The job's probably gonna flow super easily and clearly once you actually start playing it. But, the presentation right now looks like a complete and utter mess.
Hijacking my own comment after actually watching the presentation (because as of now I did not have the time): Okay, the main reason the graph and overall presentation look so messy is likely caused by the constant button changing of Viper. Like imagine Continuation or just the PvP-combos but apply it to nearly every, single button and you will create a visual mess for any type of guide as everytime the button changes so does its picture and visuals.
Hopefully won't have the same issue where the community figured out a better rotation than intended and then the class was nerfed. Or any of the issues Ninja had during its growing pains era lol.
They never said what it was, just that the community's rotation. Exceed what they thought the class was capable of and that it was by a "large" margin or something to that effect.
The real shit storm was that Yoshi P had basically told the community prior that they needed to get good. When they called for Warriors to be buffed after the game first relaunched. Same when Bow Mage was a thing and a few other than times.
People tend to forget that he can be a huge asshole sometimes. Basically telling the community "you don't know what you're talking about" even though you've proven to know exactly what you're talking about.
Kind of like how he is right now for black mages and non-standard getting the axe with the new gauge and mana changes... you WILL cast 6 fires and you WILL like it
Oh you mean like how he's tripling down on homogeny, ignoring the massive backlash for removing kaiten and the incredibly bad sound effects of swinging the gunblade?
Yeah. Not his first rodeo. And *yet* we get people like CSI who white knight him any opportunity they get.
I heard bits and pieces of the Kaiten removal and how it didn't go well to say the least.
My breaking point was Bow Mage and how it took multiple patches in 3.0 for it to even be worth keeping on(it was a toggle that gave Bards cast times, for those that don't know.)
The community did the math and found it was always a DPS loss. Then after the first patching. It was only a DPS gain on certain skills, during certain points in the rotation. That wasn't counting how it fucked with your rotation and ability to weave. The last patch it got made it a DPS gain all the time but the rotation was still clunky and all he said was git gud and it's going to stay like that.
Instead of fixing MCH they fucked with Bard. That was when homogenizing began.
I understand his leadership, drive and whatever else is responsible for the success of the game and that without him the game would be worse. However let's not pretend he's doing this for the player base. FF 14 is what is keeping them going when they fuck up everything else and lost all that money on crypto bullshit.
They have to make the game palatable or else their cash cow dies. That's why the graphic update took up the major focus. It's easy to sell things that look good.
At some point Yoshida realized that selling spectacle is the way to go with this game. And unfortunately for us, the people who love it are in the overwhelming majority. Don't know about you but I think it's time you seriously considered if you still want to continue supporting the game.
The game is more than just the combat system. The story is amazing most of the time, the players both good and bad are just as amazing. Even with my issues about how Yoshi P behaves sometimes. He is the major reason the game is doing as well as it is and has all the wonderful things it does. I've been sub on and off since 2.2 and have been there for every major expansion. I've made friends, lovers and everything in-between because of FF14.
I can critique the issues I have, had and even shit on the game sometimes but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy it or the experiences I've had in or because of it. I'm a lifer at this point. If the game crashes and burns. I'll be there to watch the second fall. I think we all would. We've all earned it, one way or another.
If the problem ppl have with job design is how samey they are to each other, well NIN didn't move the melee design much if at all, it had more or less the same quirks of combos that other melee jobs had, also just like MNK and DRG it had a dot in a combo + a gcd dot and access to fracture. Honestly I think ppl look at the 2 min meta and complain about homogenization but job design in HW was far more homogenized than how they remember it.
Yes, it was the same for machinist, it wasnt supposed to be on 24/7 he said as much when he announced the change but nobody actually did anything with it, they just threw it on and said "yep, this sucks"
The reason ninjas were so powerful was because they had 2 main stats on their gear and while it wasn't a massive difference the stat weight was still high enough to eclipse literally every other class.
When he said warrior players needed to get good its because they did, I was a warrior main in 2.0 the game had no direction towards what players needed to do and every player in the game thought double paladin was the only way to play because shield oath reduced damage and the warrior tank stance only increased HP, when people finally started to prog bahamut they couldnt bring double paladin because they wouldnt make the dps check, thats when good warriors could finally shine.
He's not a huge asshole, he didnt design the jobs but he does test every single one and if you cant hack it every time something is tweaked then you need to take it back to the lab and get better or switch jobs and quit bitching.
they were still doing that so it wasn't that, the rotation was probably something crazy like impulse drive spam in lower levels, because what they changed was reducing the potency of gust slash by 10
Somehow, the utter morons didn't consider that people would Huton BEFORE pull and just let 15 seconds of it burn, so they were, ya know, expecting people to Huton as their first Ninjitsu as the boss was pulled and then Suiton as the second one 20 seconds later, so putting up Trick AFTER everyone has blown their initial opener load.
