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Welcome to Qojqva's Book of the Sniper, a hero guide part of the Book of Dota series!
Here you will find all the information you need to learn to play Sniper on a high level – from drafting and builds to the optimal playstyle in different lanes and situations. We hope you’ll enjoy this guide and find it useful!
Draft: Don’t pick Sniper early in the draft – if your opponents pick a lineup that can easily jump on you the game will be very hard.
Early Game: Focus on your own farm, but don’t forget that Shrapnel + Assassinate are very powerful in the early game. You can seriously boost your growth if you manage to steal a couple of kills with your ultimate. In the later laning stage you can push out the wave, stack and farm camps with Shrapnel.
Mid & Late Game: Continue farming but move with your team – Sniper is not a hero who should be farming risky areas. Deal as much damage as you can with your long-range attacks while staying behind your frontline heroes. When you have a resource advantage, secure the win by sieging the enemy base and chipping away at the enemy tower from a safe distance.
Sniper is an agility carry hero notorious for his huge attack range – the guy can sow death from over 1000 range which allows him to stay in the backlines in every fight. He’s good on the lane thanks to Shrapnel and he’s able to finish his enemies off from an extreme distance with Assassinate. Sniper has a great late game potential but is also one of the most defenseless heroes in the game.
MAJOR
Can attack from the back of beyond: True to his name, Sniper is able to attack from 950 range with maxed Take Aim,
which is further increased by Dragon Lance with 140 and later on by his level
25 talent with another 125 (for a grand total of 1215). This allows him to
always stay in the backlines and if the enemies try to reach him, they have to
expose themselves to danger.
Good laner: Shrapnel is a very good ability in the laning phase (and throughout the entire game, frankly) with various uses – you can use it to harass or zone the lane opponent, to save yourself when the enemy tries to go on you and is a great setup for kills.
MINOR
Siege master: As long as there is someone to give you vision on the high ground, you can always attack from a safe distance, slowly chipping away at the enemy tower.
Great attack animation: Sniper has one of the best attack animation and an extremely fast projectile, which gives him an advantage in last-hitting and denying.
MAJOR
Very squishy: Sniper is one of
the most defenseless heroes in the game – he has low HP (16 + 1.7 strength) and
no escape mechanism whatsoever. He’s always a desired target because he can
dish out tons of damage if left unchecked. For that reason, you need to have very good positioning in fights.
Very farm dependent: In order to deal serious amounts of damage, the hero needs a lot of items and he’s not exactly the best farmer either. Although Shrapnel is a good ability for farm, the hero can still have troubles keeping up with flash-farming carries.
MINOR
Horrible base damage: Sniper is at the bottom of the starting damage table along with SF, Invoker, Morph and while those heroes have abilities that help them increase it, Sniper stays with that damage until he gets items. This means last hitting in the first few levels could be problematic and you should rely on the good attack animation to compensate, but this takes practice.
Very slow: 285 starting movement speed, enough said.
COL vs EG, EPICENTER XL
MATCH ID 3734692413
Replay:
Limp demonstrates how well Sniper works on a 5-man draft that can push easily. He has Tusk and Ench to pressure and win the lanes. Later on he has DK to stand in the frontline while Sniper shoots freely. This allows him to deal a huge amount of damage – 18.8k, while the next highest hero damage belongs to Chessie and Fear with 9.5k – half of what Limp managed to deal.
It is worth noting that Sniper is a great carry to have versus a Gyro, as Gyro has low range and no mobility spells.
Fnatic vs Execration, DreamLeague season 8
MATCH ID 3734103965
Replay:
A dominant performance by Abed on Sniper versus Execration. He trades relatively even with OD on the mid lane, despite having much more denies - he has a very high range, which is a big advantage against OD, but lower attack damage. After the laning stage Abed manages to deal by far the highest damage on both teams mainly because Execration doesn’t have the right tools to reach him. Brew and OD buy daggers, but they don’t have good disables yet and with the help of his teammates he manages to stay alive and fire away.
