A lot of people have been asking me to do guides on specific builds, and I'm happy to oblige.
Today we'll talk about the most difficult of the reptile builds - the snake.
Now to be perfectly honest with you, I'm not sure why you'd ever want to try to snake build;
snakes are in general low tier, averaging in the D plus range.
Not only that but their gameplay is some of the most difficult content you'll ever experience.
If you ask me
It's a little silly to use so many points to spec into the reptile faction and then opt to not have legs.
With that said even though most snake builds are low tier, if you really know what you're doing
you can make one of the most formidable builds possible.
Today we'll go over the most viable options as well as common mistakes many snake players make.
You have to be careful since there are a lot of enticing skills that can end up wasting a perfectly good build in the long run.
Let's begin by discussing the main traits, strengths and weaknesses of your snake build.
As previously stated, the most defining trait is opting to not give your character legs.
This has a few benefits - it opens up a lot of unique movement options
like slithering, sliding, sidewinding, and even gliding in some cases.
Access to secret areas of the map normally blocked off by tight access points become available to snakes.
This can let more exclusive access to food, shortcuts and escape routes.
In my opinion, this doesn't fully negate the negatives of having no legs,
but credit where credit is due; it's not the worst trade.
But how can you maximize the evolution points you gain by dropping legs as a spec?
Well there are a lot of interesting options.
Advanced tracking abilities; extremely potent Venom; climbing; camouflage; the ability to traverse Ocean;
Ability to scale walls; feign Death; Produce musk
the list goes on
but before you get too fascinated by the abilities of the snake class, be warned
There are only three competitively viable snake builds in the current meta.
The rest, I'm sorry to say, are pretty unremarkable and no doubt low tier.
Even the official game wiki refers to the typical most popular snake builds as a garbage group.
So if you take anything away from this video, understand that vanilla snake builds are not worth your time
But I'm getting sidetracked, let me get back to the three viable builds.
I'll go through them one at a time, from worst to best,
as well as the special characteristics that make them so strong and any shortcomings they may have.
The first viable snake build is the constrictor. This includes boas, pythons, and anacondas.
It's the only snake build classified as a tank with high HP and a thick scaly hide.
but more important than the snake's defense is with unparalleled grab game.
A well spec Constrictor Build can zero to death any player they manage to grab.
If we compare the constrictors grab to other high-level grabs
You can see that it sits among the best grabs in the game.
Now the constrictor build is not perfect by any means
It's not low tier but I'd say it maxes out around the bottom of B tier for a few reasons
Constrictor Snakes are huge and this comes at a cost to speed because of that they need the element of surprise to secure a grab.
The problem with that is, again, they're huge so it's not easy to hide
And secondly constrictors are a tank build but completely lack the ability to deal with groups of enemies
Sure, they're pretty overpowered in a one-on-one situation
but a fully executed Grab combo takes a long time to perform
making it impossible to fight a group of hostiles and will quickly be overwhelmed by a coordinated assault
Not much else to say about this build so let's move on to number two
The second most viable build is the pit viper
Unlike the constrictor build and also unlike most other garbage tier snakes, the pit viper class specs pretty deeply into the venom tree
"But Tier zoo" I hear you say "didn't you rip on poison dart frogs for doing that?"
No, unlike the poison tree the venom tree is absolutely worth diving into
Poison is valuable for defense up to a certain point, but the thing to keep in mind
Is that you're always going to be at a negative if you actually have to use it
Because for its effect to activate, you actually need to take a significant hit
The Venom on the other hand is an offensive tool
Which can allow its wielder to score kills much easier or defeat opponents that would otherwise be way out of their league
More powerful venom effects only make you a more dangerous opponent
Something to fear instead of something to avoid
Anyways vipers are generally defined as having specced into two main abilities.
The first is their venom
The Venom tree is pretty diverse with a lot of interesting effects but the pit viper build chooses two of the most important effects available:
Hemorrhagic toxin and tracking compounds
The typical strategy of a pit viper player is to sit and wait for a target
Which is aided by their high-level camouflage
And to score a single hit before retreating
Hemorrhagic Toxin is not a fast acting venom type
But has extremely high raw damage over time
Intimidation and stealth are really the only things preventing you from getting killed
So if a player with high resolve detects you, there's not much they can save you
remember this class has slow-acting venom
So it won't be able to kill something before it has the chance to kill you or at least do some serious damage
all in all though Great build unique fun and powerful
I place them at the bottom of A tier and
Finally the best most well optimized snake build - the cobra
Cobras are pretty similar to the viper build, but a bit more well-rounded
While vipers are more effective at stealth and critical strikes, Cobras are just an all-around more powerful class
excelling at both offense and defense
with a few unique abilities of their own
They are larger and therefore less stealthy but bulkier and more heavily armored
and they also spec into the venom tree in a different way that I believe is more well optimized for versatility
the venom of a cobra is different than that of a viper
in that while a viper bite causes hemorrhaging
Cobras carry a potent neurotoxin
Neurotoxins are much faster acting that hemorrhagic toxins because they quickly induce paralysis
Which results in suffocation instead of waiting for the victim to die from internal bleeding
This is important because it means a cobra bite is much more effective as a defensive weapon as well as an offensive one
Cobra players rarely need to actually bite in self-defense anyway though
since they possess one of the most effective intimidating moves in all of outside
The combo of flaring their cape and hissing enough to drop almost any aggressors resolve to zero
however if this fails a few advanced cobra players have unlocked an extremely rare method of self defense.
A tactic which allows the player to deel damage while not putting themselves at risk - a ranged attack
the ability to deal damage and status effects over a distance is extremely powerful and has only been unlocked a few times in the entire playerbase.
The Cobra's ranged attack inflicts permanent blindness if it connects rendering its target effectively helpless and doomed
The combo of versatile venom, excellent defensive options and daunting intimidation effects puts the cobra class in a high A tier
so in summary
three best snake classes are constrictor, pit vipers and Cobra:
each with unique traits that allow them to surpass the normal limits of what snake builds can do
Thank you for watching and if you've got a build, play-style, biome or any other aspect of the meta that you'd like me to analyze
leave it in the comments.