So, when is VPR getting nerfs? (Frontline)

[VictorSpoils]

It's even worse when they're a premade, they had a DNC constantly ulting for them, a PLD covering them constantly, we had almost our entire alliance focusing him and they were able to just keep tanking everything.

Well, there's your answer. Most solo Vipers run in and use Snake Scales and kill nothing with it. You can blame the BH changes for making 19-7 performances feasible.

The fact is these jobs are balanced around CC first, with FL getting different damage modifiers inserted in an attempt to adjust that.

Yes. It needs a nerf in frontline. https://x.com/i/status/2054650725825704095

70 kills and still losing. Sounds about right.

[TofuLove]

"look guys it's really complicated, so many factors!"

Problem with viper is that it's balanced for CC (as all things in pvp), so it performs OKish 5v5, but the heal up becomes busted vs 24 players, combined with how easy it is to proc Snake's Bane even with splash damage in frontline.
Armored Scales is 4k shield with 50% damage reduction (so basically 8k shield?). In frontline 60% damage reduction means that this shield effectively is 13k of weaponskills. This is extremely easy to proc against 24 players.

So backlash normal 12k attack becomes 18k damage from backlash with snake's bane proc (50% buff to enemies within 6 yalms). All this on a 30s cooldown. And you get Rattling Coil which resets it, every 45s... Somebody can do the maths, but i guess it's 3-4 charges of snake scales every minute.
Lets say it's 3 charges minimum. So that's 54k aoe damage per minute from just 1 skill. Correct me if I'm wrong please, i am just using calculator and ff14 portal.

It's kinda hard to compare it to other jobs, because direct comparisons are kinda difficult, but... for example:

Dragoon limit break does 27.2k (32k*0.85 (damage reduction)) damage to enemies within 5 yalms (slightly smaller range) on a 105s timer (yes, they have a damage up that they should use before hand)...but lol.

Reaper has PH which does 24k with 8 stacks, that's on a 60s timer (yes they also have limit break, but that's longer and multiple skills)

Paladin (another overtunned job tbh): Sheltron bomb is... somebody can figure it out, but it's probably a lot, but it's multiple skills, which have more difficult proc requirements.


I don't really know what they can do to balance viper without redesign of snake scales/backlash for frontline or buffing other jobs. Because if you reduce it's damage taken - it becomes even easier to proc Snake Bane. Changing animation so you can't slither with it? Reducing % damage? Making slither longer CD?...

p.s.
nerf bravery. in another post i suggested 50% reduction of potency when cast on others OR being unable to cast it on others completely. because nerfing viper will just end up with more gunbreakers and paladins with dancers with bravery pocket.

[edit]
got the drg lb number wrong

[Scintilla]

Having high BH or any BH at all on that job was barely a bonus, icing on the cake as a reward, but it was literally not needed. Meteodrive or RoW never required BH to mess up with high value or threat targets.

Losing your BH when you switch class mid-game, basically being penalized for adapting your play to the demands of the game, is ridiculous. I don't see any reason for it to happen, unless they were concerned about people using another class, like SMN, to spam AoEs and farm the BH as fast as possible before switching to a different class, like melee to try to use it to dominate? I guess there was a reason behind it, but I agree it can be very annoying when you're just trying to adjust to counter an enemy that you didn't know from the start that you'd be up against.

Is BH essential for a counter-MNK? I'd agree, no. Even if I'm getting heavily targeted for doing it, causing me to lose my BH, I'd still continue anyway: taking the chance of my 1 death would be better than having the whole team wipe. That said, even after handing them the lifeline, in many games you'd still get the team wipe afterwards because must-lick-ice. Regardless, having BH and keeping it remains a bonus, however small. An icing on the cake.

Personally, I feel some melee classes benefit from the BH changes more than others, which may be part of the reason why even the veteran FL community is so split. RPR / NIN / MNK were always easy to farm and keep BH:
RPR - non-target teleport, good self-healing, multiple options for range attacks with short CDs
NIN - ground-target teleport, a range of healing and def buffs for when needed, and, again, multiple ranged attack options.
MNK - a bit more melee based than RPR/NIN and requiring a close by target to teleport to when the need comes to get out fast, but, like the others, still plays to an in-out approach and picking off individual targets who've become separated from their team. It's an excellent counter class that is perfect at deleting individual, dangerous targets, but you'll (no surprise) rarely see a MNK leading the charge.

