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