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My biggest beef with Nox was, combined with Design, it would fill up the enemy debuff list.

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this is a great video though I want to add something about a comment you made at the start just because something is called viper does not imply poison. viper/snake/cobra are all terms used when used in real world of martial arts is used to imply speed and fluidity as well as pinpoint attacks to vulnerable areas. since gaming cannot really replicate that kind of combat games tend to add stuff like poison to it to simulate the whole death by a thousands cuts nature that a "viper" style would have. its really hard to program say slashing someone tendon and how they would affect their ability to keep fighting.

your editing skills are godly my guy, the limit break edit was neat!

I think you bring up some really great points, especially about why vicewinder suddenly felt empty after the changes due to optimizing for Nox. From what I've seen so far, people's opinion on the job changes seem to come down to a few different things. If you're a giga-casual then the change is good no matter what. If you're a high end raider, it depends on if you like optimizing to the job or to the fight, or both. FF14 fights are all scripted and easy to execute on loop forever, and the jobs also become that. For me, the fun in a job is learning to play it at the highest level in hard fights, which comes AFTER learning the job, and AFTER learning the fight, then combining the two. Nox optimization added one extra step to reach that end-goal, so when they removed it, they moved the goal-post for players like me. For people who don't really care about optimizing the job to the specific fight, and just want to clear, this is obviously a good change, since its one of the top DPS classes that requires zero thinking outside of double reawaken and UF usage, and double reawaken just becomes muscle memory anyways. I disagree with your feelings towards the VPR changes but great video.

Some people are just obssessed in gatekeeping jobs. Those people want to keep jobs difficult to play so they can feel better about themselves that they are among the few who can optimally play them. Those people hate SE for making every job accessible to everyone. I enjoyed both versions of the VPR but I have no qualms with those who prefer one over the other, but don't tell me it's for the overall health of the game to keep some jobs with high skill ceilings or the job is no longer fun to play. Why wont they just admit that they want to feel special, then I'd have more respect to those people. I have watched videos on the VPR change with the opposite reaction (brax & rinon), and let me tell you their video are seeping with elitism. Why not play VPR with one hand and a blindfold so those people can feel special and record themselves doing it so they can brag about it on the internet.

Holy shit that drk at the end felt like jesus

Even though I mostly play Reaper and don't have much experience playing Viper, I can see why they removed Nox. The duration of the debuff is short enough that there becomes a constant need to work around it rather than working around the enemy. I think extending its duration might have also helped Nox, but just removing it was probably the most optimal solution.

As a casual player that does not raid, the changes didn't seem all that big to me, I was worried that the rotation would change, but I was relieved that everything that I knew about stayed the same. Mind you, I don't use food or pots or anything like that. Basically to me, Viper is the first job that feels so smooth and intuitive that I can play it without looking or checking on my hotbar. As a casual I use my 30 second charge ability on cooldown and my 1-2-3 rotation when it's not available. Other melee jobs like samurai, reaper, ninja, monk, etc all seem super complex. Viper doesn't seem like it has any weaving outside the 30 second charge, in which, the weaves light up letting me know what to press! It feels at least to me, super oonga boonga press button that lights up :)

How to play viper 101: 1. Do opener 2. Spend Vice 3. Retain buffs Optimization: 1. When to coil 2. When to burst 3. When to pot depending on kill time very fun with viper this tier

Elephant in the room? Yes, Dragoon is in my name, it has been for years, but DT made me a Viper player because of aesthetics and job fantasy, it's fast, fun, flashy, and hits a lot of key notes for things I like. As for actual gameplay, I was initially against the removal of Noxious until I thought about upcoming ultimates and even some current fights like Valigarmanda EX where you were forced to save a dreadwinder for the adds phase or lose 10% damage until you could get around to starting your combo again, and the same for when feathers dropped on the arena, the reason the debuff "works" on Reaper is because Shadow of Death is it's own standalone GCD independent from it's combo structure, which is where Viper's fell apart, even having Dreadwinder became mildly tedious to manage for the soul purpose of upkeep on noxious. But as someone who's been prog'ing M4S? Thank GOD i don't have to manage noxious with how diabolical that fight timing feels.

