FFXIV: Dawntrail Media Tour: Viper (VPR) and Pictomancer (PCT) Overview

[@bassheartstrings]

Mans has the best leveling guides out there, full stop. So glad they recognized the crime of not inviting you to the media tour in the past!

[@swiftcastholy9034]

I'm really glad you went to the media tour, I feel like you're one of the few trustworthy XIV content creators and hearing your thoughts is definitely worth something.

[@konnerwilley4844]

LETS GO WESK, GRATS ON THE MEDIA TOUR INVITE

[@wavypavy4059]

Nice overview, I'm really looking forward to trying out both new jobs. As for viper's gauge, personally I'm really glad that both a gauge and the skills give information on which skills are ready, because to me that feels like accessibility and choice of which part of the screen your eyes tend to sit on

[@CUBErt_]

WESK GOT THE MEDIA TOUR LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOO CONGRATS KING

[@Lylliannah]

You always break down jobs into a very easily understandable format. You help me understand concepts that would have been quite difficult for me to grasp without your guidance. I’m so happy that your important contributions to the FFXIV community have been seen!

[@skaapippai]

CONGRATS ON GETTING TO THE MEDIA TOUR!!!!!!!!!

[@wetw0rk14180]

You did great, Wesk. Congrats on getting the invite to the tour. There are few, if any, who deserve it more. Tysvm for the video and the info. I am looking forward to you level 100 guides.

[@nathanrichardson8263]

I'm so happy you had the opportunity to be a part of the Media Tour! It's very well deserved and you've earned your spot to be a part of it! I'm looking forward to Pictomancer and how fun and quirky the moves and motifs are. I have a fun time optimizing jobs and seeing where I can upkeep and this job makes a fresh new change that I've been wanting to see.

[@MrCharly780]

Congrats on getting into the tour! Viper seems so clean and as a reaper main it feels very similar in the awakening state. Definitely im gonna try it

[@SubduedRadical]

I'm so happy you got an invite, Wesk! You're such a nice and humble guy, and I always like seeing when people like you get rewarded. Yeah, I also hate flying (and landing!), and yeah, I hate crowds, and I absolutely feel Imposter Syndrome basically all the time. Maybe it's because of that I'm so so so so so so SO happy for you. :D Thank you for going and getting us this info, and congratulations for going! \o/

[@TheProud1]

So glad you got an invite to attend. Much deserved, you provide so much help to so many players. Well done sir!!

[@ryanstudham640]

THANK YOU for sharing your opinions of the jobs and how they play. A good review is way more illuminating than an encyclopedic list of every cooldown and potency.

[@corn2454]

I already settled on maining picto on theme alone (I'm an artist myself and wanted an art job for ages) but it also seems to have a lot of what I find fun in a job. It seems like it'll have a rotation very Black Mage adjacent where you'll wanna plan out your resource usage based on incoming mechanics, setting it all up pre-emptively will add to that constant micro decision making I love in jobs.

[@keiyangoshin3650]

Congratulations on being a part of the media tour!!! 🎉 Thank you for sharing all your knowledge about the new jobs with us. 😃❤️ Taking everything with a tiny grain f salt. On a scale of 1 to 10 how excited are you for these jobs?

[@WeskAlber]

9 for Viper. Maybe 6 for Picto

[@hisdudeness1835]

I think I'll like Picto. I'm not that good with overly busy jobs with many buttons, OGCDs and all that. Jobs with downtime and a more mental task than "how many buttons I can press in a specific order in this timeframe" seem more like my jam. For example Warrior has like 2 OGCD damage buttons and apart from that it's just GCD combo with a GCD skill based gauge. Summoner is also just "enter phase, do burst damage, pick your lego, do GCD, pick another lego and so on and fourth". The only "busy" job I enjoyed so far has been Machinist and that's because I feel safer with the added distance anyways so I don't feel the pressure of uptime while doing mechanics as much.

[@DarkAura19]

I'm with you, especially since I use controller lol. Less buttons tends to help with that, and I do also just enjoy having to think a little bit more about where I am and what I should be doing. I absolutely love Astro and managing its deck, but since that's not really going to be a thing any more, I think this might help fill the gap a bit. Plus, it's an FF6 job and 6 is my GOAT.

[@hisdudeness1835]

@@DarkAura19 Also using a controller. My go to healer has been Sage so far because I like shield healing over "oh shit I need to heal". Astro always seemed like you need a phd to play.