Unlike other carry heroes, Sniper is actually good in the early game with his Shrapnel and ‘kill securing’ Assassinate. Because of this reason, he is a decent solo laner and usually doesn’t need help in 1v1 situations. He starts falling behind in the mid game - that’s when he needs space to get farm the most.
Sniper can be played both with another hard carry and with a more aggressive lineup as a late game warranty.
In the first case, you are aiming to build a draft where you have the clear late game advantage. Thanks to his huge range and primary attribute (AGI), Sniper scales extremely well into the late game. You simply cannot kite him in fights, which means that when he gets a lot of DPS items he can easily kill the whole enemy team if left unchecked. He is great at defending high-ground thanks to his range and Shrapnel, which helps you reach the late game in most cases.
In the second case, the aggressive draft is designed to buy you space, which you can use to free-farm in the mid game. Moreover, with Sniper you can participate in fights without going in dangerous positions thanks to your long range and Assassinate. If you enter the late game with farm and map control advantage, you can start sieging the enemy high ground to take Rax without exposing yourself to a lot of risks.
Sniper is usually played in the mid lane as an additional carry. His Shrapnel allows him to harass the enemy and is great for setting up kills for your roamers.
You can always put him in the safe lane if you suspect he will be an easy kill in the mid lane for the enemy roamers.
Sniper is the most archetypical ranged damage dealer in Dota and as such his synergy and counters are quite straightforward: you like heroes that can occupy the attention of enemies while you deal damage and you fear heroes who can easily get on top of you.
Frontliners: Axe, Magnus, Void, Bristleback, Centaur, WK
Your favorite type of ally is any hero who can offer AoE disables or stay on the front lines and prevent enemies to get to you. That allows you to stay in the backlines and just keep firing away. Playing Sniper without a frontline core in the team is very hard, as you are not a ranged hero who can kite enemies well (at least without items).
Buffers: Drow Ranger, Ogre, Omni
Those heroes can help you with damage, attack speed or just keep you alive for longer, which is always nice. Extra damage is great
Armor reducing heroes: Slardar, Elder Titan, Weaver, TA
Especially good because they also give you vision, so you can hit enemies from a huge distance even if they try to hide in the fog. Otherwise, the armor reduction simply increases you DPS a lot, which is very useful especially in the mid game, when you don’t deal as much physical damage as other right-click carries.
Heroes who can jump on you: Storm, Centaur, Lifestealer, PA, Slark, Spectre, Spiritbreaker, Tusk, Blink Dagger
The number of heroes with mobility skills who can jump on you in a fight is too damn high! Storm can Ball Lightning directly on top of you, Centaur offers max speed to all of his friends, Lifestealer can be infested in a hero with Blink Dagger, Spectre literally pops his ultimate and he’s on top of you – half of the heroes in the game can do something like that. This is why playing Sniper can be troublesome and you need to have great positioning and survivability items.
Consumes a charge to launch a ball of shrapnel that showers the target area in explosive pellets. Enemies are subject to damage and slowed movement. Reveals the targeted area. Shrapnel charges restore every 55 seconds.
Cast Animation: 0.3+0
Cast Range: 1800
Effect Radius: 450
Effect Delay: 1.2
Damage per Second: 15/35/55/75
Move Speed Slow: 15%/20%/25%/30%
Shrapnel Duration: 10
Number of Charges: 3
Charge Replenish Time: 50
Mana: 50
Shrapnel is a really great ability with various applications.
Firstly, it’s your strongest laning tool: you can use it to harass and to set up kills, to zone the enemy laner away from the creep wave or to farm both on lane and jungle (you can push out waves and farm stacks in the jungle). This is why it’s always maxed first.
Shrapnel is also great for clearing jungle stacks, so stacking in the jungle will give you a huge early game boost and is vital to keeping up in the mid game.
Scouting with Shrapnel is extremely useful in the mid and late game – you can use it on high grounds if you suspect enemies are waiting there or even in the Rosh pit. Even more importantly, you can use it to reveal heroes who are trying to juke into the fog of war and finish them off.
