The Viper Changes are Disappointing in FFXIV Dawntrail
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- Опубликовано: 9 сен 2024
- I've been wanting to yap about the Viper changes for a while, and I finally found the time. I think there's an interesting chat to be had about fulfilling job design here!
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I found the job fun, but probably one of the most useless job bars ive ever seen om a job tho
you can feel that way, i find it very useful. i have it set to simple mode and above my hotbars, i never look at hotbars because of it, just glance at which side is glowing for 3rd combo hits. lets me focus on the fight more. it was more useful before the changes but its still nice.
Yeah I’m surprised how many keybinds I have open with that job compared to the other jobs I play
i got used to 1-2-3 combo with other jobs, viper weaponskills are confusing to me lol
@@zensei7685i guess can add new buttons easily in future, maybe new combo route or finisher
@@angelking1989 all they had to do was make two 1 2 3 combo buttons. One for rear and one for flank. Like how Monk used to work 🙄
Personally, I think the real reason this got changed is there is some underlying issue with the debuff system. On release we saw in multiple patch notes that there were ongoing problems with Noxious not triggering if enemies had too many debuffs. And we've seen in past ultimates and of course in field content problems with hitting the debuff cap. I think there are underlying issues with the debuff system that SE doesn't want to spend the time/resources addressing and this is why the change was made. I also think this is why we've seen fewer and fewer dots over the years, and when we do get them (like Sage's new AoE dot) they don't stack with the older options.
The issue now is vpr getting dangerously close to the buff cap o .o
The solution should have been removing Death's Design. Noxious Gnash + Dreadwinder was fun. Death's Design is not.
Yeah but DD is an obnoxious part of the class that you have to go out of your way to refresh. Making it an actual mechanic. Instead of Noxious that was just conveniently easy as an option in your 1-2-3.
And frankly that was Reaper's thing. I think DD should be a shared "everyone benefits from it" debuff that every reaper gets to reapply on the single instance thaat a mob has... Because 6.0 Zadnor with 11 DDs and 7.0 Fates with 8 NG per mob was dumb as hell.
But I think DD has more merits over NG and I'm glad they took that out of Viper. Especially because it was a debuff in a class called Viper that wasn't a DoT and that was turbo stupid. MONK had more venom on it before Viper came around, ffs.
@@LucasBernardesRosaYeah... I don't think DD needs to be changed, much less to be a thing everyone benefits from either.
@@riel0563 I just don't think we need to have 5 different DDs on the same boss in Alliance Raids.
They could just make all Reapers share the same DD. You COULD make it a Bard situation where Reaper buffs everyone with it on, that would be cool, but most importantly I just hate seeing a bunch of buffs that don't mean shit to everyone else aside from the ONE person that put it on.
Let me play devil's advocate for just a second: Viper this savage tier felt amazing to figure out. There were examples in most fights, but I'll use M4S in particular. From using vicewinder during both parts of Witch Hunt to give myself a longer gcd to move out with and not worrying about NG while doing it, to setting up double reawaken for raid buffs during Ion Cannon after dumping four Uncoiled Fury in a row, to finding the exact line to use down to the gcd I pot on to make sure I can double reawaken during transition and not lose any buffs when she goes untargetable, there were many parts of the decision making process in Viper's rotation this tier that made me alter how I interacted with the rails of the rotation that left me immensely satisfied when I found the right path. In all likelihood, these incidents would've been far more difficult to figure out with NG at play.
But now that I've said that, let me also say this: I'm disappointed that I never got the chance to figure out these lines with NG. I'm disappointed that there could've been yet another component to crafting the perfect line of playing into my teams buffs, never letting cd's drift, and not once letting any buffs overcap or drop. Viper was the first time in a long time that I felt XIV had become comfortable giving a failure state that wasn't just shooting the player in kneecaps, but rather something that you'd curse under your breath seeing you messed up, and vow to do it better next time. Having NG removed feels like Viper has been dumbed down to an insane level, and the only thing keeping it from feeling worse at the moment is that high end fight design is still somewhat engineering the need for thought in the rotation whereas, before, NG could've handled it in those fights and more.
Well said!
Damn I actually like the changes ngl
The dumbest thing imo is how ninja is the most punishing melee and its scouting partner, viper, is just completely braindead and outperforms it
VPR raw DPS outperforms ninjas even with their provided dmg too which is funny.
Viper should outperform Ninja though the job has no utility, then again Picto is loaded with utility and is the strongest DPS in the game atm so who knows lmao
@@willcolvin4738 raid buffs are just a different form of doing damage, imo every melee should be equal on rdps because none of them really have strong utility outside of damage (arcane crest and riddle of earth are the closest to actual utility, though neither is that impactful on the healers). Though if fights are going to continue being designed like this tier then maybe they should buff the jobs with no good ranged attacks (cough dragoon) to make up for having to chuck spears while viper just throws out uncoiled furies
@@midorixiv Honestly yeah, I guess you could save your gierskogul + bastions for uptime? But it’s probably just worth it to use for burst. Same for monk and it’s riddle of fire/air attacks
@@midorixiv I mean, monk also has mantra too
I have no idea why they felt the need to remove the debuff. It gave the alternate first step of the combo a logical reason you press it other than "just alternate", which I find *way* more compelling. I feel the same way about, say, Armor Crush. I like armor crush - before DT and after, because you press it for a *reason* that doesn't feel as arbitrary as just alternating back and forth.
If they wanted to make it more lenient there were other nobs they could have turned - like max duration - without removing it outright.
the alarming amount of times i've seen noxious referred to as a DoT really showcases how 14 players can't read and makes me wonder how low the skill floor is
People actually do? Lmao damn
the removal of noxious was baffling to me 😂
The removal of the word Dread is most baffling to me
@@drbiohazmatthis, Vice sounds so lame lol
Not that baffling to me. People pointed out it was basically identical to Death's Design on Reaper, except more annoying, because shorter duration and you couldn't just apply it whenever. Your only application was half of the maximum duration, and a double Reawaken combo takes ~23 seconds (and that's _with_ the Swiftscaled buff), so you were often forced to refresh it early to avoid dropping it during the burst window. Reaper's Death's Design has been almost universally panned, and a LOT of people were strongly hoping it would be removed in DT (alas, no such luck). People similarly complained about Noxious Gnash, and for the same reason, so it's no surprise at all to me that they went ahead and yeeted it. The new flip-flop buff works better anyway, imo, and accomplishes a similar goal, having you regularly alternate your first combo hit just like you do the other two combo hits.
And, _fortunately,_ they recanted on removing positionals.
@@KaedysKor I have to reply to this immediately because saying it's the worse version of death's design is an insane take. You had plenty of time to reapply it especially since the dreads didn't break combo. It also was additive timer and went up to what 40 sec? Those people were just some how playing the light up buttons wrong lmao
@@drbiohazmat probably to make things a bit more on theme with snakes, a la constrictors.
MOM, GET THE CAMERA - I'M IN A RINON VID!!!
I think what isn't addressed enough is that now viper has 4 permanent maintenance self buffs, and an additional 2-3 conditional buffs BY ITSELF.
this can potentially make it a victim to buff cap and repeat the same problems a lot of classes had when TOP came out.
of course we can't tell what the Eden ultimate will bring but I hope the dev and playtesting teams will remember TOP and make sure it won't repeat itself.
Then they should have just raised the buff/debuff cap. Working in a way to make way for future job designs. If people believe we won't hit those as they add jobs? Then they are crazy. That will need adjusting as time goes on and should have been at the forefront instead of removing Noxious.
I always hear people complain saying Viper had a Reaper clone esque feel (which I don't see how) and now it's a striking class feel. That's not a good thing lmfao.
@@Frostbyte115 is not as simple as pressing one button and thats it, it is known that there are problems regarding debuffs and sometimes the VPR debuff wouldn't register, everyone knows at this point that there is a shit ton of spaghetti code and probably fixing the whole buff/debuff caps will be solved eventually, but in the meantime, they have to create a fast and easy solution to the problem and probably, removing the debuff and turning it into a buff was the easiest, Yoshi P is not going to ask the team to waste time untangling the FF14 code if that could eventually create more problems while also wasting more time and resources just for the sake of it, especially if there is a quicker and easier way to solve the debuff issues
I didn't super mind whether they removed noxious gnash or not. What I did mind, however, was being blindsided when they said it'd be positionals that they'd change, and then the change was not positionals. I feel like I got baited.
