Can we get a buff for Viper? (Ultimate content)

[Karuya]

I am playing "optimally" as described on the balance, trying to keep uptime for everything and I still still still struggle in DPS within P1 and P2

Don't worry, there is no way to do good as a viper in P1 and P2, i've killed FRU 4 times as a viper, i played well everytime, and everytime my team had to carry P1 and P2, viper and machinist are so bad that it looks nearly impossible to take them in the team if there is no broken pictomancer to compensate. And you can still consider yourself happy cause machinist is even worse, at least the viper is good in P3 - 4 - 5. I really don't know if there has been a single time in the game when such a lack of balance has occured : picto in ultimate is the most broken thing i've ever seen(at least in P1 and P2), while viper and specially machinist are so trash that they can't even play without a picto in the team.

Oh and in addition, that's not the subject, but since we are talking about the viper, i'd like to add that currently, the viper also has the biggest problem in term of gameplay : since they removed Noxious Gnash, the viper's whole combo system is totally broken, the viper only uses 4 of his 8 possible combos in a full uptime scenario, while SE has made an entire UI for it. I think Noxious Gnash in its previous state was absolutely awful, i don't know if removing it entirely was the best choice but i understand that they did it because it was terrible to use in any situation that was not a single target full uptime. But now that they removed it, we lost half of our rotation.

So they should absolutely make something, like easy solution : reaving fang should give a TWO CHARGES buff(or resource without time limit) that buffs steel fangs two times. By doing just that, they would alternate in a reaving - steel - steel loop, the viper would get back his 8 combos, and those would work in a 12 combos cycle that would loop every around 2 minutes. Everything i said should have already been done in patch 7.1, we're now at 7.15 and nothing has been done while other jobs like ninja, samourai and dragoon got buffed while they were already stronger than viper, i hope something is done really soon because it's starting to get frustrating.

[brinn12]

With PCT being forced in every FRU PF, there is no reason to exclude VPR or MCH, especially for prog. These two jobs are very strong in P3, where you usually have deaths or damage downs. Adds will be harder, but if everyone pushes their buttons, it's not an issue, as intermission should not have any deaths.

I do agree that downtime sucks for VPR. The unfortunate "solution" to this will be removing VPR's personal buffs, mirroring what happened to MNK. VPR lost so much already, why not just lose more?

[Karuya]

The unfortunate "solution" to this will be removing VPR's personal buffs, mirroring what happened to MNK. VPR lost so much already, why not just lose more?

As i said earlier, viper's personal buffs are absolutely not a problem, just like samourai's personal buffs are not a problem at all.

With PCT being forced in every FRU PF, there is no reason to exclude VPR or MCH, especially for prog. These two jobs are very strong in P3

There is not a single phase on this fight where the viper is stronger that the dragoon for example, while the dragoon is fine in P1 and 2. And the viper is not even that strong even in P3 and 4.
Machinist is worse, P3 is the only phase where it is not the weakest dps by a huge margin.
I guess people want to minimize the risk of failing any phase, and seeing how abyssal their dps are on some phases, it's hard to blame them for locking those jobs. Developer's fault.

[brinn12]

As i said earlier, viper's personal buffs are absolutely not a problem, just like samourai's personal buffs are not a problem at all.



There is not a single phase on this fight where the viper is stronger that the dragoon for example, while the dragoon is fine in P1 and 2. And the viper is not even that strong even in P3 and 4.
Machinist is worse, P3 is the only phase where it is not the weakest dps by a huge margin.
I guess people want to minimize the risk of failing any phase, and seeing how abyssal their dps are on some phases, it's hard to blame them for locking those jobs. Developer's fault.

With a PCT, no one cares about P1 and P2 damage. And a (good) VPR is indeed strong in P3, same to MCH. The only "hard" checks are intermission, P3 and P5. Everything else is super easy. I'm only counting P3 and P5 because it's common to have deaths there, but the DPS check is by no means hard. Back in TOP, you would see clean enrages with Relics and dungeon gear. People wouldn't ban any jobs, so why would they ban 5 now?