Sniper increases his accuracy, giving him a chance to deal extra damage and briefly stop the movements of his enemies.
Proc Chance: 40%
Damage: 30/60/90/120
Move Speed Slow: 100%
Attack Speed Slow: 100
Knockback Distance: 10
Slow Duration: 0.5
Knockback Duration: 0
Headshot can miss.
Headshot is useful as a slow on the lane – you make it harder for the enemy to escape the Shrapnel zone.
Later on, it synergizes well with attack speed, so items like MoM or Mjollnir increase your DPS even more. It makes it harder for melee heroes to get to you if they don’t have a mobility skill – with the knock-back talent and some AS items it could be impossible to simply walk towards Sniper when he’s attacking you.
Extends the attack range of Sniper's rifle. Can be activated to double the attack range bonus for 1 attack.
Attack Range Bonus: 100/200/300/400
Active Attack Range Bonus: 100/200/300/400
Active Max Attacks: 1
CD: 15/12/9/6
Mana: 30
Well, Take Aim is pretty self-explanatory. This is the ability that makes it easy to deal damage from a safe position and makes it almost impossible for enemies to kite you. You usually upgrade it further with Dragon Lance, so you will be able to hit from a whole screen away.
The active is mostly useful to try to finish off a kill after your target exits your normal attack range.
Sniper locks onto a target enemy unit and, after a short aiming duration, fires a devastating shot that deals damage at long range and mini-stuns the target.
Cast Animation: 2+1.37
Cast Range: 3000
Radius: 0
Damage: 320/485/650
Critical Damage: 0%
Stun Duration: 0.01
Vision Buff Max Duration: 4
CD: 20/15/10
Mana: 175/225/275
Turns Assassinate into a ground target AoE ability, that after the channel period launches a critical strike and procs headshot on units in the AoE. Only affects visible heroes.
Assassinate is a nice finishing move – it’s useful for killing running enemies who are already out of your hitting range. Don’t use it from low range except in the very early game – the amount of damage you will deal with right-click attacks in the time you’re charging it will likely be enough and you can save the ultimate for someone else.
‘Kill stealing’ with Assassinate is fine regardless of what your teammates think. Sniper is a carry hero and doesn’t farm too fast, so every bit of gold he gets his hands on will make winning much easier.
This is the standard skill build – it relies on Shrapnel to harass on the lane and farm later on.
Headshot is usually skilled at level 1 to harass the enemy hero a bit. However, it’s advisable to save your point – if you get into a fight for a rune, you can skill Shrapnel to slow the enemies and score a kill.
After Shrapnel we max Take Aim – it just scales much better than Headshot. Headshot only increases its damage with levels and it’s not useful in anything else but fighting, whereas Take Aim allows you to farm and fight from a safer position, which is the main idea of the hero.
You could invest one more point in Take Aim at early levels to boost your attack range and to be able to hit heroes who can’t respond. For example, it’s useful when you play against OD – he’ll never be able to come close to hit you or Astral you.
+6 Shrapnel Charges
+125 Attack Range
-1.5s Assassinate Cast Time
+35 Knockback Distance Headshot
+20% Shrapnel Slow
+40 Attack Speed
+20 Damage
25% Cooldown Reduction
Lvl10: The CD reduction is very significant – take it if you are building multiple items with active abilities (Midas, MoM, Shadow Blade, Hurricane, etc.). The DPS, however, is also a good talent especially when combined with AS items.
Lvl15: The attack speed is the usual choice, but the slow is also very useful if you want to kite heroes.
Lvl20: Again, unless you plan to build Aghanim’s Scepter, there’s no reason to pick the Assassinate talent. The Knockback is really infuriating to melee heroes, especially if you have a lot of attack speed.
Lvl25: As good as Shrapnel is, at level 25 you don’t need it for farming anymore, so you can always save it to slow enemies in fights and to scout. +125 Attack Range is usually much better.
Sniper is relatively versatile in his item build, but you want to prioritize two things – items that help you stay alive and kite enemies and items that increase your DPS:
In the early game, most players start with multiple Wraith Bands – this is because Sniper’s starting damage and stats are pretty bad, so an extra band is very useful.
