Puncture vs Viper strike

I'm building a DW claw shadow and I'm probably going to go for ghost reaver/CI, but I haven't decided yet. Anyways, which gives a better DOT and which scales better with levels? I've never used puncture an any characters, but I use viper strike on my DW duelist and at 4 stacks it does quite a bit of damage. Against bosses, its where almost all of my damage comes from, and I'm expecting to need a DOT ability later in cruel and merciless.

I know that the downside of viper strike is that you have to hit 4 times for full stacks and that has gotten me killed a couple times because I was trying to get all the stacks in one go. But then puncture doesn't stack, so I'm not sure how well that works.

Puncture is based on weapon damage, so I would assume it would be better later and maybe not the best for early game. Anyone have experience with the two?

Puncture works best when the enemy is moving around (if you play Dota 2, it's very similar to Bloodseeker's Rupture). Not really too sure on any more specifics than that though.

i think puncture is great if combined with chance to flee support gem and viper strike is just great because you can do hit and run with it !

Provided the enemy doesn't have Chaos Inoculation and you're not using a bow, Viper Strike will stomp all over Puncture any day.

For a start, puncture's DoT is based on the initial damage packet. That means you need to have specced in the weapon you're using (costly, node-wise) and that you'll want to spend a few slots Supporting puncture with damage enhancements.

Secondly, you can't stack Puncture. If that initial hit sucked, the puncture will suck. Try again.

Thirdly, to capitalise on Puncture, you have to make the enemy move. So you're essentially playing tag, and not all the mobs are going to come chasing after you that quickly.

In contrast, Viper Strike is consistent Chaos damage over time. Every hit does precisely the same amount of damage. It blitzes puncture as a hit-and-run skill.

Any curse that benefits Puncture will benefit Viper Strike with equal efficacy, with perhaps Critical Weakness being the exception.

Being Chaos damage, Viper Strike eats mages for breakfast, again assuming they're not using CI, which to my knowledge very few mobs do.

Of course, if you're facing someone or something with CI, you put the Viper Strike away and go Puncture.

As a respectably leveled mobile melee shadow (63 during Closed Beta, could handle merc act 2 just fine), there was no time where I'd choose Puncture over Viper Strike.

Edit: a little low level math for you.

At level 16, Viper Strike does 221.7 Chaos damage per second for 7 seconds. You can stack it four times for roughly 900 chaos damage a second for 7 seconds.

At level 16, Puncture will do 16% of your initial hit over time (not specified how long bleed lasts, but I assume 5 seconds), and 80% extra if they're moving.

So regardless of how many nodes you've spent on your weapon, Viper Strike at level 16 will deal 900 damage a second for 7 seconds. Not bad for zero node investment.

Let's assume you really love your weapon and you've gotten, oh, 5000 damage from your puncture hit. You'll be dealing 800 extra damage for each second of the duration of the bleed, and almost 5000 a second if you can get them moving.

Obviously that's far more impressive than Viper Strike but my question is -- how many nodes did you spend on your weapon type to get Puncture to 5000 damage a hit?

I've never really focused on weapon speccing so I'm not really being hypothetical here. I just feel that if I can deal my weapon attack damage + 1k chaos damage a second for 7 seconds (usually much longer because I use TC and Increased Duration) then those nodes are better spent elsewhere.

My listed DPS with Viper Strike at level 63 was something really silly like 200, but as I said I was having no problem clearing merciless act 2 in closed.

I don't know. I have a puncture+flicker strike dagger shadow on the go right now and the only reason I'm not using Viper Strike is because I like seeing all that blood.

Thank you for the break down. For the most part it is along what I was thinking already, but I figured they wouldn't have an ability that is outclassed in almost every way by another one, so I was making sure I wasn't missing anything with puncture. That being said, I know it's still in beta and hopefully it will be balanced out better soon just for the fact that it would open up more options.

For a melee shadow, how's Puncture stack up to 1.2 Viper Strike? I can't decide.

Charan's posted a pretty tough argument but I dunno, my 2h sword crit shadow just feels so much better with puncture than VS. I ran with VS for a long time and saw a marked improvement on switching to puncture. Maybe it's because I almost always crit with it, or maybe it's because I do around 2000 a hit, but one puncture is enough to almost kill piety for me. Bonus points for getting her while she's in her firechicken form.

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Lenox2288 wrote:

For a melee shadow, how's Puncture stack up to 1.2 Viper Strike? I can't decide.

i was building a 4Dot char with viperstrike+hoa and

but i gave up... its strong, but desync ruins the gameplay of melee char

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Crossflip wrote:

Charan's posted a pretty tough argument but I dunno, my 2h sword crit shadow just feels so much better with puncture than VS. I ran with VS for a long time and saw a marked improvement on switching to puncture. Maybe it's because I almost always crit with it, or maybe it's because I do around 2000 a hit, but one puncture is enough to almost kill piety for me. Bonus points for getting her while she's in her firechicken form.

If I understand VS mechanics, crit builds in general are an outlier to charan's argument I think, as puncture dot gains a lot from crit strikes and VS dot stays steady crit or otherwise.

Piety would be an example of a mob where puncture is almost universally better because she does not want to stand next to you, so you dont have to convince her to chase you and also you lose up time on viper strike as she wanders away randomly.

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LostForm wrote:

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Crossflip wrote:

Charan's posted a pretty tough argument but I dunno, my 2h sword crit shadow just feels so much better with puncture than VS. I ran with VS for a long time and saw a marked improvement on switching to puncture. Maybe it's because I almost always crit with it, or maybe it's because I do around 2000 a hit, but one puncture is enough to almost kill piety for me. Bonus points for getting her while she's in her firechicken form.

If I understand VS mechanics, crit builds in general are an outlier to charan's argument I think, as puncture dot gains a lot from crit strikes and VS dot stays steady crit or otherwise.

Piety would be an example of a mob where puncture is almost universally better because she does not want to stand next to you, so you dont have to convince her to chase you and also you lose up time on viper strike as she wanders away randomly.

In addition you can put puncture in a trap if needed, and also VS doesn't apply with every strike. If you are comparing apples to apples, puncture just works better. A few other points.

*There are no bleed resists vs Chaos res or CI
*Puncture has more weapon choices
*Puncture scales better, and even crazy in some niche builds (see OP chin sol)
*You can puncture at range(bow or trap), VS is melee which is inherently more dangerous.
*If you are kiting to some degree, Puncture's added damage is better than VS's DoT stacks when moving.