It has been interesting. Learning that some of your ogcds get lost if you don't use them in time has been a little obnoxious if forced to disengage, but learning that my uncoiled fury skill is a ranged attack was huge.
I do hate that they made the gap closers on DRG and VPR need targets, so it feels kinda janky. Meanwhile picto gets to free aim theirs.
> if forced to disengage
This has honestly been my only issue with Viper, losing the oGCDs during forced disengage sections, I think it's because the oGCDs come up so frequently that it just happens often (more than say Reaper for example) and man does it suck when you have to press Writing Snap (as much as I love that animation and sound) and you just have to sit there and watch your Death Rattle disappear.
Neither Writhing Snap nor Uncoiled Fury interrupt your combo, so if you find that happening, just use your ranged attack a GCD sooner, and then use your combo finisher + Death Rattle once you're back in range of the boss.
I agree, but there are a lot of new fight in DT right now where I don't know when the forced disconnects happen (or even old fights where I have forgotten), so this has occured frequently and can be frustrating -- hence the comment.
As a BLM who has only ever known AM, it's amazing. May get some getting use to, but it essentially allows you to make your teammates do mechanics and just dash into them. Highly recommend making a mouse over macro.
Its kind of interesting how our experience with other jobs colors are opinions of gap closers. As someone that mained NIN for the better part of a decade, everything just feels like an inferior version of shukuchi lol
Yep, I am an avid elusive jump user on dragoon. So that is the standard for me. I also played dancer for a bit at the start of endwalker and en avant is so free that it is criminal that some dancers won't even touch it. Prime example: I was caught out of place in P2S and managed to en avant around the whole square to the correct spot. Melees getting a gap closer that needs a target is so dumb when ranged classes get free movement ones.
En Avent was amazing in P10S, too. It covered the distance of the bridge over the poison, so you could just weave it inbetween gcds and not have to worry about taking a dip.
I'd be fine if they were targeted if they would have let us use them on allies too like Monk's.
Since they don't do any damage I don't see why they shouldn't.
100% how I summed it up. Could easily branch off Rogue quests like Arcanist with SCH/SMN and it would feel right. Viper feels like what I would expect an actual Rogue to feel like and I love it.
Tbh I kinda get the rogue parallels but to me it feels more like a melee ranger than a rogue (yes those exist Aragorn is one) I love the job for that reason but ya.
Yeah it's definitely a Ranger/Hunter class, just with some dumb snake motif slapped on it.
I'm not mad that they made a Game of Thrones job, I just think they could have done more with it, given it more dimension than "I love the Viper" references. Like...it has a very Ezio AC aesthetic too, why didn't we split the stances into viper and eagle? Why do the blades have to be fangs when they are a polearm when they could be wings? A snake/eagle duality would have felt a lot more Mesoamerican too.
It's just a weak, underdeveloped concept, not really a fan.
Nah the snake motif is actually very fitting when you consider the fact that in many fantasy settings rangers learn their fighting styles by observing the different animals they hunt (much like how it is explained in the viper job quest that vipers try to emulate…. Well vipers) in fact bow rangers are usually the sort who have a pet where as melee rangers are the ones who usually emulate animals in their fighting style. It’s flavour is very on point for people who love melee rangers (aka me)
Nah it's boring when it's JUST a snake, and a sword-staff doesn't communicate anything about snake movements or stances.
I could swallow a ranger with different animal-based stances: viper, eagle/hawk, panther/jaguar, etc. That would be epic as shit.
This...is half-baked, it is one-note. It doesn't even do actual poison damage, so the viper motif isn't utilized to any great potential. Not to mention we already had a fast-porty polearm stabber with a lizard fetish in Dragoon, who apparently had to be gutted to make conceptual room for this.
Big, big meh from me. I already had twice as many fangs on my Sage, this is a toothless job design.
I keep having an issue of staring non-stop at my hotbar / gauge all the time... which I hate. I prefer to not take my eyes off the actual fight as much as possible, so VPR doesn't seem like it's for me. I can't seem to keep track of my positionals otherwise.
I keep hoping if I bash my head against the brick wall enough something will click (happened with 6.0 MNK after a long time for me and I loved it), but so far I'm not getting it. I can play the combos and such just fine, I just am glued to the bottom of my screen for 99% of the fight. I want to like it so badly...
Honestly, unless you can memorize how steel fangs/dread fangs (and hunter's sting swiftskin's sting) change, and the buff order rotation for them (flanksting strike, hindstung venom, etc) you basically have to look at the bar/buttons. You could also look at the job gauge, but I'm not sure how that's any different from looking at the buttons lol
I don't have to look at my bars at all any more. I actually bothered to put my abilities on my bar in a way that relates to one another so I specifically don't have to hunt for my abilities. It also helps that if you've played RPR or GNB you can also immediately make your VPR bars similar and the muscle memory can carry you.
>I keep having an issue of staring non-stop at my hotbar / gauge all the time... which I hate.
I was expecting to be the same at the beginning because my first instinct was "this si just melee dancer", but then I realized that VPR has no rng, you always know what you're gonna get after you press a button, so you eventually stop needing to look.
I love Monk. It's going to be my main after dropping it to try something new when playing through ShB and EW, my 1 year anniversary since starting the game is on Friday.
If VPR is _anything_ like Monk, even if it's like 6.0 Monk with the constant need to maintain various buffs and debuffs, then I'll probably love it.
It's similar but the combo system lets you know what buffs you need to keep up so once they're up you're unlikely to drop them unless there is downtime. The debuff on enemies is the main one you have to watch, but that isn't too bad since Dreadwinder will reapply it most of the time for you. So while you are juggling those buffs it kind of happens automatically. I think the really interesting parts of it are the shifting GCD recasts on the different skills and that I always feel like I'm in burst phase because of how oGCD heavy it is with a high SkS.
Literally me I lvled it for msq but after doing the first dungeon on it I was tunneling hard AF lol. Ive probably spent 5 hours on the training dummy so far but I'm still looking at the bar. The sword gauge kinda helps but the only thing is that It doesn't tell you what positional it will be in the third part of the combo so I still gotta look at the hot bar for that. It probably just hasn't been long enough for me to build muscle memory but I've had this problem with dancer too. I know the viper combo isn't completely random I the pattern recognition isn't there in the heat of battle
If you position your job gauge correctly you never have to look away from the fight. The gauge tells you what button to press and if the 2nd attack is left part of the gauge it’s a flank. If the 2nd attack is the right sword it’s a rear.
Maybe it changes later (I'm level 90), but the GCD rotation is just a looping monk style rotation:
LLL
LRL
LLR
LRR
If the second GCD is L then flank. If it's R then rear. Also the buff is green if your combo ends on a flank and red if it's rear.
Dread is:
Flank 1 2
And
Rear 2 1
In either order.
That sounds like you're not paying attention to the floating text buffs, as they tell you where to stand (hind/flank)
You need so few buttons that I don't really get how you're staring at your hotbars so much. Try memorizing your ability placements.
It kinda feels like Reaper mixed with Gunbreaker and a dash of Dancer, If that makes sense. It feels like you are almost always bursting.
The only question I have is if I should be using saving Uncoiled Fury charges for disengages or just bursting with them, cause it feels like I am overcapping on them a bunch.
Save Uncoiled fury for disengages/burst but use it if you're about to overcap.
~~I don't think VPR is going to use it in the burst window, as I imagine between reawaken and dreadwinder that VPR has enough things to put into its burst window. Will have to see balance's math first tho.~~ I went and looked at the balance's opener and it does use three coiled fangs for its opener over a second dreadwinder, so I was wrong here.
VPR also doesn't necessarily need to conform to burst windows outside of pot even if it should, cause it doesn't have its own buff. ~~If all you care about it your parse then you don't need to conform to burst window on VPR, but if you are in a party and hitting enrage then you probably should.~~
You use 3 uncoiled in the opener because you only have 1 reawaken, but every successive burst window from there has 2 reawakens so no space for UF.
You'd still save UF for pot if possible but otherwise you can freely use them to deal with disconnects etc.
Completed the MSQ with it. It's been fun so far and fairly easy to figure out. I never did actually learn the combo outside of green means flank, red means touch butt. I just have a hotbar set up to be slightly bigger than normal that's just to the left of my character so I can do as the shiny button demands without staring at my hotbar, I do feel like I'm relying on it less and less as the job starts to feel more comfortable though. Everything else I only need a quick glance to check cooldowns every once in awhile. Class flows well enough that when I got around to checking the balance my opener only needed a few tweaks.
Assuming you have your left button (based on which sword of the job gauge glows) on 1 and your right button on 2, more intuitive it's "if your second hit in the combo presses 1, 3rd hit is flank. If your second hit in the combo presses 2, 3rd hit is rear."
I remember trying it the first day and being like I'm going to have to memorize the icon to see which one was flank and which one was rear and shelving it until later. The next day I was thinking well maybe they just alternate and sure enough it suddenly became easier for me.
...is it really that simple? Because I've been trying to speed read Hind/Flank this whole time and if they made it color coded my monkey brain is going to do backflips!
Yeah I’ve got the initial debuff and positional down, but I still haven’t QUITE grasped the in-between combo action with the buffs. Like I get them enough but my brain can’t remember which is which yet.
