Viper Suggestion - Give Reaving Fangs the Armor Crush treatment

[Carighan]

That's what dancer’s for

Funny, considering Dancer has just about the only non-trivial combat setup in this entire game. I mean if you want to crack a joke, make it less obvious, say Black Mage or something which has the veneer of complexity but is still rote.

[Azurarok]

I feel the combat systems aren't exactly comparable since this game's challenge is supposed to be how well you can maintain your rotation while keeping up with the boss fight. I agree the button bloat's a problem, but also I find a decent chunk of that is because many of them lost any meaningful skill interaction through the patches.

On that note I will say there was a pretty notable difference between Death's Design and Noxious Gnash. The latter was built into the main combo so it controlled which of the combo starters you used, with some flexibility on when to use them because it was on a timer instead of a rigid buff that you either have or not. Vicewinder also extending it added another layer to it so I was a fan even if I never got good at handling it.

[Metricasc]

I heavily disagree about how much stuff viper maintains.

I am playing VPR right now in FRU... class is boring and doesn't have much going on in the head department. and I only completely more or less realized when i just simply played another class momentarily (to PLD, my actual main funny enough). and most downtime stuff in FRU often lasts long enough that you will change how you apply your buffs or is long enough that you will have to vicewinder > Swiftskin > Hunters to get your damage and sks buffs back up.

In M4S it was more about keeping your rotation and buffs going though melee downtimes else not much else was going on in the head department.

i would greatly appreciate that viper actually has some stuff to properly maintain that keeps the class from feeling boring to most ppl.

[Carighan]

I am playing VPR right now in FRU... class is boring and doesn't have much going on in the head department.

Okay I want to add two things to that:

1. You're in FRU. You're per-definition the absolutely highest top end level of player if you're doing that, top bracket, no job would ever be made or balanced for you unless the devs want to absolutely ruin their gameplay experience for the other 99,98% of players.
2. More importantly, honestly every job is that, melee in particular? It's because all every job does is run a static or quasi-static rotation, with oGCDs you punch as they come off cooldown except in rare cases where you hold them until you see the flurry of raid buffs running down your screen. That's it. That's the extend of mental effort in every DPS job: "Can you press this exact sequence of buttons for 8 - 25 minutes without making a mistake in the process?" is the entire gameplay challenge. Viper had the chance to do something else, to randomize this. And instead they added a pattern to it anyways, which completely ruined what it could have been as now it is, once again, a static sequence. Laaaaaaaaaaame.

[YumieYumiki]

Funny, considering Dancer has just about the only non-trivial combat setup in this entire game. I mean if you want to crack a joke, make it less obvious, say Black Mage or something which has the veneer of complexity but is still rote.

What’s non trivial about dancer exactly?

By the way, it wasn’t meant as a joke. The fact that Dancer can freely move independently of their damage rotation makes it easy to focus on boss mechanics.

[Azurarok]

RNG elements, apparently? I'm honestly a little confused as to why they're pushing for it in here and the DRG thread when they've been defending its removal on AST

[Carighan]

What’s non trivial about dancer exactly?

By the way, it wasn’t meant as a joke. The fact that Dancer can freely move independently of their damage rotation makes it easy to focus on boss mechanics.

Ah, sorry, different things we're talking about then. You're talking about the difficulty of not failing a fight mechanic, and yeah, sure, kinda agreed. I'd argue Machinist and Summoner are a tad easier even, in particular the latter due to point I'll get to in a sec in regards to Dancer, but sure, Dancer is one of 4 near-fully-mobile+ranged jobs, and hence you'll be caught in a spot with no chance to correct less often. And unlike the others you have En Avant, though granted with the serverside delay just sprinting is often more reliable to not get anybody killed. Wish it at least had the ~100ms less delay of Reaper Ingress/Egress. >.>

But I was talking about the combat system of the job itself. In which all jobs except kiiiinda Dancer (even Dancer somewhat is) follow a near-perfectly static rotation. Even proc handling jobs such as Bard or Red Mage have their actual GCD rotation be static or quasi-static, they only shift a weave here or there. Dancer is a fair bit less so. Due to the amount of coinflips, most GCDs are "whatever the next chakram skill is", and at the same time you have 2 resources to not overcap instead of the 1 other jobs have, which often view for attention. Plus of course CD conflicts, which are actually slightly worse for Dancer due to the dance steps required for some of them lengthening the window in which other skills can come off CD and "waste time".

It's not super complicated. But it is better than the extremely flat and static nature of virtually all other jobs, if just by minor amounts.

RNG elements, apparently? I'm honestly a little confused as to why they're pushing for it in here and the DRG thread when they've been defending its removal on AST

I'm not defending removal of RNG, I think you misunderstood my stance on AST:

* Old Stormblood RNG was the bad kind of RNG on a healer, an inherently reactive job type. I'd argue it was even the wrong type of RNG in general but eh, that's not really a strong opinion. It allowed no skill expression, instead it was a skill expectation. Which in particular for a healer (a job you want more to play) in an MMORPG (a game that a lot of people have to play to make it sensible) is not what you want, your healers ideally have very low skill floors but a medium skill ceiling coupled with one thing or two in there where the ceiling is individually high for a short moment and you can feel like a god if you can consistently pull it off. Hence that "different types of 100%"-example I gave in the AST thread that'd be a better way of doing Stormblood-style card draws.
* A secondary point, and this affects jobs like Dancer or Viper or whatever is that as much as I enjoy RNG on damage jobs personally, it's entirely natural that MMORPGs as they age remove or de-emphasize a few elements. Pets are one of those. RNG is another. Why? Don't really know, but I've been playing MMORPGs for 27 years now, you notice consistencies after enough of them and after enough years in the longer lasting ones. Seems to be some unwritten rule of MMO design. Dejected acceptance would be a better term, not defense. :P