Late game Viper

Hey,

I've played some viper recently and I gotta say I like this hero. However there are some things that really bother me while playing this hero.

The thing is, if you go standard build with MEK, you have total early-mid game dominance but there had been LOTS of games when I crushed enemy mid, helped win both sidelanes and then proceed to stomp enemy and whole my team just stopped progressing their items so enemy eventually came back into game after my item build fell off.

I was experimenting with almost all possible items and I would like your opinions...

I tried aquila, lance, phases then rushing deso, crystalis and then usually BKB and finally bloodthorn. //It was nice and noone ever expects viper to crit for 1k dmg in 25min but really depends on how well you can snowball... Maybe even midas?

Then I tried treads+aquila+lance, going maelstrom to speed up your farming, your ganking and bullying potencial stays high and you focus on tanking up while maintaining good dmg by farming skadi/pike/bfly/ac/mjollnir/bots... gotta say that Viper with malestrom is farms suprisingly fast...
Max tankiness - get satanic instead of pike...

Ppl usually are like "viper, WTF" but second build proves to be much better than usuall viper while you don't sacrifice your mid game potencial...

Its true, mek viper relies completely on using it to be almost immortal to push with his team in a limited timing window.

If you want to have more lasting midgame impact you could try Dragon Lance and sange&yasha. (or Manta Style if its good that game)
It gives you good kiting power with the extra range and movespeed along with your slow and gives you more rightclick power and stats. Compared to maelstrom it gives less farming speed but more tankyness, which fits the hero better then farming since he does fall off.
You can follow it up skadi for the ultimate slowing and tankyness experience, get a bkb if needed or hybrid damage defensive items like assault cuirass and butterfly. Or even if you can more straight forward damage like MKB.
If you still like to get maelstrom, get a mjollnir and put the lightning shield on you for a blademail like effect.
Also consider blink for positioning, or just upgrade the lance into hurricane pike, or get a hex if needed.

If you want to go righclick Viper I'd say you need either Silver-Deso(sb-deso-silver) or Lance-Skadi because it's an OP combination.

Well, lance is a must I think since viper benefits greatly from all stats and increased range and it's substitute for mek in some ways... and you let some1 else build meka

And yea, deso and crits is op on viper since even damage from his nethertoxin can crit... xD (add phase boots in this build xD)

Hand of Midas is the way to go IMO. With his lane dominance he can get an extremely fast midas. Also yes Hurricane Pike is really good on him, since Viper's main downside is his abysmal mobility.

I agree that Mekansm push is far from the only way to play Viper. The game has changed a lot since 6.80.

However don't forget that mek transitions pretty well into a standard carry build as well. It's only 2K gold.