All of these classes didn't particularly benefit from the BH change. A death is almost always of your own doing, excepting getting focused for being a good counter class. The same can't really be said for those melee classes who are more likely to lead the charge (beyond regular tanks): VPR and SAM.

SAM has no choice but to be close range: you have no ranged attack, you have no real escape option or teleport. Your biggest escape tool being Chitin, where it's entirely up to your enemies whether to call your bluff or not. But it has very nice damage and lots of AoEs that lend themselves very well to Bloodbath, meaning that, for a short period, it can be an excellent tank. You also have to be being attacked for your LB to be of any use whatsoever, which often means jumping in pretty early to grab that enemy focus before someone else does. Unless, of course, you're happy to just pick off single targets with it - a huge waste considering how long the CD is... (unless it is a troublesome target).

VPR relies extremely heavily on leading the charge. If you sit back and wait for your team to push before going yourself, you're going to get little/nothing at all: more of the enemy will be retreating than pushing and their attacks will be widely spread across your team, often leaving you with not enough damage taken to upgrade your Backlash. If you take that approach in a good coordinated team, you're not even likely to be out of the 4-second scales lock before the enemy is wiped. As such, VPR does best taking that initial lead and hoping that the rest of their alliance utilise their scales and follow up, which, unless you are part of a premade, doesn't often happen.

Just for their playstyle alone, the level of cc and focus that these two classes get is ridiculous in comparison to RPR/NIN/MNK. Deaths in these classes aren't so avoidable: Purify all you like but when you're getting focused down with a synced MNK / MCH LB, double MNK LBs, NIN/RPR/DNC LBs, and a flood of silences and other stuns and kbs there are limits as to what you can do. The ideal scenario is that your team will be right behind to support you, giving the enemy less opportunity to be spamming ccs. In premades and veteran-heavy teams, this happens. For a solo player in a team of rouletters, it doesn't. These classes tend to pay the heaviest price for the passiveness of roulette teams and so benefit the most from the BH change.

From talking to friends about it, those friends who tended to stick more to playing as premades or MNK/RPR/NIN/ranged/caster classes haven't been so keen on the change, viewing it more as 'reducing skill'. Whereas friends who play more lead-the-charge tank/SAM/VPR classes (particularly solo), tended not to mind the change so much, saying they're no longer being punished for playing a frontline role amongst a sea of ranged rouletters.

It all depends really on how the JP community have taken to it. If they like it, it's likely to stay. If they don't, we'll no doubt resort back again. From what I hear, it's been just as controversial there as it has been here.

What was relevant was removing THEIR BH. It wouldn't stop them from comboing pull in / guard removal / AoE rampage on casual chaff and mowing down teams, but it would make them a lot less lethal at doing it, because they actually needed their own alliance support to do it in openers with no BH, where with BH5 everywhere they could almost do it on their own core group, especially once Rampage/Diabro was introduced.

Again, I see purpose in my kill beyond removing that BH badge. Removing BH is not the sole benefit to defeating a player. And, lets be honest, if an alliance is mowing down teams and dominating a game, that BH is going to be regained and back to BH5 in the very next burst. That one individual you killed and halved the BH from will still have the back-up and support from the entire BH5 alliance behind them. How many times, outside of a veteran filled game like a q-sync, is a dominating BH5 team wiped? Super rarely. The losing teams are usually too focused on objectives or passive play to notice a flank or counter opportunity.

They got the BH in the first place because of the difference in team ability.

It's not us that it's helping. It's them. I don't need BH to delete high threat players, I need jobs with specific CC toolkits to do the job. Them, they don't technically need BH either, but having BH will multiply their power on a quadratic scale.

It's helping them because they use it better. Simple.

The BH change was designed to help the casual player fight back:
- The casual team will get bigger BH increases by just killing one of the BH5 dominating team. They'll get almost straight to BH1 from killing just one of that BH5 team
- The dominating team will take longer to gain BH5 than they used to, with their farming of low BH teams giving them lower BH increases than it used to, giving casuals more time to catch up.
- The old complaint used to be that dominating teams would get an early lead, then repeatedly wipe the two weaker alliances stopping any opportunity for them to gain and keep their BH, preventing them catching up and launching a counter attack. Now, BH loss has been removed, those weaker alliances no longer lose their BH upon a wipe, giving them more strength to regroup and counter.