"We previously mentioned plans to change directional requirements for certain actions. However, in light of the above changes, and the considerable feedback received from players who like this aspect of these actions, we've elected to forgo these changes. Looking ahead, we'll continue monitoring your feedback as we consider further adjustments."
From the patch note job guide.
@@Squallcloud95 players: « we don’t want positional changes »
Se: Ok we won’t
Players: wtf no positional changes
@@NoXiiZzplayers: we don't want positional changes, viper is already easy
SE: ok we won't *changes completely different thing nobody asked for or complained about*
players: wtf
@@xeno942 lots of people _were_ complaining about NG, though, and for basically all of the same reasons that Death's Design was and is complained about. I admit Rinon's points about the duration and refresh points, and most notably having multiple refresh options of differing potency and availability, did make NG rather more engaging on the decision-making front, though.
Really the only decision-making that goes into Death's Design maintenance is letting the debuff run low prior to double Enshroud windows so you can double-tap Shadow of Death during the first Enshroud as a time-filler, and the _only_ reason that exists is because Enshroud has this weird 15 second cooldown for no real rational reason. I think that cooldown was maybe added to try to avoid double Enshroud burst windows, except that it doesn't, and now the clunky time-filler to make it work has been engrained. It's clear they've rethought that particular design decision, though, since Reawaken, which is very VERY similar to Enshroud, has no cooldown, and back-to-back Reawakens are just a standard part of the Viper burst window.
>Dawntrail early access released on 6/28
>Upcoming job adjustments announcement with the initial Viper adjustment plans posted on 7/04
>Patch 7.05 released on 8/1
>This video uploaded on 8/8
>It is technically possible that this video had more time in the oven than the initial Viper adjustment plans
One can't say the same of how the no-NG iteration was conceived because we don't have an exact date (sometime between the 7/04 post and the 7.05 patch notes on 7/29, so likely a longer time gap anyway) but it doesn't reflect well on the philosophy they approach Viper with. I don't actually know if the idea that different jobs are handled by different teams comes from a concrete source as much as I've seen it thrown around, but this all happening at the same time as a job like Pictomancer being developed is really weird
I have a feeling this was a discussion going on internally for quite a while before DT even released. Possibly even before the media tour. Likely it was something they were planning to do but decided to release the original version and see how it was received. The few complaints on the Japanese forums were likely enough for them to pull the trigger on the change.
The ironic part about all of this was that viper was presented as a “challenging” high DPS job.
On release it was not challenging, and then they made it easier 🤣🤣🤣
I went into Savage and cleared all four fights on Viper for my static. So I wanna give some of my own opinion, too.
Last time I played a melee in a week one setting, I was on Reaper/Dragoon on Asphodelos. This was back when boss disconnects happened and you couldn't do much about it. Mechanics first, after all.
I struggle at times with keeping full uptime on every boss. RPR was a bit easier because of their dash, and DRG I had to learn how to get good with elusive jump. But besides that, I was balancing a lot of my rotation and trying to stock as much of my burst for buffs as I could. And I got good with it.
Fast forward to this tier, and it was infinitely easier on Viper. I have 3 charges of a targeted gap closer, so when the boss jumps or I'm out of positioning I can *zhoop* over to a party member or the boss and I've barely been punished. And when I have to disconnect anyways, I get to stock three Rattling Coil ranged attacks as a time which are a DPS gain to use anyways. I often times took downtime positions so my tanks and co-melee could greed a bit more, since I rarely lost anything. Need I mention you get at least 4 rattling coils per two minutes. That's a lot of ranged attack for a melee dps, that's a GAIN at that.
Managing my buffs was cake, I seldom got too caught in the burst that I didn't notice or didn’t refresh my stuff before entering. I learned just to not look at the debuff bar besides checking the mitigations.
It was nothing short of easy. And I felt like I got away with murder since my group fed me a lot of the loot.
The ranged GCD being a GAIN on DPS puts viper in a completely different eschelon when it comes to “uptime”.
The ONLY fight where managing uncoiled fury stacks is a challenge is m4s.
And even then it’s not that hard to have 2-3 stacks at cannon.
It’s so frustrating jobs should be learned that’s what makes them fun having their own intricacies and a skill curve makes jobs fun. Having a brainless job becomes boring.
I really feel that the team is making a massive mistake in putting too much of the game's difficulty in mechanics and not nearly enough in your rotations. It feels like every job that isn't Black Mage has been lobotomized, and Black Mage instead got their legs chopped off at the knee.
I'm living with it, but like, It is kinda disappointing. Especially the name changes, that one's particularly weird, but the loss of Gnash and the now mandatory alternation of the first two GCDs feels so disappointing.
I didn't expect the removal to bother me that much. But the alternating pattern makes it feels too much like monk for me. And I'd rather play monk.
Agreed fr
@@tangentkatz It's literally Monk+Sam in one job. Instead of how Unique Viper felt.
It's extra sad, because as you say, a failure state possibility gets removed...and I am reminded of Yoshi P talking about Jump n Runs requiring pitfalls, yet that pitfall got filled real quick.
Best I hope for now is that Viper at least gets a 'Devour' Skill. After all, lets call upon the Great Serpent, the Devourer. Give me a reason to shout Screeeee every now and again and wear funny hats
Thanks for featuring my comment
Viper was fun and satisfying beforehand. The noxious gash debuff / vice winder interaction was just enough decision making to stay engaged when outside of buff windows.
Now it basically opener -> 60 reawaken -> burst with no-thoughts-head-empty-just-do-mechanics in between each reawaken.
I 100% agree about the Viper changes being disapointing and kneejerk, and reflecting of a sad trend with job design to buff out most failure states. I used to be a DRG main when I started in ShB. I LOVED that job and one of thing I enjoyed the most was that you had to juggle your fairly simple resource, Eyes, in accordance with the 3 different CDs of your major buff abilities. EW already eroded at that part by making every CD 1 or 2 min, meaning delaying Life past the opener or double life windows were dead and gone, but there was still some form of slight pressure in the form of requiring you be attentive with your nastrond usage during Life to make sure you got all 3 uses. Then the DT changes killed DRG for me. Removing the entire mechanic of eyes without giving anything else to replace it makes DRG one of the least fun job for me to play atm. You have these incredibly busy burst windows, but then, you do nothing for 1min. Your filler serves no purpose than generating Wyrmwind thrust and the oGCDs that are not on the 1min/2min framework, High Jump and Mirage Dive, do not interact with your kit in any way. They are just empty damage buttons. As sad as it is to say, I have not touched what was previously my favourite job a single time after getting it to lvl 100.
That's a massive mood. Same here, but from Stormblood. Between positionals being eroded, Filler literally just...being filler, the loss of Blood for Blood for Lance Charge (where your burst also made you take more damage)/SSD losing its damage and stun so you don't need to plan uses... and just general oGCD bloat of buttons all just leading to more buttons as something else to press... the job feels so darn hollow.
also a dragoon main, since heavensward for me. i felt like dragoon has always been in a great state in every expansion. it usually ended up pretty fun having to juggle things and being rewarded. i think im one of the few people who liked having raiden thrust procc'd off of getting your positional for example, though i understand why that was changed and i was fine since there were things like eyes you could optimize and get rewarded for. but with the removal of it and any other resource you could juggle in dawntrail.... i dont know how to feel
people said in the past dragoon was super strict and janky and they like this change, but id honestly argue that current dragoon is the strictest its ever been. its also not fun being forced to double weave every ogcd (minus stardiver) either otherwise you lose uses of nastrond or mirage dives, its literally impossible on EU ping playing on NA, when in the past DRG was one of the most ping friendly melee for me.
im still playing it because i adore the fantasy of the class, but its definitely not the job i fell in love with for 7 years for sure, it feels like its becoming a shadow of its former self.