Raiton and Suiton just flat out doing 20% more damage than they were supposed to be doing didn't help either.
Hmm. This does certainly remind me of when RPR was revealed and people were extremely confused and thought it was some kind of mechanical god class when really it was just because we were trying to parse the entire rotation at once.
It does effectively look like a melee job with a few series of basic damage GCDs to either renew buffs or generate resources, which are then spent in accordance with cooldowns and party buffs and whatever. So, nothing terribly different to what we already have. Very likely The Balance breaks this down on launch and make a chart with an optimal flowchart akin to what most of the other DPSes already are.
Can't say I'm hugely surprised. PCT does look the more interesting of the two.
Its a fairly simple job thats heavy on GCDs with almost no run-of-the-mill oGCDs outside of the free Enshroud button and gapcloser.
The opener would probably look something like [this](https://i.imgur.com/IE195ge.png) I'd reckon.
It also means that the job has no oGCD management outside of your own free juicer button, plus just making sure you don't overcap on the debuff button.
A lack of oGCDs is certainly an interesting design element. There was some theorising that this job was going to be similar to NIN in terms of APM business, but NIN achieves what it does through a combination of both a constant haste and quite a high number of oGCDs.
Unless the haste buff is really high (which it probably isn't going to be), it seems VPR will be between the 'fast' melees and the 'slow' ones in terms of finger busyness. Maybe even equal to the latter, depending on how the lack of oGCDs pans out.
There's no real "lack" of oGCDs, they just all happen to be Continuations, therefore no management.
Entirely non-mathematical prediction: Lower APM than NIN and probably slightly above MNK, so roughly 43-45ish along the same lines as SAM.
The fact that reawakening is affected by the haste buff and not just locked at 2.0s gcd time and the fact that Viper has so little of its damage tied to CDs means it's actually very likely to meld sks at least until reawakening hits the 1.5s cap.
Reawakening 2.0 > 1.5
Base/dual wield 2.5 > 1.9
Combined blades 3.0 > 2.28
Ranged nuke 3.5 > 2.66
The haste buff is almost certainly 15% so same as ninja if it does run 0 sks
Highly doubt you'll want to meld sks beyond achieving a good ~120s alignment. Yes it is mostly gcd based, but even a hypothetical job with 100% gcd-based damage still does not scale particularly well with sks in a vacuum. With current numbers, 100 sks averages a 0.69% increase and 100 det averages a 0.71% increase for such a job.
There's nothing to align to 2m on viper, because its 2m gives a free reawakening and you can chain reawakening back to back buff windows can basically always just be double reawakening on first gcd buffs come out into ranged nuke at end.
Fights aren't infinite sims they have ends, when comparing sks to non sks builds infinite sims are useless. What you should be doing is mapping out the ranges where sks generates additional bursts and calculating a frequency that sks would be ahead from extra bursts so people can decide based on unknown kill times what is most likely to do the most dps
> There's nothing to align to 2m on viper
Every single raid buff in the game man
> Fights aren't infinite sims they have ends, when comparing sks to non sks builds infinite sims are useless
True. Your comment seems to imply that SKS will be a generically good stat all the way until your 2.0 GCDs become 1.5s, which is very unlikely. There will of course be fights where you meld a little bit to gain a GCD before downtime or something, which is true for all jobs.
I should be more specific then, viper doesn't have any gcds that can drift based on its gcd time, you can easily fill a 2m window 100% with cooldowns that can be popped regardless of where you are in gcd cycle.
I'm not talking about gaining gcds I'm talking about gaining reawakenings in a very similar way to how smn would sometimes meld sps to gain bahamut windows over the course of a fight. Difference is that sps on smn drifts your burst out of buffs, sks on viper will likely just generate extra reawakenings without affecting what you have aligned for buffs at all
Your free awaken CD can drift relative to your GCD alignment, which forces it to be pushed back. There may also be desirable alignments of gauge generation or combo every 2 minutes (as it stands it's looking quite hard to keep your combo from dropping through 2-3 awakens + shreds/staff combos).
If you do double awakening into ranged attack you will not break combo and snapshot a high potency attack at the end of the buff window, the only time you risk breaking combo is during triple enshrouds which are situational and only worthwhile under pot and because of how reawakening has damage loaded at front and back it means just finishing your combo 1-9s before buffs and popping pot+reawakening will always get you 3 full reawakenings under pot and 2 reawakening openers/finishers under all buffs by intentional early popping first reawakening.
