My summary of why I hate the 7.05 Viper changes

[M1SF0RTUNE]

Hello. I thought I'd make a concise list about what absolutely drives me nuts about these Viper changes after taking it through a couple Experts, primarily the level 100 dungeon Strayborough Deadwalk, so here goes.

1. They gave us no notice they'd remove Noxious Gnash and force you to start only following the glowing buttons making it more braindead autopilot, catering to the lowest common denominator of people who aren't willing to learn the job properly. There was no discussion, and I doubt there was any real thought or planning to how the job would be changed. We were talking about removing positionals before, but reworking how the entire job's combo flows barely a MONTH into the job's life is okay?

2. Removing NG disconnects Dreadwinder- no, sorry, Vicewinder (eugh) and Vicepit from the rest of the kit and even to some degree Reawaken. Dreadwinder/Pit of Dread acted as a combo reset while getting you topped off with your buffs and debuffs very quickly, especially if you got KO'd. NG essentially was the connective tissue between all the main abilities that boosted (as well as helped you maintain timing for) your Reawakens. Now Vicewinder's utility got reduced outside of just hitting it when it comes off cooldown and distracting you from where you left off in the endless combo, and Reawakens are just dump it as soon as you get Rattling Coil and/or 50 gauge like too many other jobs out there. That goes without saying that I think this is just lazy and boring design (Fill a gauge, spend the gauge, fill a gauge, spend the gauge...)

3. Making it an endless combo changes it from only 2 buttons to watch after your starting hit in the basic combo chain (that you chose how to start yourself) in to now constantly watching the hotbar to make sure you don't misinput, which ultimately gets you trapped in a neverending combo that is not only very easy to lose your place thanks to transforming buttons obfuscating where you left off (Reawaken) or shifting your mental focus elsewhere like Vicewinder or the boss encounter, but you don't really have a clean way to exit or break the combo without having to perform up to 5 GCD's to get back up to where you were.

4. There was expression on when and how you apply NG, like do you double up at the start or do you continue alternating? Do you start Reawaken or go for an Uncoiled Fury depending on your remaining time? Did you set yourself up in advance with enough time and/or a Dreadwinder? That kinda stuff made each fight a puzzle to solve, a minigame of figuring out how to align NG and your abilities beyond "Am I close enough to hit it? If not, used Uncoiled Fury."

5. It wasn't replaced with anything, it was just taken out and given a band-aid solution to keep the general rotation going without thinking about the ripple effect it would have.

[M1SF0RTUNE]

6. Noxious Gnash served as a better visual queue for whether you needed to start on 1 or not, and then you got to choose when to start on 2. That was fully in your control before with your own decisions on boosting the timer or letting it wane, where you could set up multiple 1-starts in a row thanks to this setup. Now the combo for efficiency is completely stripped out of your control if you want to max your parse with a confusing 1-2-1-2-1-1-1-2-2-etc. inconsistent nonsense problem that no other job has since the buttons are static and non-transforming, which leads to my last point:

7. A lot of the "free-flow" identity of the job got destroyed and replaced with a spammier, more monotonous, and even clunkier way to play thanks to forced alternating. There was more emphasis on setup and payoff (properly managing NG timing) that required some actual skill that paid off in heavier-hitting Reawakens and Uncoiled Fury's if you knew what you were doing. The nuance was in the fine details and how controlling your NG buff and timing let you control that freeflow of your own accord, but now it's literally only follow-the-buttons. Dumbed down yet smaller margin of error.

I honestly don't understand on what planet someone desperately wanted to spam Reawaken 3 times back to back and thought that was fun gameplay, it turns Viper into the equivalent of a brain-dead and even patronizing cookie clicker telling me what to push and how to push them. I had more fun with agency over what attacks to hit and felt rewarded for good play with well-managed NG usage and being able to pull off Reawakens inside big damage windows I set up myself.

We don't need ANOTHER job that's just copypasta fill a gauge, spend the gauge. Those who wanted it to work this way never understood Viper or the appeal in the first place and you're bringing the game down with oversimplifying things this way.

So to summarize my frustrations...

Change Viper back to 7.01, stop cutting complexity and for god's sake, stop holding players' hands on how to play the game. Make them learn, get them out of their comfort zone, stop cutting corners and let players actually have some expression with the job and how they fight the bosses instead of "stand here, do this at this time when we say so, move here when we say so, attack now when we say you can. Push these buttons exactly in this order every time, all the time, no thoughts allowed."

...Ugh.

[HEKnTEKn]

True and real, if you aren't going to bring back NG to appease people that complain about having to reapply it after downtime phases like that isn't part of the optimization at least replace it with something that leaves some small level of brainpower so I can have some semblance of thought in my class. While you're at it, put the finishers back to a 40 second timer. It felt phenomenal to prep burst phases so that I could barely make it in time for both noxious gnash and and fanged combo finishers. If downtime is the consideration for this give Viper an Anatman that freezes the timers until Viper does another instance of damage within 20 seconds or something (just like OG monk, it didn't need to be a channel, it was never a hard fix for them either).

IDK man. It genuinely feels like whoever designed Viper wasn't a part of the discussion to rework it, or 7.05 wouldn't have dropped how it did, replaced by whoever made summoner because everyone was complaining about it as if Dragoon wasn't just the fun melee summoner already.

