[3.1] Viper Strike Champion - UberAtziri/Shaper/Guardians/Chayula/UberLab

Welcome to my first ever guide, exiles!



In this guide, I would love to show you my current build which I have been playing for almost a week of in-game time. I was actually late for the Harbinger league (2 months late) but managed to figure out what's the best for me to work on the new reworked poison scaling that's newly introduced in 3.0. Lastly, I've done the 40 challenges completion mostly with this character and I am a returning player from the Sacrifice of the Vaal expansion back in the day. I've had a blast with the new acts and the other contents before 3.0, big props to GGG.

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3.1 update: It's been almost a week long that the new on-going Abyss league has been launched by GGG, so I decided to refresh this guide as the new major patch seems to be granting this build with some quite good things which I consider as buffs. After taking a look at the build on Path of Build based on the new patch etc, I can safely guarantee that this build is still viable and there's no major rework at all to tinker around. The good news is that this build might get more stronger due to Witchfire Brew's change and also a new unique flask called Coralito's Signature which boosts the poison duration up to 75% and grants Perfect Agony.

Unfortunately I don't have interest in trying to showcase on a video how it would stand a fight against the Elder and Abyssal Lich but I assume they aren't any bigger than Shaper's health points as the DPS benchmark.

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After doing some research and getting inspired by Mathil's Wasp Nest Build, so I decided to give the unique weapon a try and it led me to use Viper Strike as the main DPS along with a threshold jewel named Growing Agony which constantly gives me Unholy Might buff upon hitting rapidly.

The idea behind this build's Chaos Damage + Poison DoT DPS is quite simple to imagine; Viper Strike does both physical damage and chaos damage to the enemy while delivering the poison that can stack per hit. Thus, it allows the poison to develop more damage over time on the enemy constructively as many as you hit. Don't need to worry that the poison stacking will fade away as you stop hitting because Temporal Chains will keep the poison's duration much longer, but less curse effect on Boss, significantly on Shaper/Guardians but that is actually not a big deal at all.

Videos:



Pros:



Cons:



Here are the minimum requirements of gears to make this build work good, which mostly cost cheap in total. Recommended as a starter build but requires a 6L (simply buy a cheap corrupted one with the right colors or craft yourself a 6L from Divination cards) it may suffice the needs of progressing further in mapping and UberLab's business:



These are my gears at the moment that I mostly use for the game at current level 95:



Gem links:



PoB's DPS Calculation (Path of Building):

3.0

3.1

With the new Coralito's Signature and Witchfire Brew's Despair, technically as it's calculated on Path of Bulding, they can realize a better damage output to around 1.2 Mill (Normal Boss) and 850k DPS (Shaper/Guardians) with Melee Physical Damage Support gem.

Ascendancy:



Bandit:



Pantheon:



Skill Tree:



Leveling Guide:



For Ascendancy, make sure that you are 5-10 level ahead below each lab's level requirement but you actually can do UberLab at minimum level 75 though if you feel confident enough with the gears you have.

FAQ:



Feel free to ask me anything about this build and don't hesitate to give me recommendations on improving it! Have a good day, exiles!

Reserved.

EDIT1: Updated the main thread that the build can kill Chayula easily deathless on the first attempt!
EDIT2: Uber Atziri down! I would try to do a deathless Uber Atziri video someday when I get the money. I expect to upload the vids possibly tomorrow, stay tuned!
EDIT3: Shaper and Chayula YouTube vids are up, 1080p! More coming soon!
EDIT4: All vids are almost up! having a problem with the upload speed right now, so it's almost done!
EDIT5: Vids all up now! added the gears explanation and its overall costs on the other reserved post by me, probably will be working on the FAQ section next.

Cheers!

Let's talk about the gears and its costs, why I am using them for the build etc. An in-depth detail can be read on this post:



The main weapon of the build, it offers already good base mods (especially the increased attack speed) for a unique weapon with additional 80 - 120 Chaos damage when you apply 5x poison stackings on an enemy. The 20% chance to poison on hit will help to stack up the poison chance to maximum (60% from the Viper Strike gem and two poison nodes, 10% each, on the Claw passive skill tree).

Cost: min. 1 Alch to 5 Chaos

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Even though you don't attack with this weapon as off-hand at all, it significantly increases the chaos damage output you have in general.

Cost: min. 18 Chaos to 90 Chaos

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One of the best unique helmets for UberLab's enchantments, good base AR/EV and the other good things it has to give. You have to get the "30% Increased Temporal Chains Curse Effect" to make the poison's DoT bigger, it also helps to reduce "the less Curse effectiveness" percentage against Standard Boss/Shaper/Guardians.

Cost: min. 20 Chaos to 40 Chaos

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It's quite good for unique gloves which give you decent +max life, some chaos damage and increased poison duration. Don't worry that you probably can't make use of the level 20 Vile Toxins because it's hard to color the sockets into 3 greens and 1 red for Whirling Blades gem setup. Wither obviously doesn't 'hit'. You can still color it into Whirling Blade's gem setup though, but maybe it would make coloring the AR or EV based boots for Wither really difficult.

Cost: min. 1 Alch to 5 Chaos

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Cherrubim, Belly of the Beast or a rare AR/EV chest?

There are the pros and cons between Cherrubim and Belly of the Beast that you can actually compare to suit your playstyle; Cherrubim gives you the best defensive stats (AR/EV) with good life leech to possibly facetank some end-game Bosses with extra Chaos damage (5,8k HP, 21k armour with 64% estimated physical damage reduction).