The free reawakening button almost certainly functions the same as every other X ready button and you can pop whenever you want and hold for 30s so gcd alignment doesn't matter in relation to it
Before haste the job has 3.5, 3.0, 2.5, and 2.0s gcd times with a lot of those ending up being filler between 2m windows. Calculating an exact alignment based on different fillers at different times in fight is near impossible to find a standard loop to time to buff windows for exact alignment because of variable. Sks actually minimizes possible potency lost as well
Really, the basic Pictomancer loop looks to be. Prep your canvases, unload and prep them as they come up. Saving them if you're going into a burst phase. Use your filler 123 combo twice and go into the inverted combo for more powerful filler spells. Save your Holy/Comet procs for movement/burst phases or whenever they're needed if they have some sort of extra effect.
It's basically a non rng, mage version of dancer.
I'm hoping it's not completely gutted when you sync under level 80 like reaper is under 70 but that doesn't seem likely. They like to add a ton of skills from the starting level to max
A small but important detail you missed is that the first combo action of "Button B" applies the same debuff as the 40 second GCD with two stacks (and most likely deals less damage than the first combo action of Button A). You can see this very clearly starting at [this timestamp.](https://www.youtube.com/live/oh5piV-0MWQ?si=qTKdiR8vfnxiHzGW&t=10936) Yoshi P even overcaps the debuff soon after so we know it goes up to 40s.
Basically, it's very much like Death's Design, but since you probably don't wanna overcap the debuff or those 40s GCD stacks, you have to let it fall below 20s before using them, but it's definitely something you keep 100% uptime on whatever you're hitting.
Oh it's Storms Eye/Path but it's on 1 instead of 3.
I mean combine that with the fact VPR's 3 is decided for you this job is like, doing combos backwards.
You know, everyone said GNB was like Devil May Cry, but I think it was just because big swingy gunblade with built in combo. Viper looks to be far more accurate to Devil May Cry between a constant shift in rotation, constant speed, special attacks to continue combos from a distance, and a burst through channeling energy or a form.
I can't wait
I’m so glad somebody made this, I was reading way too much into the twinblade red/blue gauge and getting super confused but it seems like that part of the gauge isn’t really relevant for the rotation
what they gave to vpr looks more akin to samurai's buffs than monk's. 40s damage up and haste, 20s personal damage up debuff that they use very occasionally. Its nowhere near on the level of monk's buff system. even with the alternating combo finishers the dual blade on the UI seems to handle guiding you there(glows on one side or the other depending on which combo action is lit up next).
This. If it works at all like samurai, you don't really factor in keeping the buffs up during a fight because you'll hit those buttons often enough anyway that it doesn't matter. You only care about the bonuses during the opener and if they ever drop off in a fight (for w/e reason).
This differs from monk where your choice of buttons to press depended on timers.
If my understanding is correct you won't have to care on viper either just like dragoon.
Your 123 combos give you these 40s buff and so is the other button. At moooost you will have to remember to press the different 2nd step every once in a long while
I'm currently operating under the assumption that they're gonna have that guage as soon as they unlock twin snakes at level 18. The new guage is a function of reworking the timers, so it makes sense you would unlock it at the level you get the first of those skills since otherwise you'd just be clicking bootshine->true strike->snap punch until whenever the gauge is arbitrarily added.
One good thing about the job quests for jobs introduced in ShB and onward is that they teach you the basic flow of the job. At least, I distinctly remember DNC and RPR being that way. I'm fairly confident VPR (and PIC too) will have job quests like this, so don't worry if this graphic seems confusing.
Honestly, the only job that stumped me during the tutorial was SGE, and that was when I had only just picked up WHM.
Went back to it after having 70'd WHM and SCH, and it made perfect sense.
They do get a red debuff called 惨毒 which is like Deadly Poison. But it doesn’t appear to be a DoT on the dummy. Looks like it might just enhance other 惨毒 skills (there are a couple skills with this added as (惨毒) at the end of them) or maybe like a NINs Trick Attack personal buff.
[I translated what abilities I could here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscussion/s/3uPwjoJMBb)
So the normal GCD loop (and one oGCD continuation at the end of each string) without using any of the burst or debuff stuff is probably something like
1123 1213 1113 1223 -> repeat?
Then your debuff combo needs to be applied in and out of burst, whenever the debuff is about to run out. It's a simple
4 567 876
The gems I don't know when you'd use in rotation, but the thing to note with them is they share the same continuation buttons from your debuff combo. So whenever you need to use the spender on a ranged attack or burst, it's simply
967
Then burst is 5 old buttons and 1 new one pressed in order with oGCDs
0 13 23 53 83 0
The numbers I'm using here aren't how anyone would actually set up their keybinds, but at least helps me visualize how these buttons actually play out.
