My thoughts on Viper Changes... FFXIV Dawntrail 7.05 

It confused me. They wanted to reduce "business" so they made a change that doesn't change the rotation, button order, or end result. I leveled viper to 100 but I doubt I'll touch it after that, it's just not for me. I might just move to picto since they are apparently happy with it doing more damage than God while black mage turns to dust in the corner.

I still wish viper had at least one poison-based dot...

Wierd thing to change. It's not hard to keep noxious Gnash up. And it kind of fits the theme of Viper that poison the enemy for more damage.

Don’t want to sound elitist but as a viper main at the low casual end I see it’s easier but at the higher end it’s now robotic auto pilot. Its hit the glowy buttons without any real thought behind it. They don’t hold weight where as timing the management and the quick decision making was the part I loved the most. It felt rewarding trying l figure out when to use dread fangs and using it as little as possible but still maintain buff with dread winder. Now it’s press whatever whenever just feels auto pilot which the job already had but now it feels slightly boring to play at any level under 90 where I used to enjoy it. Not every class has to be for everyone and the class was still fine if you dropped it just work that’s where it felt rewarding to get better at it over time

But we will totally all of a sudden have complex and interesting job design in 8.0, guys!

A lot of people have been saying this doesn't really change anything... but please consider the following... It was imperative to re-up NG just before beginning re-awakening burst, and also to save dual-blade combo near burst phases to safely re-apply GN for the following coils near the end of buff phase. Removing the debuff means you no longer have to prep or save resources before your burst phase, which was akin to saving job gauge on SAM or holding wyrmwind thrust when buffs were coming back up. On top of that, the GCD rotation was super simplified, pairing the first two hits of every fanged combo such that you'll never get a 1-2-1 or 2-1-2 combo... It's always now 1-1-1,2-2-2,1-1-2,2-2-1 statically forever. Having a button to press and knowing you need to save it is extra job complexity. Needing to press a button before a critical timing in rotation is extra job complexity, and the removal of noxious gnash has removed this on all fronts. The job was always "press glowing button if you dont care to pay more attention" but now its "just press glowing button lol" Tl;dr: this changed a lot more than just a single dot... The seemingly unintentional side effects are large and effect mostly just the skill ceiling.

I think you're missing the point here. People aren't upset that they don't have a debuff to no longer manage it's more so that the job became more autopilot than ever. There isn't much agency in the rotation anymore and hardly if no decision making.

I liked noxious gnash now the difference between the two starter combos are literally pointless it was fun to keep tabs on it as someone who did countless extreme runs with it it was cool to play the game of “you can fit 3 buff your own damage starter combo before reapplying noxious” it was clutch but very fun to do so and seing that my dps kept getting better and better it was a silly mini game that was paying off.. oh well, I still love the job and will still main it probably all expac but sad to see this debuff go so soon

What this change effectively did was make your combo 2,2,x, 1,1,x, where x is the appropriate finisher. While i didn't like noxious gnash i feel like this made a simple job even simpler, but not less busy. I don't think the devs know what busy means

I mean the central *concept* of viper, from a lore perspective, is that it uses uses quickness and a venomous "bite" to weaken a more physically imposing enemy, and then finishes it off. Granted, that's not really how it plays, because Yoshida and team don't believe in debuffs or DOTs as a playstyle, but still, without that ability, there's not even a nod to the lore. It seems to me like Yoshida is that guy who doesn't drink chocolate milk because it's "too spicy."

To me, the job flowed a bit better when noxious gnash was still around. i dont think current vpr is bad or flows badly now. it just feels weird to me now. edit: I get that the job didn't change at all. it's just that to me, it feels a little weird to play now without noxious gnash. probably could have used better wording but yeah. I guess I miss noxious gnash lol 😭

If anything, they should have just extended the debuff window to being 60 seconds, with it being a 30second placement with each time ya used Noxtious.....BUT it is what it is. I'm still looking to 8.0 being the start of the game in terms of jobs being more interesting like Yoshi-P "slipped up" about not too long ago. All in all, I still enjoy VPR, and can't wait to see how its kit is extended upon in 8.0 an beyond.

Could have kept viper the way it was, for me its biggest problem is the fact that they didn’t add a single defensive skill to the class . Like why not give us something deal with the raid busters??

Honestly, of all the things VPR could change, I would've loved they changed the "mandatory" double weaves, or at least increase the gcd of the coil skills so it doesn't clip as bad for us with higher latency.

Personally, Noxious Gnash gave you a reason to mix and match your combo. Now you can just hit 1-1-1//2 or 2-2-2/1 rather than having to watch your debuff and mixing it whether you need the debuff or just raw damage. It also takes away having to pay attention so you don’t drift your reawakenings, it was the barest minimum of difficulty added to a super easy job. The buffs rarely need to be paid attention to. I still enjoy it, but I am not a fan of the debuff removal. Personally I like how Viper’s debuff is applied better than Reaper’s.