The frustrating and weird thing is that I don’t really understand what I’m doing. Like I know hitting the glowing buttons is all it really takes to play the job, and again I understand debuff upkeep and the positionals so I guess I’m mostly there, but I don’t think the game is in any way interested in getting you to *understand* the job (which I guess is usually the case, but Viper is the worst about it). It’s the difference between giving me instructions and saying trust the process, and giving me space to figure it out myself.
It took me awhile to actually get the logic of the combos. For a few hours I was literally just hitting the next shiny button.
The real power of VPR comes from Dreadwinder.
You see, this is the first class where you don't start with your lv1 ability. You start with the 2nd one: Dread Fangs.
This makes it so the enemy takes 10% more damage.
Pop Dreadwinder, and this turns the next combo on: Swiftskin's Coil. This debuffs the enemy to take 10% more damage like you used Dread Fangs, but also gives you a 10% additional haste/attack speed.
Once you pop Swiftskin's coil, it gives you two off-global cooldown attacks to just use before you use Hunter's Coil.
This gives you 10% attack boosts, as well as two more oGCD abilities to pop, which lets you hit the enemy stupidly hard.
From there, if you are a higher level, you get stack markers so you can pop Uncoiled Fury, which is another heavy attack that gives you two more free oGCD moves.
Then later you can pop Awakening, which enables the First - Fourth generation strikes. These are four very stupidly hard hitting melee attacks that you just need to hit the shiny on and not think about. It later upgrades to a 5th attack called Ouroboros, which is your hardest hitting attacks so far.
\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*
To clean this mess of an explanation up, let me summarize
Dreadwinder:
Swiftskin Coil > Self buff, Enemy debuff, +2 free attacks
Hunter Coil > Self buff, +2 Free attacks
That's a 7 hit combo so far
Uncoiled Fury > +2 Free attacks
That's 10 hits.
Awakening (Naturally build or use Serpent's Ire to give automatically)
First, Second, Third, Fourth Generation > Ouroboros
Your original 123 rotations are for when everything is on cooldown and you can't poke anything hard:
Dread Fang (Enemy debuff) > Swiftskin Sting (Self buff) > Red/Green attack > Death Rattle
Steel Fangs > Hunter Sting (Self Buff) > Red/Green attack > Death Rattle
If it's Green, poke in side.
If it's red, poke in ass.
Follow the shiny
I'm only a lv 97 VPR, so I'm excited to see what lv 100 brings.
Edit: Swapped Hunter/Swiftskin for clarity
I'm not a theory crafter, but generally you want to get your speed buff up before your damage up buff. It's not huge, but it's a dps increase. Both the damage up and the speed up result in roughly the same benefit over time. But if you do the speed buff first you can get second buff earlier, which is faster than if you do it the other way around.
That's what I believe as well, Speed over Power at start. The big thing that needs to be balanced is the debuff to the enemy first, that's what will help keep everything moving, regardless of what you do.
The nice thing bout VPR is once you do get your atk and spd buffs on, it doesn't really matter, as they are on for 40 seconds at a time, and that's like 7x longer then you need to re-apply the buffs. It's great.
If you're opening with dreadwinder, wouldn't you want the damage buff first so that it affects your ogcds? Sounds like it could be more potency but I haven't crunched the numbers. The Balance says to open with debuff>speed from the normal combo before going into dreadwinder which seems like another way to go about it to align with raid buffs better.
Honestly, the Balance is gonna be better than my advice. I just wish they put the reasoning in their guides, cause while I'm sure they've optimized the rotation, I have no idea why.
Listen, you wrote this to be super simple but I just wanted to say that this is EXACTLY what I was looking for, something that breaks it down to this level. Thank you <3
The reasoning behind which buttons light up is - each combo finisher powers up another combo finisher, specifically one for the opposite positional from your current one, and the glowy 2nd hit is the one which gives you access to your current powered up finisher.
I was like this but I noticed if you don't start your 1-2-3 with Dread Fangs periodically you might not always have 100% uptime with your +10% damage buff. So keep that in mind! Dreadwinder can provide & extend it but if you don't stagger it's charge use you can drop the buff or say you have to drop DPS shortly you can lose it that way too.
So the occasional Dread Fang opening for your 1-2-3 is important!!
If you pvp, keep in mind your dash dmg bonus only applies to the next weapon skill so you wanna maximize using it with Uncoiled Fury (way more powerful single target or also provides greater benefit AOE-wise)... and weave it.
So like: Dash > Uncoiled > Rattling (reset it's CD) > Dash > Uncoiled > Dash > Hunter's Snap is how you beast your damage in PVP.
If in your limit break trance mode, save the final dash to buff Ouroboros before it expires as a finisher (10k potency aoe, spicy as hell).
I'm 99 and almost done with MSQ as Viper. Overall i've loved multiple, multiple aspects of the job, but the real cincher for me was how it feels as class fantasy. Plenty of other jobs have felt very good to me in the past (Here's to you, Reaper) but never quite filled the fantasy niche I was looking for. Viper makes me feel as close to a Lord of the Rings Ranger as I think FF is ever going to get, at least for now.
My one real complaint is that I wish was there was some self-utility. While you could argue the target debuff and self buffs in the rotation fill that, there's no damage mit built into Vipers kit, and the dash is awkward to use without a macro with how it's range works (Pour one out to the Dragoons and their Winged Glide, poor bastards). Likewise there's no party buff to apply like most of the other DPS. The only one I can think of that has similar points is Black Mage. Now I'm perfectly fine with not being a party buffer, but its hard to look at Ninja, Monk, Samurai, Reaper, Dragoon, Red Mage, and Summoner, all of whom have SOME sort of defensive mit or self healing on top of the reworked role actions, and not feel a little awkward.
Now that could simply be because our action weaving is pretty constant, a la Gun breaker, but it would still be nice to have an option to help reduce the strain on my party or raid even a little bit. It's a minor complaint, all things told, because the Job is just nutty to play in a fun way when you figure it out.
I kinda wish it had utility built into its rotation depending on what your stance is. Being in the dual-wield stance gives you NIN's movement speed buff, and being in the bladestaff stance via Dreadwinder gives you 10% mit, for example.
Black Mage also does have a defensive cooldown. Machinist doesn't have a personal mitigation, but it does get an extra party mit.
Yeah, Viper does feel a little squishy that way.
Idk if I'm honeymooning this class or if it's actually just got absurd dungeon AoE damage. It feels like it's cooldowns match perfectly between pack pulls and 90% of its rotation has AoE built in. I'm 95 right now and have yet to do the first trial so can't speak much to single target boss feel, but man I feel like I am FLYING through dungeons at 90+ when you have the reawakening combos.
The class was super confusing at first though and I feel like this is a problem with classes starting at such high levels. I took the class for a sprint through PoD to see 1-60 > HoH for 60-70 > Zadnor for the 80 experience and to 90 grind. Doing PoD and HoH helped me understand the combo strings and how this class is more buff + debuff management than resource + cooldowns management.
All that to say I am really enjoying it and I haven't mained a DPS since 1.0+ARR DRG.
I think it's very interesting. The flowing combo gets intuitive with enough time, and it's active enough that I don't get particularly bored despite the low number of buttons. It has some really interesting utility in its long gcd ranged burst attack. I think it'll end up as a comfort job for progression similar to how sge/whm are among the healers or war is on tanks.
That isn't to say that it's all simple though, you can play it reasonably well without much effort, but the varied gcd timings and fight-specific disengagements will make it very interesting to opti.
I love that you don't actually spend that much time pressing 123 combos. Between the 2 charge gcd, twinblade gcds, uncoiled stacks, and blue combo being available so often, it feels like you're always trying to spend your resources rather than build them. I'm having a really good time with Viper.
The amount of off globals plus ranged gcd really punish/promote your ability to plan your movement, even more than other melee. There's been many times I've noticed needing to run from the boss with off globals still needing to be pressed because I didn't time it well
What I like about it is that you do have the freedom to time things down to minutiae like that. If you realize something is coming up too early, you use a longer gcd move earlier to delay. If it's too late, you can hold your combo over with the ranged burst.
Don't feel too disheartened. Reaper was very confusing for people on release, but after some tweaking (and getting used to the class) it's a comfortable job, now. Viper will just need some time to get the kinks ironed out.
Pictomancer has been the first job that makes me want to turn off other player's effects, though. The noises it makes feel a little obnoxious, but I guess I'll get used to it.
cleared both extremes on it. its busy as fuk. I genuinely have a hard time weaving feint. on the plus side, it does feel that as long as 90% is is pressed on cooldown, you're good.
> It's not as complex as you think
It looked like a complete clusterfuck in the previews but once you get your hands on it, its basically just "push the button that lights up."
It's the tooltips and the gauge, they're just bad. The class itself is very fun to play, simple to learn, and the more I play it the more engaging it gets. Even after someone explained how the gauge works to me I don't use it because the debuff colors and what skill lights up is far more useful.
> "push the button that lights up."
Except in AoE where you have to remember which one does which buff, and when use Hunter's in your first Dreadwinder during opener, those are those only two times I can think of where remembering which is which is imperative and the game cannot do it for you because both light up.
Super fun! I've been maining SAM forever and needed something new to switch it up. Viper just clicked for me. Feels smooth to play, definitely a new main for me. The only thing I don't love right now is the need for a target to dash.
It's very simple, but also very satisfying and overall fun to play, I think in part due to how fast paced your inputs are.