But the issue is plain to see in games: it's not that they're losing BH because of a dominating team stopping them (as was the excuse before the change), it's that they're not gaining it in the first place. They're not engaging in PvP, they're killing nothing.

The system was designed to help them, in theory. In practice, it utterly failed that objective - not necessarily because of the change itself, but because of the playerbase making no effort to utilize the gift given to them.

[Cidel]

I mean, more than one thing can be true at once. Viper is the latest boogeyman in Frontlines because it feeds off ignorant casual players who don't understand it's kit and/or are unwilling to change targets. But it is also overtuned with it's high defense modifiers more than it probably needs, what with their Hardened Scales perks and especially now that there is no longer any risk/punishment of losing their Battle High upon death (as well as a few other jobs, I'd argue).

Beginning with the behavioral issues of how people typically react to Vipers; right now, this is how the vast majority of most casual Frontliners handle a lone Viper running in:


Bonus relevancy for it being targeted by a firing squad of metaphorical ranged DPS.

Like, it's almost comparable to a PLD or DRK popping their LB and still seeing upwards of half your alliance still focus firing on them in spite of literally anything else being an available option to swap to, but there being just that many people hell-bent on not learning what Hallowed Ground and Undead Redemption are and what their icons look like. That, or they're just too lazy to swap targets.

But wait, where have I seen this before? Oh right, there was another, "hot-button" job that benefitted from baiting auto-pilot players that was often brought-up around here:



I guess a lot of players just get it in their head that the first things to run-up to lead the charge must be the first things killed before anything else should even be considered. The primary culprits of this mindset being the middling ranged DPS mistakenly chosen as 'safe' options, which is why you would rarely see many of these players get beyond BH 1 or 2, even with the latest change to BH. They don't kill anything or even get assists to rack-up BH because nothing is dying between their unfocused fire on a handful of enemies that want their attention, while their team gets mowed down. VPR and GNB (tanks, in general) excel at this.

I know people like to say Frontlines has a ranged meta, but the truth is, the teams that hardly have any melee players at all tend to get bullied off objectives and ultimately lose 1 on 1 fights because they're full of backpedaling ranged DPS competing to not be the foremost player while they spam Powerful Shot and Blast Charge at whatever melee their tab targeting landed on first before wasting an unbuffed BH0 Marksman's Spite to take some random MNK from 90% HP to 55%.

...Having said that, yeah, Viper is definitely eating good from the change to not losing BH on death, despite often times needing a pretty large focused effort to bring them down even when they decide to retreat. Yeah, Diabrosis helps (honestly, I wouldn't bother with a VPR unless it is afflicted with it), but even that has a longer CD than Scales to be considered a reliable counter. And even if you personally have the sense not to touch a VPR during Scales, that says nothing about your teammates who are effectively buffing it's range and power by being ignorant and hitting it regardless.

Between that, No BH loss, Slither, Bloodbath and whatever else their teammates can offer them, Viper just comes off as overtuned (not overpowered, there's a difference) when you consider they're sitting on a +60% Frontlines defense modifier; the highest of any job. Honestly though, now that BH level is permanent (like Soaring in RW), I'd argue a whole slew of jobs should have their defense modifiers lowered.

TLDR: VPRs benefit from the same ignorance that sees people hitting obvious LB-baiting SAMs and wasting bursts on invincible (or baiting into their LBs) DRKs and PLDs, while also being overtuned due to their huge defense modifier, recent adjustments to FL and innate skillset that was constantly buffed and tuned for low-man CC.

[Valence]

Again, I see purpose in my kill beyond removing that BH badge. Removing BH is not the sole benefit to defeating a player. And, lets be honest, if an alliance is mowing down teams and dominating a game, that BH is going to be regained and back to BH5 in the very next burst. That one individual you killed and halved the BH from will still have the back-up and support from the entire BH5 alliance behind them. How many times, outside of a veteran filled game like a q-sync, is a dominating BH5 team wiped? Super rarely. The losing teams are usually too focused on objectives or passive play to notice a flank or counter opportunity.

They got the BH in the first place because of the difference in team ability.


It's helping them because they use it better. Simple.