[@AxeMain]

Viper looks like it's gonna feel fun

[@Skycrickov004]

Grats on the media tour man! Excited to hear your insights leading up to Dawntrail.

[@raarasunai4896]

I’m glad to hear Viper isn’t super complex. I wanted to make it my main since I heard it was being added. Finally I can be my favorite RPG Protag(and role model) Lloyd Irving!

[@Scorchlette]

Damn, Viper looks fun as hell. Seriously can't wait for the 28th.

[@shaidied1828]

My conspiracy theory is they're going to try and make all jobs use a max of 24 buttons next expansion to make the 2 default hotbars for PC and the standard face buttons with triggers for console all that's needed to play every job. Picto and Viper are 23 and 24 respectively which doesn't seem like a coincidence.

[@etchyasketch2851]

🎉 glad yoy got invited to the tour. You make hands down the best levelling guides on here. And im glad theres recognition for it. Good video too. Sounds like viper is cool and picto has some growing pains.

[@kal_delet]

Amazing, congrats ! Happy to see that you've been recognised.

[@raarasunai4896]

I sat down with the tooltips some people shared and a piece of paper and mapped out my Crosshotbars(PS4 player) for Viper and Pictomancer. I have my hot bars set so Bar 1 is Single Target, bar 2 is AoE (with things you use in both, such as Dragonfire Dive being in the same spot on both) and bar 3(accessed through both rear triggers pressed one after the other) is utility stuff(feint addle and the like) Pictomancer came up to only 17 slots filled on bar 1(smudge and Tempera coat went on the utility bar) and viper filled only 11! Unless I’m mistaken, this puts viper at the lowest button count of any job

[@melissab6938]

This is the first time I feel like I have any real idea about what’s going on with Viper. Your videos are the best, thank you

[@cobaltwolfknight]

It feels like Pictomancer is going to take the place of whatever they would have ever done with Geomancer.

[@Castersvarog]

I can believe that, the fact that there’s specifically using six elements is a funny coincidence. Plus that did happen back in Stormblood, Red mage was originally gonna be Geomancer, but was changed in development because having two eastern themed jobs in a game that’s divided between two continents didn’t come out right.

[@redgeoblaze3752]

Personally, I'm really hoping Geomancer will be next expansion's Tank class. I'm thinking it could have a huge focus on Elemental magic. Earth magic to mitigate incoming damage, Water magic to heal yourself, and Fire magic to deal damage. And your 1-2-3 combo generates those types of magic guage in sequence. For their weapon, I'm thinking a Hand-Axe and a shield, just to take that monopoly away from Paladins. To be honest, I mostly just want this because one of my favorite MMO classes ever was the Shaman Tank in Vanilla WoW. Which was insanely fun, but so underpowered that the devs gave up and just made it a DPS.

[@ScottishBookwormQc]

So happy you were able to go :)

[@cashman1228]

I.....think I'll wait for the spreadsheet guys to figure out the Pictomancer rotation before I pick it up lol. I wasn't able to fully grasp it from this video. I'm more excited to level BLM anyway.

[@Shakzor1]

I'd guess one can get the general idea and where the rotation wants to go by just playing it a bit. Maybe wrong orders, but likely not "oh, i played it COMPLETELY wrong" as if you'd play a BLM mainly in ice phase

[@Swimdud]

With the power of Ouroboros, Wesk will finally achieve "Complete global(cooldown) saturation!"

[@c0ntr4d1ct]

fantastic media tour content!

[@one_eyeddd473]

Ty for your hard work wesk

[@n.allstein]

my favorite job guides creator got invited im so happy! :)

[@RhyanGarrison]

Congratulations love your video’s!

[@depoant]

Mr happy viper showcase was so confusing, this is far easier to understand, also congrats on your invite to media tour

[@Keaton_Ambrose]

3:45 I love when the pretty lights take over

[@aphilli97]

Cant wait to sword blitz with viper

[@ElkiLG]

Your breakdown of the viper skills and combos is very, very good. The big jpegs I kept seeing were not exactly intuitive. Great video, thanks!

[@SamoyedSagas]

Viper not being super busy and having little buttons is a surprise to me, makes me actually excited to try it out. Also I paused the video and screenshotted that Picto tooltip the first time Wesk showed it on screen thinking it was ridiculous, only to laugh my ass off when he brought it up at the end, its soooooo long.