Going to leave my comment here before i watch and then compare our takes, i really liked your video on what makes a job fun.
Before this patch it really felt like you had to go into your 2 minute burst phases methodically in order to make sure your buffs didn’t fall off as well as how you pick back up on your rotation post burst. I think it’s really been understated by the community how much easier it is to optimize the job with the additional 20 seconds added to your positional buffs. If you had bad planning your buff timers all being 40 seconds meant that you ran the risk of everything falling off in a domino effect and I found that VERY engaging. This tension typically arises when you are spending rattling coil stacks mid burst with any additional time left on 2 minute buffs OR acted as a way to delay your first ouroboros mid awakening to buy time for buffs if someone is misaligned. The job is still flashy and you press buttons the same, but they took the tension/fun out of the job for me personally.
I couldn’t agree more with your points and I’m thankful you are a voice in the community!
Rinon, I don't know if I've ever mentioned it to you, but I really appreciate that you can actually understand the game design behind the job decisions for VPR's 40s timer (and the game as a whole)
A lot of XIV content creators usually make me sad because they immediately dismiss any consideration in a job as "clunky", when overcoming these can be really satisfying
Game design is about mastering adversities.
Most of the "most satisfying" games to master is all about becoming fluid in a game where when you started you felt rigid and clunky.
"I don't know how to use it, therefore it's clunky, and anything that is clunky needs to be removed." Welcome to 5.0 and onward game design. I fucking hate this... Give me back the jobs that were actually fun to play...
It's the modern world we live in. Anything that has a modicum of difficulty is considered clunky or bad.
One part, I agree with you, the other part it's always this dilema. Lots of 3.0 class design are clunky as fuck and to the same point to what you said, satisfying to overcome. Some time it's delusion of difficulty while other time it's just a not well set balance between the two. Also, I actually like 3.0 gun mage and bow mage as well as the 7.0 pre change mnk(which is more akin to 5.0 early mbk pre grease lighting removal)
it would have been clunky in savage, did the tier as vpr and i promise you forums would have been full of bitching about certain mechanics in each fight, you can say skill issue but it would be ignorant, its not a matter of can't do it. its a matter of it would have felt terrible. i was sad at first, savage made me happy its gone.
When I first saw and felt these changes, Viper went from my favourite job of the game, to one of the least. Now I've given it the time and appreciation it deserves, I was too harsh in that but I do believe these changes weren't fundamentally necessary. But they do give some insight into the development which I could see being interesting.
While I sorely miss noxious gnash, my biggest complaint about the changes is honestly how hard it is to tell where you are in your rotation. Because everything glows and swaps around each time you press a new button, unless you are intimately familiar with how the job plays, you are almost required to look at your hotbars to see whether you're going to be required to do a flank or rear positional since it's so hard to know whether you're at the end of a 3 part combo or not now. I almost believe this is why the 7.01 changes suggested they would remove positionals because it is likely a brand new pain point they've created for themselves with these changes.
The only real benefits I have found to the change are to AOE and transitioning between mobs and bosses in dungeons. It is infinitely more smooth as you no longer have to break your combo, or get stuck without being able to apply Noxious Gnash for a short while. This could've made transitions in Ultimates a little weird but is that not so with every job? I certainly don't feel that is a strong enough case to remove such a crucial part of what was Viper's kit so early. I don't know if we can ever go back to how Viper was, but I feel I should certainly make it clear, THIS IS NOT the direction I want jobs to go in the future. I want jobs to be more engaging and have more failure states, but neither do I want those failure states to be obnoxiously hidden by weird game mechanics (looking at you Fleeting and Forked Raiju). My favourite jobs tend to require small decisions that impact the grand scheme of your rotation and that was something Noxious Gnash fit PERFECTLY. I want more things like Noxious to return if we can get that, especially looking forward into 8.0
Determining where you are in your rotation is precisely what the VPR job bar is for. I love it.
Man that bit about job design... So many times I hear people complain about a job aspect being "clunky" and being like "you know that's the whole thing that makes the job different?" It's the small "clunky" nuances that people fall in love with, not the parts that are easy and the same as every other job. The number of changes for my main, DRK, I've heard suggested that boil down to "make it the same as X" drive me nuts man. I heard someone suggest that because MP is "clunky" DRK should have a discrete gauge like GNB. Wild.
Going off on a tangent because I've been very peeved lately with everyone saying DRK is the worst designed tank, DRK is the only tank that has any choice in it. Sure, *usually* you spend EoS in your 2M. But in non-standard content (which again side tangent but this game is SORELY lacking. Every job feels the same because the only content we get is single target and jobs are intentionally designed to be homogenous in single target. Differences in analogous skills come out strongly in non-standard content. For example, Salted Earth can be used to remotely protect an area by drawing aggro but you never get an opportunity to see that. Anyway,) In non-standard content you want to be very particular with your uses of EoS. You can use them to tag enemies or you can use them for TBN or you can save them for when you group enemies or you can save them for buffs. You have to know what you're doing and think about it. Tools like TBN and Oblation give opportunities to instead protect allies for free if you know what you're doing.
Compare that to say PLD and GNB and WAR who are ALL on rails. Just do your rotation. You rarely want to spend anything protecting allies because of the opportunity cost with protecting yourself. There is almost nothing when it comes to saving something for later. It just baffles me that people think DRK is the least interesting tank. But at the same it doesn't because the only content we've got for almost 3 years is raids. No one takes dungeons seriously. Raids intentionally strip jobs of choice so that they all become on-rails. You wouldn't realize which job isn't on-rails because we only ever get raids.
I think the 2M meta was good for health of the game by allowing all jobs to slot in with each other freely so there's never a job left behind. I think what people are truly lamenting with old raid buffs is the ability for jobs to show off their jank and choice in single target situations. It was fine for them to remove that from single target because they want to intentionally make raids about performance rather than composition, but at the same time EW had zero non-standard content. Thankfully DT will be getting an exploratory mission. I think people will start to feel like jobs are unique again when it comes out and the nuances of jobs start to shine. For example, DRK is the best job at pulling solo enemies in the overworld because of the number of oGCDs it can save to tag enemies. Sure, it's a damage loss, but when you're in Eureka/Bozja farming and you want a tank to pull enemies, DRK is the best at doing it quickly. EW added Enhanced Unmend, Salt and Darkness, and TWO stacks of Shadowbringer which can also all be used to tag enemies, but we got no content to show off their nuances. Instead these traits were considered useless/obnoxious respectively because they were useless to single target -- the only content we got.
That's also not to mention how jobs feel different with things like haste and actions from Eureka/Bozja. DRK using magic and MP really shines in those situations where you can use actions that other tanks can't and also aren't able to use some that the others can. Jobs *are* unique we just aren't given situations to show it off anymore.
Incredibly bad faith nonsense you're talking, as a GNB main.
The changes completely blindsided me and ruined my day when I found out about them. I’m a tank player and was so excited to have found a melee dps I actually enjoyed playing and this felt like a slap in the face
I'm still trying to figure out just who they're listening to when they make these changes. They've made a number of changes over time in "response to popular opinion" but it wasn't popular opinion. It seems that they will listen to the loudest person yelling sometimes.
A lot of these changes that seem to come out of nowhere are responding to feedback from their JP playerbase, so we in the West don't often see it. And, from what I've heard, many JP players just... won't give feedback unless there's a problem that they perceived, so most of the JP feedback, which the JP devs of a JP game take more seriously, is about 'issues' that a majority... don't have. That's part of why DRK and MCH had to wait HALF to a full year after ShB/END for the devs to make changes to those classes more ping friendly...because that's just not a problem in JPN. To the point where during one of the live letters, Yoshi-P said "Wait, what's the issue with DRK (and landing a full Blood Weapon)" During the same LL that Hypercharge got its duration made ping friendly.
What's especially frustrating to me is how many of my friends who don't play Viper at a high level defend the removal. It makes me realize that we probably aren't getting it back if that's the attitude of most players.
i do ultimate so id say im pretty high lvl of a player :), did the tier as vpr, thank fuck its gone. so many mechanics in this tier that would have felt horrible with it being a thing. doable yes, feel like shit as well? yes.
