3.25 - Starter Skill Speedrun - Viper Strike Assassin - 3h22m19s

#pathofexile #speedrun

The viper strike starter skill speedrun, a fabled challenge of man vs self. Viper strike is fun, but being placed in a side of the tree that has poor access to good melee defensives, no armour scaling, lack of strike range, not anywhere close to Tribal Fury, without critical melee supports available without muling or library, melee socket pressure issues and massive attribute issues for both strength and intelligence.... now that sounds like a good time. This build/run type with Viper Strike is very punishing and is a fun challenge, but it is not a friendly build to play at all due to various challenges it faces. Something like Poisonous Concoction will be a much better poison leveler through campaign.

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The viper strike assassin run was actually the entire inspiration for the starter skill speedrun series as it was a run format I had tried to make work before, but just didn't quite have the tools to overcome some of the inherent jankiness of the skill and tree placement of shadow for a melee build. With 3.25 and the introduction of autoexerts, a viable path finally became available for leveling it all the way through reasonably. Before, the run would require two seperate 4L viper link setups. Now, we could condense the run down into 1 single 4L setup that uses melee splash as a link to help clear. While this causes single target loss since we have melee splash on (and I don't individually gem swap it for bosses), the damage effectiveness changes for melee in 3.25 help alleviate this pain point as the numbers for viper strike got a lot better. However, helping resolve some socket pressure was just the beginning of the challenge as melee defenses for shadow in campaign on the right side of tree are lacking. Moreover, the build needs a fair amount of both strength and intellect (90 plus of each) to function well. Throw in mana issues, lack of access to non-combat life sustain (ie non-life gain on hit/leech) and weapon upkeep issues of DW claws present some QoL issues to the run. Oh yeah and getting stunned like a lots of stuns. So in the end, we get a bit of cook and some strategies to allow us to sustain tank against bosses while stationary (for most part) and to avoid getting one-tapped/stunlocked using Arctic Armoury, Flesh and Stone, Automation Steelskin, and Fortify to help us survive against the beating melee shadow faces. A lot of on-hit sustain via poacher's mark (with Frenzy mark mastery), claws inherent life on hit, and the claw mastery for life/mana on hit, we get a bit of an old school in-your face shadow Viper Striking toe-to-to with just about everything. Did I mention there is next to no strike range for melee shadow on that side of tree? Good times.

I ended up really enjoying the challenge that this run presented and was pumped to finally send the run in a way that I felt was satisfactory. Would have loved to be able to get Despair, a Wither Totem, or some offensive auras going, but the reality of trying to smooth of the run and make things playable made it such those options just didn't end up working as well as Decoy and sustain/QoL from mark and forget playstyle with Poacher's made navigating encounters way easier. Defensives auras needed to avoid being complete and utter paper. Shout out of the physical stun mastery (cannot be stunned by hits which only deal physical damage) to putting in some massive work. Offensive capabilities generally felt pretty sound so long as claws were somewhat up to date (even with having melee splash in main links permanently/not swapping it out for single).

PoB of Actual Character Gear/Tree at End of Run: https://pobb.in/tdPwgkIPE6Jr

Table of Contents: 0:00 - Act 1 23:03 - Act 2 40:58 - Act 3 and Lab 1:10:34 - Act 4 1:31:14 - Act 5 1:47:51 - Act 6 2:07:45 - Act 7 and Cruel Lab 2:31:20 - Act 8 2:48:32 - Act 9 3:06:16 - Act 10 and Merc Lab