Excluding SMN/RDM to a caster that's outperforming every other melee by a large % is reasonable. Machinist gets an extra Barrel Stabilizer in P4 by using it before rewind, and it can reach 31k rDPS consistently, some go up to 34k. It's not like you need it anyway, as the P4 DPS check is the easiest and you don't see the enrages being cast in good PFs.

If you're getting bad MCHs or VPRs, you should avoid the players, not the jobs. If you're seeing enrages after swapping a DRG to a VPR, check who you're playing with. 1300 median difference means less than 5%. We'll always have stronger jobs, and if you can't deal with that, you should not be raiding. If you're banning due to a 4% difference when you already have a PCT, it's time to hit that striking dummy a bit more.

[Karuya]

I'm not banning anyone and i'm not saying people should ban anyone, and i guarantee i'm hitting my striking dummy more than you, but it doesn't mean that the situation is fine and nothing should be done. I've done TOP on patch and i clearly remember there was absolutely not this kind of imbalance, the only dps problem in TOP was in P2, if you didn't have white mage or sage or dragoon or reaper in P2 then you would have way more trouble beating P2 easily, but that was not on the same level than FRU and that was on a weird 2 targets situation, on FRU we are talking about full single target imbalance on 2 consecutive phases. What if picto was not broken ? Then you are saying that it would be understandable to ban viper and machinist because it would be too hard to beat P1 and 2.

Anyway, it's not because the fight is feasible with any team that we should not at least hope to see every job perform decently when there are absolutely obvious ways to fix those problems and it should have been done before the ultimate even came out.

[brinn12]

I'm not banning anyone and i'm not saying people should ban anyone, and i guarantee i'm hitting my striking dummy more than you, but it doesn't mean that the situation is fine and nothing should be done. I've done TOP on patch and i clearly remember there was absolutely not this kind of imbalance, the only dps problem in TOP was in P2, if you didn't have white mage or sage or dragoon or reaper in P2 then you would have way more trouble beating P2 easily, but that was not on the same level than FRU and that was on a weird 2 targets situation, on FRU we are talking about full single target imbalance on 2 consecutive phases. What if picto was not broken ? Then you are saying that it would be understandable to ban viper and machinist because it would be too hard to beat P1 and 2.

Anyway, it's not because the fight is feasible with any team that we should not at least hope to see every job perform decently when there are absolutely obvious ways to fix those problems and it should have been done before the ultimate even came out.

You're blaming the developers for VPR being excluded from PFs. This job was more than fine in Savage. FRU is its first on patch Ultimate. Ultimates have different durations and uptime for every phase. A 4% difference in an Ultimate is not unhealthy for the game, as this could mean jobs are not homogenized.

I am not disagreeing that VPR and MCH need changes to perform better in Ultimates. I main MCH and the job has been underperforming for 3 expansions. But it was viable in EW, still is now. Excluding VPR/MCH in parties without PCT is not justified, the issue is just worse when you already have a PCT. What you should do is avoid joining these PFs, if people really are coping for the perfect composition in a fight without relevant DPS checks, rather than looking for good players.

Also you're telling me some people swapped to MCH in TOP because of P2? P4 was a major problem, and many groups struggled with P6 damage. P1 was much harder... For any effect, in PF, TOP would see more clean enrages, and it's not even close. So you tell the people who ban VPR to hit the striking dummy, rather than blame the developers. MCH and RPR were good picks in TOP, and not very good in DSR. These variations are healthy for the game.

[Karuya]

You're blaming the developers for VPR being excluded from PFs. This job was more than fine in Savage. FRU is its first on patch Ultimate.

