Snake

The **Snake** is an agile hunter, capable of reaching many locations others fail to. Snakes generally have high mobility stats, which coupled with their unique movement abilities make for an extremely easy escape in most matches. Snakes builds are recommended for advanced players due to the lack of legs, which makes moving around a challenge for even the best reptile mains but allows for more efficient burrowing. It also allowed for new strategies and escape options. Not only that, their stealth stat is increased as they can slither through crevices and barriers to ambush players and they are not held back by short grass and foliage.

While they are mostly used as the hit-and-run harassers due to their high mobility and stealth, Snakes can also be built around long-term poison. Due to forsaking legs, Snake players often have more evolution points than they know what to do with. Some of the snakes most notable statistical weaknesses are its low health and defense, however, in practice, these are often negated by the build's high chance to dodge attacks if the player build around a smaller, more aerodynamic base. For this reason, the basic snake build is D tier. There is one correction that tierzoo didn't do and that is the fact that snakes can move in all the metas.

## General Moveset

Since very few snakes diverge from the typical snake build, it would be better to list all the noteworthy abilities snakes tend to share with each other

### Swallow Whole

The snake guild's bite move and their most infamous ability. Due to having a jaw bone that can expand to at least twice the diameter of its head, snakes can easily swallow anything that most other reptiles can't whole. Often used to finish players that survived their constriction or venom bite but are too numb to move. Those snake builds without venom or constrict ability usually have to resort to this ability to kill its prety.

### Constriction

Used mainly by Boas but is an ability all snakes can theoretically use. Deals heavy crush-type damage should it fully execute, but is very susceptible to interruption by third-party attackers.

### Climb

Paradoxically, Snakes are capable of climbing up surfaces despite having absolutely no external claws.

### Slither

Due to having no legs, Snakes can get very low to the ground, giving them a very great stealth buff, especially among grass. Some can also dig underground with this ability.

### Venomous Bite

The snake guild's other most infamous ability. Deals damage over time and can last for a while, eventually killing the afflicted player unless it's cleansed or they have venom resistance.

### Hiss

Many snake builds use hiss as a moderate intimidation ability.

## Viable Snake Builds

In the current meta, only three Snake builds are actually viable and will be the only ones covered for the time being.

### Constrictor

Most notably including Boas, Pythons, and Anacondas, the Constrictor subclass is focused on suffocating prey by crushing it and cutting off its windpipe. Constrictors are the only snake build classified as a tank due to their high Health and thick scaly hide, useful for a chance to deflect melee attacks. The most notable feature about constrictors is their unparalleled grab game, which when well specced, can zero to death any player they manage to grab. It's not low tier but 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.

### Pit Viper

Unlike the constrictor class, and most other snake builds the Pit Viper relies heavily on investing into the Venomskill tree and being very aggressive with it. The two defining characteristics of Viper Venom are the Hemorrhagic Toxin and Tracking Compound. The typical strategy for pit Viper players is to sit and wait for other players, aided by their high level of camouflage and score a single hit before retreating. Hemotoxin is not a fast-acting venom type but has extremely high raw long-term damage. After a while, the Hemotoxin should take effect, downing the player. This is your queue to find them with your Tracking Compounds which will leave a trail to the downed player as they attempt to flee which makes confirming kills easy. But if all that wasn't enough for you, you also have the Vipers signature ability, Thermal Vision, which highlighting prey and complexly negating the Stealth bonuses provided by darkness and camouflage and makes it so targets can rarely sneak/evade the player. The most notable downside to Pit Viper builds are the extremely low base Health and Defense. Intimidation and Stealth are the only things preventing you from getting killed, so if you are detected by a player with a high level of resolve, there's not much that 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 enough to be placed at the bottom of A tier.

