I may have drank too much snilk for this one.
In all honesty, I think the changes are…
GOOD!
I do miss Noxious Gnash a little bit, but I believe this iteration is closer to what the devs had in mind for the job design.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments! If you’re reading this make sure you include the word ‘YIPPEEE’ in some format.
Rinon’s Dissenting Opinion: https://youtu.be/yLUsECcLgLA
Also I’m back! My laptop decided to end its suffering so I got a new rig – hope you enjoy the clearer quality.
Socials:
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Subscribe for more Viper content. The Viper Guide is in the works and coming soon.
Chapters:
Intro | 0:00
The Criticisms | 0:37
Why I Loved Noxious Gnash | 1:53
Job Design | 2:29
Our Greatest Resource | 5:15
Ultimates | 7:06
Dungeons + Casual Gameplay | 8:45
My Summarized Thoughts | 9:47
Closing + Outro | 11:17
SEO:
viper, changes, rework, raiding, savage, casual, ff14, ffxiv, dawntrail
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I still love it, a fc mate of mine thought the job was butched when NG was removed but I felt like it was more free to do what you wanted with it because you didn't have to babysit the debuff.
Extremely grateful that you made this video because I feel like you put forth a lot of the points I've been arguing as well but people just seem to gloss over. One thing that I would add is when you brought up ultimates you mentioned how NG's removal will help with timings and this is so understated by others it's insane, another thing that's really important about this point is in phases like dsr with the meteors where anytime in the future we may have had to deal with multiple enemies like that having to put NG on all of them just to do our optimal damage is abysmal ESPECIALLY when a lot of our kit is already inherently aoe like reawaken and uncoiled fury. I'm not a fan of it on reaper either but at least with reaper they can just press death's design on thordan when he comes back whereas we'd have to plan our whole rotation around very inconsistent meteor death timings because we can't go back in our combo to reapply quickly and dreadwinder being our only other option to get it up instantly, while also dealing with our speed and attack buff it just becomes a mess if they have any phases like that.
Again I'm just really glad you made this video so there's at least one other person bringing up positive points for the removal, even more so because you heavily play viper and I feel like a lot of people who don't heavily play it are gut reacting because the removal on surface level does just make it seem like they're trying to blindly simplify the job for a small amount of people who apparently asked for this, but as you said I think there's still a ton of optimization that can be done with the job and I like your mindset that we get to plan more for the fight as opposed to the debuff which I think is healthier overall
Just like how what one player finds difficult others find easy, I think there are things some find clunky/annoying/tedious that others find fun. Stuff like monk’s old buff upkeep, scholar in general, old smn, or even crafting and gathering. Nox fell into that same category imo. My issue is less with its removal and rather with the devs’ philosophy, which seems to favor removing things for those who find them annoying with little regard for those who find them fun. Which is silly when the natural solution to not liking something is to just…do something else. Different strokes for different folks, you know? If Nox doesn’t suit one’s interest, one could always play reaper. Same goes for any aspect of any job. Braxophone made a pretty great video on the topic.
Bro this whole video is viper job fantasy. What people forget it viper is a monster hunter frist , with the viper title being a metaphor.
So it becoming more adaptable to fighters fit more imo. Also feels like were getting tought by a master viper in a job quest when watching this xD
another excellent video. I agree with basically everything you said. Im a huge fan of adaptability, and im very much a fan of changes that support that. hopefully the comments can be civil about this XD
I think they won't change it because its the most played job in the game right now, lol. Why change it when so many people love it? I dislike Viper, but that's ok. i dont need to like every job in the game =/
I think the main thing wrong with Viper is that it doesn't have a disengage lol
Very methodical video and I appreciate you waiting and seeing before reacting to the changes. I've accepted them at this point though I still wish we had nox personally as someone who likes the very high end spreadsheety kind of optimization. My biggest annoyance was the patch they chose to do it on and I definitely feel like they should have given us at least a tier on the job and changed it before the ultimate if the general perception was nox being too annoying.
