Viper Strike of Mamba

Since VS of Mamba is very new, its very hard to find the best setup since POB do not work with does gems.

My question is about the 6L gems.

Since you can add any type of damage due to Tinctures, Void Manipulation is out of question.

VS > Melee Phys > Deadly Ailments > Swift Affliction is the base gems.

Then we go to the last 2 supports which is the hard part since you have the line
"Cannot Poison enemies already Poisoned"

So, duration is "Useless", its QOL, but not more DPS so:

Unbound Ailments = 19% more damage and 60% inc duration

Efficacy = 25% more damage and 25% inc duration

Cruelty = in my test, because I use deadly ailments, on boss I get 20%~ damage even with Cruelty Buff mastery, so I didn't like that much.

Ruthless = Since it has 100% more dmg only at third hit, if it works like ignite where the highest DoT keeps up, then its insane, if i have to attack only when the previous poison ends, then its 0%, 0%, 100% more damage, which is bad. If I attack and do not apply the poison due to a stack is already UP, I lose the hit.

Which one should be the last 2 support gems and why?

For normal mapping I would go with as much DMG as possible, w/o worrying about duration. For end game bosses tho, as a melee character most of the time you are unable to attack (unless you are very tanky) so its good to scale duration as much possible to have as much uptime on your dmg as possible.

Could use added chaos support to increase the base damage even more.

Sadism support could be used to further reduce the poison duration and increase damage per second. If the poison duration ends up too short, then you could add unbound ailments to offset.

If you run an ele weapon with tincture, ele damage with attacks should increase the ele damage from your weapon.

The suggestions above are good.

ZiggyD has been running this skill the last few days so tune into his Twitch for some helpful advice and guidance. I've shamelessly plagiarised his build for myself to mess around with in standard.

For main skills I've gone with:
Viper Strike of the Mamba - get quality on this as a priority - 40% more damage with poison is insane
Melee Physical - more base damage plus more poison damage makes this a no brainer
Deadly Ailments - downside of less damage with hits is offset by more ailment and we're all about that poison now
Swift Affliction - more damage over time is great and less duration is too - I'll explain below
Added Chaos - nothing amazing, just flat extra damage which is definitely helpful
Sadism - faster ailment damage is awesome and so is the less duration

So here's why all of that works. Because Mamba can't poison an already poisoned enemy the concept is to make poison inflict its damage in the shortest possible time, so that when you strike again your target is no longer poisoned and they receive maximum damage each time.

Unlike a traditional poison build where you want to extend duration and stack poisons, here you want to increase your poison damage but have it occur in the shortest amount of time possible as you are limited to just one poison at a time.

Still feels kinda squishy due to having to be up in the face of everything you want to kill. I'm still playing around with defensive measures right now.

Tincture? So you are going Rebuke+Bino or Voidforge? Because that's the only thing I can think of that'll have use for ticture. Otherwise it would be better to go STR stacker, +5% STR charms from Primalist and Replica Alberon.

In any case, the way I see it...
Sadism and Swift Affliction to reduce poison duration while dealing more damage
Multistrike to get APS high enough, since we're looking at less than 0.2s poison duration.
Melee Phys Damage and Deadly Ailments for the damage.

You definitely want proliferation, it'll be huge since its duration isn't affected by local decreases from the supports. So either PF or dual-wielding Bino and high DPS weapon.

"

ExiledSarin wrote:

Tincture? So you are going Rebuke+Bino or Voidforge? Because that's the only thing I can think of that'll have use for ticture. Otherwise it would be better to go STR stacker, +5% STR charms from Primalist and Replica Alberon.

In any case, the way I see it...
Sadism and Swift Affliction to reduce poison duration while dealing more damage
Multistrike to get APS high enough, since we're looking at less than 0.2s poison duration.
Melee Phys Damage and Deadly Ailments for the damage.

You definitely want proliferation, it'll be huge since its duration isn't affected by local decreases from the supports. So either PF or dual-wielding Bino and high DPS weapon.

Voidforge doesn't work as it has the line "deal no non-elemental damage"

"

hiImZomboy wrote:

Since VS of Mamba is very new, its very hard to find the best setup since POB do not work with does gems.

My question is about the 6L gems.

Since you can add any type of damage due to Tinctures, Void Manipulation is out of question.

VS > Melee Phys > Deadly Ailments > Swift Affliction is the base gems.