Actually Viper was not really fine even in savage if you look carefuly at the statistics and consider every aspect of those fights : if you look at maximum(95%) potential damage in cdps on patch 7.05 on arcadion, you'll see only reaper was behind viper by 1%, but the viper was lower than samourai by a whooping 5%, monk was equal to samourai, and ninja and dragoon were the best(with picto of course). After that, ninja, dragoon and samourai were all buffed in 7.10, while viper and reaper didn't get anything.

And that was on arcadion, a raid tier that was clearly designed to give an advantage to the viper because there was a lot of movement where the viper could benefit from his uncoiled fury. It was alarming to see that viper was not the best by a big margin seeing how those fights worked and how uncoiled fury looked totally broken. Statistics on 7.10 patch are not relevant because nobody's doing this content seriously nowadays, so the viper has an advantage because easy to play and uncoiled fury.

So it was obvious from the start that viper would be bad in FRU, just like it was obvious that picto would break the fight if nothing was done, and it delivered. Viper is effectively the worst melee if we consider the entire fight even though he's supposed to have a big advantage in P4 thanks to his 40% cleave on burst. Even that is not enough to catch up to samourai who is the second worst melee on this fight. Which also clearly shows that the selfish jobs are always the weakest ones : Viper, samourai, machinist and even black mage if we compare it to picto or even red mage.

I think it clearly underlines a problem with the dps profile difference between selfish and buffers, in my opinion every selfish job should have a higher burst than buffers because it seems like it's the only way to mostly balance every type of dps, give them advantages in some situations or others, and to give them a decent synergy with their team. Currently, selfish just don't have any advantages. Problems always come from the idea that some dps should do "long term" dps, it was the monk 10 years ago and it disappeared, was samourai on Stormblood and it disappeared to get an insane burst, now they give it to the viper and it will disappear.

During endwalker, samourai didn't really have this problem because devs had already realized that samourai could never compete with other melee if they don't give a clear edge : an insane burst. Now that's exactly the same for viper, it will never have a good damage potential if you don't increase his synergy with his team's buffs. Same for machinist, same for black mage.

[Karuya]

Also you're telling me some people swapped to MCH in TOP because of P2?

P2 was a problem because if you didn't have jobs with a good 2 targets cleave like white mage, then you would have trouble killing it without spending recourses that you should keep for P3, so you would be late for P3, so you would be late for P4. P4 was hard but was not the same problem because that was a single target, and it was the end of the big dps race, P5 dps check was easy, you had to spend eveything either at the end of P3, either during P4, depends on your team, for example i as a samourai would hold my burst for P4 while my team would burst in the end of P3. I didn't say anything about machinist in P2, i don't remember.

Anyway, i don't disagree with you on anything actually, and sorry i said banning a job in PF is kinda ok, i actually find it ridiculous, i was just speaking out of frustration for my job. But i'm still surprised that the devs didn't realize sooner how unbalanced this ultimate would be while statistics clearly showcased it.

[HeavenlyArmed]

With PCT being forced in every FRU PF, there is no reason to exclude VPR or MCH, especially for prog. These two jobs are very strong in P3, where you usually have deaths or damage downs. Adds will be harder, but if everyone pushes their buttons, it's not an issue, as intermission should not have any deaths.

I do agree that downtime sucks for VPR. The unfortunate "solution" to this will be removing VPR's personal buffs, mirroring what happened to MNK. VPR lost so much already, why not just lose more?

The solution to not locking out VPR and MCH being to lock out BLM, RDM and SMN is actually not a good solution, just in case anyone was wondering.

[Reylap]

Excluding SMN/RDM to a caster that's outperforming every other melee by a large % is reasonable. Machinist gets an extra Barrel Stabilizer in P4 by using it before rewind, and it can reach 31k rDPS consistently, some go up to 34k. It's not like you need it anyway, as the P4 DPS check is the easiest and you don't see the enrages being cast in good PFs.

MCH getting to 34K rDPS? What kind of substance are you on? Not even the top 99% players can even reach 28K rdps in any fight (ultimate or savage) or in any phase for that matter. Have you even done any of the fights? Or are you speaking this just by looking at streamers?