Evil's Medusa Builds

I understand there's inefficiency when activating Viper Shot with a build that puts you over the 2.5 AS cap. Historically, this is one reason why, when Qin's and crits were semi-balanced, AS steroid gods would go crits (e.g. before the Shuriken tree was created) and non-steroid gods would go Qin's.

That said, inefficiency of this nature with Medusa is different than if we were talking about any god with a longer duration steroid ( Artemis, Rama, etc.). Keep in mind, she only gets 4 shots with the increased AS. That's ~2 seconds, which is significantly less than a 5 second steroid.

In this case, when you build Qin's, I personally wouldn't worry a whole lot about temporarily overcapping unless you're getting really close to the AS cap without Viper activated. For the rest of the shots that aren't Viper (9 second CD without any CDR), you'll have a higher base AS to get more out of Qin's and support your non-steroid DPS. You want better non-steroid DPS, because you're not just going to be fighting when you've got Viper activated...and it will help with general minion, structure and objective clear where you will have no steroid for a longer period of time.

As an FYI, your first and second builds (full build w/ Tabi replacement) provide 1.733 APS without Viper, and doesn't even max with Viper (2.493). The third build gets you to 1.923 without the steroid, so is getting at least some use of Silverbranch Bow. That said, I'd personally build Qin's before Silver...your DPS will be higher.

I'm personally okay with Magi's Cloak as an option, though I'd get it at the end of a build (6th or Tabi replacement) rather than as the 5th main item.

I would swap Atalanta's Bow out for Titan's Bane, that way you can still fit in Qin's Sais and Medusa doesn't really need the passive since hers has the same movement speed effect that's always active. As for Magi's Cloak, like Kriega pointed out, it's not core on Medusa, or any hunter for that matter. It's a niche item you pick up when Petrify and Purification Beads aren't enough anti-CC to keep you alive.

IMO any hunter build that focuses at least partially on basics (e.g. not full ability build) should have either crits or Qin's.