@@slimfastsubaru2043 I don't think that is remotely true. My Viper player has had NO issue keeping his uptime. That is either a skill issue or your group isn't making it easier for melee's. Decision making should be in the forefront of job and fight design.
@Frostbyte115 then your viper hasn't done m4, or been hit by m1 knockup or stun, or every had defamation or had to drop puddle in m2, or ever had to do towers in m3. Or had to do multiple mechanics in m4. How tf you clear? Without doing any of that. Btw uptime is not really the issue, its the times at which you'd be forced to reapply during the forced downtime that would make burst setup awkward asfk. Go through the fights, look at a timeline, now look at old viper you apply gnashing literally first gcd so it's not hard and line that shit up.
@@slimfastsubaru2043for every mechanic you listed except getting stunned on mouser you literally just save uncoileds for.
@froggy2point0 yes and the timer on gnashing would get weird during those, you need at least 25 seconds to do your 2 minute, some of those mechanic make it delayed enough be the time you need to burst you need to do 2 combos Ina row for gnashing because of Said downtime or our buff would fall off before it could be applied or very unoptimal burst windows which would lose potency would be a thing, like having to use a dreadwinder for 20 seconds on the final gcd of raidbuffs instead of a fury.
ive been maining viper since the start of early access, and while i really liked noxious gnash management i'm finding that i'm totally okay with its removal. i do agree that there are less decisions being made which i'm a little sad about, especially with the timing of vicewinder uses, but i think that juggling your buffs and keeping up with positionals and uncoiled fury and vicewinder charges is still enough to keep the job engaging and fun. i usually like jobs that are more free-form and mobile so viper still feels really good to me but i do wish we were able to take it into savage or ultimate before they decided if it needed to be changed :(
i also totally agree with what you said about failure states and friction!! i think something viper still does very well (but did even better with noxious gnash) is having multiple levels of failure state where you get a minor potency loss for things like missing venom and honed buffs and medium potency losses for dropping your haste and damage buffs or your double weaves. it makes it feel like the job is always pushing you to play better which i think is great :)
I didnt mind the old version of viper but heck yeah im happy that they removed the debuff. if played in dungeons that thing just felt absolutely terrible to refresh when you were mid 123 combo already, etc. Thanks to the change i have even more fun with the job, able to focus on the mechanic and not to worry to let that bloody debuff fall off or overcap it. I know, its "only" dungeon content, but thats simply part of the content that is available too, its not only EX or Raid fights. I really wonder how people can even play those long rotations right and doing all the mechanics perfectly at the same time. Respect for that. :D
Yeah, i like the easier to play jobs with less buttons but i also understand why people want to have more complex jobs with more things to do, etc. And i think its good to have both ways. As far as i know other meele jobs are not as easy to play as viper. And if thats the case thats good! Those that want a more challenging job can play one of the others and people like me that finally took a step into savage content can play an easier job like viper to experience the whole savage raid thing. :)
I also really like to play Summoner and i heard people dont like it for several reasons, but i think in the end its always just the personal taste that leads us to make comments about how we feel about a job. We have to remember that just because we feel like that, doesnt mean the majority of players feels the same way about it.
I can only compare it to WoW-Balance and how people argue about a lot of things, not thinking about the fact that raiding and especially high end raiding is just a really small percentage of the playerbase. So if changes are made to a job its not only important to keep it at the level raiders want it but also how it feels for casual players. and that balance between those two things is hard.
I think SE did the right thing here with viper. :)
(Sorry for any grammar mistakes, english isnt my first langauge :D)
In my opinion, it's not as simple and black and white to say that the adjustments have turned VPR into this simplified husk of its former self that's akin to SMN, or essentially every other job in the game at this point. I agree with many of the points made, yes NG debuff management was a form of skill expression, more so in multi target situations like that of Valigarmanda EX wherein you'd try to align your rotation in that you enter add phase or only start to attack the feather with a fresh combo ready to immediately apply NG for optimal damage output.
However, in it's own weird way the removal of NG has breathed life into Vicewinder. Previously, I felt that VPR's positionals were overwhelming, sometimes even encumbering(Even though in reality is just 50 potency but hey, point is to be optimal). This doesn't mean I was of the mind of reducing positionals however, what I desired was more akin to SAM, and how they had the ability to delay positionals with the use of their Yukikaze combo, or NIN with being able to pick and choose between Armor Crush or Aeolian Edge and move those around in their rotation so that they can use Armor Crush when forced into a flank position for say maybe a spread mechanic, but still avoid overcap by delaying the refresh of formerly huton, now Kazematoi.
The new Vicewinder has given VPR flexibility in controlling their filler GCD flow, either by delaying it as Vicewinder itself has no positional requirement, or giving you the option to use a rear positional when your filler GCD requires a flank thus granting you precious seconds of delay before needing to use the flank positional due to ongoing mechanics. Sometimes even the fact that Vicewinder has a slower GCD speed makes all the difference even if it is just half a second or so. All this made possible by the fact that the use of Vicewinder is no longer prioritised and dictated by noxious gnash, because refreshing noxious gnash with your basic 123 was an unoptimal choice as dread fangs (now reaving fangs) had lower potency than steel fangs, while dreadwinder was a cooldown and was meant to be used and not overcapped.
So ultimately I don't disagree with the points made in favour of Noxious gnash, but i disagree to the points made against the removal of it. On a more personal opinion though, I ultimately don't think the removal of Noxious Gnash changes the feel and oomph of viper too significantly, and I always like more flexibility and options in my jobs for more skill expression in a way of planning your rotation around a fight's mechanics. Noxious Gnash was really not in favour of that, still loved how I had to play around it for add phases in Valigarmanda EX though!
Bruh, the job just came out last month lol
It's funny on what can seem like a small change or quality of life can dramatically change the feel of a job. The removal of Noxious Gnash also changed the flow of the job significantly. Dreadwinder usage tying naturally to Noxious refresh timings was a big boon for myself when keeping track of where I am inside of a fight. Without it I find that I'm having to focus more on my cooldowns and making sure that they aren't overcapping and the lack of buildup into the 2 minute window where you have to plan your 3 gcds in order to properly refresh noxious also takes away from that flow as well. Viper is fine as a whole but the feel of the job has definitely changed and I'm hoping there's a place for more of this cooldown tracking outside of "Don't overcap dreadwinder lol". Honestly I'd rather have had them remove some positionals than being given this current iteration of the job.
Which makes seeing comments that say "it's just one button/dot bro" amusing. Nah it changes the whole flow of the job on top of requiring one more braincell. Samurai players can probably relate to that one.
You know, for the two weeks before release I was playing all melees, trying to figure out which one I wanna play and I found that my favourite ShB job felt great to play again, even tho I didn't care for it in EW. I spent the next week practicing it, learning the optimization, applying meikyo accelerations and ADHOC when I thought they were right but mostly - trying not to fuck up the loop. I loved that about SAM. Your rotation being perfect, with 2 fillers on every odd burst window, you having the potential to double tendo during the 2nd pot window, all of that I spent practicing, doing extremes, 10-20 minutes in front of a dummy every day because I was, for the very first time since shadowbringers, extremely excited about a job.
And then the savage day came out and they ruined it. Which is fine, if they wanted to change it, but why on savage release? I hate that I put effort into learning a job, that I found difficult but extremely rewarding only for it to be removed.
So I'm a viper main now, can't even be bothered to care about noxious gash
With the removal of of noxious gnash, Viper honestly feels like the melee job for someone who wants to play ranged physical. And as someone who mains ranged physical but has been asked to play VPR for this savage tier, I absolutely love how it plays now. I get that many people feel that VPR has been dumbed down by some margin, and are unhappy about it, but I find myself in probably the only subgroup that enjoys 7.05 VPR.