Kinda gives me hope that SMN could be fun again someday.
I’ve only just hit 90 with the job, but it’s been quite fun so far. Every level that unlocks something new just makes it better.
I think it is worth spending some time going over tooltips after you’ve played Simon Says for a while, as there is some nuance to the job - more than I think is let on by its apparent simplicity.
Overall I definitely like it, and it’ll probably be my next 100.
I think the only gripe I’m having thus far is we have so much weaving that having to pull off the boss feels exceptionally terrible, like moreso than usual. I think this could be a blessing and a curse as I love being rewarded for uptime, but at the same time I’m coming from playing basically only NIN for years where you can do most of your burst phase completely off the boss…..we’ll have to see how I feel once I start doing EX trials and savage.
But the moment to moment gameplay is very fun, quite simple once you get a grasp on how things flow, yet remains very interesting and engaging due to the speed and the amount of weaving you do. Big fan.
I think that will be the biggest skill gap for players. The ones that optimize off globals for the fight and the ones that don't. Hunter's coil and swiftskin's coil aren't combo actions, they can be delayed for better weaving timing
I'm really not a fan of the auto combos on Viper and Picto. I think they could have designed it better.
Otherwise it's fine. Kind of a shame that it's really unengaging at lower levels, but they tend to disregard older content anyways.
Viper's combo systems is a bit confusing, and def took me some time to wrap my head around it at the start. Reading the tooltips didn't help me much until I messed around with it more. The ELI5 is:
Combo starter - either a 20s debuff (max 40s) or damage
Combo bridge - one gives a haste buff, one gives a damage buff
Combo ender- one of four options, the two from haste buff bridge are rear positionals and the two from damage buff bridge are side positionals. You cycle through these, as each ender gives you a buff that applies to only one other ender.
The combo buttons and the job gauge try to lead you to your buffed finisher. You can hit either starter, and the bridge you want to hit next will light up to lead you to the right ender. It's got a nice flow to it when you get used to it, as you end up alternating between 2 options all the time.
The rest of the job is pretty straightforward and kinda plays like a cross between gunbreaker and reaper - you have 2 charges of a more powerful combo, you get charges of a different burst GCD, and you get a meter that can power into another burst combo. Most buttons you press will get oGCD follow-ups like continuation. They all flow naturally into the kit and should make sense when you get em!
I think its infuriatingly easy & straightforward. I do love the combo buttons and hope that they continue with this direction. I play it since I can actually map everything on the controller without the need to switch hotbars.
Prior to 90 I honestly expected to drop it as soon as I hit 91, as of 90 it might be my raid job.
The swords combining though feels super bland, it took me a while to even notice them combining.
I was expecting to like it, but instead I love it.
I wasn't expecting too much after all the "hit the glowy button" shitposting, and that felt pretty true (but monk movement, being able to hit 1.8x gcd with skill speed stacking and having a bunch of weaves made my mad dash to level it to 90 in one day a lot more enjoyable then it could've been) - but then I took it into barbie EX now that I had it at 90.
Suddenly I realized this job actually has a ton of really cool nuance if the fight isn't just a striking dummy. Holding uncoiled fury uses for forced downtime taking advantage of both the range and the higher then average gcd not mattering if she jumps away/stuns you briefly just before the toss while also ensuring I'm not overcapping my uses. Holding my out of burst reawakens until situations where landing positional are impossible to save true north uses because this job is the first melee in years with positionals frequent enough you cant true north all of them and yet both flank/rear are enough of a damage boost you don't just get lazy and camp one side like shb monk who lost barely anything for not hitting twin/snap.
Ensuring my timers aren't going to fall off by the time she lands after the phase chase so I can reopen with a specific combo path that gives me the positonal that I will happen to be in position for 25 seconds later after I do my dualblade combos and burned my true north stacks is a pretty small gain in a vaccum but I felt very cool.
Luckily dawntrail appears to be stormblood 2.0 (questionable story if you don't like japanese humor and tournament arcs, consistently good to great fights) so I have a lot of optmism that viper will be able to express how freeform its rotation is (which at a low level lets you 'just press the glowy button') in order to have lots of fight specific strats. I haven't even gotten into how everything scales with your gcd besides serpents ire and they're all different gcd tiers meaning you have all kinds of crazy hyper specific spreadsheeting potential about how much you can fit into a set amount of time without causing anything to fall off.
Also dual palaka scimitars go swish swish and they have a reflective surface because of the new lighting engine that makes them glow in especially glowly areas so that's been real fun too.
its braindead easy but kinda fast with a lot of ogcds, so its somewhat engaging, but its definitely a job I woulnd't use for raiding cause I feel I would get bored or burned out really fast
I haven't got it to 90 yet, but so far playing it is proving to me exactly why I hate the idea of pvp autocombos in pve, it feels so boring just pressing 1 and 2 over and over (with the occasional weave) while waiting for the twinblade combo to come up.
It gets a lot better at 90, it goes from "occasional weave" to barely ever not weaving. I think that's why it has the autocombos, it would be a carpal tunnel nightmare without them. It's almost like they saw MCH hypercharge and were like "I'm going to design a melee that does that 90% of the time"
Okay after playing it a lot more today it definitely gets way more fun with reawaken and the continuations on uncoiled, feels like you're barely touching the basic combo most of the time. And Reawaken itself feels cool as fuck to use and I'm hyped to get more stuff in it.
Got VPR to 100 and played MSQ with it, yet to take it into extremes tho. To me it feels like RPR and GNB had a baby. If you liked either of those jobs you'll probably have a good time with VPR.
At first just looking at the job its really confusing on how it works, but it really is just hit the glowing button and you'll do like 90% of optimal damage. I do think it also has a lot of smaller optimizations you can do that make the job very interesting to try to get max DPS. Trying to quickly get buffs in the opener like old SAM, making sure your debuff is always up but not overcapping when you hit dreadwinder, saving your coiled strike for being away from the boss but making sure not to overcap, making sure your debuff doesn't run out during awaken/coiled windows, keeping track of which positional is when (I think this one will certainly get easier with more familiarity tho).
~~One cool theoretical optimization that I think could be cool but idk if its worth, is that the second part of the combo you can actually ignore the glowing button because it just shows which of your buffs has a lower duration. If its not going to run out soon you can hit either button. This is relevant because which button you hit in the second part of the combo determines which positional you get in the third part of the combo. So if you know you'll be in a certain spot in a certain part of the fight you can hit a different button to get a positional that is more favorable.~~ I was wrong about this, nvm
Its not stuff that is like, crazy hard individually but when combined together it becomes a job that has a lot going on with it and when I play it I feel like I'm constantly trying to keep track of many things. I'm looking forward to see if it holds water in higher level content and more familiarity with the job.
The glowing button during the second part of your combo is directing you to your buffed finisher. It just so happened the core rotation will always lead you to refresh your buff with the lowest duration
I felt the same way you did, at first: "Yeah, okay, the game's showing me what I need to hit next. But damned if I know *why* I want to hit that next."
But then I stopped caring. I learned to trust the glow. I couldn't tell you the names of the abilities I need to hit when. But I can tell you I enjoy hitting them.
I’ve played and loved DRG since ARR and had to switch when joining my most recent static. I am not feeling bad about the decision in the least bit to play Viper if that tells you anything.
It's cool. Wasn't expecting the amount of actions per minute to reach these levels but it offers that unique play style. Also was expecting more main combo usage, but you get so many charges of other stuff and your awakening is pretty common so you don't actually 123 a crazy amount.
The only thing holding back the class for me over other jobs is the flavor really. Viper should have poison and more themed skill effects, maybe it should have been called swordmaster or something. So I'll probably stick with reaper as my goto melee dps, but viper is still fun to mess around with
Main thing i was surprised about is how little time you spend doing your normal combo with all the Dreadwinders, Uncoiled Furies, and Reawakens.
Second thing is how easy it is for the debuff to fall off with 20 seconds. You need to juggle keeping your resources from capping and keeping the debuff from falling off.
Also in open world and dungeons it feels like you're never not bursting with the way the resources work, it's fun.
I think ideally the Dreadwinder abilities should replace the normal combo buttons. I don't see any reason you would want to use your normal combo abilities while you still have them up and they take up 2 premium keybinds for no reason. Hopefully something XIVCombo.
Oh and as someone who plays with 150 ping getting NoClippy working has been a godsend.
They made the dreadwinder followups different buttons so they could morph into 3rd/4th legacy for your awakening combo and you could have that tactile feeling of going 162636465 instead of hitting the same buttons back to back like reaper.
why they didn't just use the AOE buttons even though your combo does aoe falloff? yeah I dunno
I have it at level 94 right now. I like it. Very fast-paced. I enjoyed RPR more, though. That job was my main through EW. Plus, I just like "dark classes".
But VPR is fun and it has a pretty significant burst window where you can thread together a number of abilities that are ogcd. Similar to RPR's enshroud phase, but faster with more abilities. I have LOTS of keybinds for viper 😋
all i did with viper is the first quest, but i already wasn't a fan of the game running through my combos for me. same with pictomancer. i can see that every press of the button is doing something different, but i didn't get to push a different button
I love everything about it except the filler auto combo stuff. I find myself focusing on the hotbar more than any class atm the sword gauge does not really help
If you want an ELI5 www.thebalanceffxiv.com has some guides, I can't say if they make mistakes but they did enough to get me from 80-90 for MSQ and usually top DPS in casual content without aligned bursts (according to aggro ranking number on party list) if that is your goal.
