Today, we take a look at One Shot Ambusher Strike in Path of Exile 3.23. We’ll show you how to use Viper Strike of the Mamba to assassinate enemies on the screen with one tremendous hit.
Viper Strike is a classic skill that allows you to attack with two weapons at the same time and has a chance to poison the enemy. Affliction League introduces Viper Strike of the Mamba, a Transfigured version of the gem with a very interesting twist.
It releases a more powerful poison, but does not allow more than one layer of poison to be stacked. It also has an interesting feature because it combines the damage from both weapons when dual-wielding.
So this means we’re encouraged to funnel all damage to one hit. And we’ve found many clever ways to do this.
How To Maximize Critical Strike Chance?
The first step is to reach maximum critical hit chance. This nifty ability teleports you to an enemy, blinding them and giving your next melee attack a massive base of critical chance and critical multiplier.
With Ambush, it’s relatively easy to get a critical hit rate of 100%. So easy, we can even use Marylene’s Fallacy. While these reduces our critical hit chance, we can balance this out on the skill tree without too much fuss.
The bonus is that we get a huge critical multiplier from Amulet and Culling Strike Support.
In this build we could achieve a critical hit multiplier of over 550%. So the goal is to kill something that is highly toxic.
But the problem is, Damaging Ailments (such as poison) in Path of Exile 3.23 does not increase with the critical multiplier.
Therefore, the best solution is to pick up this Keystone Perfect Agony. Over time, our damage increases by half the critical multiplier, approximately 275%.
Low Tolerance
Now let’s talk about the real core of damage, Low Tolerance. This is a special passive that can only be obtained from Cluster Jewels, but it works perfectly for us. It increases the damage of our poison by 300% against unpoisoned enemies. Since we’re only causing a single poison stack, there’s no real downside to this.
Additionally, there is no limit to the number of times we can assign this passive. So if you can invest a certain amount of Divine Orbs to roll a Cluster Jewel, you can have as many gems as the passive tree will allow.
Weapons
For our weapons, you might imagine some Mirror-Tier physical and chaos weapon. But in fact, this build uses two copies of the cheap and unique Rebuke of the Vaal. This is typically the highest total DPS of any one-handed sword in the game.
This means you only need a very low POE Currency budget to complete the weapon requirements for this build. The downside is that it’s a mix of damage types, making it difficult to scale.
Tinctures
In our case, elemental damage, namely Fire, Lightning and Cold, is not counted in Poison. So how do we solve this problem?
Path of Exile 3.23 introduces Tinctures, a special flask that we can use if we choose Warden of the Maji Ascendency. These are essentially permanent buffs that can be enabled or disabled. We’re using Poisonberry Tincture, which just poisons all our damage.
Viper Strike Of The Mamba
Now, those big numbers on our swords account for poison damage. On top of that, our key skill, Viper Strike of the Mamba, actually damages two weapons at once.
Technically, instead of hitting and inflicting poison with each hand separately, it calculates the hit and ailment damage for each hand and then combines them into one larger hit. Therefore, the poison we use is proportional to the combined base damage of both weapons.
Alchemist’s Mark
Additionally, by using Alchemist’s Mark, we can almost double the damage. This skill creates Caustic Ground when we poison them. This ground effect causes 80% of the strongest poison’s damage to enemies over time.
As you know, our poison is powerful. As long as our enemies stand still, they will be melted.
Master Toxicist
The last consideration is our ability to clear the map. We hit hard, but we didn’t have AoE. For this we rely on Master Toxicist. This will spread the poison we apply to nearby enemies, which is often enough to wipe out the entire group in one hit.
In summary, here we show you the necessary items and everything else is flexible. This build can focus on more damage, higher defense, extra mobility, or whatever is needed for you.
Regardless, this is a fun, themed, and powerful build. It may not be the fastest mapper you’ll ever play, but it’s a great boss killer.