[@redgeoblaze3752]

I was thinking the same thing for Viper from what you explained. I'm still hyped for the class, and I think it'll still probably be my melee main going forward, but I also wouldn't be surprised if I just drop it after a while. I'm sure there are a ton of micro-optimizations that require you to fully understand your toolkit. The kind of thing I was hoping new Paladin had, but I was sorely disappointed to be wrong about.

[@DevilSeiji]

Hell yeah \o/ was hoping to get videos from you

[@DevilSeiji]

Damn. Viper makes my head dizzy xD Def gonna need that guide of yours when dt is out. Good thing I plan to start out with picto so I wont panic.

[@kh0nan]

My body is ready.

[@Snowinmyears]

my only negative point about viper is the forced consolidation of the basic combo. I don't mind that it's only 2 buttons, and i'm still gonna play the heck out of it, but i would've loved the option to have the combo be 5-6 buttons instead, as that would feel a bit more like monk to me, and i have monke brain

[@KuroeNezumi]

I mean, same. But also, I feel bothered that they took all the stuff from other jobs which were simplified even more than before and then gave some form of it to Viper. They took Monk's DoT and more restrictive-yet-free flowing combo (if what they said about making its combo work like other jobs, where they can press any button at any time, but have a full on linear rotation they must perform to maximize damage, because only one button at a time gains the potency benefit) and Ninja's management of an ASPD buff (which I'm not as pissed off about, but still feels weird that they'd remove it and immediately give it to another job). Don't get me wrong, the job looks cool, but I'm just nervous because as much as button bloat is a thing, as a monk main it ticks me off that part of the more unique aspects of it seem to have been moved to an entirely different job because they needed something to give to it.

[@Snowinmyears]

​@@KuroeNezumi i completely get where you're coming from, as i'm a monk main as well. I think it's easy to look at systems getting changed from one kind of resource management to another, and feel like things are getting more simple, or that the job has lost some key identity, especially when the new flashy job gets a similar system to the one your job lost. BUT as it stands, the changes to monk and ninja aren't actually gonna impact the feel of the jobs too much, and who knows, we might actually find out that we prefer the new versions. Don't get me wrong, i felt my spirit leave my body when i initially read the monk changes on the liveletter just as clearly as any other monk main, but now i'm just excited to get my hands on the DT version of the jobs. (RIP optimal drift) and honestly? Viper steals features from all the melees 😂

[@mrdarkstar3756]

Well deserved invite bro.

[@mrdarkstar3756]

Picto sounds like it's going to be very punish8ng on death lol. That 2nd and 3rd trial gonna be a doozy

[@SavannahNightwolf]

Holy WOW is Viper FAST!

[@Tigerbro6]

yo weskalber media tuor streamer lets GOOO

[@sharkntux7402]

Yeah im gonna need a guide on just how the sword gauge works...im a little slow 😅

[@Dzyntara]

I know you didn't have much time with the jobs and things can still change - but I'd like to ask anyway in case. Does Pictomancer rely on any weaving or double weaving?

[@Relhio]

I don't understand why they added a melee dps when there was a spot empty for ranged physical. I was also hoping they would've added a pure offensive support akin to Augmentation Evoker, but my biggest disappointment is that after all this time there's still no hunter/ranger job in the game.

[@kingjayded4752]

Agreed

[@penrilfake]

They added a new melee because they're rounding out the Scouting job. Maiming had a duo, Striking had a duo, and then there was NIN. Next expansion will probably see a fourth Phys Ranged.

[@backslash4141]

It is worth noting that we are getting the beast master limited job, which we haven't seen yet as well

[@waffledough8476]

@@penrilfakeBLITZBALL!!!

[@Relhio]

@@backslash4141 It's a limited job. If I wanted to play single player content, I'd go play a single player game.

[@prismcrystahla]

1:58 So despite news of having the option to combine certain button to changing buttons or not, you CANT un-combine and separate Vipers 1 2 3 combos? aka the ONE THING i was worried about?? fuck my life.

[@Shakzor1]

If they're 2 seperate combos, is there any reason to un-combine them? Not like they allow you to do different orders like DRG with either the dmg or debuff paths after the first strike

[@aidanmillow566]

Well, I for one find this description of Viper highly appealing; it will probably be my second job to 100 (after Gunbreaker) based on this. I'm somewhat surprised that it seems to be SAM levels of selfish.