[jonimated]

This may be unpopular but I would rather they brought Noxious Gnash as a regular old DoT over what we have now. Even just like a 10 potency DoT. Honestly anything.

I just want a reason to press Reaving Fangs that isn't "Because I pressed Steel Fangs last time". Reaving Fangs needs to be given utility again.

[Rayne6665]

Time for me to go back to Reaper. I don't like the change at all or whatever they did with Viper . I'll switch back again whenever.

[LisseyCrowe]

This may be unpopular but I would rather they brought Noxious Gnash as a regular old DoT over what we have now. Even just like a 10 potency DoT. Honestly anything.

I just want a reason to press Reaving Fangs that isn't "Because I pressed Steel Fangs last time". Reaving Fangs needs to be given utility again.

Interestingly this could be a middle-ground? I get the impression people don't lose nearly as much sleep over a lost tick of DoT or two than they do at a 10% damage buff going out midway through their second Reawakening. And that's if they even make those two ticks worth just as much damage as that 10% would've been, there's definitely some leeway they could go with.

I think my only personal issue with it is I always feel like DoTs are super unsatisfying to manage in AoE scenarios, but I'd still take it over no NG (but not over NG).

[M1SF0RTUNE]

Imo I like the little bit of serotonin with lining all the buffs up for the big burst, it just feels more satisfying when you line all your cards up and go for the big kill shots. Noxious Gnash felt like a bit of that and someone actually taking Reaper's Death's Design idea and trying to bake it into your normal rotations with a little more skill and nuance demanded from you. But that's just a personal thing I *like* about Noxious Gnash.

On the flipside, I just don't want the class to be entirely on rails either. I don't think a DoT is a good idea, personally. You might be having numbers tick regularly with DoTs but it doesn't really invoke "skill" of landing your biggest hits within that time window effectively, that strikes me as far more of the brainless maintenance the people who liked the change complained NG was.

(I also can't understand the AoE complaints either, it's not hard to hold off applying the debuff until everything's all together and then you had a basic combo starter that easily reapplied it. Trash pulls where they're used 85% of the time are always low-stakes affairs anyway that don't need as much precision as bosses)

[LisseyCrowe]

(I also can't understand the AoE complaints either, it's not hard to hold off applying the debuff until everything's all together and then you had a basic combo starter that easily reapplied it. Trash pulls where they're used 85% of the time are always low-stakes affairs anyway that don't need as much precision as bosses)

I probably should've been more precise, it's not applying them that sucks, it's re-applying. I find the decision of "Do I refresh this dot on this dying pack or not" to be a bit bland as it's not the kind of calculation I can do on the fly, and instead would probably end up relying on some outside source telling me how many seconds the DoT needs to be mathematically superior. Admittedly this is some degree of hypocrisy on my part (and maybe supports my argument a little), as I didn't really ask myself that question unless that pack was literally dying within a GCD or two with NG.

Also to your previous point, I get landing your big hits within a time window but as far as optimal DPS goes be it a debuff or a dot you'll still be tasked with as much uptime as possible? It's just that the consequence for failing to do so wouldn't be as immediately obvious. But don't get me wrong, I prefer the debuff version as well, it's just that I'd settle for a DoT if it leads to the Viper changes being reverted.

[Eino_Himaa]

I want to throw my voice in with an analogy:

Imagine buying a car with a stick shift transmission, learning how to use it and enjoying how you're able to manage your cars speed with this type of transmission. Suddenly you receive a message stating that other users of the same type of car are experiencing issues with this car and you need to bring your vehicle in so they can fix the issue. Then when you get your car back you realize they removed the transmission and replaced it with an automatic all because some people didn't know how to use the stick shift.

Without Noxious Gnash a lot of the Viper rotation feels weird, like the op said, dreadwinder has lost its utility since you no longer use it to tactfully use it to refresh the debuff over using dread fang. The 1-2-3 feels less fluid as you're forced to swap from 1a to 1b and back again every time you go through the combo. Then there's the theorycrafting that triple reawaken might actually be a thing now, when before it was a meme that would punish you as all of your de/buffs fell off without being refreshed after the second reawaken.

[LisseyCrowe]

Then there's the theorycrafting that triple reawaken might actually be a thing now, when before it was a meme that would punish you as all of your de/buffs fell off without being refreshed after the second reawaken.

Which is funny to me because previously the double window required planning ahead and setting up properly, so there was a satisfying payoff to "I've done everything properly, played my cards correctly, here is my reward". But with the removal of NG that payoff is absent now, and we're left with what is and was always the ... ultimately relaxed part of Viper, imo?

Like once we go past the "OMG BLUE EFFECTS AND APM WOO" it's the phase where you don't need to look at your hotbar, you don't have positionals, you're not juggling multiple ressources, you're not managing any buff/debuff. I often found myself hitting Reawaken not for damage but because I needed to see what was going on in the fight.

And I get it, seeing that animation sequence makes the chemicals in my brain happy too but it still feels like it's lost all it's meaning. The extended double window (and lord forbid a theoretical triple window) is no longer a reward for the work that was done previously, it's just a thing that happens now. What used to be a reward and a relief is now only the latter.