Viper Strike

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Legatus1982 wrote:

RIP viper strike.

Basically, anything you do with this skill will work better with puncture in the skill's current state.

this is exactly the problem with this skill. it would be better if the skill, instead of adding 10% poison on top of the phys damage, if it just did 110% of attack damage as poison damage over 3 seconds then added the poison counters on top of that. other wise you're killing mobs with the phys damage and the poison is pointless, which is the case at the moment anyway.

I think GGG needs to take some pointers from poison necros in D2 to try to make this skill playable. some people like the slow drain killing that D2:lod poison skills did and that's what differentiated it from the other attack skills.

viper strike is pointless in its current state because it RELIES on phys damage instead of AUGMENTING it.

Yup I agree with that assessment.

The problems with this gem:
1. It scales best as phys, which is dumb imo. It's ok to scale with phys but dot and chaos should be more efficient scaling IMO.
2. Dot doesn't always apply, so you often end up killing mobs with the hit trying to even get stacks applied.
3. Initial hit accounts for a large portion of the damage, which defeats the purpose of a dot skill really. You're either clearing faster with reave or other phys aoe, or you're better kiting a boss with hit and run puncture. There's nothing that makes viper strike better in any situation.
4. Relative to puncture, puncture is still vastly more efficient per application when you consider the double dipping effects of phys damage, of which there are quite a few "increased physical damage" nodes on the tree.

Suggested change is to apply a phys to chaos conversion and then make all the damage apply as a dot rather than as a hit. 100% application and just lower the damage per hit to make it have the same average damage.

Also, dot builds have lots of drawbacks and need something to make up for those. In swtor for example, dot builds often did the highest actual dps by a large margin, because of the drawbacks of having to wait for the damage to materialize as well as often having the target be killed by a teammate before it did, resulting in your build being useless. As mentioned earlier this was made up for with extra total damage output and built in leech.

In the case of poe all of the same drawbacks apply if you're in a party so something needs to make up for those issues, and leech can't apply to a dot so something is needed there also.

If it's not going to be fixed, can shadow at least get a different starting skill? :)

Skill s aren't all meant to be usefull for endgame, consider that one as the fastest way (in his niche) to kill hillock and get a sapphir :0

Anyway I tried my best (still some theory to strike) to find an endgame niche were it best other skill... maybe it only need unreleased unique..m
1h 7 atk/s 45% crit and arround 12k dps... the best it does is add 6to 7 stack.. then you run away to appreciate the stack...(usually on bosses) and discover to your great disappointment the degen was due to burning status...and stacks do little to nothing.

Jsed a 2 hander 430 dps...usually the mobs dies before you could see the stack in action..the only way-->
Hatred HoA
Then
VS + melee phys + melee dmg on full +added fire +wed + inc crit dmg.
But seriously with that gem setting any other skill will do best (flicker)
Puncture will do better even if it dont take benefit from ele dmg
Burn prolif will be higher


The only 2 niche I have to test are full conversion chaos build and hyper fast atk speed (14 to 16 atk/sec) with added chaos dmg..but you still have to go low life and use uber corrupted gem setting to ..maybe. ..and I say maybe..get it barely viable...

And we are speaking about a skill gem a shadow starting one! Not a niche build enabling unique


Give it some love please

For now with a lv 76 char with a 2 hander, the best i'v come for now is, and in the best scenario possible (criting and getting a charge ) is arround 12k chaos damage per charge and in single target.
arround 2.5 attack per seconde.
It could be increased by 25% buy going CI or attack speed coul be uped by 70% by going low life.

Have come to putting 20 charges while dual wielding but i dont have 2 mirrored foil so damage is pretty low even if i targeted affordable gear like dreamfeather. So the way to go is Big fast 2H sword for and infernal mantle and pyre to maximize.

I als tried to get 60% inc IAS going with corrupted Dark ray and Snake Bite, but without darray, charges time is..ahem let's be cool and say it's just pretty hard to maintain ( 8 charge = 2 sec with full passives, even with frenzy it's hard to get higher

Mechanically, this skill is incredibly boring now. Scale generic damage, watch things die quicker.

The old version had interesting gear options and one was of the only legit uses of +3 melee weapons. I would like to see it reverted back!

Edit: and the fact that charge damage is based on hit damage makes it even more lame. The only goal to have with this skill is to increase DPS making it incredibly unexciting.

If viper strike splashes poisoned blood on hit which melt high defense mobs like ones with otherworldly mod or high armour very fast by nullifying defensive mods or defensive statuses on mobs, e.g. making blue or yellow mobs temporary degrading to white mob equivalents, that would be interesting.



Another idea: If poisoned mobs temporally attack the nearest creature, irrelevant to foe or not, that would be interesting too. Actually there are many types of poisons even in the real world, so GGG should have plenty of ideas and concepts to make it an interesting gem.

Checking back 1 year after the change. Nothing happened - no fucks given I guess. Will be back in another year.

How about changing this skill so that it synergies with number of charges which are to be consumed and converted on hit as a viper de-buff charge?

For example,
when
3 - 8 charges consumed, then the damage = 0.5 X number of charges consumed
9 - 19 charges consumed, then the damage = 0.8 X number of charges consumed
20 - 30 charges consumed, then the damage = 1.5 X number of charges consumed

Edit: Now I remember there is a gem called discharge in the game, so the idea of linking the buff charges to the viper charges seems not good, but still, making this gem synergies with claws through charge interactions might be interesting.

I'd happily see this skill reverted back to it's old state.

I fondly remember playing a duelist in the nemesis league without any life on gear to merciless act 3, purely with viper strike stacking and kiting.

How about something like this -->

old value's of the skill reinstated(and re-balanced if required)

gains 1% chaos damage per 10 dexterity

This gives it a clear synergy with the right side of the tree and creates a rather interesting way of scaling its damage.

given the current jewel system, this would only enhance possible theory-crafts.

The value per dex is random obviously. Just thinking of something to make this skill unique and niche again and potentially more potent then just "get a +1/+2 weapon + empower"

In it's current state, it is quite literally useless in my opinion. Like mentioned a couple of times already, whatever it does, can be done better with other skills.

And it is extremely boring when compared to the old version of this gem.

Peace,

-Boem-