Thread: My summary of why I hate the 7.05 Viper changes

Originally Posted by M1SF0RTUNE

(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.

To that end I'd respond back with saying that the debuffs also aren't any harder to re-apply than it is to single-targets, since you had the Pit of Dread for an easy re-apply and you could re-up it with the second AoE starter combo, there wasn't any more added difficulty; it wasn't easier nor harder, just literally the same. The only difference is being able to *track* all the timers, but if everything is bunched up well enough in a trash pull then re-applying the debuff is still just as simple as it was before.

As for your uptime mention, here's the big thing to think about I iterated on earlier in the post. If you lose your debuff, you had at least 2 different ways to reapply it very quickly, Dreadwinder and Dread Fangs. Dreadwinder you could use between combos if you manage that resource well enough and use it semi-regularly, and if you're mid-combo and absolutely need to re-apply it, you could choose to do the AoE equivalent of Dread Fangs and then rotate back into your single-target combo. The main point is you're one GCD away from recovering your maximum damage during your regular combos. In the current system, it can take upward of 5 GCD's to get your combo starters back on track and you're still railroaded into what buttons to push to make that happen. Sure, it doesn't affect Reawaken, Vicewinder and most of the regular combo if you misinput, but it still makes it clunky when you ultimately go back to the standard combo at any point and you're still forced to watch the hotbar for extended periods to make sure you're following the glowing buttons properly. I don't ultimately control the combo anymore in this system, whereas before I had the agency to set myself up to start with 1 multiple times in a row and the debuff acted as a visual queue for that.