The real Issue with Viper is the Job Gauge

[Cynric]

Today I would like to give some feedback involving the most recent changes in patches 7.01 and 7.05 to viper, how they affected the rotation and the play feel of the job, and why the job is difficult to some players. I actually don't often make my own threads but I felt like doing it this one time.

First off, I have read a lot of feedback about Viper from both English and Japanese sides. Overwhelmingly most of the likes are for a return back to the 7.01 state. The reason for this is because of how the play-feel of Viper has been affected by the removal of Noxious Gnash.

With the 7.01 change we had a QoL increase by adding a range extension on to the OGCD abilities, I believe this was a good change and helps deal with times where you need to disconnect from the boss but also need to double weave.

However, when talking about the changes in 7.05, I believe the play-feel of Viper has fundamentally changed and been made more boring. Interacting with Noxious Gnash it seems was a main part of the kit, there are some things that have not changed much. Rather than say how bad it has made the job I would instead like to list the pros and cons of losing noxious gnash that I have noticed from playing the job itself both before and after the patch.

Removal of Noxious Gnash
Pros :

1) No longer needing to track the debuff means less staring at specific parts of your UI(Though this still remains a problem)

2)Full damage faster on multiple targets

3) More flexibility on when to hit "Vicewinder" (Though in some cases this feels like a con with the way it's been implemented)

With dreadwinder gone it doesn't matter when or where you hit vicewinder, as long as you don't overcap the charges. The charges themselves are more or less pointless now though, since you aren't keeping up a debuff or really getting anything from it at all it's just a skill you hit because it's there. They could reduce the cooldown and remove the charge and it wouldn't really change anything about it.


4) Players who did not engage with the debuff optimization have more damage.

Cons:

1) Job feels empty in many places now.

Interactions with the debuff : Making sure you were ready for double reawaken, optimizing dreadwinder uses to allow for more steel fangs and less dread fangs, optimizing when you used Uncoiled fury in relation to the timer on debuffs and buffs to make sure you didn't drop them, being aware of disconnecting from your target and planning accordingly.

Without these interactions, the job doesn't really have anything much left to it. You have uncoiled fury optimization based on disconnects and there may be some slight buff optimization left. But functionally the debuff was a core part of the kit that tied together the use of Uncoiled fury, the use of dreadwinder, the lead up into double reawaken, and is what made the filler interesting.


2) You can no longer use the debuff as a timer. Prior you could figure out where in your rotation you might be by using the timer if you'd gotten used to it. Now you'll mostly be staring at Vicewinder and Serpent's Ire as you infinitely press lighted buttons.

3) The filler combo has become less interesting. As mentioned above, without needing to at points attempt to optimize how often you use steel fangs, the filler has become a clunkier version of the 123 combos that is somehow less interesting than them. You're more or less no different than Samurai now, except Samurai doesn't light up which skill you need to do next.

4) The viper job has no poison on it at all. Which is a shame really.

5) This doesn't solve the problem, and adding more lights to the hotbars and job gauge makes it even more annoying to play.

6) You will find yourself staring at the hotbar more than before because there is no real tell as to when to use Vicewinder and you gain gauge very fast while marathoning through the alternating combo steps.




Now, I'm not going to say keeping up Noxious Gnash itself is the thing that made it interesting. But what I am going to say is that the interactivity between the debuff and the rest of the kit is what made the job flow in a fun way. If they removed it and increased the potency and the job felt the same , I don't think I would care as much. But the job currently is a fundamentally different job than the one I have been playing for the past month, and that really sucks.

Next, I would like to talk about the actual reason players are finding difficulty with the job and why this change does nothing to alleviate that, and in fact, from the feedback I have seen , it makes the problem worse.


In Short, the issue is the job gauge.

Vipersight has to be the absolute worst designed job gauge I have ever seen in this game since they added gauges in the first place.