[@karstaboi3330]

We gaming

[@chrisanderson7820]

Hmmmm, I am not super keen on "upkeep" jobs, I prefer not having to babysit my gauges and buffs, just use and done. Maybe I will like Picto less than I thought I might, will have to see.

[@sirlenemodesto2665]

Monk AND reaper!?

[@iaxacs3801]

Viper looks like it wants you to balance between the 2 GCDs like the 2 blades it has, I'm willing to try it out though I hope it gets to a point where 1-4's effects are open ended to allow the player to decide their own order of how to apply them. Would be super unique if they could manage to pull something like that off when literally every other Job has a set rotation you flow through. Would love to play where I ebb and flow with the feel of the fight to change my rotation on a whim at least in some way

[@redbloodreaver4935]

I'm thinking the Viper player is gonna have problems discerning the actual position of his character if he is always visually zipping and teleporting around

[@WeskAlber]

DRG already has been doing this since 2.0. It'll be fine I expect

[@Dae-Dae97]

Idk how but this is the first time youve confused me. Viper is one of those jobs i just need to feel in game

[@WeskAlber]

The base combo really is a huge bit of confusion. Once you can play with it yourself while having the chart in mind, it will click. And someone even just said Happy video confused them and mine is fine lol. Given this isn't following the 1-100 structure could be part of why, its very fundamentally differently structured. I'm sure Happy's version is fine, its a matter of needing a different way of explaining it. Try his or anyone else's and maybe you'll get it, unless you truly just want to wait.

[@RexIsOnline]

6:51 Complete. Global. Uptime.

[@TehZagar]

I honestly did not understand a thing about the picto... Im so confused.

[@WeskAlber]

Maybe once I get to the 1-100 guide.

[@Castersvarog]

I am genuinely super excited to play Pictomancer during Dawntrail. It looks like such a fun and well built job. Viper looks pretty cool to, gotta try it out

[@TruxtonII]

6:51 Wesk's new main confirmed.

[@EclipseHighroller]

So pictomancer is perfect for Astro mains, gotcha

[@HeartPliz]

Thx for the videos, but as someone who gets copium pressing 1 2 3, are we able to bind the buttons for the 1 combo and 2 combo on viper?

[@WeskAlber]

Nope, as I say it seems build with condensing in mind. It has 0 options for splitting skills up

[@HeartPliz]

@@WeskAlber unfortunate, but understandable. Thx sir.

[@OneFiveYankee]

I’m a little bummed that viper is going to be a bit brainless.

[@TaranTatsuuchi]

I don't see why they couldn't make 123 combos into 111 combos.... A couple of jobs might need some adjustments, but overall it should be doable. And it would free up more buttons for interesting skills to be added.

[@jesserebelo3583]

I'm hoping they let us uncombine buttons on viper and the button combination was a media tour limitation only

[@johnwhalen7579]

I’m very very VERY excited for Viper. I love dual wielders and dual bladed type characters. I do think the particle effects are too much though… can’t even see the character in all those effects

[@NameTakenSensei]

Appreciate the info, but Isnt every job really an "upkeep job" 😂 I can't think of a class that regularly wants to hold CDs consistently

[@WeskAlber]

Different in that you need to actually stop everything to worry about upkeep. Where every other job just hits stuff on CD, Picto has to stop and work on their stuff.

[@scifisyko]

It will always bother me a little bit that they already used Zidane’s combat stance for Rogue/Ninja and so can’t use it for Viper.

[@Darkwarp1994]

Well viper going to be a challenge for me on controller but im up for it if i screw up royally then i screw up royally

[@Nodnarb59]

The more I see of these two jobs, the less excited I get for them I dunno. I'll level them for the all jobs to 100 achievement, but doubt I'll main them or play them outside of that.

[@userbunny14]

Viper seems way easier then monk or samurai. I pretty much don't understand those jobs at all. Especially monk. Those two and ninja just hurt my brain. But Viper seems easy peasy.

[@_Zeshia]

viper looks so good but i fear it will feel awful on controller with all the buttons u have to press. hopefully thats not the case

[@WeskAlber]

Viper has very few buttons actually. Notice how nearly the entire toolkit for ST fits on 12 buttons.

