Viper Strike

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crits just apply critical weapon damage and the normal effect.

thanks for your reply,and it means all added Elemental Damages
Support Gem didn't cause Critical Damage....uhm it sounds really bad

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rogerchtd wrote:

thanks for your reply,and it means all added Elemental Damages
Support Gem didn't cause Critical Damage....uhm it sounds really bad

Actually, all damage components of a critical hit will be multiplied by your damage multiplier, so added elemental and chaos damage will also be increased on a crit. But it shouldn't affect the DoT.

As far as I know, the chaos DoT portion is caused by a debuff that is placed on a monster on a successful hit of Viper Strike. It isn't a normal component of the damage, and thus is not increased by your critical multiplier in the event of a critical hit. If you attached an Added Chaos Damage support to Viper Strike, the chaos damage from the support would become a component of the hit, and thus be eligible for critical damage multipliers. But the chaos damage over time from the debuff would still remain unaffected.

I think the only way to increase the damage of the Viper Strike DoT is to apply the curse Vulnerability. You can also increase the duration to do the same amount of damage every second for a longer period of time before expiring, but it will still deal the same amount per second.

Viper Strike is an excellent skill, especially for high dex rapier builds (which really lack any other kind of solid damage move, with the possible exception of flicker strike, the problem with FS being that it's really simply a better fit for other weapon builds).

The biggest problem with Viper Strike, however, as others have said, is its lack of an AoE component.

Some kind of support gem which makes melee attacks AoE (analogous to the ranged support gem of "multiple projectiles") would solve this problem nicely, short of making Viper Strike AoE to begin with.

I'd like to point out, as well, that the real competitor for this skill for dex specialists is Poison Arrow, which is itself Area of Effect. Needless to say, Poison Arrow is incredibly fun to spec into for bow users. I would be very interested to see the same sort of thing with Viper Strike, though while keeping the melee requirement of course.

My current Ranger revolves around this skill...

I have a +1 to melee skills sword with a 1.70 attack speed, I've specced into golems blood and stacked health as well as attack speed getting my AS up to 2.20

I have increased duration gem on my Viper strike and it's at 10% quality along with the 45% increased duration of skills. Currently it does 120 chaos damage every second for 12 seconds

so with four stacks of VS that's almost 5200 damage. Bosses are absolutely no issue for me as I can just stack it 4 times and run around till they die my only problems so far have been big AoE packs but for those I simply use Molten Shell which usually kills them in 2-3 explosions and FUCKING CASTERS, because regardless of my resists or my health, they seem to be able to chunk the shit out of my health.

Overall I think it's a great gem and when specced into things that benefit it, attack speed, increased duration all that jazz.

However I've yet to test Elemental Proliferation with it but according to a lot of people it doesn't work which makes me extremely sad.

As it currently stands there is NO WAY that I've found of to increased the damage that Viper Strike deals per second through passive skills or equipment that increase +spell/elemental damage.

I really do not like this, while we're seeing 12k damage AoF templars running around just one shotting everything, here I am tapping every single individual monster for a kill and doing it 10x slower than an AoF templar.

Why? Because I enjoy the DoT mechanic, if it wasn't for that I wouldn't be playing this type of character.

It doesn't really need a buff, it just needs a little bit of flexability, less restrictions on what can and can't affect chaos damage and a decent support gem or two, maybe even allowing Elemental Proliferation to affect it.

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Altnaharra wrote:

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Elboat wrote:

As it currently stands there is NO WAY that I've found of to increased the damage that Viper Strike deals per second through passive skills or equipment that increase +spell/elemental damage.

Vulnerability Curse.

Does this actually work? If so I may pick it up. but I really don't have any more freakin places on my skill bar for it :/

How does this ability work with Adder's Touch? Since Mark said that you cannot have simultaneous chaos debuffs.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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IrishKigoi wrote:

How does this ability work with Adder's Touch? Since Mark said that you cannot have simultaneous chaos debuffs.

No I didn't?

Viper strike charges are a completely separate debuff to poison, and you can have both, and both will take effect.
multiple poison debuffs don't stack, only the highest of them takes effect at any given point, but viper strike is it's own separate defbuff.

Perhaps I assumed incorrectly. So Adder's Touch from passive and Poison Arrow from the skill gem are considered the same type (Poison, even thought I can,t find anything in the passive skill tree or game items that affects "poisons")... But Viper Strike and Poison Arrow (which are both from Skill Gems) aren't the same type so they do stack. And yet all 3 do Chaos Damage over time.

Also the extended duration of buffs/debuffs of passive skills doesnt affect the Adder's Touch poison (because it's from a passive skill) but it does affect Poison Arrow it sounds like.

It just seems like several quasi-relationships that don't make a consistant "big picture." This isn't making sense to me. I'm not trying to be argumentative Mark, I'm just struggling with the mechanics here.