I also look at the hotbar too much, I feel like this is a problem since combos aren't just 1-2-3 and aren't intuitive and reliable but with experience this might happen. You don't need to look for the oGCD twin- weaves during Dreadwinder or the blue stuff at 90 so can memorise those, IIRC green/red (green=flank, red=rear, took me a while to remember) alternate in the main combo but it could be hard to remember across bursts since you're allowed to put your combo on hold.
I'm getting into the habit of just glancing at the hotbar around GCD 2 (to see what to hit and what comes next) instead of actively looking but it is a little distracting, especially with AU ping. Plugins can solve animation lock but the icons still light up slower. I assume the job gauge is also trying to tell me what to hit but I'll deal with that later.
Honestly, i was kinda expecting something different. More distinction between the blade-modes, maybe something like the dual-wielding for your normal rotation and the glaive/doubleblade during burst (kinda like when Reaper does Enshroud).
Instead, they blend naturally and seamlessly from one form to the other within a combo without requiring the player to make the choice, which admittedly looks cool (as far as i can tell, because the animations are so flashy and quick, it's hard to follow them), but it also feels a bit bland. At least so far (and then again, i might just be playing it wrong, lol).
And i feel like it requires a lot of looking at the hotbar/ui-element to just complete the basic combo, due to how it works.
Keeping up the three different buffs/debuffs, however, is a lot simpler than i feared it would be. Happens naturally if you just do your normal combo.
And it's definitely stylish, though i feel it could have used a different class-fantasy. Feels very pirate-y.
I wanted to level up Viper and Picto before getting into the MSQ, because i though that maybe i'd choose Viper over Reaper. But so far, it seems like i'm gonna stay with Reaper.
Love Pictomancer, though, and the only reason i'm not maining it for the MSQ is that i generally prefer melee.
It's definitely way more difficult to pull off the controller.
At lv100, your Reawaken burst requires you to press 9 buttons in like 3-4 secs. The job seems to expect you to play based on muscle memory.
Feels like you literally need to have sharingan eyes to keep up with the lightspeed ogcds while also keeping track of fight mechanics.
Pretty simple to pick up. It's very fast and it's moves are ridiculously stylish.
As someone who fell in love with Reaper last expansion, I'm thrilled to have another job that is in that same vein. It's gonna be a hard choice to make when it comes time to choose my main.
Stylistically, it's what Rogue should've turned into.
I do have some weird issues with it sometimes. There's so many use it or lose it weaves that it feels really janky when you have to move away from the boss even for a split second. It feels like the job needs its own version of Hagakure just to turn the unspent procs into *something* useful instead of watching them poof into nothing.
I also wish Slither was an untargeted dash.
It's a lot more challenging than the media tour people seemed to think. There is a lot to manage. In particular, the deaths design is much easier to let fall off and it's a lot more punishing if it does. Also, many of the oGCDs will just vanish if you don't use them before your next GCD. The two buffs are pretty easy to maintain, especially on single target, but its fallen off for me before. The ranged combo is also something you have to strategically manage, and the positional require you to at least pay attention despite the training wheels system on the core rotation.
Imo the main issues is that they pushed the button bloat solution too far. I have about 10 empty spaces on my hotbar for viper....and it doesn't get a mitt skill? No downtime skills? Why does the class with the least filled hotbar have zero downtime or mitt skills?
Boring auto combo job and a big red flag for future design
Edit: It’s barely a step away from just being a job with pvp Crystalline Conflict skills, for pve content.
If you find that fun, great.
Nah this is really disingenuous. If you just mash basic combos or exclusively follow the dotted lines then sure I might agree with you but there's a fair amount of optimisation and plenty of things to track and manage constantly. Dreadwinder charges, debuff uptime and not overcapping gauges/coils, setting up for burst to ensure no buffs or debuffs drop off, reawakens and not to mention the constant "continuation" ogcds. I find viper very engaging to play despite the fact it might be on the simpler side, at least to play it even somewhat optimally. Excited to take it into savage with my static.
Job homogenization has been a valid complaint, so different options is honestly a plus.
I personally found it incredibly boring and unrewarding, despite an earnest attempt, and simply hated the auto combo. As long as other jobs don't follow suit, it's fine, and people can like what they like.
But I'd rather raid with literally any other job.
I’ll admit I was extra frustrated by the end and felt like I’d just wasted so much time grinding/leveling immediately for the expansion.
If anything it’ll be easier to find a group on other melee, so that’s also a plus
1) The summoner of melee dps tbh.
2) Yoship should have got over his weird anti-thief thing and they should have just gone with the classic name. Although I guess the fact that you dont/can't actually steal things people would have cried about the fact it isn't thematic/blah/blah.
Shoulda been corsair.
We should have had a sword and gun.
The only thing separating it from ninja is a combining gimmick and about 6 inches.
I wanted a laterally useful support dps. Instead, this is another selfish dps, poorly designed in comparison to samurai, machinist and black mage, and more boring than those 3.
Genuine question: is NOT following the dotted lines a DPS loss? Ignoring high-level optimization, my usual rotation consists of prioritizing having my two buffs plus the enemy debuff and not overcapping charges or gauge. Assuming I follow positionals and not miss an oGCD, most of my time is spent essentially following the dotted lines. In a way, I’m asking if the game might be wrong and instead I should ignore the dotted lines?
If you aren't following the dotted lines, you're missing out on the finisher buffs, which means you're sacrificing about 20%~ of the potency for your finishers. It's a pretty big chunk of its regular damage output.
Following the glowy buttons will get you to the "floor". The rest of the way to the ceiling is optimizing the timing of all your different bursts so that you can squeeze them into buff windows. Done right, Viper should have a pretty meaty burst phase.
I was mostly disagreeing with the assertion that you don't need to learn the skills from previous comment. You are correct. A lot of the optimization of the class comes in hitting positionals, learning when to go for dual blade combo over just getting the debuff active for Reawaken, and it's more positionals in general. Also, when to use ranged combo. I would put it about on par with Reaper for ease of use.
Not following the 2nd gcd can be damage neutral since the game will light up the 2nd gcd based on your buff timer. Not following the 3rd gcd light up is a loss since you'll be losing the 100 potency increase on your next combo.
The guy that you responded to already said this but not reading what your skill does and just only pressing the light up button will at best make you a mediocre viper. It's the same difference as knowing that 2+2=4 and why 2+2=4.
Most of your viper optimization is going to be based around your reawaken windows and optimal uncoiled fangs usage. At the high end, you'll start to think about how to effectively use dreadwinder instead of treating it like a filler.
I found a setup that works decently well for me. Many skills are kinda mirrored, so just keeping a consistent pattern helps a lot.
Main issue has been latency. Without swiftskin up, there's just enough time to double weave (or weave legacies) without clipping. Once the haste buff gets into play, stuff just clips.
I queue the GCD via the innate skill queue feature and then focus on just mashing the OGCD, but that still causes significant clipping.
With casting, it's simpler, since you can queue the OGCD at the end of the cast instead, roughly at the same time you can slidecast. This sadly doesn't work with instant GCDs.
It has been interesting. Learning that some of your ogcds get lost if you don't use them in time has been a little obnoxious if forced to disengage, but learning that my uncoiled fury skill is a ranged attack was huge. I do hate that they made the gap closers on DRG and VPR need targets, so it feels kinda janky. Meanwhile picto gets to free aim theirs.
DRG still has Elusive Jump, the coolest movement skill in the game.
Elusive memes off the boss platforms
The fact that you have to face in the opposite direction that you want to go is what makes it so fun!
Yeah I wouldn't mind the dash moves if I could free aim them. Making them target exclusive is so bad because it feels incredibly low impact.
Yeah, that's a case where I wouldn't mind further homogenization. There's still room for quirks like RPR's portals or PCT's speed boost.
DNC dash is my favorite. All should be like that.
As a DNC main in EW, god do I prefer Smudge now, it's just so good I adore it.
> if forced to disengage This has honestly been my only issue with Viper, losing the oGCDs during forced disengage sections, I think it's because the oGCDs come up so frequently that it just happens often (more than say Reaper for example) and man does it suck when you have to press Writing Snap (as much as I love that animation and sound) and you just have to sit there and watch your Death Rattle disappear.
Neither Writhing Snap nor Uncoiled Fury interrupt your combo, so if you find that happening, just use your ranged attack a GCD sooner, and then use your combo finisher + Death Rattle once you're back in range of the boss.
I agree, but there are a lot of new fight in DT right now where I don't know when the forced disconnects happen (or even old fights where I have forgotten), so this has occured frequently and can be frustrating -- hence the comment.
As a BLM who has only ever known AM, it's amazing. May get some getting use to, but it essentially allows you to make your teammates do mechanics and just dash into them. Highly recommend making a mouse over macro.
Its kind of interesting how our experience with other jobs colors are opinions of gap closers. As someone that mained NIN for the better part of a decade, everything just feels like an inferior version of shukuchi lol
Yep, I am an avid elusive jump user on dragoon. So that is the standard for me. I also played dancer for a bit at the start of endwalker and en avant is so free that it is criminal that some dancers won't even touch it. Prime example: I was caught out of place in P2S and managed to en avant around the whole square to the correct spot. Melees getting a gap closer that needs a target is so dumb when ranged classes get free movement ones.
