Ah, Viper Sting. Up until this latest patch I used it for two reasons, and two reasons only: to extinguish mage-type mobs who had nasty fireball attacks that hit like a truck on my pet, and to tick off casters in Alterac Valley. Well, the first is rather situational, and the latter hasn’t gotten much use since I decided I don’t feel like doing the PvP gear grind again anytime soon so I’m on extended hiatus from battlegrounds… not to mention the drain itself has been rather distressingly nerfed. Anyways, the point is, when Serpent Sting finally became a bread’n’butter hunter ability, there was really little use for Viper anymore.
Recently, though, Viper Sting has changed entirely. Namely, that mana it drains from a mob? It now also gives mana to you.
There are two reasons why this is awesome.
First, it makes solo’ing easier. My current preferred solo/leveling talent build scoops up 2/2 Invigoration, and if you combine that with the new Viper Sting, and then finally Aspect of the Viper, your downtime is pretty much zero.
Now, you should be aware that the mana you gain back from Viper Sting from most mobs in the field, while certainly not nothing, also isn’t exactly earth-shattering. You’ll still find yourself switching to Aspect of the Viper a lot. So this brings us to our second point…
There are a lot of instance and raid mobs or even bosses who have metric tons of mana. Guess who can drain it? And guess who gets a lot of mana back for it?
That’s right, you. While I’ve actually yet to test this in a raid situation (all the raids I wanted to test this in this past week either failed to ignite or conflicted with my schedule), I’ve tested it in a few heroics and it’s quite amazing how much mana you can get. Now, Serpent is still preferred in most situations from an instance/raid standpoint. But if you need the mana, well, now you’ve got a great backup. And my Marksman friends out there get a nifty bonus when they combine it with Chimera Shot.
In short? Say hello to your new little friend, Viper Sting. It’s an ability that I think will come in handy whether you’re a lackadaisical hunter (thanks Mania for the term!) or one who likes to go swimming in the raiding pool.
Caveat lector: Not every mob or raid boss has mana. A good many don’t, in fact. In those situations, you’re back to your old tricks. =P
Yep, new Viper Sting in very handy the right situations. I’ve used it a couple of times already since the patch which is a couple of times more than I used it in the past year. And for us Marks folk, we do get some extra when we tack a Chimera on to the end of it. Now, we do lose some DPS from missing Serpent + Chimera, but it’s better than dropping into Aspect of the Viper all together me thinks!
This is extremely interesting and something I missed through 3.1. Good job!
About a week ago while fretting over what do do about mana I remebered the new Viper Sting and dug it out of the spellbook and have been giving it a try. So far I haven’t had occasion to use it in a raid or heroic but initial testing suggests it may certainly help.
It’s good to mention something many of us may have totally forgotten about! In the past VS has been largely useless and easily forgotten.
I’ve been using it in Naxx from time to time and it’s been making me very happy.
I find I don’t really worry as much about AoV as much as I had, so my dps stays higher and I don’t lose all my mana at once. Dav=Happy
It looks like this shot is going to be on my bars again. 😀
Yeah, I have it hotkeyed to Shift-2 (where Serpent is just 2), and it’s… decent. Not amazing, but it helps rarely.
Lets not forget that only one hunter can use it at a time, so if for some reason you’re in the same raid as me…better bring some pots 😉
I’m finding there aren’t as many bosses as I’d like with mana bars, but a surprising amount of raid trash does. My rule is if it’s got at least as much mana as me, it’s worth it to speed up or avoid a viper phase. Bosses, though, are candy, rare as they might be.
I actually had an “argument” about this in a naxx raid the other night. I put viper on a boss, and someone got upset at me that I did so b/c they would perfer me to use serpent for extra dps. Well this was a 10 man w/ little regen (and with regen being as it is now) I found myself switching to aspect of the viper alot more than not (and it cuts my dps quite a bit; I mean a rogue in heroic gear was doing better than me on bosses w/ no mana) and when I used viper sting, it helped my dps (in terms of not having to use aspect of the viper) and let me keep using my abilities at max damage w/ little time in viper.
I do not have any charts, but in raids with little regen, I am willing to bet that viper sting creates a lot more dps than a serpent. Granted that you do not have any talents in serpent that would max out your dps when applied.
This is for Surv only and was more so pre-3.1 when Explosive Shots ticks still all gave you separate mana gains on Viper, but still – when you get a Lock’n’Load proc, why not switch to Viper for few secs and regen some mana with those free shots? I do realize it’s a DPS loss to some degree but so is dipping to Viper…
Is this completely whacko approach or is anyone doing this?
@ Voldenmist – I am glyphed to increase Steady damage when Serpent is applied, that is the primary “DPS loss” I would be concerned about, although Viper is only up for a short while and I’d think that the mana gain (and subsequent less time in AotV) would make up for it.
ekh: SV hunters generally don’t have to switch to Aspect of the Viper very much, mostly due to things like Thrill of the Hunt and Hunting Party. When we do, we spend very little time in it because Explosive Shot ticks restore mana.
Lock and Load is one of the biggest DPS boost procs we have so cutting the damage of ES in half intentionally on a LnL is not very desirable to me. I can’t say that I’ve heard of anyone doing that, either.
With the most mana expensive shots + improved stings, I would have thought viper would be most beneficial to the Marksmen Hunters 🙂
When fighting trash, this plus Rapid Recuperation with that Trinket from the oracles gives me some pretty good mana regen but I swap the trinket out when it’s boss time.
Theaah needs to start a blog, methinks. I’d point all the endgame raiding SV hunters in her general direction. *nods sagely*
You know, with all the excitement about Black Arrow and the new design of the Survival tree I had completely forgotten about this change. Thanks for the reminder, I may have to take a look around and see where this can come in handy now.