As a midcore player, the Viper changes made me realise exactly why it is that I like some jobs' DoTs and debuffs and not others, because I'm fine with Bard's DoTs for example (I'm not always completely on top of maintaining them, but I'm fine with them) and also don't mind Reaper's Death's Design, but I didn't really like Noxious Gnash. And what I realised is, debuffs that I can throw in whenever I need to (albeit at the cost of a GCD) to maintain them are fine, but I don't like ones that are side-effects of core rotation abilities and thus force you to plan your rotation around them *all the time* (for example if your rotation is thrown off by having to dodge a mechanic) rather than just working out where they should slot into an ideal rotation. Also, all debuffs are kind of annoying when it comes to adds or mob packs, but for single-target ones like Bard's DoTs I mostly just don't bother applying them in those cases, and for AoE ones, again, you can throw it in whenever with something like Death's Design, but for Noxious Gnash it was always really irritating to have adds join the fight in the middle of a combo, meaning I was kind of stuck doing hits on them without them being debuffed before the rotation cycled back around. And for all that I am not super into optimising my rotation, knowing a DPS loss like that was happening *outside of my control* felt... not great. Actually worse than knowing I'm losing DPS through my own fault, weirdly enough. Basically I like some complexity in combat but not too much, and to me, maintaining Noxious Gnash felt like a bit too much. Either way, Viper quickly became a melee DPS I actually enjoy playing both before and after the change, and as someone who doesn't hate but also doesn't super love any of the previous melee jobs, that's all I really hoped to get out of it. Finally, in the name of balance, one thing I do dislike about the Viper changes is: there was absolutely no reason to rename the abilities????

Nox was bad from the start, I'm glad the devs realized that very soon after launch

What? No music? NO LIKE THEN!!!!! /unsubscribe_in_rage

Also, something I want to put into the conversation: regardless of duration, Death's Design is able to be put on and not break any combos the reaper needs to do on his rotation, but for viper, it's necessary for him to put up Noxious Gnash thorough a combo, and he had a stack to put it more duration on it, while reaper can do it basically for free, without locking him out of combos and such. (I think the only restraint here for RPR is you need to use Gibbet/Gallows after Blood Stalk/Unveiled Gibbet/Unveiled Gallows(

I was perfectly ok with us losing nox, my biggest complaint is how they also changed dread fangs and steel fangs. I liked the decision making process of "do i reapply buff/debuff with a lower potency attack, or forego that in favor of a higher potency attack". If they had kept that I think the changes would have been perfect

This is what I've been saying! I'd rather play the JOB than a TIMER!

Yes thank you. I love the changes, SE has always done a good job at ignoring the small minority in this community that has this obsession with making things harder even if it makes no sense.

Man you nailed every point in the head for me and 9:25 is probably the best quote to ever describe VPR The job is just such a different experience in fights like m4s and even m3s and it’s a rush to see what you can get away with Every decision in m4 comes together at the canon phase disengage Did you have enough Coils? Did you reapply your buffs so you can smoothly double Reawaken? Remember to not drop your combo starter? I really do wish the job had a defensive though. There are times where if I don’t bloodbath I just fall over

For me, I think Noxious and Death's Design are fine. They are essentially the equivalent of other jobs having DoTs. With a Damage over Time, you want to activate it as soon as possible and keep it active. If you view Noxious and DD as being Viper and Reaper's equivalents of DoTs- ones where their potency equals 10% of all other actions used during its uptime, it's a much more appealing concept. For Reaper, DD doesn't even break combos and can be extended up to 60 seconds, making it much easier to manage than your average DoT. Viper has a lot to manage, so I can understand the stress people were feeling from it. But it really did harm the job's overall skill expression. It's still a fun job and one of my favorites to play, but I wholeheartedly stand on the side that the debuff should have been kept in. Viper is in a stronger place now for less effort, so it's not a bad change for people who want to use the job to excel for less management. But I personally liked the complexity.

