Final Fantasy 14’s new Viper job is a dual-wielding blademaster that’s new to the entire series
Final Fantasy XIV has revealed the first of two new jobs coming to the MMO in next year’s expansion Dawntrail. The Viper is a fast-paced melee DPS armed with two swords that can transform, Bloodborne-style, into a single two-handed weapon. It’s brand new for the Final Fantasy series, too.
Producer and director Naoki Yoshida - aka Yoshi-P - unveiled the new class during the opening of this weekend’s Final Fantasy Fan Festival in London, having announced Dawntrail at the game’s earlier event in Las Vegas over the summer. Yoshida appeared on stage dressed in cosplay of the new job.
Yoshida described the Viper as a class designed for players looking for another dual-wielding job to play after Ninja, with the two jobs sharing dexterity melee gear. In contrast to FF14 jobs that have appeared in previous Final Fantasy games - such as Red Mage, Ninja and Dragoon - the Viper is what Yoshida called a “Final Fantasy XIV original”, having been designed specifically for Dawntrail.
A reveal trailer for the job showed the player character able to deliver fast-paced barrages of light attacks while dual-wielding, applying pressure to enemies. Upon combining the two separate blades into a two-handed staff-like weapon, the character boosts their damage with a series of slower attacks. As a Final Fantasy 9 fan, it brought to mind the twin daggers and staffs used by Zidane - but perhaps I’m just hopeful for a bit more FF9 representation in XIV.
The Viper can enhance their damage per second further with a temporary effect indicated by a blue glowing aura around the character. In the gameplay footage, the character delivers a multislash attack - not unlike Cloud Strike’s Omnislash limit break in Final Fantasy 7.
The Viper will be
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