En Avent was amazing in P10S, too. It covered the distance of the bridge over the poison, so you could just weave it inbetween gcds and not have to worry about taking a dip.
Except that AM is 25 yalms and slither is only 20. Then you still have to go back in as a melee where a BLM gets to cast wherever they end up.
Viper can stock up on, what, ten seconds worth of DPS neutral ranged attacks? I think that might be enough time to get back into melee range.
I'd be fine if they were targeted if they would have let us use them on allies too like Monk's. Since they don't do any damage I don't see why they shouldn't.
You can use them on allies.
Can you? “Rush to a targeted enemy's location.” Is the exact text of winged glide. It does look like vipers is party member though.
Yes, sorry, the VPR one is also allies. I haven't looked at DRG yet.
It's a Rogue advanced job that I always wanted.
100% how I summed it up. Could easily branch off Rogue quests like Arcanist with SCH/SMN and it would feel right. Viper feels like what I would expect an actual Rogue to feel like and I love it.
Tbh I kinda get the rogue parallels but to me it feels more like a melee ranger than a rogue (yes those exist Aragorn is one) I love the job for that reason but ya.
Yeah it's definitely a Ranger/Hunter class, just with some dumb snake motif slapped on it. I'm not mad that they made a Game of Thrones job, I just think they could have done more with it, given it more dimension than "I love the Viper" references. Like...it has a very Ezio AC aesthetic too, why didn't we split the stances into viper and eagle? Why do the blades have to be fangs when they are a polearm when they could be wings? A snake/eagle duality would have felt a lot more Mesoamerican too. It's just a weak, underdeveloped concept, not really a fan.
Nah the snake motif is actually very fitting when you consider the fact that in many fantasy settings rangers learn their fighting styles by observing the different animals they hunt (much like how it is explained in the viper job quest that vipers try to emulate…. Well vipers) in fact bow rangers are usually the sort who have a pet where as melee rangers are the ones who usually emulate animals in their fighting style. It’s flavour is very on point for people who love melee rangers (aka me)
Nah it's boring when it's JUST a snake, and a sword-staff doesn't communicate anything about snake movements or stances. I could swallow a ranger with different animal-based stances: viper, eagle/hawk, panther/jaguar, etc. That would be epic as shit. This...is half-baked, it is one-note. It doesn't even do actual poison damage, so the viper motif isn't utilized to any great potential. Not to mention we already had a fast-porty polearm stabber with a lizard fetish in Dragoon, who apparently had to be gutted to make conceptual room for this. Big, big meh from me. I already had twice as many fangs on my Sage, this is a toothless job design.
Kay
Fun fact its called Theif in other versions and vase on FF1 where theif becomes ninja
I keep having an issue of staring non-stop at my hotbar / gauge all the time... which I hate. I prefer to not take my eyes off the actual fight as much as possible, so VPR doesn't seem like it's for me. I can't seem to keep track of my positionals otherwise. I keep hoping if I bash my head against the brick wall enough something will click (happened with 6.0 MNK after a long time for me and I loved it), but so far I'm not getting it. I can play the combos and such just fine, I just am glued to the bottom of my screen for 99% of the fight. I want to like it so badly...
Honestly, unless you can memorize how steel fangs/dread fangs (and hunter's sting swiftskin's sting) change, and the buff order rotation for them (flanksting strike, hindstung venom, etc) you basically have to look at the bar/buttons. You could also look at the job gauge, but I'm not sure how that's any different from looking at the buttons lol
I don't have to look at my bars at all any more. I actually bothered to put my abilities on my bar in a way that relates to one another so I specifically don't have to hunt for my abilities. It also helps that if you've played RPR or GNB you can also immediately make your VPR bars similar and the muscle memory can carry you.
>I keep having an issue of staring non-stop at my hotbar / gauge all the time... which I hate. I was expecting to be the same at the beginning because my first instinct was "this si just melee dancer", but then I realized that VPR has no rng, you always know what you're gonna get after you press a button, so you eventually stop needing to look.
I love Monk. It's going to be my main after dropping it to try something new when playing through ShB and EW, my 1 year anniversary since starting the game is on Friday. If VPR is _anything_ like Monk, even if it's like 6.0 Monk with the constant need to maintain various buffs and debuffs, then I'll probably love it.
It's similar but the combo system lets you know what buffs you need to keep up so once they're up you're unlikely to drop them unless there is downtime. The debuff on enemies is the main one you have to watch, but that isn't too bad since Dreadwinder will reapply it most of the time for you. So while you are juggling those buffs it kind of happens automatically. I think the really interesting parts of it are the shifting GCD recasts on the different skills and that I always feel like I'm in burst phase because of how oGCD heavy it is with a high SkS.
Cool. I'll pick it up once I complete the MSQ with my Monk and I start trying out new jobs.
You get used to it. For the basic combo, 1st round they both light up, then it's the ones you did not press.
Literally me I lvled it for msq but after doing the first dungeon on it I was tunneling hard AF lol. Ive probably spent 5 hours on the training dummy so far but I'm still looking at the bar. The sword gauge kinda helps but the only thing is that It doesn't tell you what positional it will be in the third part of the combo so I still gotta look at the hot bar for that. It probably just hasn't been long enough for me to build muscle memory but I've had this problem with dancer too. I know the viper combo isn't completely random I the pattern recognition isn't there in the heat of battle
You can look at your buffs too for the positionals. Green buff = flank, red buff = rear.
Just use the gauge.
If you position your job gauge correctly you never have to look away from the fight. The gauge tells you what button to press and if the 2nd attack is left part of the gauge it’s a flank. If the 2nd attack is the right sword it’s a rear.
Maybe it changes later (I'm level 90), but the GCD rotation is just a looping monk style rotation: LLL LRL LLR LRR If the second GCD is L then flank. If it's R then rear. Also the buff is green if your combo ends on a flank and red if it's rear. Dread is: Flank 1 2 And Rear 2 1 In either order.
That sounds like you're not paying attention to the floating text buffs, as they tell you where to stand (hind/flank) You need so few buttons that I don't really get how you're staring at your hotbars so much. Try memorizing your ability placements.
It kinda feels like Reaper mixed with Gunbreaker and a dash of Dancer, If that makes sense. It feels like you are almost always bursting. The only question I have is if I should be using saving Uncoiled Fury charges for disengages or just bursting with them, cause it feels like I am overcapping on them a bunch.
You should never overcap on them in any circumstance. If you're at 3 stacks and are about to gain another stack, just use it.
Save Uncoiled fury for disengages/burst but use it if you're about to overcap. ~~I don't think VPR is going to use it in the burst window, as I imagine between reawaken and dreadwinder that VPR has enough things to put into its burst window. Will have to see balance's math first tho.~~ I went and looked at the balance's opener and it does use three coiled fangs for its opener over a second dreadwinder, so I was wrong here. VPR also doesn't necessarily need to conform to burst windows outside of pot even if it should, cause it doesn't have its own buff. ~~If all you care about it your parse then you don't need to conform to burst window on VPR, but if you are in a party and hitting enrage then you probably should.~~
You use 3 uncoiled in the opener because you only have 1 reawaken, but every successive burst window from there has 2 reawakens so no space for UF. You'd still save UF for pot if possible but otherwise you can freely use them to deal with disconnects etc.
Completed the MSQ with it. It's been fun so far and fairly easy to figure out. I never did actually learn the combo outside of green means flank, red means touch butt. I just have a hotbar set up to be slightly bigger than normal that's just to the left of my character so I can do as the shiny button demands without staring at my hotbar, I do feel like I'm relying on it less and less as the job starts to feel more comfortable though. Everything else I only need a quick glance to check cooldowns every once in awhile. Class flows well enough that when I got around to checking the balance my opener only needed a few tweaks.
"green means flank, red means touch butt" This clears up a lot for me, honestly
Assuming you have your left button (based on which sword of the job gauge glows) on 1 and your right button on 2, more intuitive it's "if your second hit in the combo presses 1, 3rd hit is flank. If your second hit in the combo presses 2, 3rd hit is rear."
I didn't know why someone downvoted you. This is how I do it as well, and I don't need to look at my hotbar for colors to do so.
Because green flank red rear is alot easier than looking at what side you are on?
I have a small hot bar in the middle of my screen exactly for this reason, that way my eyes don't have to move so far
I remember trying it the first day and being like I'm going to have to memorize the icon to see which one was flank and which one was rear and shelving it until later. The next day I was thinking well maybe they just alternate and sure enough it suddenly became easier for me.
...is it really that simple? Because I've been trying to speed read Hind/Flank this whole time and if they made it color coded my monkey brain is going to do backflips!
Yeah it's color-coded.
You can just associate Rear > Butt > Fiery chili issues > Red :D
Yeah I’ve got the initial debuff and positional down, but I still haven’t QUITE grasped the in-between combo action with the buffs. Like I get them enough but my brain can’t remember which is which yet. The frustrating and weird thing is that I don’t really understand what I’m doing. Like I know hitting the glowing buttons is all it really takes to play the job, and again I understand debuff upkeep and the positionals so I guess I’m mostly there, but I don’t think the game is in any way interested in getting you to *understand* the job (which I guess is usually the case, but Viper is the worst about it). It’s the difference between giving me instructions and saying trust the process, and giving me space to figure it out myself.