I enjoy it too but that bc i stopped caring about jobs in ff14 and just play whatever looks cool. I mostly only keep playing bc my bf still loves the games and wants us to play together. 😅
noxious gnash was like, my FAVORITE thing about the job because it made filler engaging but not overwhelming. I felt like I was actually doing things. I thought I had finally found the perfect job for me that I could solo main through an entire expansion without dropping msq halfway through to level something else. And then, as though to spite me specifically, the change hit right as I was halfway through the expansion. Also the new names they chose for all the skills are CRIMINAL. I mean, really, which sounds cooler to you, "Pit of Dread" or "Vicepit"?????
It's a tough one for me, I play viper as one of my alt-jobs and my plans for it probably don't extend beyond doing NM raids or dungeons on it, and I think it's a positive for me that some days when I'm not feeling like being super optimal and I just want to chill and press my buttons without thinking too much, that I have a job or two that I can do that with. Before the changes, Viper was not one of those jobs for me, the debuff provided some decision making and planning that I felt were a little too much for me when it came to planning on a job I'm only playing casually. Letting it drop or overcapping the debuff - or what would happen more often for me, capping my Dreadwinder charges. The changes have made the Viper one of those jobs for me now, I can go into a duty, follow my job gague and just have fun with the job, I'm using my Dreadwinder charges more and not letting them cap at all anymore because I'm not worried about it's interaction with the debuff. But I do know that if I were playing this job for my main job, that I would probably find these changes disappointing. I play Pictomancer as my main job and have embraced it's little complexities and the optimization required to play this job in EX/SV and deal good damage, if some of those things were taken away from Picto it would feel awful, it would feel like my ability to express my skill at the job would have taken a hit, which is what I feel seperates me from the average DF Picto, and I guess that's the point - for Vipers who are playing it as their main job, this is a level of skill expression that's been taken away from them and I certainly do feel for them. So it's hard, because on one hand the changes are allowing me to enjoy Viper more, but I do feel for those Vipers who feel (reasonably) that they've lost something.
I moved from VPR to SAM bc I need that sense of decision making to make a job feel meaningful and fun to play.
Gnash removal was unnecessary and I still play Viper since its release but now I'm just worried if they are gonna continue to dumb down classes in 8.0
Yeah i had the same though as you when the patch came out
Viper is kinda boring right now :/
Imma be honest: I actually really like the changes. I was really worried that they were going to get rid of some of the positionals but they didn’t and instead got rid of an ability that I disliked slightly less than Reaper’s version. The flows like water now and I’ve been enjoying it so much that I’m actually going to gear it up second after I finish Pictomancer which is my actual main. To me, these changes are SE fully committing to the idea they had for Viper which was to follow the glowy abilities and now the only thing you can do wrong is miss your positionals. I’m also very interested in checking out SAM now as I fell off from playing it after Stormblood but now it looks kinda crazy with all the double spams.
There's also the other failure state of hitting the wrong 2nd or 3rd combo button. And missing, or flubbing the order, of the oGCD followups. Overcapping Coil charges. Overcapping Offerings. Letting your 2nd combo hit buffs expire (which is absolutely a thing that can still happen during burst windows).
The editing is getting better. I appreciate that.
Were the changes too soon? Yes. Did this class need more than a month before they changed it? 100% Yes.
HOWEVER, after all of this my attitude is pretty mild and "meh". I admit, I'm a fanboy and have been since the job was announced. It's FFXIV Fury Warrior and I had fun with that class in my brief time in WOW. I mained Viper before the change and I'm maining it now.
I understand the mindset of those upset at the changes but for me personally the job was fun before and is fun after so I'll keep playing and adapt.
They will never allow jobs in this game to be complex anymore
I hated it in dungeons, it was annoying when tank pulled a new pack and you were in the middle of 1-2-3 combo and wanted to apply noxious gnash asap for reawaken. you either finished your 1-2-3 and applied it or used dreadwinder, dropped the followup attacks and use reawaken. if you wanted to do it normally by the time you did your 1-2-3 combo and reapplied it or did the whole dreadwinder combo and you reawaken the pack was almost already dead
I personally initially got overwhelmed by viper qt the start but in my head it is literally because its a new job, square have been taking away these components of jobs that make them unique and fun. DRK, VPR, MNK are hit the hardest by this line of thinking, i would argue GNB as you would commonly weave the gapcloser in the gnashing fang combo so it was a satisfying 3 double weaves almost each time. Sometimes complexity is fun, in my opinion its good to have jobs that are easy to play and can be recommended for new players and other jobs that are somewhat difficult for those who want mastery in that role. I personally love getting double weaves off on my jobs as i am an oce player and before we got our server i couldnt even do double weaves majority of the time. I would also argue if you are struggling to get the hand of a job with weaves or placement of skills or abilities that you go to resource that can help you out, whether that be friends, the balance and many online sites including youtube. It doesnt take 2 weeks to learn a job like viper and have it stick in muscle memory so the changes are a bit uncalled for in my opinion. Thats my rant over 😅
Less micromanagement will always feel better to me. I don't mind the changes at all.
Now if only RPR can follow suit and be rid of of their debuff or make it how noxious used to function.
Same
Viper has stolen my heart as my favorite melee, and whilst I’m not necessarily disappointed with the changes, I will eternally miss the addition of Noxious Gnash and how it operated your decision making in its rotation and flow. I’m no expert in the discussion of job design or feel, but there was a certain edge it had when it was there as to how it flows now. I still love it, I am not just about to abandon my new favorite melee, but I hope they reconsider how important of a mechanic it was to the job’s identity in tandem with the personal buffs. Just my two cents.
Completely agree with this video. But confused to hear this after you said that deaths design should be removed from Reaper in your job trailer video (paraphrasing). A change that would make the job definitely more boring as well, due to how it interacts with your 2 minute burst and executing double enshroud. As well as the job just being a little less braindead. I hope Viper gets something interesting back as well.
I'm a ninja main so I understand failure states all too well. Wish viper got more time to breathe before changes, even if I didn't care much about the change at first. Now it does feel like a little something is missing from the job, even if it's still fun to play.
This is the future everyone who said "EW SMN redesign is good" wanted and now get to reap their streamlined and railroaded job design.
Yours truly with most spite, ARR to early EW ex SMN main.
@10:30 Open the can of worms!!! do a video on the topic of job stagnation! The people need to know!!!
While it simplified viper, it didn't change what I fundamentally liked about the job, which was the speed. So the change was fine for me, tho it was unnecessary
While I respect your opinion and I'm all for keeping job complexity I would much rather them drop NG and implement something else in the future than have kept it. NG optimization had its moments but I really think people oversell how engaging it was and just completely ignore the annoyances. Think of something like the last boss of Alexandria where you need to kill the adds in a circle, or something more engaging, the meteors in dsr, I can't comprehend someone finding it enjoyable being forced to put NG up on these sets of adds that die 5 seconds later just so that you can do your optimal damage, and then in something like dsr you're now further behind when thordan comes back because your rotation is all over the place trying to put NG on meteors and you can't even go backwards in your combo for thordans return, at least reaper with DD being on a different button if meteors died super fast you can just DD thordan and continue.
Here's another example, in M4S when she first uses the cannon there's extended downtime into a 2 minute, you needed at least 2 NG casts to have it last long enough through a double reawaken so now you need to get both your buffs up and then bare minimum start another dual blade combo before you can even begin bursting and by then buffs have already been out.
Putting debuffs like this on the enemy in this day and age is just clunky especially when built how viper's is where you can't necessarily apply it as much as you need extremely quickly. I'm all for job complexity but that's not the way imo, and tbh vpr has more complexity than I think people give it credit for, yes at base value it's just follow the glowy button, but things like optimizing your uncoiled fury usage, consistently hitting all of your positionals, consistently alligning your burst with raid buffs and in speed kill situations actually getting through as many reawakens that are possible in the fight and as many uncoiled furies that are possible there is still a lot to work with.
