The Viper Venomous swords are the best for early BaW.
This is major truth. I often just don't craft them now. The first few games I played, I used the Viper steel and silver swords until almost level 20 before I found something I liked more. They are extremely effective weapons, but never once felt overpowered. (Dare I say...almost perfectly balanced weapons...?)
Viper Gear has Aard bonus, and is Medium armor, so you could invest in that. Aard can be a lifesaver if your bonuses aren't very good. But it doesn't have very good synergy with the "theme" of Viper (poison).
Yeah, I think they primarily added it because the starting armor is really cool-looking, but it gets classed out fairly quickly. I think many people underplay Aard + Poison, though. Two things that Aard is fantastic at are a.) quickly interrupting an enemy and opening them up for a strike, and b.) knocking numerous opponents down, which both delays their actions and almost always allows for at least one instant kill (when fighting groups).
So, application with Poison here would be:
1.) Engage enemy, using Aard "quick-tap" to land as many fast strikes on as many different targets as possible. Whirl is great for this, as long as you position properly before executing it. The combo maximizes the chance for several targets to be poisoned simultaneously.
2.) Execute a "powered-up" Aard push once you have several enemies taking poison damage. Not only will that allow Geralt to finish 1-2 of them off, but all of the others will continue taking damage over time while they're picking themselves up again.
3.) If I back off at that point, it forces even more DoT to occur while the enemies close in on me again, all the while I'm basically just waiting safely.
4.) Bubble, rinse, repeat.
