General DiscussionHow to handle Viper?

I didn't realize he received any buffs or changed at all? You sure about this? To me it is just his armor passive is pretty sickly strong and makes people not want to harass unless they know they can go for a gank.

- Corrosive Skin duration increased from 3 to 4
- Viper Strike Aghanim's cast range increased from 800 to 900
- Nethertoxin max damage increased from 32/64/96/128 to 40/80/120/160
- Base strength increased by 3
- Corrosive Skin affects any damage source not just regular attacks
- Viper Strike is no longer removed by Dark Pact or Kraken Shell
- Poison Attack cooldown reduced from 4/3/0/0 to 0
- Corrosive Skin no longer works while doomed

yeah

Well I guess that picture of DOom is right then :)

I don't personally see much Viper in comparison to Furion, Invoker, Mirana, and Axe which seem to be in 100% of games.

Myabe they'll nerf duration back to 3 seconds.

you counter cancer with cancer.

viper is strong in lane...thats it

He is picked competitive sometimes (as much as pugna...does that make pugna op?) as a carry
But many pros comment that if viper doesnt make an impact early, he falls off really quickly

He is also pure single target and has no escape
He is an awesome kiter but he is by no means OP
He has no no come back mechanic and farms slowly compared to other carries

In teamfights, you always look for stuns, cc, aoe - viper gives none of those

Why is he a problem again?
You want to solo 1v1 him?

viper is good in pubs and 1v1s because it is pretty much a auto lane win. Once u win lane you say 'ez mid' and let the other team fight among themselves and win game

He's been picked 219 times this patch, just as Shadow Shaman, so I wouldn't say he's picked that often in competitive.
IMO, you don't deal with him. You crush other lanes and take enough advantage to make his impact less important. Either that or focusing him down first in teamfights, but that depends on the enemy team composition.

I had an drunk viper feed 6 kills in 7 minutes against a SF.

Try forcing your opponent to drink.

If you want to dominate viper in the lane(which is the only place he is strong) pick enchantress. untouchable makes so he cant hit you and once you hit lvl 6 he cant stay in the lane.

viper beats enchant easy..........

regardless of winning/losing lane ench is way less impactful mid-late compared to viper which defeats the purpose of sending him mid since thats vipers main weakness anyway

PA mid does fine against him, tinker mid works well too

i picked viper once: http://dotabuff.com/matches/547549841 is the most easiest and op hero

Windranger is actually pretty effective against viper, if you know how to use her

you can outlane a viper with a sniper or lonedruid

sniper dies to corrosive skin

so does windranger

he can kill druids bear and last hit reasonably well in that lane too

^ if you get outlaned by sniper with any hero i suggest deleting dota

max headshot is no joke

"IMO, you don't deal with him. You crush other lanes and take enough advantage to make his impact less important. Either that or focusing him down first in teamfights, but that depends on the enemy team composition. "
Okay so you let him sit mid and farm a 5 minute mekansm and he proceeds to force earlygame teamfights that you can't possibly win.

Heroes that counter him mid do exist. Good burst damage and long duration stuns are good, escapes are good. Mirana, Tinker, Timbersaw. Phoenix can counter him pretty well in teamfights, because viper is so slow and can't do anything against a Supernova. I'm not keen on the idea of sending Beastmaster mid against a Viper but just having the boar attack him is pretty strong, BM ult is always great.
Also you get a bunch of vipers that still build shadow blade or max orb first so you get a good amount of free wins hooray!

Only counters to lane to viper is probably razor , syla and necro with maxed aura

Also, he is 0 in teamfight, so focus him there. He is just op in 1vs1 situations.

PA mid is garbage.... Gives the opponent (viper in this case) free farm, you have to last hit with dagger or else to 2-3 orb shots, you can't deny, you can't harass, you don't have an escape if he goes aggressive, and pa needs farm more than levels.

Everything batman said is true. Viper falls off and must snowball, he kites well but he doesn't really do that much dmg and farms slowly. He is an amazing hero but has definite weaknesses.

If you want to kill him, disables + nukes. He will die quickly. Anything that kills him fast is good because his poison is damage over time. The longer the fight goes the more advantage viper has. Probably 80% of vipers will build aghs as a first or second item. That's a great item for him but it doesn't do much for his right click dmg so he will rely heavily on those poisons to drop hp so nethertoxin can kick in. Thus strong nukers are best like tinker (not the march one, the laser/missile one), lion, lina. He's also extremely gankable cus he has bad mobility.

He sucks in team fights, his whole role will be viper strike the right clicker and then try to pick off supports. If you disable him he is not very threatening, provided that viper strike doesn't ruin your entire lineup.

Viper directly counters heavy right clickers like ursa and sven. He will viper strike them so they attack slow and then proceed to kite them until they die.

To reiterate what I said about snowballing and farming, viper needs to get kills cus he has no flash farm abilities so his creep farming will not be good mid game. However viper is not a great ganker because he is slow. He's not like a bloodseeker, bounty, slark or clinkz who can get from one side of the map to the other in a hurry or unseen. If you have decent wards viper plods through the lanes going to gank and it's quite easy just to back away. If he gets his strike on you you're screwed but he's not that hard to avoid. As long as you don't feed him kills he will be underfarmed mid/late game and then your carries will out carry him.