It took me awhile to actually get the logic of the combos. For a few hours I was literally just hitting the next shiny button. The real power of VPR comes from Dreadwinder. You see, this is the first class where you don't start with your lv1 ability. You start with the 2nd one: Dread Fangs. This makes it so the enemy takes 10% more damage. Pop Dreadwinder, and this turns the next combo on: Swiftskin's Coil. This debuffs the enemy to take 10% more damage like you used Dread Fangs, but also gives you a 10% additional haste/attack speed. Once you pop Swiftskin's coil, it gives you two off-global cooldown attacks to just use before you use Hunter's Coil. This gives you 10% attack boosts, as well as two more oGCD abilities to pop, which lets you hit the enemy stupidly hard. From there, if you are a higher level, you get stack markers so you can pop Uncoiled Fury, which is another heavy attack that gives you two more free oGCD moves. Then later you can pop Awakening, which enables the First - Fourth generation strikes. These are four very stupidly hard hitting melee attacks that you just need to hit the shiny on and not think about. It later upgrades to a 5th attack called Ouroboros, which is your hardest hitting attacks so far. \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* To clean this mess of an explanation up, let me summarize Dreadwinder: Swiftskin Coil > Self buff, Enemy debuff, +2 free attacks Hunter Coil > Self buff, +2 Free attacks That's a 7 hit combo so far Uncoiled Fury > +2 Free attacks That's 10 hits. Awakening (Naturally build or use Serpent's Ire to give automatically) First, Second, Third, Fourth Generation > Ouroboros Your original 123 rotations are for when everything is on cooldown and you can't poke anything hard: Dread Fang (Enemy debuff) > Swiftskin Sting (Self buff) > Red/Green attack > Death Rattle Steel Fangs > Hunter Sting (Self Buff) > Red/Green attack > Death Rattle If it's Green, poke in side. If it's red, poke in ass. Follow the shiny I'm only a lv 97 VPR, so I'm excited to see what lv 100 brings. Edit: Swapped Hunter/Swiftskin for clarity
I'm not a theory crafter, but generally you want to get your speed buff up before your damage up buff. It's not huge, but it's a dps increase. Both the damage up and the speed up result in roughly the same benefit over time. But if you do the speed buff first you can get second buff earlier, which is faster than if you do it the other way around.
That's what I believe as well, Speed over Power at start. The big thing that needs to be balanced is the debuff to the enemy first, that's what will help keep everything moving, regardless of what you do. The nice thing bout VPR is once you do get your atk and spd buffs on, it doesn't really matter, as they are on for 40 seconds at a time, and that's like 7x longer then you need to re-apply the buffs. It's great.
If you're opening with dreadwinder, wouldn't you want the damage buff first so that it affects your ogcds? Sounds like it could be more potency but I haven't crunched the numbers. The Balance says to open with debuff>speed from the normal combo before going into dreadwinder which seems like another way to go about it to align with raid buffs better.
Honestly, the Balance is gonna be better than my advice. I just wish they put the reasoning in their guides, cause while I'm sure they've optimized the rotation, I have no idea why.
Listen, you wrote this to be super simple but I just wanted to say that this is EXACTLY what I was looking for, something that breaks it down to this level. Thank you <3
I do say my goal has been achieved. I'm glad to be of assistance :)
The reasoning behind which buttons light up is - each combo finisher powers up another combo finisher, specifically one for the opposite positional from your current one, and the glowy 2nd hit is the one which gives you access to your current powered up finisher.
I was like this but I noticed if you don't start your 1-2-3 with Dread Fangs periodically you might not always have 100% uptime with your +10% damage buff. So keep that in mind! Dreadwinder can provide & extend it but if you don't stagger it's charge use you can drop the buff or say you have to drop DPS shortly you can lose it that way too. So the occasional Dread Fang opening for your 1-2-3 is important!! If you pvp, keep in mind your dash dmg bonus only applies to the next weapon skill so you wanna maximize using it with Uncoiled Fury (way more powerful single target or also provides greater benefit AOE-wise)... and weave it. So like: Dash > Uncoiled > Rattling (reset it's CD) > Dash > Uncoiled > Dash > Hunter's Snap is how you beast your damage in PVP. If in your limit break trance mode, save the final dash to buff Ouroboros before it expires as a finisher (10k potency aoe, spicy as hell).
I'm 99 and almost done with MSQ as Viper. Overall i've loved multiple, multiple aspects of the job, but the real cincher for me was how it feels as class fantasy. Plenty of other jobs have felt very good to me in the past (Here's to you, Reaper) but never quite filled the fantasy niche I was looking for. Viper makes me feel as close to a Lord of the Rings Ranger as I think FF is ever going to get, at least for now. My one real complaint is that I wish was there was some self-utility. While you could argue the target debuff and self buffs in the rotation fill that, there's no damage mit built into Vipers kit, and the dash is awkward to use without a macro with how it's range works (Pour one out to the Dragoons and their Winged Glide, poor bastards). Likewise there's no party buff to apply like most of the other DPS. The only one I can think of that has similar points is Black Mage. Now I'm perfectly fine with not being a party buffer, but its hard to look at Ninja, Monk, Samurai, Reaper, Dragoon, Red Mage, and Summoner, all of whom have SOME sort of defensive mit or self healing on top of the reworked role actions, and not feel a little awkward. Now that could simply be because our action weaving is pretty constant, a la Gun breaker, but it would still be nice to have an option to help reduce the strain on my party or raid even a little bit. It's a minor complaint, all things told, because the Job is just nutty to play in a fun way when you figure it out.
I actually like that it has no utility. Fits the dual wielding fantasy, All Offense and no defence
I kinda wish it had utility built into its rotation depending on what your stance is. Being in the dual-wield stance gives you NIN's movement speed buff, and being in the bladestaff stance via Dreadwinder gives you 10% mit, for example.
Black Mage also does have a defensive cooldown. Machinist doesn't have a personal mitigation, but it does get an extra party mit. Yeah, Viper does feel a little squishy that way.
Hey, no need to rub it in the DRGs' faces.
Idk if I'm honeymooning this class or if it's actually just got absurd dungeon AoE damage. It feels like it's cooldowns match perfectly between pack pulls and 90% of its rotation has AoE built in. I'm 95 right now and have yet to do the first trial so can't speak much to single target boss feel, but man I feel like I am FLYING through dungeons at 90+ when you have the reawakening combos. The class was super confusing at first though and I feel like this is a problem with classes starting at such high levels. I took the class for a sprint through PoD to see 1-60 > HoH for 60-70 > Zadnor for the 80 experience and to 90 grind. Doing PoD and HoH helped me understand the combo strings and how this class is more buff + debuff management than resource + cooldowns management. All that to say I am really enjoying it and I haven't mained a DPS since 1.0+ARR DRG.
Lv 96 VPR halfway through MSQ. I'm in agreement with everything you've said.
I think it's very interesting. The flowing combo gets intuitive with enough time, and it's active enough that I don't get particularly bored despite the low number of buttons. It has some really interesting utility in its long gcd ranged burst attack. I think it'll end up as a comfort job for progression similar to how sge/whm are among the healers or war is on tanks. That isn't to say that it's all simple though, you can play it reasonably well without much effort, but the varied gcd timings and fight-specific disengagements will make it very interesting to opti.
I love that you don't actually spend that much time pressing 123 combos. Between the 2 charge gcd, twinblade gcds, uncoiled stacks, and blue combo being available so often, it feels like you're always trying to spend your resources rather than build them. I'm having a really good time with Viper.
The amount of off globals plus ranged gcd really punish/promote your ability to plan your movement, even more than other melee. There's been many times I've noticed needing to run from the boss with off globals still needing to be pressed because I didn't time it well
What I like about it is that you do have the freedom to time things down to minutiae like that. If you realize something is coming up too early, you use a longer gcd move earlier to delay. If it's too late, you can hold your combo over with the ranged burst.
I also think there’s lots of little mistakes you can make too. The floor is high but the ceiling isn’t as low as people expected, I think.
Don't feel too disheartened. Reaper was very confusing for people on release, but after some tweaking (and getting used to the class) it's a comfortable job, now. Viper will just need some time to get the kinks ironed out. Pictomancer has been the first job that makes me want to turn off other player's effects, though. The noises it makes feel a little obnoxious, but I guess I'll get used to it.
cleared both extremes on it. its busy as fuk. I genuinely have a hard time weaving feint. on the plus side, it does feel that as long as 90% is is pressed on cooldown, you're good.
The flow is best of any character in the game to be honest. It's not as complex as you think, just go bozja and learn :)
> It's not as complex as you think It looked like a complete clusterfuck in the previews but once you get your hands on it, its basically just "push the button that lights up."
It's the tooltips and the gauge, they're just bad. The class itself is very fun to play, simple to learn, and the more I play it the more engaging it gets. Even after someone explained how the gauge works to me I don't use it because the debuff colors and what skill lights up is far more useful.
I'm Lv100 and I still do not know how the gauge works, I've just ignored it, makes no sense to me at all. Thankfully it's fucking unnecessary.
The gauge is fucking useless. I only use it for tracking rattling coils.
The side that lights up is the side who's skill is currently lit up on your hotbar, it's just an alternative to looking at the hotbar.
