Who Else Loves the New Viper Strike?

Imo, Viper Strike makes possible some of the best lower budget builds in the game. I just made a viper striker and it plowed through content so fast. Right now I could do level 70 maps and I'm only level 57. Never had an easier time getting through content.

What gear and build do you use ? I am interested to make a new char using viper strike but last time I tried it after the change I was kind of disappointed.

Well it's important to get all of the new degen/chaos damage nodes which double your viper strike as far as I know. Next you need an item that boosts your gem levels. Ideally a shield which as you can imagine is super rare so for now I'm using an off hand axe. If you can't get some like that then use a Geofri's helmet. Then if you have a Empower gem, link it. Then to add even more damage you throw a searing bond totem too which also benefits from the damage over time passives.

What's so good about viper strike is that you don't need a bunch of links or any physical damage really just degen. Which means you have a bunch of passives left over for more defense and utility than usual.

This is my gear atm, as a side I am undefeated in PvP with this build. As level 55 I beat a level 66 guy who was trying to use perma freeze on me as well as a leap slammer with high damage.

I know I have a cast on death gem but that's just in case, the build doesn't get killed a lot. The only thing that killed it lately was I killed Kole in Meriless and the stupid caster used detonate dead on his corpse.



The sword's damage doesn't matter, you just want to convey the chaos stacks so the sword works just fine it even has a decent attack speed and everything.

Once the character hits level 61 I'll put this axe in the off hand slot to boost Viper Strike to +5 levels. At that point it will do about 7000 DPS of degen which isn't super fast but it's strong against ES enemies.

Viper Strike build surely opens some interesting choices for weapons. Was about to try one myself aswell.

Do you know if the quality bonus from Added Chaos Damage is going to affect the DoT aswell?

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Grughal wrote:

Viper Strike build surely opens some interesting choices for weapons. Was about to try one myself aswell.

Do you know if the quality bonus from Added Chaos Damage is going to affect the DoT aswell?

Yes, it will.

Sounds great, but how expensive is the build you currently have? If it's over 3ex worth of gear (standard prices) then it's too high for me to even consider.

Are you going to start a guide (thread) on this build?

sounds fun , a melee dot build.
what about puncture and such ?

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Zedda wrote:

Sounds great, but how expensive is the build you currently have? If it's over 3ex worth of gear (standard prices) then it's too high for me to even consider.

Are you going to start a guide (thread) on this build?

His numbers don't add up and the only expensive portions in his build are the level 2 empower and a +1 all, +2 melee gems weapon.

You should be very skeptical of the numbers you hear here.

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His numbers don't add up and the only expensive portions in his build are the level 2 empower and a +1 all, +2 melee gems weapon.

You should be very skeptical of the numbers you hear here.

Indeed, also go fight a chaos resistence/regen/allies regen mob and tell me how you like fighting a mob that you cannot damage.

VS is lacking. It deals less damage then before the nerf even with all the nodes. This makes it a skill requiring 47 points invested in the passive tree to not even get it on the same level of dps where you did not need to invest any point in pre-dot patch.


Edit :



Added the viper strike sub forum link so you can check the numbers yourself by people who are actually testing this and comparing to pre-patch. Enjoy.

Here are my numbers, which are really loose I'm no mathematician.

level 25 viper strike is about 500 damage per stack. The passives basically double that to 1000 per stack. 4 stacks = 4000 damage. Add vulernability and it's roughly 5600. Now along with this I said in my post that I added searing bond totem which is what pushes the number up to 7000 DPS guesstimate. This isn't even counted desecrated ground from the chest which does a ton of damage vs bosses. Bosses melt so fast. Some more than others. Kole and 2nd phase Dom in particular just get cut like melted butter.

And yes I have to fight chaos resist mobs all the time I told you at level 56 I was doing level 68 maps easily even chaos resists double bosses. Of course I do the maps white because I'm underleveled. This is a real build that actually works.

And it also works in PvP. It's a good all rounder and the items are cheap you don't need a mirrored dagger and a bringer of rain in order to do this build.

Every key item can be bought for 1 chaos or less.