[@_Zeshia]

@@WeskAlber hm would you say if you are used to ninja (main) viper will feel easy ? because the high apm viper has looks definitly harder to do on controller than k&m but that could also be just me haha

[@WeskAlber]

@@_Zeshia Proper placement, I think it will be easy

[@DamianRavenhold]

Pictomancer’s consensus of being “hey its probably not my thing but someone definitely will like it” FFXIV has really suffered from changing the identity of jobs to be as homogeneous as possible. To be honest I think having jobs that you absolutely do not want to play is a good thing. Its someone’s play style, just not yours and I think they should do that more.

[@MegaVbnz]

To me viper feels uninspired and secondary. Picto, on the other hand, is like a breath of fresh air in casters department. Visuals though...

[@aoifebakunin1966]

Visuals are the best part

[@phantomvox]

Im not excited about these two. I will play Viper for a while but not main it. Picto is definitely not for me.

[@piconio]

Viper not having any mitigation to protect himself is ridiculous, even selfish dps like samurai or black mage have something like shield. Unless viper won't beat them in terms of dps, not having any mitigation is stupid and it does not fit when compared to other jobs, hope they will address that

[@WeskAlber]

Dragoon.

[@piconio]

@@WeskAlber dragoon got two charges on a ability that restores portion of hp based on dmg dealt As well as got higher physical defense and more hp than samurai and ninja

[@WeskAlber]

Life Surge is used for damage and doesn't augment defense. See what I said about Bloodbath with that argument. Either way, that is healing, not mitigation. Most raid damage is Magical, which all melees share M.Def. You should be worried about Physical Ranged which have less HP, the same M.Def AND no Personals. Even without Personals (which Red Mage lacks too), Mages have a higher M.Def stat that slightly balances it out. Melee HP values are pretty comparable. My DRG/RPR has 83105. NIN/VPR has 82433. Less than a 1% difference at current levels. 1% is a difference for sure, but not that much. To the point that people have complained plenty that DRG doesn't have a personal either. Homogenizing for the sake of it is pretty pointless.

[@piconio]

@@WeskAlber still majority of the jobs got their way of keeping themselves alive for some time when healer is down, im not talking about savage content where red mage removes vercure from the hotbar. Im talking about dailies and normal content when getting a bad healer/tank is common and a melee job not having in their kit anything to protect themself is simply a bad design in the current sate of jobs. Add to that too that viper does not bring anything outside of their dmg Zero buffs or party wide mitigation in exchange for survivability

[@WeskAlber]

@@piconio If Life Surge counts, see again, Bloodbath. VPR is very speedy even outside of Reawakening. This makes Bloodbath better by default. Further, given the relative simplicity of Viper's toolkit being mostly GCD based, even after the potencies are reduced (most Tour potencies tend to go down from my experience) you'll still be doing bigger hits. Bloodbath is also a "portion of damage" making it scale stronger with bigger hits. This is true regardless of the content. Hence my original point. They may be leaning into Bloodbath more as far as not needing a personal. Viper is not the most squishy DPS, and the squishiest DPS has been surviving raidwides no problems for years. As for casual content, it's casual content. You can survive even Tank Busters usually. This is with or without personals. Personals aren't even good in casual content because of their relatively low value. If your tank died in wall to wall, Bloodbath is the thing that will save you due to AoE damage scaling. In a Boss, you'd use it on a tank buster that you should be able to survive anyway. It is in those Savage contexts where the problems would begin. Where a single raidwide can do 100% of your HP when unmitigated. Finally, Vercure being removed from a RDM's bar in Savage? That's incorrect. Vercure still has usage in Savage and Ultimate. For healing in downtime - it's free in downtime after all - and for Dualcast procs. Which still isn't a mitigation, which still means RDM has no self mit, which I don't think anyone has called poor design.

[@VainEldritch]

Fab work Wes - really useful.

[@HyouVizer]

10:11 idk if it's like this for other the languages, but they seriously need to chill with this yugioh card effect wall of text good lord smh.

[@WeskAlber]

They can't or they don't give you all the info. If a skill does a lot it does a lot. Hell they even missed something on this one

[@HyouVizer]

@WeskAlber Issue is giving separate naming terminologies of 2-3 buffs from same action, then elaborating what each of them do making it longer. They need to just give simple straightforward info and remove the terminologies.