Well said, 100% agree
I’m a fan of the removal of the deaths design copycat mechanic. I also split cleared the tier in 13 hours, clearing on day 4, if you want my “I’m a gamer” cred. All it did was add annoyance to the job. Yes, it made it harder to play, but that didn’t make it more FUN. Having the freedom to decide when to use dreadwinder rather than “only when debuff under 20 left” is much more enjoyable. You still have to choose a spot where you can hit the positionals or TN it, but now you have a lot more ACTUAL choice. Choosing to overcap or not overcap isnt a choice
I think it's really worth noting that, with a 40s CD, you _cannot_ TN every single usage, unlike Reaper's Gluttony. And since VPR also still has regular combo positionals, it's not always a great idea to mindlessly TN the Vice combo. There's some gameplay around getting yourself up to the third combo hit, then using Vice and TN, then the two coils and that third combo hit all inside TN (like when you're forced to stand in front of a boss and ain't hitting ANY positionals).
Literally my only minor issue with noxious gnash was that doing a long burst with Viper left you needing just like 10 more seconds to avoid needing to re-up it mid burst, as the video notes. It did make you think though after the first time it happened to think about how to prevent it going forward while Viper is now one step away from being brainless. At least they pivoted away from changing the nature of Viper's positionals, but post DT launch balancing has kind of been breaking my brain in most cases.
My solution was always just to overcap that shit immediately before the burst window. Double Reawaken takes ~23 seconds (with the Swiftscaled buff), so you absolutely could get in a position where you either had to drop the buff, overcap it, or burn a GCD between the two Reawakens and push Ouro out of buffs. So I just unconditionally refreshed it to 40s before the burst (unless it was already over like 30s or so) and didn't sweat it. Even then, dropping your combo buff, when it was only 40s, was also incredibly easy. Personally, I'm a big fan of the change, and _especially_ of their decision not to remove the positionals.
I’m part of the majority of players maining viper at the moment, I picked it up on day one of Dawntrail and have yet to put it down. My favorite part of running it, especially in EX, was the reward for perfectly timing everything to maximize dps. I felt so proud when I put all of the pieces together myself and managed to run a perfect Woqor La Dor Extreme both in terms of survival and damage output.
Reading the patch notes when they were published brought a sense of dread to me on the Viper changes. While the dread itself was misplaced, Viper is still super fun in my opinion, there is still the loss that I am lamenting. Dawntrail was the first time I had ever decided to do endgame content, Viper was the first class I decided to fully piece together. I chose viper because of its simple ease of use and engaging visuals. The loss of our applied debuff is a significant change that removes a whole layer of complexity. Viper feels a lot like EW Dragoon to me now, where your entire focus is keeping up on your rotating 1-2-3 combo and weaving in between. The choice to choose whether to reaply that debuff or deal more damage was fun, the lack of choice now just to follow glowy buttons isn’t. I miss my debuff man. I miss having to do a small amount of thinking and having agency over my decision making, agency that no longer exists due to never having to worry about buff or debuff uptime anymore.
Sorry for the long and winding reply. I have had these thoughts and feelings in my head since 7.05 released. Thank you for making a video that explains what we lost so perfectly.
i was ok with them moving noxious fang debuff into a personal buff, but im sad they got removed my decision making in a fight between reapplying a buff but with a lower potency ability, or not reapplying it but hit harder, kind of like how ninja was before dawntrail. i actually don't understand why they did that.
I'm glad noxious gnash is gone, but I do agree that what they came up with is also rather dull.
I am happy with gnash gone as it was too clunky to properly have ample duration going into burst. What I am not happy with is how 1 dimensional job is. No personal mit, no moving skills around, no party utility, positive gauge buildup so no deadzoning needed. VPR feels like DRG that doesn't have to fit ogcds into their limited weave windows.
Hardly any need to think if i should do x or y throughout an encounter
I mained Healer since I started playing in 2.4. I did play some Bard and some Monk casually but 99% of the time, I healed. I haven't been enjoying the game outside of Savage since Shadowbringers, so in Dawntrail I quit being a healer and picked up melee dps. The furthest you can be from healer.
I picked up Viper because it was engaging, easy to pick up and forgiving. The job didn't punish you for mistakes. No drifting your rotation, just losing potency. So when noxious got removed, I didn't care. I dropped it all the time because I am still not used to playing a job with a rotation. But now, it feels like there isn't much more to learn. The game even tells me with a yellow glow what button to hit, and I can use my twin blade attacks to get ranged stacks without caring about noxious. I haven't even gotten close to the ceiling, and it now feels like I'm almost there. Viper was already the easiest melee, and now even I, a total newbie to the role, can perform well.
I'm very curious to hear your thoughts on Dawntrail AST, because you've summed up exactly why I personally no longer find the job fun or engaging, with it previously being my favorite healer to play. Removing the random draws and the seals from the card system results in me feeling like I'm not making any decisions -- my melee and ranged cards will always go on the same 2 dps every single time, and the healing/mitigation cards will almost always be played on the tank (or just sit unused, getting overwritten by the next draw). I'm certain that in Savage, there can be interesting decisions to be made with the healing/mitigation cards, but outside of that it feels like I no longer have any real agency with my cards. It's ironic that I felt like it was more engaging when all of the cards were essentially the same thing, and now that we have diverse card effects it feels very uninteresting to me. Hopefully you will share your thoughts on the job!
I mean, Astrodyne can stay fully dead, imo. I didn't mind the redraw mechanic, but when the ONLY decision around cards otherwise was whether to put it on a ranged or melee, the prior card system was basically a WHOLE SYSTEM doing what just the Balance/Spear does right now. Really, the only thing that changed is now you don't have to muck with seals, and you only make that DPS decision half as often (and, because of how they line up, effectively just back-to-back during the 2m window). And your Lord is tied to it, so you need to make sure you get Lord in _before_ the Draw cast during the 2m window.
@@KaedysKor For what it's worth, I do think that EW's version of the job was a downgrade from SHB's in almost every way. But in either system, you didn't know which seal or type of card you would draw, so you would always have to be considering multiple people to play the card on and whether or not you would need to redraw (more interesting decision in SHB because of how EW nerfed redraw into the ground).
Was it a super deep and impactful decision? Ultimately, not really, but it was at least something. Playing AST in Dawntrail feels like I'm on autopilot. The only reason to not play The Balance/Spear on the same two dps every time is if they're dead. You know exactly what you're drawing every time and what you'll want to do with it.
Basically, I always thought of AST as "WHM but with something interesting to do (cards)" and now that the cards are static, it instead feels more like "WHM with extra steps." I still love Essential Dignity, Earthly Star, and Celestial Opposition, but playing AST just feels kind of "hollow" to me now because the main system that I enjoyed was gutted.
Noxious could lead to many failure states that made the job both fun and glued the entire kit together. Before you would need to think about when to use your dreadwinders, what to press before burst, and how many UFs you could use at a time (especially if you needed them for disengagement in burst. Now, nothing matters. Press whatever you want whenever you want, use as many UFs as you want whenever you want; just hit the shiny buttons. It turned a well tuned job kit into a soup of random buttons you can hit in practically any order, with on demand ranged attacks that you can also press whenever. Essentially, it turned a fun, somewhat easy job into the summoner of melee.
I was very into everything about viper when it first came out, and was comfortable calling it my main. Now I feel like it's just another ffxiv job. It's very disappointing and, as someone who has played almost daily for about 4 years, I feel a strange loss of passion now that something I very much enjoyed was quickly taken from me.
if you think refreshing a buff is the only reason a job is any kind of fun maybe the job was never fun in the first place
I think viper is fine as is, and was fine before too. Alright job with amazing visual and sound design.
Something I reflect on when it comes to game design in general is that... I think Friction is a really good element to really any design, and its okay to have a game upset you, or make you feel annoyed or irritated, as long as its transparent where the issue was, and how you can improve on it next time.
I personally get really annoyed at games like Total War games, or Slay the spire because in Total wars case, the combat can be overwhelming where you're trying to manage up to 40 units, and considering how formations, enemy decisions, terrain, Fatigue, etc is all determining the outcome of a battle. There is a lot of friction, but I can feel where I'm making mistakes, I can see where the cracks started to form, and even if I get upset, and Alt F4 out of the game, when I do come back, I'll have had time to reflect, improve and try again with new knowledge on what to do better.