Then we go to the last 2 supports which is the hard part since you have the line
"Cannot Poison enemies already Poisoned"

So, duration is "Useless", its QOL, but not more DPS so:

Unbound Ailments = 19% more damage and 60% inc duration

Efficacy = 25% more damage and 25% inc duration

Cruelty = in my test, because I use deadly ailments, on boss I get 20%~ damage even with Cruelty Buff mastery, so I didn't like that much.

Ruthless = Since it has 100% more dmg only at third hit, if it works like ignite where the highest DoT keeps up, then its insane, if i have to attack only when the previous poison ends, then its 0%, 0%, 100% more damage, which is bad. If I attack and do not apply the poison due to a stack is already UP, I lose the hit.

Which one should be the last 2 support gems and why?

Hey man im wondering with ruthless support works with mamba? as in only the strongest applies? if so awak multistrike would also work

At end, I find out that the best support, was Enhance,

https://poe.ninja/builds/affliction/character/hiImZomboy/BomDiaEuSouOValdinei?i=0&search=name%3DValdinei

"BomDiaEuSouOValdinei" at poe ninja if link dont workout.

1% Quality = 2% more dmg so enhance 4 = 48% more damage, so the best 6L would be Unbould ailments so it would last more and feel better for clear, for Single prob Efficacy would be best links.

I quit the build at 2-3 day of the league, so I Couldn't go any further.

Ruthless hit cannot apply poison if the target is poisoned even if the poison stack is higher.

Is this skill bugged?

From the wiki (https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Viper_Strike_of_the_Mamba):

"

To maximize the damage from Viper Strike of the Mamba, it's important to have your attack speed be as close to the poison duration as possible without getting your attacks per second faster than the poison duration.

Sadism Support synergizes the best with this skill, allowing you to maintain a high attack speed while avoiding the penalty.

However...

I have attack speed higher (like 0.3 seconds) than my poison duration (like 0.26 seconds -- using sadism), and OFTEN my poison just does not seem to apply.

It's hard to test without a combat log, but it seems like it might actually only be applying every other hit. I tested against rare mobs highly resistant (not immune) to chaos damage. I'm sure I had 100% chance to hit (but even if not, it'll be really close), and had over 100% chance to poison. Not using momentum or frenzy charges, so attack speed is consistant.

And some blue mobs which should always take exactly 2 hits to kill often take 3.

I found this reddit post that seems to agree: https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExileBuilds/comments/18j08oo/viper_strike_of_the_mamba_sadism_multistrike_yay/

I'm worried that it's testing if the target is poisoned at beginning of the attack, not when the attack actually connects and would apply the poison. If it tests at the beginning of the attack, then there's no realistic way to have two consecutive attacks apply poison -- no matter how slow my attacks are, or how low I get the poison duration.

If that's the case, then this skill just feels bad to use because...

a) Even if this skill worked perfectly as I had imagined and the wiki describes, you still kinda have to sacrifice a gem slot for every other attack skill you have equipped for a sadism gem (whirling blades, etc). Otherwise, the longer poison duration on those skills will interfere -- that's a big sacrifice. Could run with only this as your 1 attack skill -- but that is boring as hell, which is why I say it feels bad. Arguably, this mostly only affects whirling blades, but I'm not giving up whirling blades.

b) It just feels bad when poison procs only something like every other hit because it feels exactly as if I'm just missing a lot.

If the check for whether the target is poisoned happens at the beginning of the attack and that is intended, then it should say that... somewhere -- ideally on the tooltip, but a wiki entry or even a post here would do. Because it's not obvious with the current wording, goes directly against what the wiki says, and it's hard to test without a combat log.

If that's NOT what's happening, then...

I dunno.

This is hard to test without a combat log. Maybe my passive chance to poison being picked up by Herald of Agony? Doesn't seem like it, because that would be a 2 second period where I couldn't apply poisons with mamba and that doesn't seem to be happening. Or maybe I'm getting stunned A LOT and not realizing it -- I'm swinging away while staring at the hp bar at the top of the screen, but it sounds like I'm getting all my hits in. Maybe they have high block % or some flat avoid %? But then the sound effect for hits would be different. Maybe lockstep networking is cocking it up somehow? Kinda need lockstep for whirling blades (I have 6 to 13 ms latency so lockstep is amazing for me).


I'll continue testing it to try and figure out what's really happening. First I'll test without herald of agony (it'll drop my chance to poison to 95%, but whatever). I might have to record the video of my tests since there's no combat log.

EDIT: Just realized this isn't the skill gem feedback section, BUT there is no skill gem feedback thread for Viper Strike of the Mamba.