels weird.

Edit: Since I know job homogenization can be a concern I came up with a different solution.

Reaving Fangs and Vicewinder add a 20 second buff to Steel Fangs only (stacks up to 40 seconds). This allows the buttons to act functionally identical to their previous iterations, and all but completely removes any repercussions for allowing it to fall off. the buff affecting a single button instead of all damage allows double Reawaken windows to be done without issue, and there's no danger with it falling off during a long disengage period while using Uncoiled Fury.

This honestly feels perfect to me. Thoughts?

[Embio]

Honestly, I could get behind something like this. I think part of the reason the new change feels so awful is because it effectively removed half of your combo chains. 2-1-1, 2-1-2, 1-2-1, and 1-2-2 do not exist in Viper's current design. They spent all this time designing this free form combo system for Viper, only to turn around and make the rotation completely static. Wasn't that supposed to be the point of the job? What was the goal of this change?

But a stack system would help bring those combo strings back by making Dread Fangs a maintenance tool again. I think what they did with Ninja was an elegant solution. If timer management is too clunky, then replace it with resource management.

I don't think it's too big of an ask for the "free form combo job" they designed to actually have free form combos, lol.

[Leonus]

Obviously people are mad at the removal of Noxious Gnash. Or rather I feel like they are mad at the removal of a mechanic that required even a minor amount of consideration when playing the job.

I think based on SEs job design the removal of Noxious Gnash was inevitable. I'm honestly surprised it made it passed testing to begin with. Seems perhaps the root of the disappointment with it's removal was that it was just removed. It wasn't replaced with something of equal value.

imo SE should have treated this like they did Armor Crush when removing the Huton speed buff.

Reaving Fangs should give 2 stacks of a buff to Steel Fangs, and Vicewinder should add 1 stack. This buff stacks up to 3 times. Make the potency of Steel Fangs lower than Reaving Fangs without the buff, but higher with the buff. This change would keep the feel of intermittently weaving Reaving Fangs into the combo starter with purpose, and keep the combo from feeling completely static. This also adds the utility back to Vicewinder to affect the base combo.

I feel like this change is easy and obvious and I'm not sure why SE didn't take this route. Maybe because it would feel too close to Ninja, but half the Viper kit is taken wholesale from other jobs so that doesn't seem to be a consideration.

I do hope they consider this, or something similar, to add back the feel that was taken from the basic combo. I don't think Noxious Gnash needs to be put back, but I do think something needs to be done. As it stands now the combo has become completely static and it just feels weird.

Actual constructive criticism. I like it.

[LisseyCrowe]

I feel like if they were going to go the path of "Well it's a personal buff now" they would have just swapped it to that. "Envenomed Blade", grants 10% increased damage, lasts up to 40 second.

Let's be real though, the actual issue is just that Job HUDs are incompetent. Tracking a 20-40 second debuff isn't hard, it's tracking a small debuff icon that most people don't go out of their way to make more obvious that is. Dark Knight shouldn't be the only job who's HUD tracks the one thing they have to keep up at all times, everyone that has such a mechanic should have one.

[KooriGraywolf]

Dark Knight shouldn't be the only job who's HUD tracks the one thing they have to keep up at all times, everyone that has such a mechanic should have one.

The difference is that Darkside, and other cases like Ninja's old Huton were personal buffs. You can't have a timer on your HUD when the debuff is on the enemy such as with Noxious Gnash. But in that case, it would work with your "Envenomed Blade" idea

[wereotter]

Dark Knight shouldn't be the only job who's HUD tracks the one thing they have to keep up at all times, everyone that has such a mechanic should have one.

Dont know if this is a fair comparison... but bard songs? Dancer standard step?

[LisseyCrowe]

Dont know if this is a fair comparison... but bard songs? Dancer standard step?

"Only" was definitely a bit of a stretch. Bard might be a unique case since it's multiple, but Dancer fits. Dark Knight and Dancer are funny in that you don't really track those. SE's job gauge priorities feel inconsistent to me, I don't know.

[jonimated]

Honestly, I could get behind something like this. I think part of the reason the new change feels so awful is because it effectively removed half of your combo chains. 2-1-1, 2-1-2, 1-2-1, and 1-2-2 do not exist in Viper's current design. They spent all this time designing this free form combo system for Viper, only to turn around and make the rotation completely static. Wasn't that supposed to be the point of the job? What was the goal of this change?

But a stack system would help bring those combo strings back by making Dread Fangs a maintenance tool again. I think what they did with Ninja was an elegant solution. If timer management is too clunky, then replace it with resource management.

I don't think it's too big of an ask for the "free form combo job" they designed to actually have free form combos, lol.

I do think you've articulated something important here. Something many seem to miss or forget. Surface level what SE did was remove a simple management debuff. That had a cascading result, however. Not least of which being the removal of literally half of the Viper's potential combo paths. It seems like an insignificant change on the surface but it can be felt when playing the job, and has removed a huge part of the uniqueness of the branching 2-button combo design.

I do hope SE considers something to bring back the feel of the combo, either my suggestion or something else.

[Lamarcy2699]

While it's a neat idea I sadly feel we need less homogenization, not more. While you could say that the application of NG was close to DD from RPR, it was ultimately different in the way it as applied and the tight timings of the buff since it's cannot be reapplied in Reawaken. The best course of action would be to just bring NG back but goodness knows we're just talking to deaf ears at this point.

[jonimated]

While it's a neat idea I sadly feel we need less homogenization, not more. While you could say that the application of NG was close to DD from RPR, it was ultimately different in the way it as applied and the tight timings of the buff since it's cannot be reapplied in Reawaken. The best course of action would be to just bring NG back but goodness knows we're just talking to deaf ears at this point.

I'm in complete agreement with believing we need less homogenization, not more. I think in my brainstorming I just went to what I figured would be the more likely scenario between SE giving back something that was taken away, or coming up with something similar but less cumbersome. I can't think of a time when SE just gave something back that was completely removed simply because the community wanted it. Has that ever happened?

Though if I'm being completely honest with myself (and pessimistic) I think the most likely scenario is SE just does nothing and we have to live with the way it is now.