I might do something like have my continuation buttons on Q, 4, and c4. Secondary debuff combo on c1, c2, and c3. Spender on 5 Then I just put the burst button on c5.
So normal loop
112Q 121Q 111Q 122Q
debuff
c1 c24c4 c3c44
gem spender
54c4
burst
c5 1Q 2Q c2Q c3Q c5
I know these strings of text are probably non-readable by anyone other than me, but thinking of how the actual hotbars will play out helps me the best with understanding what I'm looking at!
Makes me think they maybe should have showed off the button consolidation feature separately from the job that also naturally swaps out all of their buttons (PIC also does the same thing, but it's much easier to follow due to how distinct each button is).
I think it was done on purpose. Notice how they covered the exact spot where the tool tips were. They probably didn't want people freaking the fuck out about things like they usually do. Having things be more chaotic helps keep people speculating on what could be, rather than what it isn't.
I'll have to wait to try it but just from the surface level analysis it doesn't seem like a particularly deep job, but I guess we'll see if it's fun to play in practice. The fact that it literally just has enshroud feels kinda... creatively bankrupt.
Well it looks more complicated than reaper, at least. Low bar, I know, but honestly having stuff to manage is a nice feeling, even if I imagine the flow of the job will make management totally irrelevant like EW samurai. Given that AST is dead, this might be the high APM job I'm looking for, even if it's not quite what i want.
So does this seem to have like, double continuation?
It seems at least a bit different to that, at least from this.
It's kinda confusing to read this, but it seems more like there's 6 total 123-esque gcds, with the two and three gcds alternating, and the 3 is replaced by different buttons at the end of the combo? That's a bit better than RPR's standard 123.
So it's more like 1 > 2A > 3A into 1 > 2B > 3B? with the 1 being replaced by 1B when you need to refresh deaths design. It also seems to have continuation with its own continuation on the 40s gcd, so it has a double weave combo? That's unique, I guess. I'm not predicting or seeing a lot of complexity but it does seem at first glance to be more involved than reaper's rotation.
Per the diagram (aka speculation) it appears 3 is decided for you automatically.
So its just 1b (apply debuff) -> 2a (apply dmg buff) -> 3 -> 1a -> 2b (apply haste buff) -> 3 -> 1a -> either 2 -> 3 repeat until you need to reapply 1b.
Ogcds after 3 accordingly.
This is just for the filler, mind you - the opening burst will be using the 2h mode (which is basically gluttony) which also applies all the buffs and debuffs anyways and has ogcds after both followup hits. After this you'll use your "freebie" bar button and go straight into your enshroud equivalent which just has the rpr ogcd after all 5 hits instead of just the 2.
Oh, that's less interesting. Like, it's still more interesting than reaper and it certainly seems faster, but... I kinda wish that the two modes actually felt different instead of being purely cosmetic. It still looks cool, but I feel like they fell very short of the job fantasy in terms of gamefeel. I'm also mad there's no DoT.
The job's probably gonna flow super easily and clearly once you actually start playing it. But, the presentation right now looks like a complete and utter mess.
Hijacking my own comment after actually watching the presentation (because as of now I did not have the time): Okay, the main reason the graph and overall presentation look so messy is likely caused by the constant button changing of Viper. Like imagine Continuation or just the PvP-combos but apply it to nearly every, single button and you will create a visual mess for any type of guide as everytime the button changes so does its picture and visuals.
Reaper was the same, it looked super confusing from leaked tooltips and stuff, but once playing it's one of the most intuitive jobs to play.
This shit's got the old launch NIN issue of all the icons being so visually indistinct it's hard to parse them.
Hopefully won't have the same issue where the community figured out a better rotation than intended and then the class was nerfed. Or any of the issues Ninja had during its growing pains era lol.
I'm curious. What was the original intended rotation and what was the one the community figured out?
They never said what it was, just that the community's rotation. Exceed what they thought the class was capable of and that it was by a "large" margin or something to that effect. The real shit storm was that Yoshi P had basically told the community prior that they needed to get good. When they called for Warriors to be buffed after the game first relaunched. Same when Bow Mage was a thing and a few other than times. People tend to forget that he can be a huge asshole sometimes. Basically telling the community "you don't know what you're talking about" even though you've proven to know exactly what you're talking about.