Also silencer is a direct counter since he has only his ult to drop the curse.

"Also silencer is a direct counter since he has only his ult to drop the curse."
So viper maxes his skin and curse does more damage to Silencer than it does to Viper, in addition to slowing the dude. That's a pretty big advantage in viper's favor if you ask me. Silencer is able to stop Viper from autoattacking, though, which is huge.

Viper is good but od may be better.

Viper takes more dmg.

Curse dmg: If the buff lasts for its full duration, it deals a total of 120/210/300/390 damage and removes 48/96/144/192 mana.
Corresive skin dmg: Deals a total of 40/60/80/100 damage.

However you have to double the corresive skin dmg cus it'll proc twice since it's duration is 4 seconds and curse duration is 6. So the damage difference isn't that much, 40/90/140/190, but it'll drain all of viper's mana so he can't orb walk or viper strike him at 6. The silencer can orb walk with glaives and out harass him. And since skin is proc'd anyway silencer can get some right clicks in without worry of refreshing it for 6 seconds anyway.

Maybe it doesn't seem like much of an advantage but having played both heroes a lot I hate facing silencer on viper.

death to all viper pickers

Another thing to mention, viper is hard to deny cus of nethertoxin but it doesn't work on his own units so you can probably last hit decently enough. Viper sucks at killing towers, or at least isn't any better than any regular ranged hero, so if you keep pulling the creep waves back he's not going to push you. Avoid him, don't lose towers, win late. Unless he has other pushers or carries on his team he won't win late without snowballing into a powerhouse.

If u pick qop, dont upgrade your Q

Toxin works on towers iirc

It does half dmg to creeps and structures. But because of how viper builds he's not going to turn into a tower killer that quickly. Compared to like drow with her ult, sniper with flare, shadow fiend with souls dmg, tinker with march, death prophet with her ult, they can all drop towers much quicker than him and more safely usually. If you pull viper's creeps back he won't be able to drop a tower.

Never had too many problems with viper, out of the lane i never see him doing much

Silencer is indeed a really nice pick vs viper.

And Phoenix.

Phoenix wins every 1v1

If Viper's purpose in his team is to rush the Mek and not necesarily counter the early game of another hero, he can simply go to another easier lane if someone decides to pick a lane counter against him as he's pretty confortable in any of the 3 lanes.

If the Viper in question is not retarded, you should focus on countering his midgame instead.

to win against viper u must turtle the game, avoid fighting when his powers peak 7-25 mins , after 30 mins if he isnt fed i guarantee its a 4 v 5 game he becomes shit, just dont fight early and dont feed him.

@ Esp Wink where did you get the doom picture from?

We had a game against a Viper last night. The early game was where Viper got his usual kill advantage. Which started showing during the middle game when the other team was dominating us and we were at that point where we were sure we had lost, but figured might as well try, because we always at least try... Surely enough, Not only did we win, but Viper was garbage late game and had virtually no effect on team fights. We came back and won and woulda done so easily if their Morphing hadn't became a late game giant.... So we had to duke it out with him a bit before winning...

I was playing as Elder Titan, who just so happens to be a good counter to Viper. Although, a very unpopular hero. I also bought a heaven's halberd, which will disable Viper's auto attack for a solid 4.5 seconds, making him completely void in a fight... Except the damage you receive from his corrosive skin.

In short, any disable will take Viper out of the game. I would pick a disabler as a hero and consider getting a heaven's halberd during the mid game to shut Viper down. When you become ok with the fact that you might have a slow start or die from him in the beginning... But if you can accept it and make it less painful on the team. You will be fine to shut him down in the mid game, as long as you get that disable. Maybe that's why Viper's win rate is so low, cuz if you can shut him down, hes garbage.

What everyone above said..Also, Bane!

There´s enough counters to Viper, and if he can´t snowball early he isn´t much use late game.

Lich can annoy the crap out of a viper in lane as well, or CM babysit. There´s so many counters really.

whoever said getting outlaned by sniper is a joke is so wrong

sniper dominates a lot of mid matchups

and pa mid is fine against him since theres very few heroes that can man up and farm against him whereas pa is guaranteed to get 2-3 last hits per wave and can walk up and grab a couple every now and then; can man up on viper pretty well too since he has an instant gap closer/escape and the dodge against a hero that basically only autoattacks is pretty strong

people keep saying that u should just wait for him to be useless in the mid game but hes just gonna force fights with a mek rush and theres nothing u can do since ur mid probably got shitted on

silancer

spam the curse. and he wouldn't be able to do anything. 0. NADA

and u die from corrosive skin

And you don't?

You could say that for every hero, so viper can't be countered?

no actually not every hero has a dot that gets them killed

ur better off just trading farm with him by picking a hero that cant get harassed out of lane and has good enough base damage to cs well in the lane

razor is good with boots, timber is good on a sidelane but not really as much mid, alch is fine, pa is fine, mirana is fine, nagas good

razors the only hero that really counters viper, the rest are just able to cs well against him, effectively trading farm which is always a win versus viper

Again i dont see the problem against viper

Guessing the problem vs viper is he takes down weaker heroes easy because he can add dmg for basically no mana loss and poison. So very early on he is pretty OverPowering. He can be taken out pretty easy, but 1v1 he is pretty annoying.

whats a 'weaker hero'