The BH change was designed to help the casual player fight back:
- The casual team will get bigger BH increases by just killing one of the BH5 dominating team. They'll get almost straight to BH1 from killing just one of that BH5 team
- The dominating team will take longer to gain BH5 than they used to, with their farming of low BH teams giving them lower BH increases than it used to, giving casuals more time to catch up.
- The old complaint used to be that dominating teams would get an early lead, then repeatedly wipe the two weaker alliances stopping any opportunity for them to gain and keep their BH, preventing them catching up and launching a counter attack. Now, BH loss has been removed, those weaker alliances no longer lose their BH upon a wipe, giving them more strength to regroup and counter.

But the issue is plain to see in games: it's not that they're losing BH because of a dominating team stopping them (as was the excuse before the change), it's that they're not gaining it in the first place. They're not engaging in PvP, they're killing nothing.

The system was designed to help them, in theory. In practice, it utterly failed that objective - not necessarily because of the change itself, but because of the playerbase making no effort to utilize the gift given to them.

This doesn't happen in a vaccum. It's not because I was personally allowing a kill or multiple kills of BH5 players from premades that I was the only one doing it. In fact, using MNK for it was by necessity having other people dunk on the target to finish them off. As a result, there was an individual aspect in setting up things for your team, but there was also team wide movement and flanking tactics, when they worked. I have stopped counting the amount of times I've had games where the alliance with the big nasty premade(s) got crushed by a sandwich properly executed, and lost most of their BH5, while the two other teams had a sudden spike of BH in return.

This is not possible to expect anymore.

I understand the logic behind lowering BH gains for steamrolling steams and helping BH gains for teams that do struggle, that was in fact the part of the BH changes that I cheered for. But the removal of BH loss is just trying to bandaid the players being farmed so that they don't lose their BH1 or 2 for those who have it, which again, I understand, but you said it yourself, it's not bringing much in terms of value there while it's as expected, bringing a LOT of negatives on the other end of the stick. To me it's a sheer negative addition, unlike the BH gains scaling depending on the value of the targets you kill.

[Divinemights]

It's kinda hard to compare it to other jobs, because direct comparisons are kinda difficult, but... for example:
Dragoon limit break does 27.2k (32k*0.85 (damage reduction)) damage to enemies within 5 yalms (slightly smaller range) on a 105s timer (yes, they have a damage up that they should use before hand)...but lol.
Reaper has PH which does 24k with 8 stacks, that's on a 60s timer (yes they also have limit break, but that's longer and multiple skills)
Paladin (another overtunned job tbh): Sheltron bomb is... somebody can figure it out, but it's probably a lot, but it's multiple skills, which have more difficult proc requirements.

The job itself was a meme from the start: Sword Art Online and “Starburst Stream”
Its controllable damage output is honestly pretty similar to Samurai when SAM fails to bait someone into hitting Chiten.
If the bait fails, the job contributes far less pressure than people pretend it does.
In actual large scale Frontline engagements, both jobs can often just be ignored entirely.
If your alliance has someone competent marking targets and coordinating focus fire, then enemy Vipers and Samurais usually end up looking like Frontline clowns more than actual threats.

[TofuLove]

The job itself was a meme from the start: Sword Art Online and “Starburst Stream”
Its controllable damage output is honestly pretty similar to Samurai when SAM fails to bait someone into hitting Chiten.
If the bait fails, the job contributes far less pressure than people pretend it does.
In actual large scale Frontline engagements, both jobs can often just be ignored entirely.
If your alliance has someone competent marking targets and coordinating focus fire, then enemy Vipers and Samurais usually end up looking like Frontline clowns more than actual threats.

Problem with comparison with SAM is that SAM needs casting to do most of it's damage during which it's vulnerable to cc, and kuzushi window is quite narrow, vipers don't have any of those problems as in fact they eat up the cc instead (having reapers/monks waste their LBs is a funny "solution").
Additionally ogi combo being a cone makes it a fair bit more awkward comparatively to radius attack of viper, which can also be repositioned via slither.
Additionally sam has -5% damage dealt, and 50% damage reduction, which again...more vulnerable/less damage.

Chiten also has 24s cooldown, with no additional refreshes, so it's way less available than Snake Scales. And if we are comparing chiten baiting zan rather than just buffing itself for raw damage.... we are comparing zan to snake scales which is kinda wild.