Your core items are Hurricane Pike for survivability and Mjollnir for DPS and farming speed. Your late game choices are, as usual, open, but ideally, you want items that increase your right-click DPS.
Power Treads the stats give survivability and mana pool, while the AS is great with Headshot.
Dragon Lance: The reason to buy it early is actually not because of the attack range, but because of the stats it provides – you easily reach 1000 HP, which puts you out of the burst damage threshold of most nukers, whereas if you build directly Maelstrom or MoM you sit with 800 HP.
Maelstrom: A relatively cheap way to boost your farm and it’s also useful in fights. The upgrade is also great later on, though it can be delayed until you get some more survivability if needed.
Hurricane Pike: Since you already have Dragon Lance and even an extra Wraith Band, the upgrade is not that expensive. Force Staff is also a perfect survivability tool for Sniper, especially in the upgraded form – it allows you to create 900 range distance between you and the enemy. Sometimes you might even want to finish the whole Hurricane Pike as a first item to deal with heroes who are jumping on you like PA or Riki.
BKB: You usually don’t want to build it, but if the need is too great – buy it. It will make you much harder to kill in fights, though it’s expensive and you delay your damage items. You will usually need it against the more mobile heroes like Storm or heroes with high burst damage like Tiny or SF.
Mjollnir: Since you already have the Maelstrom, Mjollnir is a good upgrade, increases your DPS.
Skadi: Increases your survivability by a lot while also providing some agility. It really changes the hero in the late game from a squishy glass cannon to a well-rounded core. Slowing the enemies also synergizes very well with Headshot (especially with the Knockback talent).
Butterfly: Good against physical damage carries and is a nice boost to your DPS. The Flutter ability is sometimes useful to get out of a bad situation – using it with Phase Boots basically grants you 550 speed.
If you want to have some fun, you could try the Aghanim's build: Aghanim’s Scepter makes Assassinate an AoE ability that fires a 280% critical strike at all heroes in the area. Since it’s physical damage, Desolator is a great boost to it and if you have teammates who reduce armor that’s even better – Slardar is the best one by far, but any hero with Solar Crest or other armor reducing skill would work.
The early game is pretty much the same as usual – build core items, try not to die, build Hurricane Pike to survive. Once you have Aghanim + Rapier, however, you literally deal 1500 damage every 8.5s with 0.5s delay (when you skill the cooldown and Assassinate talents).
The advantage of this build is mainly that you always stay in a safe position – you have 3000 cast range. You can literally stay 2 screens away from your enemies and shoot them with a huge nuke every 8.5 seconds.
Even though Assassinate has an area of effect, casting it will immediately mark all enemy heroes there and will hit all of them, no matter how far they run away.
If the enemies try to counter you with Blade Mail, simply get a Ghost Scepter – it will negate the returned damage.
An Aghanim’s + Rapiers Sniper is almost impossible to push into. At the same time, the huge drawback is that every time you exit your base you are taking a huge risk – a single death will most likely cost you the game, which makes finishing games very hard.
Power Treads: the stats give survivability and mana pool, while the AS is great with Headshot.
Dragon Lance: The reason to buy it early is actually not because of the attack range, but because of the stats it provides – you easily reach 1000 HP, which puts you out of the burst damage threshold of most nukers, whereas if you build directly Maelstrom or MoM you sit with 800 HP.
Desolator: a DPS item used on Sniper only for the Aghanim’s build or possibly for minus armor drafts.
Hurricane Pike: Since you already have Dragon Lance and even an extra Wraith Band, the upgrade is not that expensive. Force Staff is also a perfect survivability tool for Sniper, especially in the upgraded form – it allows you to create 900 range distance between you and the enemy. Sometimes you might even want to finish the whole Hurricane Pike as a first item to deal with heroes who are jumping on you like PA or Riki.
Aghanim’s: Agh’s on Sniper is a very unique item and to benefit from it properly you want to tailor your whole item build around it. Buying Agh’s with your standard build would simply not work.