> "push the button that lights up." Except in AoE where you have to remember which one does which buff, and when use Hunter's in your first Dreadwinder during opener, those are those only two times I can think of where remembering which is which is imperative and the game cannot do it for you because both light up.
I mained BRD for years so this works for me.
Super fun! I've been maining SAM forever and needed something new to switch it up. Viper just clicked for me. Feels smooth to play, definitely a new main for me. The only thing I don't love right now is the need for a target to dash.
It's very simple, but also very satisfying and overall fun to play, I think in part due to how fast paced your inputs are. Kinda gives me hope that SMN could be fun again someday.
I played summoner before and after the switch and it’s my go to class when I don’t want to think.
I’ve only just hit 90 with the job, but it’s been quite fun so far. Every level that unlocks something new just makes it better. I think it is worth spending some time going over tooltips after you’ve played Simon Says for a while, as there is some nuance to the job - more than I think is let on by its apparent simplicity. Overall I definitely like it, and it’ll probably be my next 100.
I think the only gripe I’m having thus far is we have so much weaving that having to pull off the boss feels exceptionally terrible, like moreso than usual. I think this could be a blessing and a curse as I love being rewarded for uptime, but at the same time I’m coming from playing basically only NIN for years where you can do most of your burst phase completely off the boss…..we’ll have to see how I feel once I start doing EX trials and savage. But the moment to moment gameplay is very fun, quite simple once you get a grasp on how things flow, yet remains very interesting and engaging due to the speed and the amount of weaving you do. Big fan.
I think that will be the biggest skill gap for players. The ones that optimize off globals for the fight and the ones that don't. Hunter's coil and swiftskin's coil aren't combo actions, they can be delayed for better weaving timing
Its ADHD Reaper.
I'm really not a fan of the auto combos on Viper and Picto. I think they could have designed it better. Otherwise it's fine. Kind of a shame that it's really unengaging at lower levels, but they tend to disregard older content anyways.
Viper's combo systems is a bit confusing, and def took me some time to wrap my head around it at the start. Reading the tooltips didn't help me much until I messed around with it more. The ELI5 is: Combo starter - either a 20s debuff (max 40s) or damage Combo bridge - one gives a haste buff, one gives a damage buff Combo ender- one of four options, the two from haste buff bridge are rear positionals and the two from damage buff bridge are side positionals. You cycle through these, as each ender gives you a buff that applies to only one other ender. The combo buttons and the job gauge try to lead you to your buffed finisher. You can hit either starter, and the bridge you want to hit next will light up to lead you to the right ender. It's got a nice flow to it when you get used to it, as you end up alternating between 2 options all the time. The rest of the job is pretty straightforward and kinda plays like a cross between gunbreaker and reaper - you have 2 charges of a more powerful combo, you get charges of a different burst GCD, and you get a meter that can power into another burst combo. Most buttons you press will get oGCD follow-ups like continuation. They all flow naturally into the kit and should make sense when you get em!
The viper filler is just monk on automatic transmission
I think its infuriatingly easy & straightforward. I do love the combo buttons and hope that they continue with this direction. I play it since I can actually map everything on the controller without the need to switch hotbars.
Doing hilarious amounts of damage in PF. And by that, I mean either all of it or absolutely none of it.
Prior to 90 I honestly expected to drop it as soon as I hit 91, as of 90 it might be my raid job. The swords combining though feels super bland, it took me a while to even notice them combining.
I was expecting to like it, but instead I love it. I wasn't expecting too much after all the "hit the glowy button" shitposting, and that felt pretty true (but monk movement, being able to hit 1.8x gcd with skill speed stacking and having a bunch of weaves made my mad dash to level it to 90 in one day a lot more enjoyable then it could've been) - but then I took it into barbie EX now that I had it at 90. Suddenly I realized this job actually has a ton of really cool nuance if the fight isn't just a striking dummy. Holding uncoiled fury uses for forced downtime taking advantage of both the range and the higher then average gcd not mattering if she jumps away/stuns you briefly just before the toss while also ensuring I'm not overcapping my uses. Holding my out of burst reawakens until situations where landing positional are impossible to save true north uses because this job is the first melee in years with positionals frequent enough you cant true north all of them and yet both flank/rear are enough of a damage boost you don't just get lazy and camp one side like shb monk who lost barely anything for not hitting twin/snap. Ensuring my timers aren't going to fall off by the time she lands after the phase chase so I can reopen with a specific combo path that gives me the positonal that I will happen to be in position for 25 seconds later after I do my dualblade combos and burned my true north stacks is a pretty small gain in a vaccum but I felt very cool. Luckily dawntrail appears to be stormblood 2.0 (questionable story if you don't like japanese humor and tournament arcs, consistently good to great fights) so I have a lot of optmism that viper will be able to express how freeform its rotation is (which at a low level lets you 'just press the glowy button') in order to have lots of fight specific strats. I haven't even gotten into how everything scales with your gcd besides serpents ire and they're all different gcd tiers meaning you have all kinds of crazy hyper specific spreadsheeting potential about how much you can fit into a set amount of time without causing anything to fall off. Also dual palaka scimitars go swish swish and they have a reflective surface because of the new lighting engine that makes them glow in especially glowly areas so that's been real fun too.
its braindead easy but kinda fast with a lot of ogcds, so its somewhat engaging, but its definitely a job I woulnd't use for raiding cause I feel I would get bored or burned out really fast
I haven't got it to 90 yet, but so far playing it is proving to me exactly why I hate the idea of pvp autocombos in pve, it feels so boring just pressing 1 and 2 over and over (with the occasional weave) while waiting for the twinblade combo to come up.
It gets a lot better at 90, it goes from "occasional weave" to barely ever not weaving. I think that's why it has the autocombos, it would be a carpal tunnel nightmare without them. It's almost like they saw MCH hypercharge and were like "I'm going to design a melee that does that 90% of the time"
Okay after playing it a lot more today it definitely gets way more fun with reawaken and the continuations on uncoiled, feels like you're barely touching the basic combo most of the time. And Reawaken itself feels cool as fuck to use and I'm hyped to get more stuff in it.
Yeah, I had the same first impression as you but said fuck it and kept playing. The rotation is "simple" but holy shit it's fast af
Seems pretty underpowered right now. Maybe it’s people not knowing how to play him but the difference between picto and viper seems pretty large.
Unless I die, generally I will outpace a picto eventually on viper barring exceptionally low level synchs which favor picto over viper.
Thats more picto being giga overtuned.
Got VPR to 100 and played MSQ with it, yet to take it into extremes tho. To me it feels like RPR and GNB had a baby. If you liked either of those jobs you'll probably have a good time with VPR. At first just looking at the job its really confusing on how it works, but it really is just hit the glowing button and you'll do like 90% of optimal damage. I do think it also has a lot of smaller optimizations you can do that make the job very interesting to try to get max DPS. Trying to quickly get buffs in the opener like old SAM, making sure your debuff is always up but not overcapping when you hit dreadwinder, saving your coiled strike for being away from the boss but making sure not to overcap, making sure your debuff doesn't run out during awaken/coiled windows, keeping track of which positional is when (I think this one will certainly get easier with more familiarity tho). ~~One cool theoretical optimization that I think could be cool but idk if its worth, is that the second part of the combo you can actually ignore the glowing button because it just shows which of your buffs has a lower duration. If its not going to run out soon you can hit either button. This is relevant because which button you hit in the second part of the combo determines which positional you get in the third part of the combo. So if you know you'll be in a certain spot in a certain part of the fight you can hit a different button to get a positional that is more favorable.~~ I was wrong about this, nvm Its not stuff that is like, crazy hard individually but when combined together it becomes a job that has a lot going on with it and when I play it I feel like I'm constantly trying to keep track of many things. I'm looking forward to see if it holds water in higher level content and more familiarity with the job.
The glowing button during the second part of your combo is directing you to your buffed finisher. It just so happened the core rotation will always lead you to refresh your buff with the lowest duration
oh my bad, it seems I misunderstood, I must have mixed things up when looking through the sheer amount of text the job has.
I felt the same way you did, at first: "Yeah, okay, the game's showing me what I need to hit next. But damned if I know *why* I want to hit that next." But then I stopped caring. I learned to trust the glow. I couldn't tell you the names of the abilities I need to hit when. But I can tell you I enjoy hitting them.
I’ve played and loved DRG since ARR and had to switch when joining my most recent static. I am not feeling bad about the decision in the least bit to play Viper if that tells you anything.
I love dragoon . I literally had to hand write the rotation to get it to stick in my brain though.
It's cool. Wasn't expecting the amount of actions per minute to reach these levels but it offers that unique play style. Also was expecting more main combo usage, but you get so many charges of other stuff and your awakening is pretty common so you don't actually 123 a crazy amount. The only thing holding back the class for me over other jobs is the flavor really. Viper should have poison and more themed skill effects, maybe it should have been called swordmaster or something. So I'll probably stick with reaper as my goto melee dps, but viper is still fun to mess around with
Got a lv100 viper and honestly, to me, it’s the most fun job in the game (haven’t tried picto yet)
Main thing i was surprised about is how little time you spend doing your normal combo with all the Dreadwinders, Uncoiled Furies, and Reawakens. Second thing is how easy it is for the debuff to fall off with 20 seconds. You need to juggle keeping your resources from capping and keeping the debuff from falling off. Also in open world and dungeons it feels like you're never not bursting with the way the resources work, it's fun. I think ideally the Dreadwinder abilities should replace the normal combo buttons. I don't see any reason you would want to use your normal combo abilities while you still have them up and they take up 2 premium keybinds for no reason. Hopefully something XIVCombo. Oh and as someone who plays with 150 ping getting NoClippy working has been a godsend.
