Why the Viper Changes are Short-Sighted and Bad

[ovIm]

The job has lost none of its nuance or difficulty, the primary difficulty in Viper has always been managing your positionals and knowing when is the right time to use your reawakening and ranged combo

none of that has changed. The only thing Noxious gash had was a rather inconvenient debuff to manage. The decision was either extend the duration or remove it, and they chose to remove it.
The only weird change imo was with the base combos now being rather samey with the 111 222 111 222 stuff, which now it feels like why not just make the whole thing one button instead of 2, but it's such a minor gripe to have when the job plays pretty much the exact same.

I shall stand with what I said in other threads - anyone who truly believes that Viper plays pretty much the exact same as before has not played Viper right in the past. This is not a bad thing, mind you, people are allowed to push buttons in the order they desire. But the fact of the matter is - while you thought NG was inconvenient to manage, it was still a gameplay element that increased the jobs skill ceiling, rewarding people with proper debuff management with more damage and more flexibility, as compared to now. (Also, please don't consolidate the Viper Combos into 1 button like in PVP).
Previously, you made a conscious decision whether to use Dread Fangs or Dreadwinder, now you just alternate the first step of your filler combo. The primary difficulty of Viper had been juggling all the Buffs and Debuffs while dancing around your enemies. This was, to many, engaging and fun, and was a core element of the job that was ripped out without any real reason, the plan for that had been made 6 days after early access.

Your rotation and priorities are basically identical, without the need to reset your debuff. You can still hold onto your resources/cooldowns for raids buffs and damage windows, there is nothing stopping you from doing that.
(personally I think we should move away from the 2 minute window garbage anyway)

While I agree that the 2 minute window is utter garbage, as stated above, no, the rotation has changed noticeably, and the priorities have shifted. Dreadwinder is now just a button to push instead of interacting meaningfully with your filler rotation. The class rotation is completely different to before (as long as you played it right, that is).

[Rychu]

Honestly, this makes me wonder on if the developers released the job with a Noxious Gnash that gave 30 seconds instead of 20 seconds and capped it at 60 seconds on if the "feedback" would have been strong enough for them to consider the removal. Just something to think about.