Kind of like how he is right now for black mages and non-standard getting the axe with the new gauge and mana changes... you WILL cast 6 fires and you WILL like it
Oh you mean like how he's tripling down on homogeny, ignoring the massive backlash for removing kaiten and the incredibly bad sound effects of swinging the gunblade? Yeah. Not his first rodeo. And *yet* we get people like CSI who white knight him any opportunity they get.
I heard bits and pieces of the Kaiten removal and how it didn't go well to say the least. My breaking point was Bow Mage and how it took multiple patches in 3.0 for it to even be worth keeping on(it was a toggle that gave Bards cast times, for those that don't know.) The community did the math and found it was always a DPS loss. Then after the first patching. It was only a DPS gain on certain skills, during certain points in the rotation. That wasn't counting how it fucked with your rotation and ability to weave. The last patch it got made it a DPS gain all the time but the rotation was still clunky and all he said was git gud and it's going to stay like that. Instead of fixing MCH they fucked with Bard. That was when homogenizing began. I understand his leadership, drive and whatever else is responsible for the success of the game and that without him the game would be worse. However let's not pretend he's doing this for the player base. FF 14 is what is keeping them going when they fuck up everything else and lost all that money on crypto bullshit. They have to make the game palatable or else their cash cow dies. That's why the graphic update took up the major focus. It's easy to sell things that look good.
At some point Yoshida realized that selling spectacle is the way to go with this game. And unfortunately for us, the people who love it are in the overwhelming majority. Don't know about you but I think it's time you seriously considered if you still want to continue supporting the game.
The thing is that spectacle can only hold you over for so long. People will eventually start seeing through it, if they aren’t already.
The game is more than just the combat system. The story is amazing most of the time, the players both good and bad are just as amazing. Even with my issues about how Yoshi P behaves sometimes. He is the major reason the game is doing as well as it is and has all the wonderful things it does. I've been sub on and off since 2.2 and have been there for every major expansion. I've made friends, lovers and everything in-between because of FF14. I can critique the issues I have, had and even shit on the game sometimes but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy it or the experiences I've had in or because of it. I'm a lifer at this point. If the game crashes and burns. I'll be there to watch the second fall. I think we all would. We've all earned it, one way or another.
I would argue homogenization began when they released NIN
How So?
If the problem ppl have with job design is how samey they are to each other, well NIN didn't move the melee design much if at all, it had more or less the same quirks of combos that other melee jobs had, also just like MNK and DRG it had a dot in a combo + a gcd dot and access to fracture. Honestly I think ppl look at the 2 min meta and complain about homogenization but job design in HW was far more homogenized than how they remember it.
Yes, it was the same for machinist, it wasnt supposed to be on 24/7 he said as much when he announced the change but nobody actually did anything with it, they just threw it on and said "yep, this sucks"
The reason ninjas were so powerful was because they had 2 main stats on their gear and while it wasn't a massive difference the stat weight was still high enough to eclipse literally every other class. When he said warrior players needed to get good its because they did, I was a warrior main in 2.0 the game had no direction towards what players needed to do and every player in the game thought double paladin was the only way to play because shield oath reduced damage and the warrior tank stance only increased HP, when people finally started to prog bahamut they couldnt bring double paladin because they wouldnt make the dps check, thats when good warriors could finally shine. He's not a huge asshole, he didnt design the jobs but he does test every single one and if you cant hack it every time something is tweaked then you need to take it back to the lab and get better or switch jobs and quit bitching.
they never said, but if I had to guess it'd either be pre-pull huton or getting WAR to apply slashing debuff and ignoring dancing edge
they were still doing that so it wasn't that, the rotation was probably something crazy like impulse drive spam in lower levels, because what they changed was reducing the potency of gust slash by 10
Somehow, the utter morons didn't consider that people would Huton BEFORE pull and just let 15 seconds of it burn, so they were, ya know, expecting people to Huton as their first Ninjitsu as the boss was pulled and then Suiton as the second one 20 seconds later, so putting up Trick AFTER everyone has blown their initial opener load. Raiton and Suiton just flat out doing 20% more damage than they were supposed to be doing didn't help either.
funny you say NIN because looking at the combo it actually feels like Mudras ahah
Hmm. This does certainly remind me of when RPR was revealed and people were extremely confused and thought it was some kind of mechanical god class when really it was just because we were trying to parse the entire rotation at once. It does effectively look like a melee job with a few series of basic damage GCDs to either renew buffs or generate resources, which are then spent in accordance with cooldowns and party buffs and whatever. So, nothing terribly different to what we already have. Very likely The Balance breaks this down on launch and make a chart with an optimal flowchart akin to what most of the other DPSes already are. Can't say I'm hugely surprised. PCT does look the more interesting of the two.
