Next meta Patch.

[Lysah]

I have a recording of me using snowball to dodge warlock ult with my entire team, submitted it to plays of the week for shits but of course they'd rather post another sun strike kill

And let me be more clear, I don't think DotA has bad balance. But there is a tendency of Icefrog to buff rather than nerf anything until heroes become so strong they need to be cut down several sizes (earth spirit) until they're trash. Most of the heroes that got buffs in the last few patches will get nerfed soon as well. I don't blame Icefrog for wanting the metagame to change and forcing people to pick new heroes. He's keeping competitive interesting and that's his job, so well done. It's a lot better than simply spamming new heroes every 2 weeks as a form of keeping the game fresh and leaving old heroes to rot in the pit of unviability.



Oh, and if you want to counter Rhasta, pick Sniper. Where the hell was he while Rhasta was pushing games? He goes mid, he gets level 6 before SS does, he one shots the wards from total safety, SS just ends up feeding him tons of gold, he starts killing SS in 2 hits, again from total safety. Did I mention he has 1000 range? Assassinate is also a pretty good early game push deterrent, when it will hit your squishies like DP for half their health.

[Deleted]

I have a recording of me using snowball to dodge warlock ult with my entire team, submitted it to plays of the week for shits but of course they'd rather post another sun strike kill

And let me be more clear, I don't think DotA has bad balance. But there is a tendency of Icefrog to buff rather than nerf anything until heroes become so strong they need to be cut down several sizes (earth spirit) until they're trash. Most of the heroes that got buffs in the last few patches will get nerfed soon as well. I don't blame Icefrog for wanting the metagame to change and forcing people to pick new heroes. He's keeping competitive interesting and that's his job, so well done. It's a lot better than simply spamming new heroes every 2 weeks as a form of keeping the game fresh and leaving old heroes to rot in the pit of unviability.



Oh, and if you want to counter Rhasta, pick Sniper. Where the hell was he while Rhasta was pushing games? He goes mid, he gets level 6 before SS does, he one shots the wards from total safety, SS just ends up feeding him tons of gold, he starts killing SS in 2 hits, again from total safety. Did I mention he has 1000 range? Assassinate is also a pretty good early game push deterrent, when it will hit your squishies like DP for half their health.

Sniper is such a punishable pick in competitive games, though. You have to be absolutely sure you can defend him and his appalling strength growth, or he'll be food even in a pro game. I think Sniper is punished as a pick to an even higher degree than Naga is, and she's arguably even more useless early.

[veiledy0]

I have a recording of me using snowball to dodge warlock ult with my entire team, submitted it to plays of the week for shits but of course they'd rather post another sun strike kill

Plays of the week is actually just Invokers and Rubicks of the week. Submitting anything else is futile.

[Lysah]

Sniper is such a punishable pick in competitive games, though. You have to be absolutely sure you can defend him and his appalling strength growth, or he'll be food even in a pro game. I think Sniper is punished as a pick to an even higher degree than Naga is, and she's arguably even more useless early.

I agree he is very situational and easily stopped by speed picks like SB, NS, BS, QoP, and a couple other heroes but none of these are being picked lately that I've seen. It's not hard to throw him in as last pick when nobody will expect him because he isn't trending.

Plays of the week is actually just Invokers and Rubicks of the week. Submitting anything else is futile.

And Puck. Did you see him click phase shift!?! OMFG wodota

[Deleted]

I agree he is very situational and easily stopped by speed picks like SB, NS, BS, QoP, and a couple other heroes but none of these are being picked lately that I've seen. It's not hard to throw him in as last pick when nobody will expect him because he isn't trending.


And Puck. Did you see him click phase shift!?! OMFG wodota

The thing with Sniper, though, is that he doesn't even require outright counterpicks. You don't need "burst" because he has no HP and absolutely no escape in the first place. A smoke, one support with a disable, and a little bit of help, and Sniper goes 0/5/0 before laning is done because he dies before reaction TPs can come in. And that's in pro games, mind you. In pubs he goes more like 0/50/0.

[Sorcereria]

Sniper is the most simple hero to fix. Give his ultimate a DMG reduction xx% for the duration of the aimed shot aquire. This way aimed shot could be used defensivly on all innitiations apart from stuns.

[Grable]

Sniper is the most simple hero to fix. Give his ultimate a DMG reduction xx% for the duration of the aimed shot aquire. This way aimed shot could be used defensivly on all innitiations apart from stuns.