It gives you the number of rattling coils you have, and tells you where you are in your combo. Well somewhat anyway. The way it tells you the combo information is by lighting up in ineffective and counter intuitive colors.

What it should tell you :

Are you flank or rear next?

What is the timer on your debuff?

What is the next step of your combo?


The issue that they were trying to solve could've been easily resolved by actually redoing the job gauge because it is simply useless.

The changes I would like to see based on all of the feedback I have gathered are as follows:

1) Revert the change back and add Noxious Gnash back in, but increase the timer on Noxious Gnash to a maximum of 50/60s

2) Add the timer of Noxious Gnash to the new job gauge, The reason players are struggling is partly because designing your UI is such a big deal towards playing jobs effectively. Reaper also requires looking at a debuff but the interplay between Deaths Design and the rest of Reapers kit is far less than Vipers was with Noxious Gnash. This being an issue isn't helped by the fact that the Enemy Debuff area can not be changed to be left justified or right justified like every other buff/debuff UI piece.


3) Change the colors on the job gauge to better match the skills they are coming from. If you are on a Green skill the gauge should fill up green, if you are on a red skill the gauge should fill up red.

Also while you're at it, change the step 2s of the combo, Hunters sting and swiftskins sting, to match the color of the rest of their combos. The third steps were changed to a unified color before full release, I don't see why the second steps of the combo were left both red.


This would let you actually know the way your skills have changed. I have no idea why it lights up red no matter what skill you're doing, this simply is counter intuitive and part of why nobody knows what they're doing even after reading skills.

4) If you are on the first step it should simply have a I, a II for step 2, and a III for step 3.

5) Allow us to remove the lightshow. This is extremely distracting, you have yellow,blue, and red lights on my job gauge, 3-4 skills lighting up at once on my hotbar, and there is always something lit up on my hotbar now. I just literally can't stand this and I just want the option to turn it off completely. It's not like I even really need them to light up.

6) Make the Simple version of the job gauge a bit easier to see. Currently when it lights up its almost not even noticeable as its much dimmer than the regular gauge. The pulsation on the gauge is also extremely slow so it's easy to miss where you're at if you don't catch it during a color pulsation.

7) Though I don't want to keep the first combo step buffs that much, If you're going to add in buffs at least add them in properly, why does the blue buff help the red skill? Why wasn't the icon red? You could've even just used the skill icons and you made entirely different icons to buff skills without making those icons even make any sense.


Finally I want to end with, failing is a part of playing games. Even the absolute best player may miss a debuff application or die for looking at a cooldown for too long in tough situations. Part of learning is getting back up and trying to do better next time. This is a concept the game itself is founded upon, you aren't expected to perfectly execute a mechanic the first time you go into an encounter. You can not expect players to perform rotations perfectly, and then when they don't try to remove any sort of thing that is stopping them from performing it perfectly. You're literally repeating the same mistake you were making with encounter design in job design.

Part of the reason why Viper is so problematic, is that it is trying to do something that no other job does, Play the game for you. You've efficently tried to account for any possible mistake and guide the player on the correct path, then when the players aren't doing that, you try to force them back on the path with a lightshow that does more harm than good with a job gauge that's pointless and descriptions most players can't make heads or tails out of. Honestly, if you're going to try to guide players to how to properly play their job, at least do it effectively.

tldr;

Add back in noxious gnash(at max duration 50/60s) partly because it keeps the job interesting, and partly because the job was clearly designed around it and now has lost most of the flavor it had. The real issue is the job gauge and the lack of information and clarity it has. Add Noxious timer to job gauge, change the colors of buffs and the colors on the job gauge to be more informative and clear, add a I, II, III to the gauge to know which step you're on. Change the colors of Hunters sting and Swiftskin sting to accurately reflect the combos they go into. Do the same for the AoE job icons, make the simple gauge a bit brighter and pulsate more often, and give an option to turn off the distracting lightshow on my hotbars.