Viper DPS Rotation, Openers, and Abilities — Dawntrail 7.05

The two hits from Reaving Fangs and Swiftskin's Sting allow us to buffer the opener to align it nicer with our party's buffs. The Vicewinder that follows finishes off our buffs and sets up a proper burst window. We get the haste buff up first, because it shortens the subsequent GCDs from the Vicewinder combo and sets us up for success later down the line. The actions after Reawaken are the strongest available at that time. Later on, at the 2-minute window, we will end up instead making sure our buffs are all properly refreshed and roll into Reawaken back-to-back.

The Viper has a simple 3-hit Weaponskill rotation which can be utilized using two buttons, which are automatically replaced by the second and then third steps of the combo. This looks quite confusing at first, but is actually extremely simple in execution. The explanation is meant to be read while following along with the image to the right.

• First and foremost: Ignore the Job Gauge for now. I'll get to that a bit later!
• The first hit of the combo is either Steel Fangs or Reaving Fangs. These two actions deal the same damage, but whenever you use one, it will provide you a buff to use the other one on the next loop. In practice, you will just always alternate between Steel Fangs and Reaving Fangs each time you get back to your first hit.
• The second hit is a choice of two actions. Steel Fangs turns into Hunter's Sting, which provides you with a damage buff while Reaving Fangs turns into Swiftskin's Sting, which provides a haste buff, instead. These two options are always the same, no matter which option you chose first, and both actions always transform.
• The third hit is a choice of four actions, but you only ever can choose from two of them, based on the option chosen for the second hit, as shown in the flowchart.
  • Hunter's Sting unlocks Flanksting Strike over itself and Flanksbane Fang over the other button. Both are Flank positionals.
  • Swiftskin's Sting unlocks Hindsbane Fang over itself and Hindsting Strike over the other button. Both are Rear positionals.
  • Each of these options provides you with an additional buff that will increase the power of a different option. This is a static rotation in the order of Flanksting Strike → Hindsting Strike → Flanksbane Fang → Hindsbane Fang and then it repeats. Additionally, on pressing one of the third hits, your Serpent's Tail action will turn into Death Rattle for additional damage. Each time you land a third hit of this combo, you gain 10 Serpent Offerings, colloquially referred to as Juice or Snilk (snake milk).
• Once you finish your first combo of the encounter, your glowing buttons will always guide you toward your best choice. This is indicated in two ways - first is by the action itself lighting up with the glowing border, and the second is by the glow on your Job Gauge (seen below). Which side lights up indicates which skill to hit - left side for Steel Fangs and its transforms and right for Reaving Fangs and its transforms. This bonus is significant, so you should always be following the directions.
• As you can see in the image, the rotation of these 4 third hits will also naturally force you to alternate the second hits back and forth, which makes it easy to maintain both of the buffs they provide. If you follow the opener, you will always be pressing the same button twice for the 1-2 hits of each combo, pairing Steel Fangs with Hunter's Sting and Reaving Fangs with Swiftskin's Sting.

In addition to this, there is Vicewinder. This combo also has 3 hits to it, but the second and third hits may be used in either order. Hunter's Coil provides the damage buff and has a Flank positional, while Swiftskin's Coil provides the haste buff and has a Rear positional. Each of these allows you to utilize Twinfang Bite and Twinblood Bite and gives you 5 points toward your Serpent Offerings gauge. The Hunter's Coil buffs Twinfang Bite and Swiftskin's Coil buffs Twinblood Bite. Each of Twinfang and Twinblood buff each other, so the overall string looks something like:

Vicewinder → Hunter's Coil → Twinfang Bite > Twinblood Bite → Swiftskin's Coil → Twinblood Bite > Twinfang Bite

This order of actions can be seen in the opener image, above. Each of these three GCDs are longer than standard - a base of 3.0s GCD spin compared to the standard 2.5s - so weaving in these two actions is easy, regardless of ping.