Snipers disadvantages are anything but taking damage while he is ulting. His ult is a kill secure on a running enemy, not to be used while teams are fighting.

[Sorcereria]

Snipers disadvantages are anything but taking damage while he is ulting. His ult is a kill secure on a running enemy, not to be used while teams are fighting.

Yet this useless ability could be turned into a "give me another 2sec of life" for my team to arrive or save me when you get innitiated or are in bad spot to die instantly. Eventually invurnability during the cast, but than sniper would be an ultimate pubstomp hero, which he already is at low levels if you know how to play it.

[PizzaSHARK]

Sniper is such a punishable pick in competitive games, though. You have to be absolutely sure you can defend him and his appalling strength growth, or he'll be food even in a pro game. I think Sniper is punished as a pick to an even higher degree than Naga is, and she's arguably even more useless early.

Sniper is extremely difficult to punish if you draft around him. Heroes like Lucy, Tide, SK, Panda, etc - the scary blink heroes - tend to get banned or picked out a lot in the current meta, anyway, so it's not like doing that will raise any red flags.

Sniper with Phase Boots, Mask of Madness, and Maelstrom hits extremely hard, ghosts through units at nearly 522ms (he will move at like 519 with a yasha or drums aura added on), and has almost 1000 range... 3000 range with ulti at lvl 16.

Headshot is ranged permabash with a fucking retarded proc chance, so it scales stupidly well with IAS of any sort and largely reduces his need to buy damage early on... he just needs IAS, which is cheap.

It's almost impossible to take down Sniper when he's defending high ground and he can easily siege towers from 1k range away... 1600 if he just wants to chip away with Shrapnel spam (couple hundred HP at a time.) Sniper ulti is a huge nuke with short cooldown and gives up to 3k range effectively permanent true sight of the target (use spell, cancel, use spell again since the true sight lingers for like 1 sec, repeat) and is primarily balanced by mana cost, which stops being a balancing factor when you have teammates with manaboots. Try picking Thrall with Sniper sometime and watch how many completely free kills you get because of Assassinate giving Thrall permanent true sight for Glimpse. If you thought Glimpse was OP as fuck before, you haven't seen it with a good Sniper involved.

Sniper is extremely strong. He isn't a good teamfight hero, but he's the best siege hero in the entire game and is extremely well-suited to picking off squishy supports like Rhasta and Skywrath from a safe distance. He would be ideal in the current meta.

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The thing with Sniper, though, is that he doesn't even require outright counterpicks. You don't need "burst" because he has no HP and absolutely no escape in the first place. A smoke, one support with a disable, and a little bit of help, and Sniper goes 0/5/0 before laning is done because he dies before reaction TPs can come in. And that's in pro games, mind you. In pubs he goes more like 0/50/0.

Bullshit. Smoke breaks at 1k range, and Sniper happens to have 1k autoattack range. With MoM and Phase Boots you can easily move at 500+ speed. Sniper's only real threats are blink heroes, and it's easy enough to pick around them and ban the ones you can't deal with.

[Deleted]

Sniper is extremely difficult to punish if you draft around him. Heroes like Lucy, Tide, SK, Panda, etc - the scary blink heroes - tend to get banned or picked out a lot in the current meta, anyway, so it's not like doing that will raise any red flags.

Sniper with Phase Boots, Mask of Madness, and Maelstrom hits extremely hard, ghosts through units at nearly 522ms (he will move at like 519 with a yasha or drums aura added on), and has almost 1000 range... 3000 range with ulti at lvl 16.

Headshot is ranged permabash with a fucking retarded proc chance, so it scales stupidly well with IAS of any sort and largely reduces his need to buy damage early on... he just needs IAS, which is cheap.

It's almost impossible to take down Sniper when he's defending high ground and he can easily siege towers from 1k range away... 1600 if he just wants to chip away with Shrapnel spam (couple hundred HP at a time.) Sniper ulti is a huge nuke with short cooldown and gives up to 3k range effectively permanent true sight of the target (use spell, cancel, use spell again since the true sight lingers for like 1 sec, repeat) and is primarily balanced by mana cost, which stops being a balancing factor when you have teammates with manaboots. Try picking Thrall with Sniper sometime and watch how many completely free kills you get because of Assassinate giving Thrall permanent true sight for Glimpse. If you thought Glimpse was OP as fuck before, you haven't seen it with a good Sniper involved.

