Depends on my farm(Usually good on Viper mid). I like to get Phase boots for survivability and then rush a fast scepter. You can get so many easy kills just having a TP scroll on you to help out your mates. I don't think Shadow Blade is that good. I would rather go for a heart or something after. Depends, tank build or glass cannon?
MEK is as you say a good item on him, but often supports wants to get it and I can focus on rushing a fast scepter to dominate early and help out my teammates.
It does cost a lot of mana but just having the aura and stats makes it really strong, almost as much regen as vanguard, and the stats give you 65 more mana so it's not quite as bad. The problem with letting supports build it is I like having the aura mid or in my lane, like I said at level 6 with the heal you can tower dive, and supports bring it online around 18 mins while I can get it by 8-10 mins.
I'm not sure about phase. Once you get the poison on someone they can't run anyway and treads allow you to switch to hp and be a little more tanky. But the attack speed isn't really needed, not sure.
I would never bottle on viper, he has no spells to cast. Just have courier deliver extra tangos if you need more regen.
viper on mid is a waste
better go to enemy long lane and dominate it with such a strong hero
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufERJEdcfAY
Well it depends if your team has another competent mid. I do like safe laning him, but often he's the best mid choice. He can harass mid really well with poison, he can last hit/deny really well with nethertoxin, he's hard to dive with his armor, he can gank well with ult. He's a pretty perfect mid in theory.
![[Lk].Zano](https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/avatars/b9/b98e01ce6ef4a5e926a44cdd1564d0e8e5fbfa36_full.jpg "[Lk].Zano")
A mid Viper's purpose is to make hard snowballer mid lane heroes' life complete hell. If that's not the case, but you still went mid, then I like to gank a lot with him.
Seeing your build made me notice that I hardly buy regen items on Viper, except for the late game Heart of Tarrasque sometimes. It's been a while since I played him...but seeing other horrible Viper players, I can tell that a Viper rushing pure DPS items is not worth it. Viper is a hero which require little skill but big BALLS to play well and by getting only DPS, you take his balls away. So, I think your items are pretty good, I'll consider buying them next time as SB got nerfed.
viper is op
also i really like your idea, thanks for that, i lately have been attempting to do something other than support, but was clueless what items to get
Yeah I have a couple noob games on viper when I first started dota and rushed shadow blade then dmg items. I noticed my friend kept building mek and aghs and thought through the reasoning and it seems to work. I need to work on my mid game a lot though (I lost bad to a zeus the other day), not bad but not great. But what I like about viper is you can focus on harassing mid and last hitting. You don't have to manage mana and fight for runes, making him a lot easier to learn than a qop or OD for instance. You also don't have to have crazy positioning and pull off move like a pudge for example.
yes. Mek is actually a good but overlooked item for mid lane carry-ish heroes like OD viper razor mirana.
Need to keep an eye on the mana usage to make sure you have the 150 mana to use mek when necessary.
I once even rushed mek on safe lane spectre and it also works pretty fine. (alternative to rush drum / vang).
You can also try drum instead of mek on viper. I remember viper is very slow in movement and turning speed. drum can make it faster when chasing and escaping
^ i love fully tank version of spectre mek+vang+drum works great if you have an pushing line up.
Mek is great on Viper but people don't expect it. Let the Lich on your team know what you're building.
I'm glad people can't counterpick Doom with Viper anymore, honestly, that shit was annoying.
mek is only good if you intend to buy aghs, where the point booster (and finished aghs) give you that extra mana you need to use it. I still prefer going Phase + Drums -> Manta + MKB/Butterfly/AC/whatever, picking up a HoT too.
I'll only build Mek/Pipe if I haven't been doing too well middle and its clear I'm not going t have a huge impact later on, where at least I can help the team out a bit with these items.
60% win rate solo queue viper here.
Good starting items:
phase boots, mek, drums, RoAquilla
Good mid game items:
heart, butterfly, manta, pipe(rare, but if they have 5 casters...)
Generally stay away from:
aghs, lothars edge
Sometimes get:
Damage items/BKB if you need to do a carry variant (not recommended as a tank build is usually superior)
General strategy:
Do not get bottle. Rush boots before you get lvl 6. You can usually kill any opposing mid hero with ult + orb walking + boots if he doesn't realize how deadly lvl 6 viper is (common). Otherwise, get a TP and just TP to any random tower and ult kill anyone in the game. Game won, gg.
კომენტარის დასაწერად გაიარეთ ავტორიზაცია.
I've been playing a lot of viper lately, usually mid, sometimes safe lane. My build is usually treads, mek, shadow blade, aghs, butterfly.
Mek is completely awesome on a mid viper. First vanguard is not good on ranged, we all know that, mek is a great replacement giving armor and hp regen and active heal. Once getting mek I can pretty much dive anyone 1v1 on a tower with ult and use mek heal to live through tower damage. Second mek is cheap. Being mid you can get it online super fast, giving your team a really nice team fight if you choose to push as a team. Third viper's skills make it that he doesn't need so much dmg and raw stats, he really needs survivability. His poisons do significant dmg and his nethertoxin gives you a ton of extra base damage, neither of which is increased by agility or dmg items. Really you want to live long enough and let your dots do their work. So tank items are great, but like I said I hate vanguard, so mek it is. Even still I occasionally get flamed for going mek (WTF mek is a support item!). Some people just don't get it.
After that I like shadow blade to enable point blank viper strike ganks and give some attack speed. Also a good escape. Then I love aghs again for stats/survivability and it lets you become a powerhouse in team fights. Open with a viper strike on a support, he's dead, clean up with a viper strike on their hard carry, the cooldown is so short. Also the range on viper strike isn't awful, but with aghs it's amazing, you can gank pretty much anyone with it.
Butterfly is usually my finisher for evasion, more dmg.
Anyway, this might be far from ideal choices, I don't really know. Especially shadow blade, with the nerf, not sure it's that essential. I'm pretty sure I'm always rushing mek, but the other items I could move around, maybe do more dmg items over aghs. What do you think?