Its weird becaude i saw the title of this video and I was like, wow thats a hot take(and i dont play viper, its just the other side is SO vocal). Then i look at the comments and see much more agreement than expected haha

I have a weird perspective in that I got bored of it and dropped it even before Noxious Gnash was removed. I will mostly be talking from a savage perspective, not casual content, and this will be long lol, but interested in your thoughts on these points if you've got the time: 1) As you addressed, Noxious was one of the few things VPR uniquely forced you to think about beyond fight mechanics because of the potency gain of using twinblade > dread fangs whenever off CD and then not dropping the buff, combo string, and finisher buff while in double RA. Now, you hardly need to think about anything at all surrounding double RA. 2) I disagree that the skill ceiling is high and it was never high to begin with. VPR optimization is entirely about when to spend or hold uncoiled due to melee downtime and how this might affect buffs/timing of double RA. The changes just made this optimization even easier than before as you no longer need to concern yourself with twinblade reapplication or reapplying earlier or later than you usually would. 3) Where I think VPR suffers the most for me is the choice and consequence or complexity of optimization as compared to every other melee (RPR to a lesser degree than the others). Every melee job is forced to optimize around the same things: buff windows/rotational alignment, (melee) downtime, and positionals. Because VPR’s only option for optimization is a solution for downtime that you get for free, will almost never affect your buff windows, and is never a DPS loss, 2 of the 3 challenges are resolved with just one decision: whether to hold or to spend uncoiled differently. A good comparison here is to ninja, which does not have a loop that can be disrupted and also has a few downtime tools like phantom kamaitachi, ration, and suiton, but these are situational or come at a potency cost in the case of ration being used outside of trick or kamaitachi usage potentially forcing a bhava or bunshin’d GCD out of buffs. It gets even worse compared to less flexible/looping jobs like SAM, which may have to now adjust their entire loop because they had to enpi for a GCD causing them to be a GCD behind raid buffs. I think you unintentionally hit the nail on the head at 10:05 when you say that Viper’s depth is fight dependent, not rotationally dependent. That is a detriment to its depth IMO because every other melee has depth dependent on the fight AND the job/rotation itself.

Only issue I have is no personal mitigation with Viper. It would make it feel less like wet paper when you mess a mechanic up or get hit with a raidwide and Feint is on cooldown.

Most level headed Viper video coming from an actual Viper main, appreciate your thoughts! Although not the best Viper player myself (I prefer Samurai) I did enjoy Noxious Gnash, but I could see how much of a pain in the ass it would of been to use it when a boss disengages you, only to come back and you have to enter the 2-minute burst window, maybe they could of rectified this by making Dreadwinder just apply and cap out the debuff at 40 seconds? But maybe that would just accomplish the same result we got from Patch 7.05

I wanted a dual sword class forever and taking NG away was not going to take me off the job. At first, it felt really bad and im sure thats the impression people walked away with if they left the job right after the change. But as i got used to it, it felt more natural and i could focus on other aspects, like fight design and uptime/hitting every positional and where and how to spend my coils and my vicewinders etc. It wasnt as detrimental to the enjoyment as i originally felt right after the change dropped but it was weird to get used to. Actually, my biggest issue is viper under 90. It feels like the most incomplete job without reawaken and most of its kit. Not only is it extremely weak but it also feels bad in lower level content. Most of the time i can handwave away how incomplete jobs feel beneath current expansion but Viper actually needs some changes to it imo. Its to the point id almost rather go anything else if its not 90+ content despite it being my favorite job in 14 ever.

My only gripe with the change is that i dont like the name changes. Dread Fangs, Pit of Dread, and Dreadwinder are better names than Reaving Fangs, Vicepit, and Vicewinder

so I think you said it yourself, if the fights are boring as viper then viper becomes boring ergo the default game state is kinda boring. The back to back reawakening combos feel kinda repetitive with nothing in between and the rotation as you've also mentioned plays itself. Uncoiling fury is the single best melee uptime tool in the game which kinda removes the need for optimizing a lot of this fights or greeding uptime like you would most melee jobs. Viper doesnt even really have a buff window to fit them in outside of a few seconds of pot due to their gauge rotation being so long. Other melee jobs have to adjust to having to deal with heavy downtime where as viper kinda gets to play the same way in each fight.

You put my exact thoughts into words. Thank you. I was going insane

What my static opted to do for mouser... Melee taken inner squares like you said but if it was uppercut the targeted player would stand a a damaged tile and get knocked up and onto the clear tile means you can maintain uptime. If it's knockdown then you stand on the clean title.

Great video dude!!