### Cobra

Widely considered the best Snake build, Cobras are statistically similar to Vipers, but a bit more well rounded. They are larger and less stealthy but bulkier and more armored. Cobras also spec into the Venom tree but in a different way, that is usually more effective than that of a Viper, in that while a Viper bite uses Hemotoxin, a Cobra's Venom takes the form of a Neurotoxin. Neurotoxins are much faster acting, often leading to quick incantations and often killing smaller prey for the player via suffocation. This also means that Cobras can use there bite as an effective self-Defense tool if they absolutely need to. Cobras seldom need to bite in self-Defense as they have one of the best intimidate moves in the game, a combo of hissing and flaring their cape, which often reduces most attackers resolve to zero. Some of the top Cobra players have supposed unlocked an extremely rare method of self-Defense, a tactic that enables the player to do damage at range and apply status effects without putting themselves at risk. The Cobras ranged attack inflicts permanent blindness if it connects, rendering its attacker helpless and doomed. However, only a few players have been confirmed to have this ability unlocked. In summary with all of these upsides combined the Cobra is by far the most versatile and strongest Snake build out there. The combo of versatile venom, excellent defensive options, and daunting intimidation effects put the Cobra build in high A tier.

## Other Snake Builds

### Colubrids

    Colubridae is a non-front fanged family that consists of 249 generas, over half the percentage of snake builds. They are known to be the weakest (in C to F tier) as they either do not possess venom or do not possess venom that affect humans with a few exceptions. Notable builds include Garter Snake, Racer Snake and Grass Snake. They have evolution points but inefficiently specced them into poison resistance or high mobility with big trade-offs like worse climbing or very low HP and defense. They would also have to chew their opponents to inject venom unlike vipers with front fangs. The few constrictors in Colubrid family like Boomslang tends to be the higher tiered snake builds.
 **Chrysopelea**

This is a colubrid subclass that hasn't appeared in Tier Zoo's videos yet but is pretty special. They have very high aerial mobility for a character in the snake guild, speccing into a glide ability. Their glide ability allows them to eat aerial players, which ruins their play style of staying in the air to avoid predators. They use their glide ability for enhanced escape and aerial sneak attacks. Their disadvantages include being out in the open while gliding which may lead to predatory bird players(which there are none of) attacking or getting K.O.ed due to ranged attacks(which will never happen because there are no natural predators in their natural biome). They are as vulnerable to attack as a normal colubrid while on the ground so their best option is to stay near the canopy and stay hidden. There ranking is: (People who are better at ranking get to choose.)

### Madtsoids (Banned)

Despite being banned and not appearing in Tierzoo's videos just yet, this guild deserves a mention. Madtsoiids were banned **Snake** with relatively primitive features. Their sizes ranged from 1 meter, about the same weight class as playable Kingsnakes to the 10.7 meter Gigantophis. These features were most prominent in their skull and skeleton. While the ones in the skeleton are relaitvely minimal, and if it was part of Madtsoiidae, Najash also still has not dropped legs completely just yet. Some of them are usually named using words for legendary Rainbow Serpents or dragons. They were usually playable similar to Constrictor builds, being quite tanky and attacked by taking down their targets by constricting them untill their blood flow stops, proccing the [Cardiac Arrest] debuff. This is where the primitive skull affects gameplay. Due to their primitive skull, their jaws were not as flexible and were unable to open as wide as playable Constrictors. This meant that their choice of targets are limited to potentially midweights at best. And this limitation means that they usually have to eat more, putting themselves at risk of losing disproportionate amounts of Health as well as having to expend more energy due to many midweights being well-rounded in both HP and speed. Its for this reason that the majority of Madtsoiids were C-tier at best, even with their large size and equal constricting efficiency. Wonambi and Yurlunggur solved this problem by also having varanoid-like teeth. Not only this allowed them to rip out pieces of flesh to minimize the weakness of having to eat more and having your target selection limited, it also inflicts a good bleeding debuff, essentially doubling as "venom". It also maked confirming kills easier. However, these **Snake**s were still too slow to realistically use their teeth as a Rushdown option, as was typical with builds of this caliber, so they were only low to mid A tier at best.

## Trivia

* Snakes evolved from burrowing lizards 130 million years ago to escape competition with Dinosaurs.
* Snakes are among the few builds of reptiles to have all of its members being fully carnivorous.
* The most popular snake build aside from the Black Mamba is the Titanoboa, which is the largest snake to ever evolve.
* Snakes are infamous in the Outside playerbase for being the most fetishized reptile build in the game with many players stereotyping snake mains as being into vorarephilia (an informal name alongside vore to describe the somewhat busted grapple move "Swallow Whole" of which snakes use to kill their opponents).
	+ Another reason why Snakes are infamous is that the Bible mentions a snake main called Satan who presumably tricked human main Eve into eating a food against the will of god and thus getting humans banned from the Garden of Eden server.