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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#ffxiv #dawntrail #ff14
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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
the balance in this game was never good, why you crying about such a minor thing at this point ? thats so crazy to me
Oh noes, they made it easier to not lose a miniscule amount of potency per minute while enhancing dungeon gameplay and making target switches less painful, whatever shall we do… anyway, i'm still having fun.
NG joins Kaiten in the abyss. RIP.
Class is absolutely braindead now.
Personally, I'm indifferent to these changes.
After usually playing tank, healer or caster in raids, I finally get to play a melee again and so far it's been fun.
While I did not see this change coming, one possible reason as to why they did that was how Reaper (the other job with this sort of Pseudo-DoT) uses it.
For Reaper it's on an entirely different button that does not interact with your combo. So maybe they felt like it was too punishing if you mess up your NG application? I'm not sure… I do agree that they should have given the players more time to let them sit on the job and figure it out before committing to any sort of changes in the first place.
It's like how they shouldn't be afraid of nerfing Pictomancer, I love the job in terms of its design and overall gameplay, but they can't just buff every other job AND leave pictomancer the same.
Because here it does feel like they want to let Picto cook a little longer to figure out what to change/nerf about it, or they want to avoid nerfing it at all costs and instead see how much they have to buff most other jobs.
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.
worst change was the removal of the word "Dread" from the kit
People forget ff14 is based on Crystal tools engine there is some sort of cap in the engine on these status effects. this causes things like dots and debuffs to be a consistent problem for the game developers. if it was easy as stacking debuffs on targets it would probably be done. its not that they dont want it in the game but there is another issue preventing them.
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.
Imo debuffs and dots suck ass and i love viper even more since they removed that shit.
Tbh if noxious refresh was a problem they should have just extended its extendable duration to 60sec instead of 40. Id have rather seen a change like that than complete removal
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.
Not a fan of the removal of gnash
Do I think Viper Sucks Now? Yes… yes it sucks. No need to sugar coat it (in terms of job design not perf lol)
Hard agree, after doing MSQ and the EXs I dropped viper… now with these changes I doubt I'll ever pick it up again. It's just the most boring melee DPS. Noxious Nash was the only thing Viper had to do…
Personally, I think the 2mins is the worst part of the job. It's easier than the rest of the kit… which is weird.
I literally couldn't care less. Keeping up Noxious Gnash required almost no brain power and only thing it was annoying when switching targets. I am not gonna sit here and pretend how VPR lost it's "great strategic depth." I was not fussed when it was removed, but if it stayed, I wouldn't have cared much either. The name changes are dumb though.
I'm just miffed that the viper change made a better monk than the monk rework we just got
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.
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.
Thanks for featuring my comment <3. I agree with the points you made in this video and I can't wait for the next one. Hopefully videos like these spreading community sentiment reach the devs so they can make a course correction on job design for the remainder of Dawntrail's release cycle.
I have never been more disappointed in a balance change in my entire time playing XIV. The buff management WAS the job's appeal, and I don't think the majority of the people who complained about Viper pre-patch spent enough time with the job to actually understand how to pilot it effectively, let alone had the understanding to critique it.
It's especially upsetting that this happened 3 weeks into an expansion, without a Savage tier even being out yet. How does the development team expect us to trust that they believe they've made FFXIV too easy at the base line, when they immediately strip a Jobs complexity less than a month into its release.
I understand that I feel much stronger about these changes than most people, but I did 100 runs of both EXs with Viper prior to the job being changed, which is significantly more time than most people have with the job even now. I appreciated how refreshing the job felt, and loved building skill with it, only to have all of the aspects I learned to love about it ripped away from me. The new rotation is lifeless and asks nothing of the player past the bare minimum. 60 seconds to hit a possional is absurd. Just remove the time limit at that point, it would be largely the same. By effectively removing the jobs failstates they've robbed the job of its intrigue. It looks cool, but that's it. The new combo system is now redundant as well.
I don't find the current iteration of Viper engaging in the slightest, and that's really upsetting. Call it an overreaction but for the moment the job is dead to me. Thankfully the changes they made to Samurai revitalized my interest in my original main, but I can't bring myself to think that jobs will be more compelling in 8.0 if this is the current state of balance adjustment. Really disappointed.
I love the removal of Noxious Gnash. I just want to do my reclears not sweat trying to keep 3 buffs up with massive melee downtime this tier on the fights.