While executing the standard rotation elements above, you will rapidly fill your Serpent Offerings gauge, sometimes referred to (as explained above) as "Juice" or "Snilk" - in case either term has caused you any confusion. On reaching 50 points on the gauge, you can execute Reawaken, an area-of-effect Weaponskill that unlocks access to a series of Generation skills: First Generation, Second Generation, Third Generation, and Fourth Generation. In order, these actions naturally replace 1st Steel Fangs, 2nd Reaving Fangs, 3rd Hunter's Coil, and 4th Swiftskin's Coil. You also gain access to Ouroboros which replaces Reawaken itself. Pressing Ouroboros ends your burst phase immediately, so make sure you save it for last.

After each hit of the four Generations, you will have 1 off-gcd action - a Legacy of matching order: First Legacy, Second Legacy, Third Legacy, and Fourth Legacy. These actions all replace Serpent's Tail as they become available. As seen in the opener, the Reawaken phase is a relatively straightforward series of button presses.

On pressing Serpent's Ire, our 120s cooldown action, you gain one free usage of Reawaken that costs no Offerings. This is how we're able to execute it immediately in the opener, and it facilitates our double-Reawaken burst window at every even minute in the future! In general, Viper is resource positive, so you will always have excess Offerings and need to plan accordingly.

One big tip - Reawaken does not break your Steel Fangs or Reaving Fangs combo attacks, but it does break your Vicewinder combo, so plan accordingly!

Whenever you hit Vicewinder or Serpent's Ire, you gain a Rattling Coil. These appear as small red gemstones on your job gauge. Each one can be spent individually to execute Uncoiled Fury. This is a strong action with a 3.5s base recast, longer still than Vicewinder. It also triggers an off-gcd combo with Twinfang and Twinblood, in that order, turning them into Uncoiled Twinfang and Uncoiled Twinblood. While it is useful for damage in the opener, beyond that it can be used whenever you would like while you have Rattling Coils. It is best saved when forced to disengage from the boss for mechanics due to its long range or to correct your rotation sequence leading up to a burst window.

As Viper lacks any damage-boosting cooldowns, our "burst" will rely on the buffs coming from our allies, which all align neatly with the 120s - 2 minute - window. This can be tracked internally via the cooldown for Serpent's Ire. We pop it very early in the opener so that when it comes off of cooldown, we press it immediately, buffer with one additional GCD, and then activate Reawaken. We should have enough Offerings to then immediately re-enter Reawaken after the first one finishes. If our party is doing well, this should allow us to land two Ouroboros under their buffs for a massive damage gain.

Using these two windows back-to-back, however, will last for over 22 seconds, so it is imperative that we refresh our buff timers prior to activating it. The ones we worry about primarily are the damage and speed buffs from the Hunter's and Swiftskin's skills, respectively. The 40s runoff of these buffs can run into problems if it was too long since your last re-application. The 60s runoff on your finisher buffs and the Steel Fangs and Reaving Fangs buff is very unlikely to be in danger of falling off because of the double Reawaken window, so they are less of a consideration. Remember - you can start a basic 1-2-3 combo, execute the double, then finish the combo off after!

All of our basic actions have directly analogous area of effect actions. The entire Steel Fangs and Reaving Fangs combo becomes based from Steel Maw and Reaving Maw with Hunter's Bite and Swiftskin's Bite providing the same buffs as you should expect by now, and Jagged Maw and Bloodied Maw acting as the third hit to those combos, each one buffing the other, just the same as the standard 1-2-3. They even provide Last Lash, an aoe version of Death Rattle.

Vicewinder has a similar analogue in Vicepit with a shared cooldown and Hunter's Den and Swiftskin's Den following them up. The Den actions trigger combos from Twinblood and Twinfang - Twinblood Thresh and Twinfang Thresh - as follow-up off-gcd actions in exactly the same manner as the single-target variant.

Uncoiled Fury and the entire Reawaken combo are also all aoe by default. As such, when fighting trash mobs in dungeons, your rotation is basically unchanged, just utilizing the aoe versions of your normal skills. Currently, all aoe actions are a gain on three targets.

The most concise way to describe the general gameplay is that you are managing a damage and haste buff, similar to Samurai, while maintaining a 3-hit combo with similarity to the core Monk combo string. The buffs and the 3-hit combo naturally flow by performing the rotation and following the lights. During burst, you need to refresh your buffs ahead of it to perform your two Reawaken combos back-to-back. Viper does not have any raid buff utility or personal mitigation options available to it. It is a purely selfish melee DPS job.