Sniper is extremely strong. He isn't a good teamfight hero, but he's the best siege hero in the entire game and is extremely well-suited to picking off squishy supports like Rhasta and Skywrath from a safe distance. He would be ideal in the current meta.

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Bullshit. Smoke breaks at 1k range, and Sniper happens to have 1k autoattack range. With MoM and Phase Boots you can easily move at 500+ speed. Sniper's only real threats are blink heroes, and it's easy enough to pick around them and ban the ones you can't deal with.

This all assumes that the other team politely waits until Sniper has a non-useless amount of levels and farm before turning him into creep food. There have been several Sniper picks in the pro scene over the course of TI 4 and its qualifiers, and while a few worked out spectacularly (Xboct safelane sniper, I think it was), the majority simply saw Sniper picked off again, and again, and again, because it takes absolutely nothing to kill him before he has 5-6 lvls. He simply dies before reaction TPs arrive.

Sniper is ideal to stop deathballs if you can protect him for those first 5-6 minutes where he's a walking first blood, but the issue to me seems that doing so is more trouble than it's worth.

[PizzaSHARK]

because it takes absolutely nothing to kill him before he has 5-6 lvls. He simply dies before reaction TPs arrive.

See also: Tinker, Death Prophet, Ember Spirit, literally every hero without a blink if the enemy team has Earth Shaker.

It's possible to ruthlessly smoke gank mid and feed off of someone that's dumb enough to not hug their tower when enemy supports are missing?



Sniper isn't particularly easy to gank compared to nearly every other popular mid (Ember Spirit is squishy as fuck, Panda is tanky as hell but doesn't have any sort of escape mechanism, etc.) Sure, he's slow and he's squishy, but he also has 700+ range, which means he can plink creeps in the middle of the river while standing within touching distance of his tower. Any gank that would kill Sniper in that situation is also going to have killed nearly any other hero, because that's a gank that's completely ignoring the tower in the first place.

Sniper is ideal to stop deathballs if you can protect him for those first 5-6 minutes where he's a walking first blood, but the issue to me seems that doing so is more trouble than it's worth.

I'm just going to be blunt. The reason it seems that way is because the pros don't know how to fucking use him. Fnatic might since they were doing some fucking horseshit plays with sniper+thrall in the XMG tournament, but Fnatic never had a chance of getting to the grand finals, anyway (they're good but not that good.)

[Deleted]

Pro players have often said they avoid insanely risky picks that "counter" an enemy strat in important competition and prefer to keep to playing their own game.

I'm just going to be blunt. The reason it seems that way is because the pros don't know how to fucking use him. Fnatic might since they were doing some fucking horseshit plays with sniper+thrall in the XMG tournament, but Fnatic never had a chance of getting to the grand finals, anyway (they're good but not that good.)

I doubt you have any experience in competitive matches or even a competitive environment to make such statements. Many heroes work differently at 3k MMR compared to the international

[Lysah]

Pro players have often said they avoid insanely risky picks that "counter" an enemy strat in important competition and prefer to keep to playing their own game.

Exactly. It's not that Sniper wouldn't be perfect, it's that nobody practices him so they won't pick him.

[Hermanni]

I said to few of my friends that I expected someone to pick SF against Rhasta in some game because SF actually oneshots wards with no items and finally I think DK did it and had great success, I mean Sniper isn't bad but without items he still needs 2 hits to clear a ward while SF or Drow could do it in one while getting minimum return fire from max range.

[Lysah]

Sniper can one hit wards easily if you start buying phase boots like you should.

[PizzaSHARK]

I doubt you have any experience in competitive matches or even a competitive environment to make such statements. Many heroes work differently at 3k MMR compared to the international

Why in the world are you assuming I'm basing this off of my games and not pro games? We're talking about heroes in the context of pro-level play, of course I'm not fucking talking about my shitty 3500 MMR games.

I said to few of my friends that I expected someone to pick SF against Rhasta in some game because SF actually oneshots wards with no items and finally I think DK did it and had great success, I mean Sniper isn't bad but without items he still needs 2 hits to clear a ward while SF or Drow could do it in one while getting minimum return fire from max range.

Big difference between 625 range and almost 1000 range. Drow's still pretty vulnerable while plinking down wards, you'd have to dive halfway to the t2/t3 to reach Sniper in the same situation.