Rapier: with Agh’s you get one big crit shot, and to increase the crit you need raw damage. Rapier is simply the item that gives the most damage. Sometimes you might want to buy the components of the Rapier and to lock them so that they don’t combine. You can unlock them after you get your Aghanim’s. It goes without saying, but when you are holding a Rapier you should be extremely careful – stay as far away from danger as possible. One death can lose you the game.
Rapier: with Agh’s you get one big crit shot, and to increase the crit you need raw damage. Rapier is simply the item that gives the most damage. Sometimes you might want to buy the components of the Rapier and to lock them so that they don’t combine. You can unlock them after you get your Aghanim’s. It goes without saying, but when you are holding a Rapier you should be extremely careful – stay as far away from danger as possible. One death can lose you the game.
Hand of Midas: Midas is a great way to increase your resource gain as Sniper, made even better by your lvl10 CDR talent. The attack speed is also welcome on the hero.
If you're constantly getting pressured, it might be too risky to go for Midas. If the game is relatively passive early on, however, Midas is a great investment for the mid & late game.
MoM: Many players favor MoM as a first item in their builds. It helps with farming and it synergizes well with Headshot and Maelstrom. The lifesteal won’t save you in fights but is useful to sustain your HP when you’re farming as we don’t build any HP regen items.
Shadow Blade: It’s a nice item that will allow you to position yourself better in fights and might help you avoid unwanted fights and ganks. The upgrade (Silver Edge) could also help a lot against heroes like PA, Bristleback, Spectre, etc.
Sange and Yasha: Another good alternative for a first item. Yasha helps with farming early on and the completed item provides some more mobility and survivability.
Manta: Although Yasha is pretty good, the whole Manta is more expensive than S&Y and the illusions are not strong at all, so it’s only useful as a counter to some nasty abilities like Corrosive Haze, Track, Overgrowth, etc.
Blink Dagger: Blink on Sniper is a better survivability item than Shadow Blade. You hit from a huge distance and if you see an enemy heading towards you, you can always blink away. The item requires you to have great reflexes, however, so you might need a little training with it.
MKB: A counter to evasion heroes. It also offers nice stats and it is relatively cheap. The attack speed, of course, synergizes well with Headshot and Maelstrom/Mjollnir.
Sniper’s early game is a bit strange – you want to be aggressive, yet stay safe at the same time. This is possible thanks to the high harass range of both his attacks and Shrapnel.
Of course, you are a hard carry, so your priority is farming. Nonetheless, Shrapnel and Assassinate are very powerful in the early game and could net you kills with the help of your supports.
Sniper’s
last hitting/denying can be a bit hard before you get Ring of Aquilla as his
damage is pretty low. This is compensated by the great attack animation to some
extent.
If the enemy has high damage (like Puck or Tinker) and you’re both waiting for the same creep, you can try to hit the creep twice – you basically wait for the moment when it has HP for 2 of your hits and you hit it twice. The enemy might not expect it and you will get a last hit.
You could also stack in the jungle. Use Shrapnel to stack 2 camps at the same time – simply hit one of them and Shrapnel the other one. Before doing that, you first want to push the creep wave with Shrapnel so you don’t miss creeps.
Unless you want to save Shrapnel for a fight, try to constantly use it to farm – both lane and jungle.
If you build Mask of Madness, farming Ancient camps can also be profitable in the early-mid game.
As we
already mentioned, Shrapnel is a great tool for harassing. Before you start
harassing the enemy, you might want to wait for level 3 (level 2 Shrapnel), as
it increases the damage more than double.
The way to use Shrapnel is similar to Alchemist’s Acid Spray – you want to place it on the enemy’s side of the lane, hitting creeps on the edge and the rest of it zoning the enemy. Try to hit your opponent while he’s under Shrapnel – a couple of Headshot procs will slow him even more and you’ll be able to deal a lot of damage.
If you don’t want to push the wave, use it on the enemy high ground and chase him for a while to zone him.