I love Viper. Main Issue i will have until they change it, is the Idle Animations. The Running Animations are something else…
yeah my stance on the debuff removel is exactly the same as you at first i was like "ok thats bad but at least they didnt make it braindead job" (as they said they will but then when the release the svg patch they changed their mind) but then when i play it i think removing it actually is better here is why : i will speak about dsr and top gameplay as they where the only hard content u can do viper rotation on since the different between 90 and 100 viper is not massive so starting with top : when u start phase 2 and u can cleave the 2 bosses you will have to hit thise bottons reawaken>first generation>uncoil fury from here you cant hit both u get the debuff which then cause u to need to apply the debuff but ofc that will come after u finish your reawaken without it then its continue with the rest of phase 2 as you have to switch target on dsr you could keep your buffs (hast and dmg) for almost all the fight except when going to phase 7 but the problem comes again the debuff as you sometime when killing a boss and going to the other u dont have the deadwinder combo and u find yourself in the roation at the second or thind step comco so you will finish the combo on the new target then apply the debuff which felt bad , ofc as i didnt dive deeply on viper maybe some of the things im talking about could be managed better but thats as far as i can speak
I liked the 7.0 viper, i stopped playing viper after doing some savage since it's boring when you have nothing to adjust in the fight
discussions about job designs in XIV is generally very depressing and demotivating because ppl don't want to consider anything outside their perspective, which is ofc the only truth. This video goes the extra mile on finding why something has changed while starting, from my understanding, in a negative opinion of the changes and finds something, as such it deserves a praise. I wish more ppl did this because I feel more ppl would become happier in knowing why something is the way it is.
I feel like it's not noxious gnash is a bad thing, more like how viper applies noxious gnash itself. it needs to be more free, but not as free as RPR to keep its complexity a bit, like Vicewinder or Vicepit combo doesn't breaks if you use something else (your combo, reawaken), so you can apply it, use something else like reawaken, and then do the remaining combo. Reawaken also should extends NG on every enemy that got hit by reawaken's damage by 10s, just like WAR's Inner Release. It's such a very simple rework, but Instead of working around it, they decided to remove it completely.
As a midcore player (I've got some extreme and savage experience, but never on a long-term regular basis) who doesn't like Death's Design as a concept, I've warmly welcomed the removal of Nox and Viper feels so much better to play for it thanks to the gained flexibility. Nox felt like a drag before, pulling the actual fun parts of the job down. For instance, it felt bad anytime a new enemy appeared and you were already in the middle of a big combo. Reawaken is supposed to be your big flashy reward, but whoops, if the boss suddenly went into adds mode while you're in the middle of RA, the rest of it just felt wasted instead of rewarding. It's nice to just… be able to use your cool abilities and enjoy their impact and primary functions in your rotation, rather than using them when Nox lets you do so long enough. I also appreciate the more focused attention the job now requires, now that you don't have to look at the boss' debuffs as much.
Death Design is an idea that has always been cool on paper, but to me has now been a failure when it comes to actual fun twice. Reaper can applies their debuff whenever, but because of that, it feels like an interruption of your actual rotation, and it's still a hassle to make sure you've tagged every enemy in a dungeon pull. Viper tried to the opposite approach of making the debuff a part of the rotation, but what this meant is that it wasn't always available when you might need it, and that felt bad for no fault of your own.
It's a good remark that Viper really becomes fun when the fight is challenging and requires you to think about your tools, otherwise the job does kinda play itself. But that doesn't seem like too much of an issue when DT has clearly adopted the philosophy of making casual bosses reasonably challenging. And there's nothing wrong with an 'easier' melee (I don't personally find the other melees harder by any big extent, but whatever).
So yeah, I didn't hate Nox, it wasn't the end of the world, but I say good riddance to it, and if you ask me, Viper is now the job it feels like it was meant to be.
The biggest problem with the VPR changes is IMHO , like you said, the timing.
We are in a FFXIV point where job changes and job design are being done with oversemplification in mind and everyone is wondering where this game will end up in a few year.
Even if the changes, in the grand scheme of things, are positive, getting a (new) class changed ON the savage patch after a lot of cry about "difficulty" and after having a new
expansion with basically 0 ( Yeah Nada, Nisba, ZERO) changes to the classes will wire the discussion on what is actually missing in FFXIV right now and not on the "good" things said changes brought.
