Viper Dota 2 Guide – Strongest Early Game in Patch 7.07d

Viper is one of the strongest early game midlaners that you can play. That’s because he is well equipped both defensively and offensively, so it’s difficult to effectively trade hits when playing against him.

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Here are the hero’s main strengths:

• Using his Poison Attack ability, he can slow a target’s movement and attack speed by 25%/30%/35%/40% and 25/30/35/40 respectively, and at the same time deal bonus magical damage to it based on its missing HP percentage.
• Using his Nethertoxin ability, he can deal 20/30/40/50 magical damage per second and decrease magic resistance by up to 25% to all targets in a 300 radius area. This area remains affected for 8 seconds.
• His Corrosive Skin passive gives him a 10%/15%/20%/25% magic resistance bonus. Enemies who attack him also have their attack speed reduced by up to 32, and take up to 32 damage per second for 4 seconds.
• His ultimate pierces magic immunity and deals up to 300/500/725 damage. It also slows the target’s movement and attack speed by up to 80%/80 for 5 seconds.

Viper Item build

Viper’s item build should generally be designed to improve the hero’s mobility, durability and damage output. As a result, here are some of the items you should consider buying in Dota 2 esports:

• Power Treads: they give you excellent stats and attack speed.
• Ring of Aquila: gives you good stats, damage, armor and the mana regeneration you need in the early game.
• Magic Wand: gives you +2 to all stats, +1.5 HP regeneration and is generally very useful in the early to mid game, thanks to its capacity to store and instantly use charges.
• Veil of Discord: gives you good stats, armor, HP regeneration and the ablity to further reduce your targets’ magic resistance by 25%.
• Hurricane Pike: gives you great stats, attack range, health regeneration and mobility.
• Solar Crest: gives you a lot of protection against physical damage, and the ability to decrease a target’s armor by 10.
• Silver Edge: gives you good damage, stats and the ability to surprise your enemies or escape from dangerous situations.
• Black King Bar: this item is essential if the enemy team has a lot of disables and you don’t have good enough crowd control and initiation in your line-up to neutralize them.
• Manta Style: allows you to remove a lot of debuffs and confuse your enemies. It also gives a nice boost in multiple areas: movement speed, damage, attack speed and stats.
• Sange and Yasha: if you need the added movement speed and the ability to slow your enemies even further, this item can be very good against certain line-ups that excel in the mobility department.
• Linken’s Sphere: nice to have against long duration single target stuns and powerful ultimate abilities that pierce magic immunity: Duel, Rupture, Doom, Fiend’s Grip etc.
• Butterfly: if you want a combination of damage, attack speed and survivability.
• Eye of Skadi: gives you great stats and the ability to slow your enemies’ attack and movement speed even more. The item’s attack modifier pierces magic immunity.
• Aghanim’s Scepter: improves your ultimate ability, reducing its cooldown to 10 seconds and giving it a 900 cast range.

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Viper Abilities Explained

Poison Attack

Modifies your basic attacks, causing them to slow attack speed, movement speed and deal bonus magical damage based on the percentage of your target’s missing HP. The attack speed slow is 25/30/35/40. The movement speed slow is 25%/30%/35%/40%. The bonus damage per second is 0.25/0.5/0.75/1 for every 1% of the target’s missing HP. All of these effects last for 3 seconds.

Nethertoxin

Covers a 300 radius area in a Nethertoxin for 8 seconds. All units standing in this area take 20/30/40/50 magical damage per second and have their magic resistance reduced by 10%/15%/20%/25%.

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Corrosive Skin

Gives you 10%/15%/20%/25% magic resistance. Targets that attack you get their attack speed slowed by 8/16/24/32. They also take 8/16/24/32 damage per second. Both of these effects last for 4 seconds.

Viper Strike

Deals 60/100/145 damage per second to a chosen target. Also decreases attack and movement speed by 40/60/80 and 40%/60%/80% respectively. All of these effects last for 5 seconds.

Best Viper Talents

• 8% spell lifesteal / +20 attack speed – The first option is much more valuable throughout the game.
• +6 Corrosive Skin stats / +100 attack range – The attack range is generally more useful.
• Poison Attack affects buildings / +100 Viper Strike damage per second – The second option is definitely more valuable.
• +120 damage / Nethertoxin silences – If you need to be able to silence a key target that has no Black King Bar or just a 5 seconds duration one, take the second talent. Otherwise take the first.

Viper Skill build

When playing Viper, you should start with a point in Poison Attack followed by a point in Nethertoxin and then another point in Poison Attack. At level 7 your skill build should be 4-1-1-1. Afterwards you maximize Nethertoxin and Corrosive Skin in this order, putting points in your ultimate and taking talents whenever you can.

When to pick the hero

Viper is a good pick whenever you want to have a very strong early game midlaner that can tank a lot in team fights and is well equipped against magical damage. He’s also excellent if you’re trying to push Dota 2 ranks solo.

Self-sufficient Tanky Midlaner

Viper is a tanky midlaner that is very strong in the early game and can deal high amounts of damage in team fights. He gives his supports the freedom to help other lanes, being strong enough not to need to be babysat during the laning phase.

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