I think there's an interesting discussion about where that line is for players, where a healthy amount of friction is okay, without being too overwhelming and pushing them over the line of not coming back, and I think honestly, there isn't going to be a one size fits all answer to that, and its especially difficult with MMO design because ultimately, the game wants to appeal to as many people as possible, a conversation I had with a friend recently about Black mages was kind of about that. They were complaining about how Black mage changes were bad, because it made the job easier, and I can 100% understand the frustration from the PoV of Black mage players, but on the other side of the coin, what about the Majority of players who are intimidated away from Black mage, because people talk it up as being a job that's so hard to play that they never try, or they feel they're playing too poorly on it to continue, even if the class fantasy of being a Black mage really appeals to them?
I don't envy the Developers for needing to try and find the right answer to these problems, though I think, from what I can understand about how the changes impacted the class, I kind of wonder if it was really even something a meaningful number of casual players would've identified and took issue with? The idea of buff uptime seems like a pretty niche thing that I feel most people who aren't really passionate about optimization would really care about, but I honestly felt the same way about Huton and other similar buffs, but they seem to be getting stripped away.
This whole video and your take on what makes a job fun feels spot on to me. Myself and many friends are planning breaks in DT due to the continued removal of decisions on job rotations (among other things ofc).
Please SE, stop simplifying every job. Please.
After playing vpr at a high level on both patches. I woudlve liked a change to noxious gnash timer more so than removing it entirely but as someone who also took reaper to its highest levels of gameplay desths design has a far better gameplay loop than gnoxious gnash purely because of the ability to reapply it on any gcd and use it as a deadzoning tool. Vpr felt incredibly rigid before. Its source of optimization and identity firmly lands within the realm of proper positionals and using dreadwinder to manipulate which positionals you are using along with uncoiled fury. Uncoiled fury separates vpr from other melees becoming the ranged optimization melee and being the melee job that gets punished far less than any other melee if you optimize around your coils properly.
As a SAM main since it's release, Viper felt like a dream class to me. I love having my utility being high damage in a party, and having to juggle a few different key components of a class to achieve results.
While I may have an easier time now as Viper, it does feel less engaging after these changes.
I was never a fan of deaths design so losing noxious gnash wasn't a big deal to me. Now it plays more like dragoon/monk where you're just alternating combos which personally I don't mind. It felt like I was using the noxious gnash combo more than the other combo because by the time I was going to use it I had to refresh noxious gnash. I didn't mind it, but it was just annoying.
I... am not convinced NG was really THAT much of a skill ceiling. It being a 40 second maximum timer was cool and different, sure, but it *literally* applies itself just by doing your rotation, just like the not-SAM buffs it has. Even as a not-very-skilled player, I can count the number of times I've dropped it unintentionally on one hand.
There's not... really a decision to be made with it? It was a flowchart that you could easily memorize that pretty much played itself during downtime, and making sure it didn't fall off in burst was easy as just holding onto a single Dreadwinder. They're literally the same cd for that exact purpose. If you didn't care about totally optimal damage and were really scared about it you could probably just ignore Steel Fangs entirely to ensure you never let it fall off ever and still clear fights pretty comfortably due to the low potency difference between the two. Compare this to RPR, who has ONE single low potency button that applies DD and intentionally breaks your combo. I don't like DD either (it's a personal thing), but it's clear that Reaper is rewarded WAY more and punished WAY harder for proper execution of DD than VPR was for NG. Because of that, making a change like this on RPR wouldn't fly, since it's the literal only point of optimization the class has besides positionals.
Did VPR lose a form of a failure state? Yeah, that's true, and a little sad for me who liked to improve. But it's not like we didn't get ANYTHING, either - there's a new failure state in the form of the alternating combo starters. Is it a mondo big-brain high-skill-ceiling optimization? No, you just look at your job gauge and press whichever starter it indicates. But was NG anything more than "Look at the debuff list and reapply when
As I've said on the forum, it's not a bad thing to get a skill issue, it might you can improve and the game tells you how.
I've learned multiple jobs to fill groups or change role, it was always difficult at first then I improved and it felt rewarding.
Square Enix is afraid of making people fail then telling them, I think that's why physical range and Summoner gamplay has been abyssmal lately.
Indifferent to the changes. Whilst i appreciate that decision making for specific things like that are unique to the job and can feel rewarding, I still feel that a lot of decision making also comes from encounter design and my personal approach to dealing with those situations. I still have to decide good times for mini bursts between the big two minute window. Saving up for double or triple reawakenings (do I even have the buff timers for that, as well), holding onto rattling coils etc etc.
I think the game and job offers enough decision making at the moment. That said, I did like Noxious Gnash as a whole, even if I don't mind that it's gone. If I had a choice, I'd have kept it.
A thing to consider as well, I guess, is that a smaller percentage than we usually think actually play enough to get disillusioned with a perceived lack of complexity in a job, or level all the jobs and play them to a point of feeling that lessening identity or homogenisation. It only really glares to the players that spend a lot of time with all of them. Even I, who got Omni 90, and am on my way to Omni hundo, don't really care about half of the melee jobs, or half of the tank/healer jobs to worry about how similar the ones I like feel to the ones I don't. What's important to me, is that I enjoy the ones I do play. I don't overly compare them to other jobs. Simply enjoying them is enough for me, and Savage content has been suitably engaing and fun for me my whole playtime
Cheers for another solid video and formulated opinion. o7
What I don't understand: what was it about Noxious Gnash that was so bad it had to be cut, that doesn't apply to Reaper's Death's Design?
I bounced off of Reaper incredibly hard because of the debuff management in Endwalker. The fact that the debuff was on a button completely separate from the rest of the rotation made it so that there was no real decision making involved in using it, just pop it when you need it, but it also felt really unintuitive because it was this oddity that had no place otherwise in the rotation. It feels like a chore to work with, yet it's still here.
Fast forward to Dawntrail, Viper comes out and it feels like they figured it out. The debuff is built into the core rotation, but in a way that it's not always available. You have to look for opportunities to apply it, maybe even burning a cooldown if you want to line it up in specific ways. It made sense and was a lot of fun, and then they cut it for no apparent reason, while also pushing Viper further towards hitting the buff cap, thus nerfing the job in specific party compositions in the process.
It literally feels like they swung and missed hard with one job, hit a homerun with the other, then kicked the latter off the team. What's the logic here?
As a Reaper main, while I get why some people prefer how Viper did it with Noxious Gnash, I personally prefer having to use a move I wasn't gonna press anyway to have to set up the buff. And something that doesn't send you into your basic combo. If you want to set up Death's Design at this point in time, you HAVE to commit to it.
That said, I prefer Viper having Noxious Gnash over not having Noxious Gnash.
I personally this is indirectly because of monk (pre-DT), with managing twin snakes and demolish buff pushing a lot of players away from the job. Now that they removed it entirely, it was met with relatively positive feedback from the player base who WANTED to give the monk a try (though not entirely from the monk player base themselves.) The team probably didn't know what design direction to go into and chose what worked for others, which I think lead to the vpr change (which now surprisingly works like current monk)
They can't removed Death's Design unless they _either_ remove the cooldown on Enshroud (or reduce it to the point where it effectively has no CD), OR find some other reason to justify Shadow of Death existing, because Shadow of Death is an _integral_ part of Reaper double Enshroud windows right now. It's absolutely mandatory as a spacer ability, because you somehow need to put 15 seconds of abilities between Enshroud usages due to the cooldown, but the Enshroud combo itself only takes 8.5s. And notably, to optimize the potency, you want as many of those to occur _at the start_ of the first Enshroud as possible, AFTER Enshroud is used (and thus starts cooling down) but used to delay the higher potency attacks from Enshroud itself until the raid buffs show up (most especially the 1100p Communio hit). The answer to that puzzle is 2 Shadow of Death casts _during_ Enshroud (its one of the only abilities you can cast during Enshroud that _isn't_ just normally part of Enshroud) and one Plentiful Harvest cast after it, which gives you 7.5 additional seconds of spacing between the first and second Enshroud _and_ lets you put those two Communio casts only 11 seconds apart for easy fit in the raid buffs.
