Viper Strike

I failed the attempt to make it work. The project was EB/MoM/EV viper striker on a lvl 83 toon. All worked as intended, except retarded VS. Picked every single DoT node on tree, equipped specific items like Bino + 2x 20% Le Heups. Build worth around 50ex total in items broke down to pieces in a lvl 70 map, right at the first test...
Gave up and reworked it into phys crit reaver. Now it works, lol.

This skill is down the drain, along with PA.

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torturo wrote:

I failed the attempt to make it work. The project was EB/MoM/EV viper striker on a lvl 83 toon. All worked as intended, except retarded VS. Picked every single DoT node on tree, equipped specific items like Bino + 2x 20% Le Heups. Build worth around 50ex total in items broke down to pieces in a lvl 70 map, right at the first test...
Gave up and reworked it into phys crit reaver. Now it works, lol.

This skill is down the drain, along with PA.

Poison Arrow just got a nice boost, essentially eliminating the Nerfs it got back in November. I wonder if it will be enough.

Sucks though that they nerfed PA and viper strike together, and then gave a mild bump together, and now GGG decided only to buff Poison Arrow and Not Viper Strike.

Now we just have to make more noise and demand both a 100% damage increase with progression, and increased DOT damage increase nodes among other things and hope it works in convincing them to adopt some of the requested changes.

I must say: Viper Strike is very underwhelming compared to the newly buffed Poison Arrow. In my build I use both skills, and it's become very obvious after awhile. I got a +3 sword right when I could meet the level requirements and it does a miniscule amount of damage considering the amount of investment I put into chaos/damage over time passive nodes. Ever since I got a +3 bow it has become pretty obviously incomparable.

Viper Strike has a longer duration and stays on the enemy. This allows for a bit more flexibility in damaging certain enemies but it doesn't have the available damage multipliers Poison Arrow has. Give this skill more ways to support it and it'll become much better, like what the damage over time mechanics change allowed for Poison Arrow. Stuff like "Concentrated Duration" (requiring you to reapply the Viper Charges more often) and Increased Burning Damage being changed to Increased Damage over Time would be awesome. Having more supports also opens the possibility of a two-handed sword Viper Strike niche, which would certainly be interesting.

This skill is just utter trash right now. Even with max damage over time + chaos nodes and Bino's Kitchen knife it only gets a total of ~140% increased damage over time. That's terrible when the base damage over time is so low even at level 20.

But I think the biggest issue with the skill right now is that it's the only attack skill in the game that doesn't scale whatsoever with gear. The only item that actually improves its damage is Bino's Kitchen Knife iirc and even then the damage is terrible because so many monsters resist Chaos and there's no external way to improve once you get all the passive nodes. It honestly doesn't matter what weapon you use it with because the damage over time is flat.

Could you try to scale the skill with gear better? No weapons improve its damage except that one unique dagger and that really makes it garbage end-game (and getting to the chaos/damage over time nodes takes forever so it's garbage mid-game too).

I have an idea to fix it: convert x% of physical damage dealt to chaos damage over time.
This would:
-Make 2-handers actually usable with Viper Strike due to their high base damage
-Make crit builds viable with Viper Strike
-Make Viper Strike damage not as laughable when used with Melee Splash / Multistrike

Thoughts?

Also the tooltip dps for the skill is broken, modifiers don't change the damage per charge shown

IMO the easiest way for ggg to clear up the mess they did, is to rework some of the dot nodes to hybrid, with chaos penetration. Instead of hybrid chaos dmg incr. + chaos res, as it's now.

Having in mind how resistances work in this game, chaos penetration is what could significantly improve the damage with less adjustments and headaches.

Usually no one gives a fuck how many chaos resistant types of mobs are in this game, unless he builds VS/PA char. All sources of ele damage have penetration as an option, just chaos haven't? Why? And actually exactly the chaos resistant mobs are the major problem at the moment. And they are everywhere.

Also I would kindly ask Mark, to do a bazaar map with overgeared viper striker by his choice, to know what's exactly the feeling before uninstalling the game, lol.

Fix your mess, don't make us wait for an year or two for that moment to come.
Txs.

Here's a list of what I think would be great for the skill:

• Any method at all to bypass enemy chaos resistance. There are many angles you come at this, GGG:
  
  • Chaos Curse
  • "Chaos damage over time penetrates #% chaos resistance"
  • "Enemies hit by you lose #% chaos resistance for # seconds"
  • "Humanoid enemies take #% increased/more chaos damage over time"
  • Change Desecrate from dealing damage to lowering enemy chaos resistance to those in the area of effect.
• Add and change certain nodes from "increased melee physical damage" to "increased melee damage" akin to generic "increased projectile damage" and "increased spell damage" nodes. For example, the one-handed ones at the start of the Shadow starting area could be changed.
• Add more support gems that affect the debuff:
  
  • Concentrated Duration (might be weird with say Searing Bond but encourages more than just a 3L sceptre)
  • Increased Damage over Time
  • Sicken ("enemies hit by this skill lose #% chaos resistance for # seconds")
• Optionally allow critical strikes to affect the debuff, though with "#% less extra damage over time from critical strikes" or something along those lines. This would make more a pretty interesting niche.

This skill was once good with bows and then moved to melee only restriction with NO apparent reason. I think it should be the old way. While there are some ways to use it with the bow, especially in conjunction with poison arrow, where this skill will find its niche.
Since currently all damage reduction from LMP chain etc. applies to DoT part too, using it with the bow will give interesting choices: to create an AoE skill with lowered dot or powerful single-target, which poison arrow currently lacks. You should give this skill back to bow users, GGG, its damn useless in melee.