Oversemplification of Jobs, oversemplification of mechanics, game systems, eck even Oversemplification ( or complete removal some might say) of the MSQ 's Active Gameplay! ( DT was a fucking visual novel) are what the problem is about.
But alas the majority of paying player are seemingly not interested in such things and the game direction will follow.
Im now just sad the only game with content like XIV is WoW and nothing else, we could really use a competitor tbh.
one thing that kinda confuses me is when you say viper difficulty is based on the fight when basically every job is like that to some degree. Sam especially you have to count how many GCD's you you missed by disengaging from the boss and using enpi and adjusting your rotation based on where you are. meanwhile viper just need to use UF or vicewinder for longer gcd uptime or reawaken to be omni positional. like its not bad by any means but def is significantly easier ever since the changes imho.
For me it's simple. The job was fun before the change and for me it's still fun. For me, job aesthetics are awesome and I personally am still having a blast. Did it need more than a month before they made changes? Yes it did. Is the job still fun? Also yes so. . . .ok I guess???
I didn't like it before, I don't like it now. Makes me sad as a melee DPS player that the new job feels gross to me
I preferred 7.0 Viper more because it felt like there was something to master. Nox gave that potential failure state that I could become better at avoiding no matter what level I was playing at, compared to now where the experience is really empty and boring once you get synced down and even in savage fights for me. It makes me more worried that eventually in an effort to try and make jobs accessible, they'll remove the whole point of why different jobs exist in the first place with them having nothing unique or nuanced to get people interested in a specific job.
Aesthetically it's still fun for me to play but it definitely doesn't feel like a "Viper" anymore which really sucks.
Real question that’s completely unrelated to the viper topic, what are Rinon’s pronouns? You refered to them as he/him in this video but everything about their presentation screams fem. I’ve checked twitter and stuff but no luck, I really like their content and don’t wanna be rude
This isn’t a gotcha or me scolding you btw, does anyone genuinely know what their preferred pronouns are?
I feel it would have been better if they move it to serpent tail prog.
When I leveled up the viper at 100 I was not really liking it, I really wanted it to be my new main job, but Noxious Gnash was such an hindrance, and was preventing me to really enjoy the job. What was the point of having the coils, which give such an amazing level of flexibility during disengages, when you had to use them most of the time in a fixed manner to allow noxious gnash to get refreshed just at the right time? Another wasted potential was in the fact that VPR, is able to delay positions thanks to the coils and Dreadwinder/Vicewinder, but since Dreadwinder also refreshed the debuff you couldn't really use it to delay your positionals. Also during some dungeons where you had to switch between different single targets, like the final boss of Alexandria, refreshing the gnash was definitely the worst part… It felt so clunky, it's like there was the potential for a class that gave you the freedom to setup amazing burst phases, or prepare for long disengage or non positional windows, without losing any dps… and everything was dulled down by that damn debuff.
I was about to drop VPR and get back to play NIN, but then I heard about the 7.05 changes, and decided to endure a bit more, untile 7.05 dropped… and my god I am so glad I did it. I love VPR now it's exactly how I wanted it to be, it's fast very fast, with amazing mid range capabilities (just like NIN is) and allows you to set up and delay your positionals very easy in case you can't comply them. Is just so fun to play and I am really enjoying it.
I liked viper before and I like it now. I like how the combo flows now by going through the two openers and I agree with you on being able to more easily work around vicewinder to have stacks of rattling coil available for disengage. I did enjoy the bit of decision making on when to use dreadfangs or dreadwinder to extend noxious gnash, but at times that felt a bit clunky. I’m just happy it’s still a fast job that switches between fast dual weirder attacks and slower twinblade attacks, and I appreciate that like ninja I have the option to disengage if needed.
To be honest I didn't feel the change, I'm still doing the same burst window the same has I was doing in patach 7.0
I'm not sure if I agree with the idea of rotation build around ng shifting to rotation around fights, I do feel that with it's removal there's a building the fight specific rotation for optimizations is a bit too easy. Right now there isn't a melee that captures the spinning plates feel of EW Monk, launch Viper captured a bit of that feeling and I'm sad to see it removed and a reduction in the skill ceiling.