Dota 2 Aghanim's Labyrinth Guide: Viper (Updated)

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It's been a while since the Aghanim's Summer event has been released. We have posted another guide about a week back which is not relevant much anymore after they have patched it. So here is a new guide for players who have been struggling lately to win the Aghanim's Labyrinth game mode. I've been looking for a guide/strategy to make everyone's life easier. So here is one I found in Reddit.

Aghanim's Labyrinth Guide: Viper

Items

Boots -> Arcane Boots -> Wind lace -> Ring of Basilius -> (Disassemble Arcane boots) Octarine -> Eul's -> Veil of discord -> Kaya -> Yasha -> Boots of Travel -> Boots of Travel 2 -> Heart


Boots of Speed - Viper is not a fast hero. He has a base movement of 275, so he will lag behind in most parties as the slowest hero. You mainly win this by not taking damage, so boots are your first buy.

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Boots of Speed

Arcane Boots - You are mana hungry. Grab arcane boots for now to keep your mana up.

Arcane Boots icon.png
Arcane Boots

Windlace - Again, you're slow, this helps keep you up with the rest of the team.

Wind Lace icon.png
Windlace

Ring of Basilius - This helps with team wide mana regeneration and will be converted to a veil later.

Ring of Basilius
Ring of Basilius

Octarine Core - Gives you literally everything you need. Cooldown reduction, Leech for your spells, and more HP/Mana.

Octarine Core icon.png
Octarine Core

Eul's Scepter of Divinity- I can't oversell how useful this item is. Going to take damage? Eul's yourself. Ally going to take damage? Eul's the enemy. The lab is about survival. This is the ultimate survival item. It can be used for so many different things, the biggest of which comes when you are fighting Aghanim himself. If you use this at the end of the spell steal cast, you will not have any of your spells stolen. This is needed because you don't have an easy time breaking the crystals yourself.

Eul's Scepter of Divinity icon.png
Eul's Scepter of Divinity

Veil of discord - All of your damage comes from spells. I rarely found myself even attacking. This buff your entire teams magic damage by 18%.

Veil of Discord icon.png
Veil of discord

Kaya and Yasha - You have octarine core so this amplifies your leech giving you more healing. You need mana regen so this amps that too. Remember what I said about survival being the most important thing in the lab? This + BoT 2 + 30 movement speed talent + 8% movement speed from the meta talent tree gives you 550 movement speed. plenty to run away from the fire lasers and then some.

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Kaya and Yasha

Boots of Travel 2 - +130 movement speed. Allows you to get 550 as discussed above.

Boots of Travel 2 icon.png
Boots of Travel 2

Heart of Tarrasque - Gives 1200 HP and a lot of regen for those times where you can't leech and your ult is on cooldown.

Heart of Tarrasque icon.png
Heart of Tarrasque

Skills

Poison Attack - Use when you can afford the mana and need the magic resistance reduction. Not super useful. We max this skill last.

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Poison Attack

Nether Toxin - Our early/mid game bread and butter. Deals stacking damage, can be used to simplify a lot of encounters, and provides break which is extremely useful for some encounters. For example, specters will not reflect while they are applied with break. This makes that encounter a lot easier. We max this first.

Nethertoxin icon.png
Nether Toxin

Corrosive Skin - Slows the attack of enemies who attack you, provides magic resistance, and more spell damage to passively leech from. If you can get the Corrosive skin applies to nearby allies talent this becomes an amazing buff for your entire team.

Corrosive Skin icon.png
Corrosive Skin

Viper Strike - The entire build revolves around this skill. We hope to make it both a damage and healing skill on as low of cooldown as possible with the highest duration possible. This becomes an AoE skill eventually which makes it amazing.

Viper Strike icon.png
Viper Strike

Skill Build

1 - Nether Toxin

2 - Corrosive Skin

3 - Nether Toxin

4 - Corrosive skin

5 - Nether Toxin

6- Viper Strike

7 - Nether Toxin

8/9 - Corrosive Skin x2

10 - 6% spell lifesteal.

11 - Poison Attack

12 - Viper Strike

13/14 - Poison attack x2

15 - +5 Corrosive Skin Stats

16 - Poison Attack

18 - Viper Strike

20 - +80 Viper Strike DPS

25 - +30 Movement Speed.

Shards

Legendary Shards

This entire build is built upon the legendary shard Contamination. This makes Viper's ult a duration ability that launches his ult to a new target within range every .4 seconds for the duration of his ultimate.

Combine that with Antitoxin which allows Viper Strike to target allies causing it to heal them for the damage and buffing their movement speed by the slow and you have a potent team-wide buff that also does a lot of damage to everything.

So here is a kind of ranking for which Legendary you should pick.

Must Pick - Contamination - Antitoxin

Great Picks - Shedding Skin - Fly into a rage - Lingering Miasma - Nether-toxin Charges

Meh - Snake Bite - Everything Else

Don't - Channeled Viper Strike

Common Shards

There are too many individual ones to list here, but the priority is pretty simple.

Viper Strike Cool Down > Viper Strike Duration > Viper Strike Damage > Nethertoxin Duration = Nethertoxin AoE > Corrosive Skin Magic Resist = Corrosive Skin Attack Speed Slow > You pick.

Play Style

Basically your play style for this build will be to walk around dodging attacks, hitting your ultimate on cooldown to buff your party and kill everything around you, dropping nephrotoxins whenever you can for their AoE, break, and leech. Use your Eul's to escape danger if you are about to take damage, and above all else, survive. A dead person can't do damage.

Special thanks to r/u/Mercarcher for inventing this awesome strategy. So what are you waiting for? Go now and start playing.


About Koushik Roy

I have been a hardcore Dota 2 gamer for a long time. I am pursuing Journalism and Mass Communication(Hons) and want to go to the esports content writing field for my future career. So trying to learn here as I devote my work to the growth of Gamzo as well as myself.