Viper: Win the Lane—Win the Game
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There is a common misconception about Viper being weak past the laning stage. He is seen as a lane dominating hero that falls off a cliff as early as midgame. That is not necessarily true anymore. Today we want to share how professional players squeeze the maximum out of this both venomous and poisonous menace.
Offlane only, please
Viper is an offlane hero, who is at his best when used as a carry-pressuring position four or three. He can technically go mid, but the current meta of long-range, nuke-farming heroes make Viper more or less irrelevant in this position: he can’t really flourish in a situation, where the enemy hero can shrug off most harass and keep farming by continuously refilling the bottle.
Recently nerfed enemy safelane, where Salve sharing is making both carries and hard supports cry, is where Viper feels at home. There, he will be typically facing a late-game oriented, farm-dependent hero who will have trouble playing aggressive into Viper and who will typically lack waveclear early on to ignore the lane.
That is Viper’s bread and butter: the hero can’t really farm and can even have trouble last-hitting, but he can make the enemy's life miserable as well and what better target is there to make miserable other than the enemy carry?
default builds
Viper starts the game with a single idea in mind and as such, his build is very straightforward as well. He has a default 4-1-1-1 skill build by level seven, with Corrosive Skin taking priority afterwards. He also has a default item progression of Power Treads into Dragon Lance into BKB on core Viper.
Always be aware that you can disassemble your Dragon Lance to get an Ogre Axe for BKB if you are being pressured. The extra Attack Range is not particularly critical on Viper and Dragon Lance is mostly a stat item and a Hurricane Pike component for him anyways.
Getting Shard after core items is also pretty critical: the Shard allows Viper to convert his oppressive early game domination into objectives. This solves the hero’s main problem: Viper is not a strong late-game hero, so why play the long game.
It doesn’t mean that your team has to rush the enemy throne, but heavily restricting the enemy access to the map can create an economic disparity that will more than make up for the lack of scaling potential.
Survivability and Offence hybrid items are what Viper wants, and going for Skadi and Butterfly is usually the build. Give priority to the former in games against healers.
One nice alternative is Wraith Pact, though it is very game-specific and is usually built on position four Viper, rather than position three. The hero lacks armor and against heavy physical damage compositions, getting an early Vlad’s can be very beneficial.
dealing with Viper
Perhaps the most important part of this post. Viper can be an extremely annoying lane opponent and will absolutely ruin your game if you allow him to. Here are some tips to help mitigate some of the hero’s impact.
Do not buy boots on core melee heroes. You will be slowed down and your 500 gold will be irrelevant during the laning stage. Instead, get as many early stats as possible and, most importantly, get Gloves of Haste. This is the most efficient early jungling item in the game.
Have one Salve to spare. Yes, this includes core heroes. In fact, after the latest Salve changes, it is mostly core’s responsibility to have their own regen. Your job in the lane against Viper is not to have a good time, lots of gold and top net worth. Your job is to get enough levels and early game items to start effectively jungling as soon as possible. Viper is an extremely slow hero so any attempts to gank you, as long as you have at least one ward in the area, will most likely fail.
Always keep an eye on Viper mana. The hero is very mana-starved and fully relies on his auto-attacks and abilities to harass in lane. He has a pretty pathetic stat block and can do very little without abilities. It also creates an interesting play for Anti-Mage, where you can buy an additional Salve early on and go for a heavy trade, before blinking out. By trading your HP for Viper’s mana you can actually win the lane, or at least make it even.
Finally, if your offlane is doing well and has a hero who can quickly take stacks, ask them to get neutral items as soon as possible. Ping camps, remind them several times in both text and audio chat, draw on the map — do whatever it takes for them to react. Because if you get Possessed Mask or Chipped Vest at ~7:15 in-game time, you have successfully dealt with and completely countered Viper’s default game plan, once again highlighting how amazing the neutral item system is.
Closing thoughts
Viper has a 51% win rate in Divine+ pubs this month and an almost 52% win rate in Divine+ pubs this week, meaning that his win rate is slowly increasing. More importantly, his win rate increases with the level of play: the hero is statistically better in higher level pubs.
This trend is usually associated with hard to execute heroes, yet Viper is anything but. In our opinion this trend mostly has to do with how long lower level pub games usually take to end. Viper is still a tempo core. Most importantly, come late game, disables and teamfight abilities the conventional position three heroes provide are going to be more beneficial to the team.
So as a Viper, try to end the game as soon as possible. Against Viper, try to abuse the hero’s low mobility to prolong the game, generally by split-pushing different sides of the map. Most importantly: don’t feed Viper unnecessary kills by overstaying your welcome in lane, while as Viper, try to push in the wave once you see the enemy carry leave it, so that you can start working on objectives.
It wouldn't be a KawaiiSocks article without a completely random, out of pocket neutral items complaint. Has any data at all actually shown their early supposedly game-ruining significance at all in any of the pro Dota we've had at this point?
There are stats on datdota that show win rate for when an items drops for a team in a professional match, rather than an end-game inventory.