You might want to pin this, but: most are agreeing that the real reason Gnash got removed was because of the buff/debuff overload from TOP were abilities were dropping due to too many buffs/debuffs being there and causing some to just drop. While that may not sound fair, remember it was a big controversy when TOP was current. As for Gnash, its more a wound than a venom, so to me, that was a weak argument in favor of flavor. So what it really boils down to is what players like, and if people liked debuff management, they would just play Reaper, which I think all these things plus player sentiment is why they chose to let it go. It also helps explain why they backtracked on positionals, despite promising to remove some or all despite that being mentioned and not Gnash. At this point it is up to the individual player on whether or not they like the changes, but saying the changes are bad just because you don't like them is an incorrect stance. From a game creator perspective, having many people like a change over a few people disliking it is a win, and while that can be bad in some cases, designing a game to cater to a small crowd can also kill your game. Look at Helldivers 2, most players just want to goof off and kill hordes of enemies with their besties, but instead of focusing on that, they would rather nerf weapons to keep artificially increasing difficulty for the handful of people who like it. Now imagine if they continued with that method, do you know where Helldivers 2 population is at? Less than 10% of the peak amount of players they had playing at once on Steam. That's bad, that's REALLY bad. I feel like too many players think "what I like">"what is good for the game" one single person does not pay for the whole of FF14. So each person deserves a class they can at least play to some extent. As for class identity, please ask Xeno, or any hardcore player, how that went in Heavensward, spoilers, but it went tragically. Many had to stop playing their favorite class because it was awful in the raiding scene, something that continued into early Stormblood. Class identity only works if it doesn't cause the class to become a non-pick in raiding content, otherwise it is a hindrance. This wouldn't be as much of an issue of gear could change to match the job, but since each job needs gear specific to it's small groups, then it is REALLY hard to justify excluding certain classes from raiding. Ultimately, if you want a class in the future to have debuff management, I would HIGHLY advise looking into creating class ideas that would make it work naturally in the class and be the focus. To me though, as long as the class is fun, I could care less about these details. Thanks for reading!

People may still disagree, but I stand on it. I want to adjust to the fight, not to my debuff. However, when you bring this up, people have strokes. I think it’s because they have a preconceived notion that NG made the class worth playing when it would have been a hindrance. Viper is constant damage.

VPR is probably one of the worst class designs in the game, because I needed a guide to even know how the main combo worked, specially when did the positionals appear and which were each. All the information was heavily obfuscated due to the nature of "actions you cannot put on your hotbar", despite how the actual concept is much easier to understand. Now, this is me, and I'm not a bad player but let me ask you; what is your average Catzy Purr'nyan@Louisoix gonna pull? How is that gonna reflect on the damage data, experience of the player and anyone that plays with him? Add to that the problem with AoE being tedious when it's what you're mostly gonna spam until 100 and you have a recipe for disaster. Removing Noxious Gnash has nothing to do with developer intentions, it's just a band-aid fix to the skill issue _(accentuated by all the above)_ of the average player. Removing the failstate of the class just made it so VPR has nothing to think about during all the fight but save coils to disengage _(without losses)_ compared to every single other melee except perhaps NIN, and therefore jump automatically to the top. VPR being so easy and so strong makes it so literally playing any other melee, probably casters too, feel unrewarding as a whole. Look up at PF and tell me how many parties have a VPR, because I lost the count; it's a bad joke. In the current state, the job needs to be nerfed to the ground _(and yes, NERFED, not others buffed because they already broke the entire tier damage checks because of PCT being so frontloaded)_ or reverted, because it breaks the entire system and will force VPR-or-bust parties if they fix damage checks for the next tier.

your voice is far too low so im out

Byebye obnoxious gnash

The Job is still good. Sure they removed a dot. What ever...... This is just like how High end players in WoW act with changes. The high end players of FF dont want an actual good melee job being opened to more casual players. Viper unlocks the ability for more casual players to actually be able to do harder content. It has the easiest rotation ever, does very good dps, honestly its hard to die on it since you have 2 charges for your gap closer.... People need to fking relax, You still have Monk, Sam, Dragoon, and Reaper to claim which all have their more complex rotations and most of them can outperform most vipers anyway. Its a good change. Dot management is always garbage and always will be. People that like it like to use it to gatekeep others or trash talk uptime %'s.

That’s cuz people are dumb

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.

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 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.

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 feel it would have been better if they move it to serpent tail prog.

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 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.

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

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???

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.

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.

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.

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.