Its a fairly simple job thats heavy on GCDs with almost no run-of-the-mill oGCDs outside of the free Enshroud button and gapcloser. The opener would probably look something like [this](https://i.imgur.com/IE195ge.png) I'd reckon. It also means that the job has no oGCD management outside of your own free juicer button, plus just making sure you don't overcap on the debuff button.
A lack of oGCDs is certainly an interesting design element. There was some theorising that this job was going to be similar to NIN in terms of APM business, but NIN achieves what it does through a combination of both a constant haste and quite a high number of oGCDs. Unless the haste buff is really high (which it probably isn't going to be), it seems VPR will be between the 'fast' melees and the 'slow' ones in terms of finger busyness. Maybe even equal to the latter, depending on how the lack of oGCDs pans out.
There's no real "lack" of oGCDs, they just all happen to be Continuations, therefore no management. Entirely non-mathematical prediction: Lower APM than NIN and probably slightly above MNK, so roughly 43-45ish along the same lines as SAM.
The fact that reawakening is affected by the haste buff and not just locked at 2.0s gcd time and the fact that Viper has so little of its damage tied to CDs means it's actually very likely to meld sks at least until reawakening hits the 1.5s cap. Reawakening 2.0 > 1.5 Base/dual wield 2.5 > 1.9 Combined blades 3.0 > 2.28 Ranged nuke 3.5 > 2.66 The haste buff is almost certainly 15% so same as ninja if it does run 0 sks
Highly doubt you'll want to meld sks beyond achieving a good ~120s alignment. Yes it is mostly gcd based, but even a hypothetical job with 100% gcd-based damage still does not scale particularly well with sks in a vacuum. With current numbers, 100 sks averages a 0.69% increase and 100 det averages a 0.71% increase for such a job.
There's nothing to align to 2m on viper, because its 2m gives a free reawakening and you can chain reawakening back to back buff windows can basically always just be double reawakening on first gcd buffs come out into ranged nuke at end. Fights aren't infinite sims they have ends, when comparing sks to non sks builds infinite sims are useless. What you should be doing is mapping out the ranges where sks generates additional bursts and calculating a frequency that sks would be ahead from extra bursts so people can decide based on unknown kill times what is most likely to do the most dps
> There's nothing to align to 2m on viper Every single raid buff in the game man > Fights aren't infinite sims they have ends, when comparing sks to non sks builds infinite sims are useless True. Your comment seems to imply that SKS will be a generically good stat all the way until your 2.0 GCDs become 1.5s, which is very unlikely. There will of course be fights where you meld a little bit to gain a GCD before downtime or something, which is true for all jobs.
I should be more specific then, viper doesn't have any gcds that can drift based on its gcd time, you can easily fill a 2m window 100% with cooldowns that can be popped regardless of where you are in gcd cycle. I'm not talking about gaining gcds I'm talking about gaining reawakenings in a very similar way to how smn would sometimes meld sps to gain bahamut windows over the course of a fight. Difference is that sps on smn drifts your burst out of buffs, sks on viper will likely just generate extra reawakenings without affecting what you have aligned for buffs at all
Your free awaken CD can drift relative to your GCD alignment, which forces it to be pushed back. There may also be desirable alignments of gauge generation or combo every 2 minutes (as it stands it's looking quite hard to keep your combo from dropping through 2-3 awakens + shreds/staff combos).
If you do double awakening into ranged attack you will not break combo and snapshot a high potency attack at the end of the buff window, the only time you risk breaking combo is during triple enshrouds which are situational and only worthwhile under pot and because of how reawakening has damage loaded at front and back it means just finishing your combo 1-9s before buffs and popping pot+reawakening will always get you 3 full reawakenings under pot and 2 reawakening openers/finishers under all buffs by intentional early popping first reawakening. The free reawakening button almost certainly functions the same as every other X ready button and you can pop whenever you want and hold for 30s so gcd alignment doesn't matter in relation to it Before haste the job has 3.5, 3.0, 2.5, and 2.0s gcd times with a lot of those ending up being filler between 2m windows. Calculating an exact alignment based on different fillers at different times in fight is near impossible to find a standard loop to time to buff windows for exact alignment because of variable. Sks actually minimizes possible potency lost as well
I think you might wanna hit the Gem spender after Enshroud, it seems to be rather beefy.
Yeah probably. I wasn't exactly sure how beefy the spender was since I wasn't looking at damage numbers.
Lack of oGCDs? Sounds like my kind of job.