Again the problem of FL has been how much DPS there is just flying around, and it keeps being increased from Endwalker till now. You can stand in onsal mid and absolutely get hit with 13k of random aoes to proc snake's bane without being the target of attacks. Just like how you can stand in the middle of the fight and bait people with chiten to prep zan (which is way less available).

Does everyone just need to stop to play around the job because is a viper on the enemy team? What if there are multiple of them? That's too much.

p.s.
I think sam is in a good place right now and doesn't need buffing. HP recovery on Setsugeka combo was a nice touch, even though it was already fine. And i was a huge fan of zanshin since they added it.

p.p.s.
what they really need is a separate kit for CC and frontline... or frontline becoming 8v8v8 to match the current kit.

[Scintilla]

I have stopped counting the amount of times I've had games where the alliance with the big nasty premade(s) got crushed by a sandwich properly executed, and lost most of their BH5, while the two other teams had a sudden spike of BH in return.

Well, all I can really say is that you are far luckier than me with your teams!

Meanwhile, I have lost count of the number of times there has been a perfect flanking opportunity in Shatter, only for the team to decide they'd rather stay to lick ice. Or a chance to flank in Onsal, but the team seems to decide that going so far to that end of the map is too much risk, and instead decide to camp on a node just outside of base. The main place I have seen roulette teams flank is (predictably) Seal Rock. But, of course, that flank is usually over a north spawn node and they're usually flanking the utterly wrong team.

Try to point out an opportunity and, while one or two may pause to consider it, the vast majority continue on their happy way doing whatever they were doing already.

This is not possible to expect anymore.

From my own experiences, this didn't happen anyway. And, if it does happen as often as you say (given you said you've lost count of the times), what was the reason for the many complaints about premades before the change?

If roulette teams were often able to flank them, wiping the BH5 alliance of nasties, why was there such an issue over them existing in the first place?

But you said it yourself, it's not bringing much in terms of value there while it's as expected, bringing a LOT of negatives on the other end of the stick. To me it's a sheer negative addition, unlike the BH gains scaling depending on the value of the targets you kill.

Oh yes, there's no doubt that it's failed in the reason it was implemented. That said, if we are to assume that they revert BH back to how it was because the change wasn't being utilised by casual players in the way it was intended, what would be the purpose to making pretty much any system change?

I'm not talking of skill changes/adjustments, I'm talking of FL system alterations (changes to score/BH/objectives etc.)
Whatever change is made, the players who will take the time to work out how to twist it or use it to their advantage the most are the veteran players. Regardless of what the change is, they will continue to work through it. Rouletters, having less care, interest, and experience in PvP are likely to let any change intended to favour them pass by, as they have done with this one.

So what purpose is there to complaining and calling for change, when they refuse to do anything with it when it comes?

[Scintilla]

Problem with comparison with SAM is that SAM needs casting to do most of it's damage during which it's vulnerable to cc, and kuzushi window is quite narrow, vipers don't have any of those problems as in fact they eat up the cc instead (having reapers/monks waste their LBs is a funny "solution")

Hey

While I agree with most of what you said, there was one thing I did just want mention from my own experiences playing both SAM and VPR.

I agree, comparing the two is hard. If going purely from damage dealt numbers, VPR has the advantage by far. That's not to say that SAM deals bad damage, but I find I'm working far harder to get 3m+ damage as a SAM than I am as a VPR.
VPR does have better escape mechanisms than SAM. And the lack of cast timers is another advantage VPR has. But....

When I look back on past games playing both, the sheer level of cc I get playing VPR is infinitely higher than that I get as SAM.
That's not to say I get nothing as SAM, because that class too suffers heavily from ccs/kbs/LBs due to it's play-style. But VPR just seems to be in a whole new league. I've not even fully broken out from the team frontline and I'm being focused down with kbs, stuns, and silences.

This is probably more due to the hate that VPR is getting right now, than anything else. But I wouldn't exactly say that VPR can 'shrug off' cc.

I'd say any cc attack on a SAM can be more costly, due to the lack of scales. But the ridiculous amount of cc attacks on a VPR means that they don't exactly get off lightly either - if scales isn't cancelled, they'll be hit with some kind of cc either immediately before or after release. It's just a matter of hoping the damage during that second of delay isn't so much that the second scales can't carry.