Miss Noxious that was the only thing that gave him structure in his rotation. The new buffs(debuffs) are more confusing

tbh i'm kinda sad... it was fun to have and the new combo starter systeme is not... it's change the flow of the job. Before each step of the combo had their own flow, now the first and second step have the same so it feel bad for me. I don't know why they made this change at all, i would have been hapier if they remove the positional of the double blade combo but no, they change the flow of the job and i realy don't like it

The damage up buff implementation really felt like just a less intrusive Dancing Edge/etc. Despite having removed it, it boggles the mind that they just keep adding it back in some form or fashion.

I’m conflicted. I like that now I’m going between the two combo starters but noxious gnash wasn’t hard to keep up. I’m surprised they didn’t leave the dread winder combo with noxious gnash. It still would have been less complex but they didn’t need to get rid of it completely.

i main dps and tend to gravitate to the jobs with the longer debuffs to maintain like samurai or reaper. i don't like to have to think about it. so i love ths change, but didnt mind how viper was before. just realized monk has no more debuff too and I love that

I'll stick to Dragoon lol. can't wait for wheeling thrust and Fang and claw to get an upgraded version in 8.0. (In all seriousness though I am willing to sacrifice battle Litany if it means we can finally get rid of the 2 min meta and finally get jobs more interesting than 'burst all damage every 2 minutes')

Personally, I feel like they're making it so you have far less things to worry about when shit hits the fan. It's why they buffed the potencies to what the damage would have been when Noxious Gnash was applied. If they just made the buff to last for up to 60 seconds, that would have been fine only. I'm maining VPR as my DPS for Savage this tier and this is somewhat a neat change, lets me go into Reawaken far faster.

Its super obvious that youre not sure how to play this job. The reason nash being removed matters and buffs got extended is so that its not so incredibly tight to do back to back reawakens. Its so much easier now. That was the intention behind the changes.

Man they need to get rid of the 2 min raid bullshit its causing jobs to play the same. What is it with these devs and removing rpg mechanics might as well make it just a hack and slach mmo like those shitty korean games. Give me poison dammit hell give us more status effects attacks. Why are bosses allowed to cause us paralyzes yet we can't I call bullshit smh. I watched Xeno say the changes are good for viper and im like mother fucker you main tank leave dps alone 😅.

Oh god it hurts watching you leave Vicewinder at 2 stacks and do a Reawaken

I'm a main viper and it's way better like this. Viper had to many things to work about. The debuff was the main thing because it was always falling off. Now is way more fun, and we can focus on the fast pace abilities.

Are you from Boston? Pahk the Cah

Im going to accuse you of being a little nose blind to the situation also in anyway comparing this change to what was done to summoner is just uncalled for.

I dislike positionals only due to how busy boss fights be.

EDIT: You really should be careful talking about Death's Design on Reaper. It is ABSOLUTELY 10000% INTEGRAL to Reaper. Without question. Apart from being built into their kit for an entire expansion now, Death's Design is also solely responsible for allowing Reaper's higher skill-ceiling burst options (Double Enshroud) to exist at all. Without it Reaper's current gameplay (especially their burst) falls apart completely. Arguing that it was more integral on Viper is objectively wrong, no room for interpretation. I'm happy it was changed because I felt the debuff really encroached on Reaper's territory. I don't think it's the perfect solution, personally I wish there was a bit more decision making in their first combo hit, but I'm happy it's further differentiated from Reaper because the classes had a lot of similarities.

I was gonna use it as my primary melee. Now I won't even level it to cap anymore. F that.

Brainlets not really understanding the problem... THEY REMOVED BOOTSHINE FROM MONK. AND GAVE BOOTSHINE TO VIPER, 5 WEEKS LATER AS A NEW JOB. It's okay to like or dislike the change, but this change was made arbitrarily. They got feedback that people liked the positionals so they felt like they HAD to change SOMETHING. So instead of doing the correct thing (Increasing NG buff duration from 20-40 to 30-60) they just removed it and implemented Bootshine. They didn't like bootshine. Why did they put bootshine back in? The problem is the balance / job design team is the same 4 people, they don't play every job, they don't even play their mains at a high level, a lot of changes are in their own head or from very bad players who don't understand anything. That's it. That's the problem.

what the heck was noxious gnash? if it was removed and I don't remember it it most have not been important.

So viper still has a dot?

Honestly, as someone who's been sort of maining VPR this expac, if you were really anal about keeping it up it could kinda break up the flow of the job. Especially in reawaken windows.

Who cares about the crying little toddlers, if you dont like the change go and play another job,this expansion is full of people that have zero idea how the viper works and they’re using it just to fulfil the supreme weeb fantasy. Im glad to see less Vipers after this changes ❤

I think the removal was unnecessary Also now its less of a Viper and instead a non venomous snake lol

ngl it didn't change anything, there is no reason to be happy or mad about it

This job was putting me to sleep already so I guess it's gonna put me to sleep a little bit harder lol. A waste of terrific animations on a sleep-inducing self-playing rotation.

I’m glad that it’s gone and I hope DD is next, lol.