While Shrapnel is great for harassment, it really starts to shine when you have a ganking teammate. If you get a gank from a support with disable or slow, it’s incredibly easy to kill the enemy as Shrapnel gives vision and has multiple charges so you can use 2 or 3 if needed (and if you have them of course). This is why it’s always good to save 1 or 2 charges in case you need them to kill the enemy hero.
That being said, try to be careful. As Sniper, the enemies will always try to focus you, so you might be a victim of ganks very often. Ask your supports for wards, ask them to help when you’re being ganked – with Shrapnel you could even turn the gank around and get a kill if someone comes to your rescue. You are very slow, so standing your ground and fighting under Shrapnel is often your best option.
Once you’re
level 8-9, you could try to participate in some kills. You have 2 abilities
with very high casting range, so if your teammates initiate with something,
you’re able to deal a lot of damage.
You usually don’t want to teleport to the other lanes, but walk there if you see the enemies have pushed the lane. The best case scenario is if your teammates are fighting somewhere in the river – you don’t even have to walk far away from your lane to assassinate the enemies. Any kill that you manage to get is a nice gold boost and you need them all because Sniper can’t farm like SF or Medusa.
Other than that, you want to farm both lane and jungle until you have some core items – Dragon Lance and Maelstrom, for example, should give you enough power to fight in the mid game and still maintain some good farm.
We’re going to observe Arteezy’s Sniper against Immortals. He’s up against Ryoya’s Visage.
The game starts very passively, with Arteezy having a support Rubick to help him on the lane in the beginning. The first couple of minutes are just last-hitting with the highlight being a Shrapnel used for minor harassing.
Arteezy waits with the courier before he brings his Aquilla until he sees the Bounty Hunter appear on another lane which is always a nice safe approach. Once he has it, he no longer needs a support’s help.
The way he uses Shrapnel at 3:20 is pretty nice as it forces the enemy to come towards him, otherwise he misses the ranged creep – it was a bait as his teammates arrive and they manage to score a kill.
He also brings another set of tangos and Salve with the courier. As Sniper has no sustain at all, it’s good to always have some regeneration items.
Check how Visage tries to harass him at 4:05 and how he uses Shrapnel on top of him. He does take damage, but then the Visage has to run and the Shrapnel causes a lot of damage too. In the end, the Visage actually takes more damage than the Sniper with that maneuver – this is why it’s usually hard to harass Sniper.
Using Salve, he switches his items to the backpack and back to maximize its effectiveness – another nice trick. Now with the Aquilla + Wraith Band, he has 78 damage at level 4 which makes last-hitting and denying a child’s play. At this point, he starts attacking the Visage at every possible occasion with the intention of slowly bringing his HP down to open a possibility for a kill.
Take a note how he uses Shrapnel when trying to escape 7:05 – he doesn’t turn towards the enemy, he clicks it in front of himself – that way the hero doesn’t waste time to turn around.
He chooses to go for Power Threads, probably because the enemies are being aggressive and the extra HP could help him in some fights.
His supports have stacked a big camp and he doesn’t even bother walking there – just uses a Shrapnel and Rubick makes sure the creeps stay in that range. That also gives Rubick 100% of the experience.
Since their courier is dead, he can’t bring a teleport scroll, so he’s not able to join the fights, but starts walking towards the bot lane at 12:00 to push and fight. Check how he’s keeping his distance in the next fight, using his abilities to help his teammates without walking into danger. That pays off in the end and they win the fight.
Playing Sniper it tactically very simple because you have one clear-cut main priority – to maintain a great position on the map and in fights. You are vulnerable to ganks and you are a glass cannon, so the enemy team will make everything possible to get to you. Always move close to your team, stay in the fog and make sure you are far away from danger in fights. This will let you live and with time as you accumulate farm you will start dealing devastating damage to the enemy team.
Hurricane
Pike is one of the items that will keep you alive in fights, so you want to get
it before taking any fight against heroes with good mobility skills. It will
also save you from a number of melee heroes who just want to run towards you
and kill you. That’s why you need to make a decision when to buy your Hurricane
– if you are playing against melee heroes that can jump on you, you need to
prioritize it. Otherwise, you can get it
a bit later on.