For more significant health gain with less armor and extra elemental resistances, you'd rock Belly of the Beast (6.4k+ HP, 17k armor with 58% estimated physical damage reduction) with two defensive flasks though (Rumi's Concoction + Witchfire Brew), you can jack up the defense to 70% physical damage reduction.

The damage output Cherrubim gives doesn't actually add up more damage significantly, just a few percentage which's hardly taken into consideration as a bigger DPS comparison. But for me personally, I prefer Cherrubim over Belly for some reasons. Perhaps in my opinion, HC players might want to use Belly but the players' skills ceiling have to be good at efficiently using the flasks (Atziri's Promise to lifesteal, Jade/Granite/Stibnite/Basalt flasks to sustain good defenses and so on.

Meanwhile, if you are on budget looking for a good alternative for the 6L armor, you would probably want to take a look at The Dapper Prodigy Divination card which's far cheaper but it unfortunately involves RNG, because what you want to look for is an AR/EV or Evasion based armor that you can color to 2G 2R 2B quite easily. Or you can just buy one from someone off which they don't need at all for a cheap price because they might have gotten a wrong base armor. There's a possibility that you could actually craft a rare chest that might be so much better than Cherrubim on the defensive way.

Cost: min. 5 Exalted to 12 Exalted for Cherrubim / min. 7 Exalted to 12 Exalted for Belly / min. 42 Chaos + some Alch/Scour or Chaos to craft for the self-crafted 6L rare armor.

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What you want to look for the rings, amulet, belt and boots are very simple in general, get the resistances capped or more with good +max life and additional Armor or Evasion rating, crafted added Chaos damage to Attacks would be useful on rings and amulet. Additionally, you can enchant your boots with "Adds 120 to 180 Chaos Damage if you've taken a Critical Strike recently" to boost your damage so much higher.

You actually don't need a T1 increased movement speed (+30%) mod on your boots as the Devoto can help you out a bit with it because the Whirling Blades gem setup can fully outrun most of the end-game bosses and even other players. Other than being a Champion, that's why this build can be considered arguably as a very good UberLab farmer.

The implicit "Enemies can have 1 additional curse" on amulet through corruption is quite good to let the level 21 Vulnerability from Witchfire Brew boost your DPS during the flask time.

The only gems you want to corrupt to have level 21 are the Viper Strike itself and the Added Chaos Damage Support, it's unnecessary to do so for the other gems on the 6L setup.

Important note: you have to get at least more than +40 to 45 to intelligence mod on one of your rings or amulet to fill up the blue gems' int requirements, one of the blue gems on this build requires 115 intelligence max (Wither at level 13) but mostly the other blue gems at the max level can take up around + 110 required int. From the skill tree alone, you roughly can have 70 intelligence.

Hey nice guide man, will give it a go. How important is the bloodgrip? I could use a rare amulet with a +1 curse?

How would Dendobate work with this build?

Nice build dude, I made a similar version of this build using a raider stacking frenzy charges, but your build does about the same damage and it has more defensive capabilities on top of it all.

I ended up realizing however that the poison build is kind of a meme, it is capable of mapping and killing bosses, but as you mentioned, going a direct damage build will net you similar results except it clears maps faster because you don't need to DOT down monsters or use abyssal cry.

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claydbp wrote:

Hey nice guide man, will give it a go. How important is the bloodgrip? I could use a rare amulet with a +1 curse?

Yes, definitely you can use a better rare amulet with or without that implicit. I was just trying to find the 'best unique amulet on budget' and that Bloodgrip came out to impress me enough. It's quite cheap that I could buy in bulk for trying to get that implicit through vaaling bunch of them.

The reason why it's Bloodgrip as my amulet choice is that it has like T2 +maximum life, T2 +adds phy damage and most importantly, it gives me doubled life recovery from instant Divine life flask (Seething).

Keep in mind though that you need at least +40 int on a ring or amulet to fill up the int requirements from the blue gems such as Blasphemy, Added Chaos Damage and so on. That's why I keep Wither at level 13.

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Korinthian wrote:

How would Dendobate work with this build?

I actually don't like Dendrobate compared to Cherrubim or Belly of the Beast or even any very good rare chest because even though it has good mods to support both poison damage and duration plus the level 10 lesser poison, it doesn't give you +maximum life or good base defensive stats. Recently I checked the stats on PoB that it only gives me around +2% more total DPS inc. poison if I swap the Cherrubim with it which in my opinion clearly isn't worth using that chest.

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ironstove wrote:

Nice build dude, I made a similar version of this build using a raider stacking frenzy charges, but your build does about the same damage and it has more defensive capabilities on top of it all.

I ended up realizing however that the poison build is kind of a meme, it is capable of mapping and killing bosses, but as you mentioned, going a direct damage build will net you similar results except it clears maps faster because you don't need to DOT down monsters or use abyssal cry.

Thanks man for looking at the build, I used to think that poison was bad until the changes on 3.0 came out. When I started playing and tinkering around the new poison changes, I also used to doubt PoB's calculation on the 'total DPS inc. poison' that's so high and quite hard to imagine how it works but in the actual game, it's quite good to kill Bosses depending on the Boss' reduced Curse effect.

Nope.

You really need RT? You're travelling a lot on Dex in your tree.
Just grab the Phys/chaos nodes in shadow start instead.

Nice guide, using abyssal cry with al dhih when leveling or even without it at higher level is quite fun for me, though i'm still hoping for it to cast automatically in some way.