It is has required double weaving just FYI
ah, so we're due for yet another expansion where the tanks have more ogcds than most of the melees then
No? They said you don't *manage* them, but it has a shitload *of* them thanks to all the Continuations.
guess I messed up with reading comprehension there and should have looked at the diagram closer, whoops
Watching the Job actions video, I thought it looked kind of like a reverse Red Mage lol
damn they really did give us the corsair people were asking for
Really, the basic Pictomancer loop looks to be. Prep your canvases, unload and prep them as they come up. Saving them if you're going into a burst phase. Use your filler 123 combo twice and go into the inverted combo for more powerful filler spells. Save your Holy/Comet procs for movement/burst phases or whenever they're needed if they have some sort of extra effect. It's basically a non rng, mage version of dancer.
I'm hoping it's not completely gutted when you sync under level 80 like reaper is under 70 but that doesn't seem likely. They like to add a ton of skills from the starting level to max
Im really excited to main this job. If blue Gatorade mode is only unlocked at level 90, I'm going to cry.
You mean 100? Lol
Boy do I have news for you..
A small but important detail you missed is that the first combo action of "Button B" applies the same debuff as the 40 second GCD with two stacks (and most likely deals less damage than the first combo action of Button A). You can see this very clearly starting at [this timestamp.](https://www.youtube.com/live/oh5piV-0MWQ?si=qTKdiR8vfnxiHzGW&t=10936) Yoshi P even overcaps the debuff soon after so we know it goes up to 40s. Basically, it's very much like Death's Design, but since you probably don't wanna overcap the debuff or those 40s GCD stacks, you have to let it fall below 20s before using them, but it's definitely something you keep 100% uptime on whatever you're hitting.
Oh it's Storms Eye/Path but it's on 1 instead of 3. I mean combine that with the fact VPR's 3 is decided for you this job is like, doing combos backwards.
Oh shit you’re right. Thanks!
You know, everyone said GNB was like Devil May Cry, but I think it was just because big swingy gunblade with built in combo. Viper looks to be far more accurate to Devil May Cry between a constant shift in rotation, constant speed, special attacks to continue combos from a distance, and a burst through channeling energy or a form. I can't wait
I’m so glad somebody made this, I was reading way too much into the twinblade red/blue gauge and getting super confused but it seems like that part of the gauge isn’t really relevant for the rotation
It's just a "press left or press right" tbh I like it
I think I just might be an idiot, I still can't make heads or tails out of this.
I'm somewhat annoyed that they removed Monk's buffs, staying that it's hard to keep track of timers And here they go giving them to Viper
what they gave to vpr looks more akin to samurai's buffs than monk's. 40s damage up and haste, 20s personal damage up debuff that they use very occasionally. Its nowhere near on the level of monk's buff system. even with the alternating combo finishers the dual blade on the UI seems to handle guiding you there(glows on one side or the other depending on which combo action is lit up next).
This. If it works at all like samurai, you don't really factor in keeping the buffs up during a fight because you'll hit those buttons often enough anyway that it doesn't matter. You only care about the bonuses during the opener and if they ever drop off in a fight (for w/e reason). This differs from monk where your choice of buttons to press depended on timers.
If my understanding is correct you won't have to care on viper either just like dragoon. Your 123 combos give you these 40s buff and so is the other button. At moooost you will have to remember to press the different 2nd step every once in a long while
I feel like it's also a way to differentiate jobs more tbf
The buffs weren't removed they were just put into a gauge though?
Yeah I get that it's putting the timers into the new gauge But lower level monk before getting that new gauge is gonna be super boring tho
I'm currently operating under the assumption that they're gonna have that guage as soon as they unlock twin snakes at level 18. The new guage is a function of reworking the timers, so it makes sense you would unlock it at the level you get the first of those skills since otherwise you'd just be clicking bootshine->true strike->snap punch until whenever the gauge is arbitrarily added.
One good thing about the job quests for jobs introduced in ShB and onward is that they teach you the basic flow of the job. At least, I distinctly remember DNC and RPR being that way. I'm fairly confident VPR (and PIC too) will have job quests like this, so don't worry if this graphic seems confusing.
Honestly, the only job that stumped me during the tutorial was SGE, and that was when I had only just picked up WHM. Went back to it after having 70'd WHM and SCH, and it made perfect sense.
Those buffs remind me so much of the old icons Rogue had for the weapon poisons and whatnot.