Possesed Mask is the "best" Tier 1 item, with a 51.5% win rate in premium level tournaments. Keen Optic is the worst at 49%. Personally, I don't find it acceptable.
I also don't know what it does for the game. It is literally a system that:
- is random
- increases complexity of the game AND
- does not provide any extra depth since it is random and it is trivial to understand how to allocate neutral items
- has overpowered and useless hero+item combinations
It is not a random, out of pocket complaint. It is a valid criticism of a terribly designed and awfully implemented, imbalanced, unnecessary game system. I've played Dota for ~16 years and had patches I liked and disliked. Neutral Items is literally the only "new" gameplay system that is making me enjoy Dota less: I love talents, love shards, love vector targeting and Aghanim's blessings, love most new heroes. I want more and new gameplay mechanics, but I will still be in favor of completely removing neutral items if there is a poll tomorrow.
Speaking of stats and back to premium level tournaments:
Tier 2 items: Brigand's Blade at 52.58% win rate while Fae Grenade at 48.09%
Tier 3 items: Psychic at 54.97% while Spider Legs at 50.45% — really surprised about this one, ngl
Tier 4 items: Leveller at 58.65% and Stormcrafter at 51.27%
There are a lot of caveats, sure. We can't really talk about those percentages as "absolute power level" of items or anything, since they drop five per team, are not team-exclusive and a lot depends on the timing you get the item at. But this data is enough to conclusive say that the system is absolutely not balanced.
Is it necessary or fun? Depends on the player, I guess. Personally I love when I go for a side pull as a support at minute seven and get Possesed/Chipped drop,because then I know my carry will be ~800 gold ahead at minute fifteen, compared to the enemy. And I will also have a level or two extra over the enemy hard support, since the lane will be mostly free to leech XP off. I hate myself for loving this feeling, though, since I objectively know that the system is not balanced)
Despite my actual out-of-pocket snark, I do appreciate the response and genuinely wasn't aware that non end-of-game data was available. It's always easier to understand your perspective fully spelled out for the first time I've seen rather than as just the off-hand quips that have otherwise been all I've known. Unfortunately, I can't apologise for being the one ruining your games by still being a little partial to the system!
What are your thoughts on building Boots of Travel instead of Power Treads?
Totally Unranked Herald opinion here but I think Viper’s impact is lessened on the side lanes. The pos 3 is also typically the initiator so the draft needs to compensate which is unheard of in unranked all pick.
Much prefer Viper in the mid but lack of scale is an issue which is why I don’t think Viper should jungle.
The time should be spent in the words of the author turning domination into objectives.
@Berenbdain
I am not a fan of BoT. You lose out on AS/Stats and Viper needs every bit of HP he can get early on: the hero is quite squishy both HP and Armor-wise.
That said, it compensates for your lack of mobility quite well. I think it can be good in games where you get away with it, but it is pushing it a little: getting BoTs is sacrificing completed Power Treads + Ogre Axe already
I always liked Viper a ton because of how much of a nuisance he can be to play against, but against the wrong team, he can be little more than just a minor inconvenience. You did well to point out his weaknesses such as his slow MS and horrid mana pool. Even after his intelligence was buffed recently, he still can burn through his mana almost instantly.
Though one strength you didn't point out here that I feel needs mentioning is his ultimate. Viper Strike is a very useful spell that can be used to open or close out a fight and it completely bypasses those pesky BKBs everyone gets. With Scepter, you'd be able to do it twice or even thrice in a single teamfight.
Every neutral item has its use.. you may be a carry who doesnt need stormcrafter. but if u are a spell caster it can be good to dispel silences
What's the 4 Viper build?
I see a KawaiiSocks analysis, I completely skip reading :)
Seen a spike in viper pickers recently. Could be due to this article.
One of his core item was nerfed in 7.31d which was null talisman. Due to his mana issues 2 nulls was super strong both in the early game n at 25min mark.
Viper players often dont realize that his power spikes at lvl 3 n lvl 5. His first skill more than doubles in dmg at lvl 3, so he has to becareful not to get ganked before reaching his timings. In other words, common mistakes include trading life for a carry, regardless of whether viper is pos 3 or 4.
Other mistakes include letting a creep wave run off towards the enemy tower where he can safely take last hits, and not stacking side camps as a support.
These mistakes r not supposed to happen in 4k mmr, but it has been quite unfortunate.
Trash post made by 3k MMR player.
I have been playing viper heavily over the last few months, here is something I can share:
1. Don't go treads, get phase.
2. Dragon lance is a critical item for viper.
3. Always start with at least 1 bracer.
4. Never get bkb, what you want is to die in fights along the enemy cores, the moment you press bkb your pos 1 or 2 will die, u want also to make use of the resistance of your passive.
5. Shard and hurricane are good, get hp and armor (tarrasque, skady, sny, cuiras) whatever happens don't get butterfly, u don't want the enemy HC to not jump against you.
6. Against a viper in lane you need to be aggressive, viper is an extremely weak hero till lvl 5, and due to his movement speed if you jump on him he will die.
^ wow we have a badass barely Ancient player here with <50% win rate on their most played hero lecturing Divine players! <3