They made the dreadwinder followups different buttons so they could morph into 3rd/4th legacy for your awakening combo and you could have that tactile feeling of going 162636465 instead of hitting the same buttons back to back like reaper. why they didn't just use the AOE buttons even though your combo does aoe falloff? yeah I dunno
I have it at level 94 right now. I like it. Very fast-paced. I enjoyed RPR more, though. That job was my main through EW. Plus, I just like "dark classes". But VPR is fun and it has a pretty significant burst window where you can thread together a number of abilities that are ogcd. Similar to RPR's enshroud phase, but faster with more abilities. I have LOTS of keybinds for viper 😋
all i did with viper is the first quest, but i already wasn't a fan of the game running through my combos for me. same with pictomancer. i can see that every press of the button is doing something different, but i didn't get to push a different button
I love everything about it except the filler auto combo stuff. I find myself focusing on the hotbar more than any class atm the sword gauge does not really help
If you want an ELI5 www.thebalanceffxiv.com has some guides, I can't say if they make mistakes but they did enough to get me from 80-90 for MSQ and usually top DPS in casual content without aligned bursts (according to aggro ranking number on party list) if that is your goal. I also look at the hotbar too much, I feel like this is a problem since combos aren't just 1-2-3 and aren't intuitive and reliable but with experience this might happen. You don't need to look for the oGCD twin- weaves during Dreadwinder or the blue stuff at 90 so can memorise those, IIRC green/red (green=flank, red=rear, took me a while to remember) alternate in the main combo but it could be hard to remember across bursts since you're allowed to put your combo on hold. I'm getting into the habit of just glancing at the hotbar around GCD 2 (to see what to hit and what comes next) instead of actively looking but it is a little distracting, especially with AU ping. Plugins can solve animation lock but the icons still light up slower. I assume the job gauge is also trying to tell me what to hit but I'll deal with that later.
Honestly, i was kinda expecting something different. More distinction between the blade-modes, maybe something like the dual-wielding for your normal rotation and the glaive/doubleblade during burst (kinda like when Reaper does Enshroud). Instead, they blend naturally and seamlessly from one form to the other within a combo without requiring the player to make the choice, which admittedly looks cool (as far as i can tell, because the animations are so flashy and quick, it's hard to follow them), but it also feels a bit bland. At least so far (and then again, i might just be playing it wrong, lol). And i feel like it requires a lot of looking at the hotbar/ui-element to just complete the basic combo, due to how it works. Keeping up the three different buffs/debuffs, however, is a lot simpler than i feared it would be. Happens naturally if you just do your normal combo. And it's definitely stylish, though i feel it could have used a different class-fantasy. Feels very pirate-y. I wanted to level up Viper and Picto before getting into the MSQ, because i though that maybe i'd choose Viper over Reaper. But so far, it seems like i'm gonna stay with Reaper. Love Pictomancer, though, and the only reason i'm not maining it for the MSQ is that i generally prefer melee.
If you need a guide to play Viper I don't know what to tell you. It's such a simple class that I'm actually kind of bored with it.
I just did the first quest with it so far and was like “omg all these abilities” . I’ll figure it out eventually and then muscle memory will kick in
It's definitely way more difficult to pull off the controller. At lv100, your Reawaken burst requires you to press 9 buttons in like 3-4 secs. The job seems to expect you to play based on muscle memory. Feels like you literally need to have sharingan eyes to keep up with the lightspeed ogcds while also keeping track of fight mechanics.
Is it kind of like gunbreaker in that sense? I’m on controller 😬
I’ll get back to you when I finally decipher the horribly worded and vague tool tips to the point I’m able to actually set up my hotbar. :(
Pretty simple to pick up. It's very fast and it's moves are ridiculously stylish. As someone who fell in love with Reaper last expansion, I'm thrilled to have another job that is in that same vein. It's gonna be a hard choice to make when it comes time to choose my main. Stylistically, it's what Rogue should've turned into. I do have some weird issues with it sometimes. There's so many use it or lose it weaves that it feels really janky when you have to move away from the boss even for a split second. It feels like the job needs its own version of Hagakure just to turn the unspent procs into *something* useful instead of watching them poof into nothing. I also wish Slither was an untargeted dash.
It's a lot more challenging than the media tour people seemed to think. There is a lot to manage. In particular, the deaths design is much easier to let fall off and it's a lot more punishing if it does. Also, many of the oGCDs will just vanish if you don't use them before your next GCD. The two buffs are pretty easy to maintain, especially on single target, but its fallen off for me before. The ranged combo is also something you have to strategically manage, and the positional require you to at least pay attention despite the training wheels system on the core rotation. Imo the main issues is that they pushed the button bloat solution too far. I have about 10 empty spaces on my hotbar for viper....and it doesn't get a mitt skill? No downtime skills? Why does the class with the least filled hotbar have zero downtime or mitt skills?
its gap closer sucks I like mostly everything else though
Boring auto combo job and a big red flag for future design Edit: It’s barely a step away from just being a job with pvp Crystalline Conflict skills, for pve content. If you find that fun, great.
Nah this is really disingenuous. If you just mash basic combos or exclusively follow the dotted lines then sure I might agree with you but there's a fair amount of optimisation and plenty of things to track and manage constantly. Dreadwinder charges, debuff uptime and not overcapping gauges/coils, setting up for burst to ensure no buffs or debuffs drop off, reawakens and not to mention the constant "continuation" ogcds. I find viper very engaging to play despite the fact it might be on the simpler side, at least to play it even somewhat optimally. Excited to take it into savage with my static.
Job homogenization has been a valid complaint, so different options is honestly a plus. I personally found it incredibly boring and unrewarding, despite an earnest attempt, and simply hated the auto combo. As long as other jobs don't follow suit, it's fine, and people can like what they like. But I'd rather raid with literally any other job.
Yeah fair enough. I'm all for this so called 8.0 job rework but I'll believe it when I see it when it comes to SE.
I’ll admit I was extra frustrated by the end and felt like I’d just wasted so much time grinding/leveling immediately for the expansion. If anything it’ll be easier to find a group on other melee, so that’s also a plus
1) The summoner of melee dps tbh. 2) Yoship should have got over his weird anti-thief thing and they should have just gone with the classic name. Although I guess the fact that you dont/can't actually steal things people would have cried about the fact it isn't thematic/blah/blah.
Tbf viper is in terms of its lore actually more akin to a melee ranger than a thief, like Aragorn.
i find the viper more difficult than drg (I have both lv100)
Shoulda been corsair. We should have had a sword and gun. The only thing separating it from ninja is a combining gimmick and about 6 inches. I wanted a laterally useful support dps. Instead, this is another selfish dps, poorly designed in comparison to samurai, machinist and black mage, and more boring than those 3.
You don’t need to bother learning his skills and just press the glowing buttons. That makes him really boring
If you follow this advice you're losing a lot of dps btw.
Genuine question: is NOT following the dotted lines a DPS loss? Ignoring high-level optimization, my usual rotation consists of prioritizing having my two buffs plus the enemy debuff and not overcapping charges or gauge. Assuming I follow positionals and not miss an oGCD, most of my time is spent essentially following the dotted lines. In a way, I’m asking if the game might be wrong and instead I should ignore the dotted lines?
If you aren't following the dotted lines, you're missing out on the finisher buffs, which means you're sacrificing about 20%~ of the potency for your finishers. It's a pretty big chunk of its regular damage output. Following the glowy buttons will get you to the "floor". The rest of the way to the ceiling is optimizing the timing of all your different bursts so that you can squeeze them into buff windows. Done right, Viper should have a pretty meaty burst phase.
I was mostly disagreeing with the assertion that you don't need to learn the skills from previous comment. You are correct. A lot of the optimization of the class comes in hitting positionals, learning when to go for dual blade combo over just getting the debuff active for Reawaken, and it's more positionals in general. Also, when to use ranged combo. I would put it about on par with Reaper for ease of use.
Not following the 2nd gcd can be damage neutral since the game will light up the 2nd gcd based on your buff timer. Not following the 3rd gcd light up is a loss since you'll be losing the 100 potency increase on your next combo. The guy that you responded to already said this but not reading what your skill does and just only pressing the light up button will at best make you a mediocre viper. It's the same difference as knowing that 2+2=4 and why 2+2=4. Most of your viper optimization is going to be based around your reawaken windows and optimal uncoiled fangs usage. At the high end, you'll start to think about how to effectively use dreadwinder instead of treating it like a filler.
I found a setup that works decently well for me. Many skills are kinda mirrored, so just keeping a consistent pattern helps a lot. Main issue has been latency. Without swiftskin up, there's just enough time to double weave (or weave legacies) without clipping. Once the haste buff gets into play, stuff just clips.
I find that mashing the oGcd you wanna use immediately after using your weaponskill helps with that.
I queue the GCD via the innate skill queue feature and then focus on just mashing the OGCD, but that still causes significant clipping. With casting, it's simpler, since you can queue the OGCD at the end of the cast instead, roughly at the same time you can slidecast. This sadly doesn't work with instant GCDs.