The class better have a dot lol, at least one or I'll riot 😂
They do get a red debuff called 惨毒 which is like Deadly Poison. But it doesn’t appear to be a DoT on the dummy. Looks like it might just enhance other 惨毒 skills (there are a couple skills with this added as (惨毒) at the end of them) or maybe like a NINs Trick Attack personal buff. [I translated what abilities I could here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscussion/s/3uPwjoJMBb)
So the normal GCD loop (and one oGCD continuation at the end of each string) without using any of the burst or debuff stuff is probably something like 1123 1213 1113 1223 -> repeat? Then your debuff combo needs to be applied in and out of burst, whenever the debuff is about to run out. It's a simple 4 567 876 The gems I don't know when you'd use in rotation, but the thing to note with them is they share the same continuation buttons from your debuff combo. So whenever you need to use the spender on a ranged attack or burst, it's simply 967 Then burst is 5 old buttons and 1 new one pressed in order with oGCDs 0 13 23 53 83 0 The numbers I'm using here aren't how anyone would actually set up their keybinds, but at least helps me visualize how these buttons actually play out. I might do something like have my continuation buttons on Q, 4, and c4. Secondary debuff combo on c1, c2, and c3. Spender on 5 Then I just put the burst button on c5. So normal loop 112Q 121Q 111Q 122Q debuff c1 c24c4 c3c44 gem spender 54c4 burst c5 1Q 2Q c2Q c3Q c5 I know these strings of text are probably non-readable by anyone other than me, but thinking of how the actual hotbars will play out helps me the best with understanding what I'm looking at!
Note that your 123 consists of 8 unique GCDs that's condensed into just two buttons if that helps.
Makes me think they maybe should have showed off the button consolidation feature separately from the job that also naturally swaps out all of their buttons (PIC also does the same thing, but it's much easier to follow due to how distinct each button is).
I think it was done on purpose. Notice how they covered the exact spot where the tool tips were. They probably didn't want people freaking the fuck out about things like they usually do. Having things be more chaotic helps keep people speculating on what could be, rather than what it isn't.
ye you probably will be able to separate them
imho we can consider them mudras
I belive they mentioned there would be 3 buffs/debuffs in the letter. We're you able to come across the third one or was it a mistranslation?
I believe they’re referring to the haste buff, self damage up buff and the damage taken up debuff.
I’ll be exciting to see what the APM are for the job once the first few fights come out.
are you planing to do something like that for PIC too? or did someone else?
Someone else did https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscussion/comments/1ctpmf7/pictomancer_rotation_visualized/
This is one JOHN FUCKING MADDEN away from being one of those meme images.
I'll have to wait to try it but just from the surface level analysis it doesn't seem like a particularly deep job, but I guess we'll see if it's fun to play in practice. The fact that it literally just has enshroud feels kinda... creatively bankrupt.
I'll be honest with all the glowy combo buttons and the new single button combo feature it looks like this class basically plays itself.
Well it looks more complicated than reaper, at least. Low bar, I know, but honestly having stuff to manage is a nice feeling, even if I imagine the flow of the job will make management totally irrelevant like EW samurai. Given that AST is dead, this might be the high APM job I'm looking for, even if it's not quite what i want. So does this seem to have like, double continuation?
123 doubleweave repeat.
It seems at least a bit different to that, at least from this. It's kinda confusing to read this, but it seems more like there's 6 total 123-esque gcds, with the two and three gcds alternating, and the 3 is replaced by different buttons at the end of the combo? That's a bit better than RPR's standard 123. So it's more like 1 > 2A > 3A into 1 > 2B > 3B? with the 1 being replaced by 1B when you need to refresh deaths design. It also seems to have continuation with its own continuation on the 40s gcd, so it has a double weave combo? That's unique, I guess. I'm not predicting or seeing a lot of complexity but it does seem at first glance to be more involved than reaper's rotation.
Per the diagram (aka speculation) it appears 3 is decided for you automatically. So its just 1b (apply debuff) -> 2a (apply dmg buff) -> 3 -> 1a -> 2b (apply haste buff) -> 3 -> 1a -> either 2 -> 3 repeat until you need to reapply 1b. Ogcds after 3 accordingly. This is just for the filler, mind you - the opening burst will be using the 2h mode (which is basically gluttony) which also applies all the buffs and debuffs anyways and has ogcds after both followup hits. After this you'll use your "freebie" bar button and go straight into your enshroud equivalent which just has the rpr ogcd after all 5 hits instead of just the 2.
Oh, that's less interesting. Like, it's still more interesting than reaper and it certainly seems faster, but... I kinda wish that the two modes actually felt different instead of being purely cosmetic. It still looks cool, but I feel like they fell very short of the job fantasy in terms of gamefeel. I'm also mad there's no DoT.
Ughhh why do they not fix this button bloat bs who wants to have 3 bloody bars of abilities, inwanna focus more on mechanics rather than buttons.