I didn't get to keep my blade poisons and dancing edge, so Viper doesn't get to keep their poisons. It's only fair!
Thank you so much for making this video, imo this change was a huge missstep and I really hope a CC talking about it raises the chances of the devs listening
I wasn't expecting to have any strong opinion about the change when I read the patch notes, but instead I ended up switching back to ninja again for endgame.
I already like the job because it was simple to play at a base level, but with some fun decision making at the high end. Now it just feels boring to me.
I don't understand why they'd keep reapers debuff but remove vipers? Reading the comments about the debuff cap make sense but it feels like they've overlooked the same thing another job has at the moment. I never liked reapers debuff application because it made me feel taken out of the hook of it's rotation, but vipers was well integrated that it flowed well for me. It just doesn't make sense to me why I guess.
2:40 this is how i feel about the Monk changes
it isn't the same :-:
Me as a WHM Main: "There are class changes?"
Yes, there's 5 more potency in Dia...
really well said! the removal of NG changed the whole feel of the job and it just feels kind of empty to me at the moment. debuff management was the only part of the job you actually had to think about, and with that removed it quite literally is just press lit-up button -> profit. i really enjoy the pace and overall vibes of the job but playing it feels way less satisfying than it did before.
I'm with you, the changes ultimately just removed something for me to think about and make decisions about during fights. I still love the job and have a lot of fun playing it, but I'm definitely enjoying it less than I did in 7.0
I do miss the debuff, it made me think more about my rotation and have me feel like I am in part mastering Viper during a fight by managing my rotation and debuff uptime without overcapping it. Now it doesn't feel as rewarding anymore because I really learned to appreciate the decision making and skill expression that came from noxious nash.
Rinon you're top oldhead for this game man, you have ppl in your comments defending the removal of debuff management, and justifying it because they've week 1'd one of the easiest tiers this game has ever had. They will never get it because they were not there for when it mattered.
I agree, I didnt care fore the highlighting of the combos like that.
Exacly my thoughts, I've felt that Noxious Gnash also adjusted to the player's skill level, if you are learning a fight or such, you can overapply the buff for a small potency loss, nothing that would make you wipe if you didn't just spam it + if you're playing savage you're probably optimizing either way, in normal content doesn't even matter. And for min maxers spreadsheeters they could adjust NG per fight which is a lot of fun to optimize dps.
VPR was my favorite melee. I wasn't expecting it to be more than "click the shiny button" so I wasnt too excited about it before release. But then I got it to 100 and did some EXs and noticed you actually had to pay attention. It felt good to save dreadwinders for add phase in EX1 and to have to use some tought before the burst window, it surprised me how well it filled the hole in my heart left by MNK. But now theres no making sure you have 3o seconds of your debuff before double reawaken, no more making sure you don't drop your positional buff, no more saving dreadwinders in phase changes, no more toughts to have as you click yhe shiny button, the only meaningful choice if you start with the red of white button. The rotation might be the same but thats only without any kind of downtime of phase change, they have taken out all the choices, the only failure poing now clicking the wrong shiny button.
The job still feels fun but it's definitely less engaging now. This was far too early to make such a drastic change to any job, let alone a fresh one that has barely had a month to simmer.
Between this, dark knight and monk (my main) there's been a few jobs where they've taken pretty significant chunks out of a job without giving much of anything in return.
I've been playing samurai a lot more to scratch that itch, but I want to play monk and feel similarly rewarded for good decision making like I used to.
THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS
I played Viper up until 7.05, I literally did an Everkeep EX clear with it right before maint, and I haven't touched it since. Unbelievably disappointed in these balance changes to Viper, feels like they absolutely butchered the class
the changes made to viper completely turned me off from the job, doesnt feel satisfying in the slightest it just holds my hand for everything
They shoulve taken more of a death desing route than making it the starting point of the combo, it was fun to manage but it been tied to the combo was something that i didnt like at all, since refreshing it with the GCD combo mid burts was pretty much necessary for pot window. Overall to drastic of a change coulve tried to ease the duration making it 30-60 before completly removing it from the game, with the change the job is just completly free form can just stack range resources for mecanics, since dread just doesnt hold any value besides it been a dmg gain, easing the play and minimizing risk, do your 1 min reawaken then save 1 for burts and youre done.
I had kind of been wishing that the useless combo tracking job gauge might someday be replaced with a tracker for your buffs (perhaps pre-DT Huton style?) so that it’d be easier to check how you’re doing on that rather than looking for a little number among all your other buffs and debuffs. Maybe they could even avoid the potential issue of having too many conditions in high level content if Viper’s buffs/debufffs were tied to a job gauge instead. But now Gnash is gone so…
Noxious made it so it wasn't just alternating back and forth, even on AoE packs. You actually had to decide which ability to use instead of "hit flashy button." Now, personally, I'm fine with the change. I actually like jobs that I don't have to think too much about so I can focus more on fight mechanics. Probably why I like playing WAR. But saying it doesn't change anything is flat out wrong.
i think it was more thematic to have their 1s alternate lke their 2s and their 3s. i wasn't a huge fan of noxious gnash and don't think it provided this deep decision making gameplay like people like to pretend. i can agree it provided this failure state that is healthy for a job's design where you don't want to let it fall off especially not in a 2 minute but i think we all know viper's rotation just like every other job falls into a cookie cutter rotation for every single fight. there's no decision making here. you had a set number of steel fangs combos before dread fangs and that was it. debuff below 20 sec? reapply. have dreadwinder stack? use that before dread fangs. there's the depth of your decision making. i don't consider this to be as big of a loss as some make it out to be but i can agree it sets a disappointing precedent that i would not like to see of them dumbing down jobs and removing failure states from them. i main black mage and my favorite thing about it despite it's shit state right now is how it retains its identity of being that class you can fail colossally on and be less useful than any other job if you suck at it. so i'm all for jobs having healthy fail states.
I am indifferent about it personally….because RPR exists if I wanted to worry about debuff management.
This is ultimately - in the end - a BUSINESS decision. They used VIPER as the poster child of marketing. it got people super excited, it got old players to return, it got new players in..
VIPER is the highest number played job in the entire game at this point.
that means even 20-30% of the viper player base = a lot of subscription $$$
what happens when the job you sold to make a lot of new and returning subscribers and $$$ is actually challenging to play properly?
it simply made business sense to tone down the job's difficulty because of the sheer number of people who wanted to keep playing the job VS having to tell these players to play a different job.
they were sold on viper. they want to play viper - or ELSE they might unsub. Bad for Business
that's why they did it.
it's not rocket science. it's suffering from the success of your marketing and not wanting to risk subscriptions revenue.
We optimizers/ultimate raiders are not the deciding factor here. we are so TINY in population vs the casual/midcore player base.
as much as I didn't like the changes to viper, I want the game to succeed. so i just moved to a different job and let the majority have their fun.
While VPR did have a couple odd issues that I’m glad we’re fixed. They still overcorrected the job as a whole. It’s crazy
I mean ill give my honest oppinion on this nothing changed cause the early iteration was did you hit yellow none glowing button twice? If yes hit the red one it felt like a reaper and for reaper not a fan of those kinds of debuffs cause its quite obvious when you need to use it i for one love that they did change it. Not cause its more brain dead but cause it feels better and a little bit faster
The jobs are just creatively bankrupt across the board now. Even sound and visuals are lacking on the generic capstone updates.
Even as someone who plays Viper more casually (I personally main Picto but love the job) I still have a pretty big issue with the change. The rotation usually was a bit chaotic feeling, with the second and first hits of your combo constantly rotating based on context. This could lead to you doing your hits in different orders a lot similar to Monk, but now the main variance is on the last hit. The first two hits of your combo are going to come in the same order every time and only the last alternates, which I think robs a lot of the physical appeal of Viper, at least for me.
I dont play melees because i think im dogwater at them but even i found myself enjoying viper when it had the buff. As i finished leveling after the changes, i can say that they were better off removing positionals than removing the debuff. The class feels so dumb now