Another important item could be BKB – you just won’t be able to survive against heroes like Storm, Puck, Tiny or similar burst damage heroes with high mobility without it. You definitely want to build it before taking team-fights if such heroes are in the enemy team.
Playing from behind with Sniper is
hard – the hero doesn’t farm fast at all and he usually deals very little
damage without items.
Luckily, you are one of the hardest heroes to push against. You can use Shrapnel for defending – it’s surprisingly hard to push high ground under Shrapnel as it deals tons of damage. Moreover, you can attack from very high range, so even though you won’t deal that much damage, you can continuously attack the enemies without exposing yourself to danger. This way you will slow down pushes a great deal and will usually be able to get your team to the late game. If you manage to slow down the game enough, you could get some DPS items that will make you a threat again in the late game.
If you are desperate and see no other way for winning the game, getting a Rapier is not a bad idea – with his huge range Sniper is one of the best Rapier carriers in the game.
The most
important thing is to know when and where to farm, which is often difficult
with Sniper.
You usually want the safer farming spots, as you don’t have any survivability mechanism and if you are out of position you will most likely pay with your life. Moreover, you want to participate in fights in order to score some assassinate kills, but at the same time, you cannot afford to neglect your farm. If you have to fight with your team and you’re not gaining anything, you’ll fall behind. If you feel like you can’t win fights, don’t constantly walk with your team. Focus on farming, go to good spots where you can farm the lane and jungle, stack camps when you’re passing through around x:53-55 and take runes when possible.
Shrapnel is good for clearing out waves, but if you’re not there to last hit the creeps, getting the gold is not guaranteed. On top of that, your damage is pretty low so you’re clearing the jungle fairly slowly compared to other carries. This is where Maelstrom/Mjollnir come in handy as they allow you to clear out waves and camps much faster. If you have a MoM as well, farming at a competitive rate gets much easier.
A Blink Dagger, later on, helps with farming a lot as well – it allows you to go through cliffs and move much faster to get to the farming spot, as you are otherwise quite slow.
In a team fight, you want to always
be in the backlines – even behind your supports.
Let your team initiate and wait to see where the dangerous heroes are. Try to position yourself at a maximum distance from them. Always try to hit from maximum range to stay as safe as possible. If an enemy gets closer to you, it would be best if you start kiting with Shrapnel, Headshot hits and as a last-ditch effort – Hurricane Pike. Using Hurricane Pike (or Blink, or Shadow Blade) aggressively is a huge risk, so only do it when you are 100% sure you’re not in danger.
Choose low armor targets – for example, DK or Timbersaw is a bad target, it will take you forever to bring them down. Better choose supports or cores who don’t have too much armor (like Invoker or SF). Use Shrapnel to slow them down and only use Assassinate if you can’t right-click them any longer.
Notice Limp’s great positioning before the fight – he stays behind the trees to make sure he is not seen. This will make it much harder for the enemy team to initiate on him. It also gives him more time to react to the Ravage and activate his BKB.
From this point on the fight is simple – he is not in any danger, so he is free to deal as much damage as possible. Notice how he uses Pike to maintain a good distance between himself and the enemy Gyro.
5-man pushing:
Sniper is great at sieging. Even though he doesn’t deal a lot of damage, you can simply hit the enemy towers from a huge distance and all you need is vision. It’s very hard for enemies to initiate on you as you will not be on the front lines even when you are hitting the towers and your team will be able to help you.
Split-Pushing:
Shrapnel can be used to push the waves rather effectively and you can try to split-push T1 or T2 towers. However, your tower damage is usually pretty bad and won’t be enough for a high ground split-push, so there’s no point in trying unless you’re massively over-farmed.
Better use Shrapnel to push the waves and move to the jungle, it’s a much safer option. When you want to break the base, it’s better to slow-push together with your team and to leave split-pushing faster, more elusive heroes.
