Support Sniper: A Build For Those 5-Carry Pub Games

I'll start off by saying that I by no means endorse this as a way to play Sniper in a well-organized game where there's some actual coordination. Yet. But in a game where every single friggin' person on your team picked a carry even after you first-picked Sniper? Maybe try this out.

Skill Build: Shrapnel maxed by 7, Take Aim maxed by 10, with a value point in Headshot at level 2. Max stats before Headshot for more survivability and a larger mana pool.

- This gives Sniper a powerful slow and harass tool to help keep himself in lane, while giving you your maximum range to proc Headshot. Since you're not playing carry, we don't care about the lack of damage from Headshot, a single point is all it takes to get those annoying 100% attack speed and move speed slows.

Boots of Choice: Arcane Boots. As support Sniper, you want to be able to give your other carries more mana for their spells, as well as give yourself more mana to spam Assassinate, which will be your main role in teamfights, apart from using this:

First Item: Veil of Discord. As support Sniper, you're going to want to get a Null Talisman as early as possible and transition it into this. This item gives you some armor and health regen, but the active is what we're looking for: a 25% magic damage amp is scarier on Sniper than you might think.

Lemme break it down: before using the active on Veil of Discord, Shrapnel will only do 36 damage per tick, per stack. This means that one cast of Shrapnel can only deal a max of 396 damage, and that's IF the enemy stands in it the whole time. If you cast all three Shrapnels at the same time, the damage becomes 1188. Which is scary. But requires dumb opponents.

With veil, on the other hand, Shrapnel does 45 damage per tick, meaning that one cast of Shrapnel now has the potential to do 495 damage! All three stacks combined, then, do a whopping 1485 damage, a 25% improvement which... makes sense, because Veil of Discord amps magic damage by 25%. Funny how that works.

Oh, and uh... also, Assassinate goes from doing a measly 487 damage to a more respectable 609. It ain't no Lina ult, but hey: 10 second cooldown. You'll live.

Mobility Items: Force Staff, Blink Dagger. Either one will work, since this way of playing Sniper will put you closer to the fight than you normally want to be, thanks to the range on Veil of Discord. Force Staff is arguably the better support item since it can be used to save yourself and teammates, so keep that in mind. Also not disable if you take damage, and increases your mana pool for more ult-spam. Fun!

Luxury Items: Eul's Scepter of Divinity, Orchid Malevolence, Octarine Core, Scythe of Vyse. You'll want an item to help sustain your mana pool better, so Eul's and Orchid are two solid choice. Eul's will give you a move speed advantage to help you run away from fights, or walk on people to keep Headshot procs, as well as giving you the OP cyclone ability. Orchid, though, gives you a silence to deal with the heroes that normally like jumping on Sniper (QOP, Storm Spirit, etc.), but also synergizes with your magic amplification build, making Shrapnel and Assassinate even MORE terrifying. Hex is a good item in general for disable heroes late game, and is, in my opinion, a situational pickup even on Carry Sniper.

Which leaves us with Octarine Core. Absurdly late game item for a Sniper that's going to be a 4 or 5 position and buying all the wards? Yes. A great item for tanking you up and giving you Assassinate on a 7.5 second cooldown? Also yes. If the game has gone long enough and you're able to pick this up.... you've probably won. Also, you're farming really well and maybe you should have gone core sniper. There's that.

Lemme know what you all think. In my opinion, this is super viable on a team with too many carries and not enough supports, but could it even be viable in an actual game? I'll be eagerly awaiting your thoughts.

If you want to play a nuking Sniper, why no Ethereal Blade? Sounds like the natural choice. Besides...it's a shotgun.

But don't bother. Nuking Sniper sucks...been there done that. There's really no redeeming feature about the hero. Ranged creep simulator with right-click items is the only thing he scales with. Icefrog really doesn't give us any other options to play him except the most boring one.

There's no support Sniper or carry Sniper builds. The hero scales better with right-click than he does with nukes. So if you have low farm build cheap right-click items like Crystalys or Maelstrom and positionning like Force Staff..not nukes.

Assassinate and Shrapnel are completely useless in late game, so by the time you farm stuff like Octarine Core...the skills do nothing.

Besides, who first picks Sniper? You're literally begging for counterpicks here. Pubs aren't as forgiving as the drafters were in DAC :)



You do realize that Shrapnel doesn't stack, so you'll have to cast them one after another?
I have seen dumb people in this game. But even 0.1 k MMR cyka blyats won't be standing for 30 SECONDS STRAIGHT in your 3 consecutive casts of Shrapnel. Besides, at that point, veil wears off xD

I mean seriously, if you want to screw around by playing carries as nukers... Sniper is literally the least interesting hero in this regard. You'll have way more fun (and success) by building Ethereal Blade on Tiny, going Aghs/refresher on Luna, going Dagon/Eblade on your mid or offlane Morphling, going Dagon/Eblade on Bloodseeker, or building Euls and refresher on Shadow Fiend.

Why would you play nuking sniper? Right-click sniper is really the only way to go, unless you get 6 scythe and spam your assassinate, effective during skirmish/before engagement, but sucks when people simply get dagger and jump on you.

It's always nice to think of alternative ways to play in unusual circumstances. Dota is all about making the best of the situation. This might be, in some rare situations, but will of course most likely not be.

We need people to think out of the box, not just people that brings them back to the ground like you do, hamster. You're pretty much always being against uncommon stuff, which I'm not sure why since Dota is about evolving and adapting...

Anyways, I like the idea, I'll have to try it out!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

The idea in this thread is pretty bad and there are a lot of reasons why it's not viable. I took the time to explain why by giving ARGUMENTS.

I've tried a lot of stuff in this game. I've tried many different ways of playing utility/nuking Sniper like this and it sucked. I'm just saying it honestly from experience.

If you disagree with me on what I've said in this thread or anywhere else, you need to give arguments as well. Saying "you're not open to new stuff" is not an argument.

See, there's a fine line between trying out original new ideas, going for troll builds for the fun, and doing horrible pub scrub builds while thinking you're actually doing something good.

I'm perfectly fine with the first two...I'm just trying to warn people from the last one which has a high risk of throwing games for your whole team and ruining everybody's fun.

I just don't want new players to start thinking right-click Dazzle, carry Treant Protector or Octarine Sniper is a thing. It's not...and I think I explained why.

The thing is, what op is trying to suggest is a nuking sniper, not a support. Sure he can buy wards and sentries, but his damage scales so much better as a carry with actual farm. Plus, it has already been tried, and the damage output is measly at best.

Mmh, well I guess we just see it in a different way. You think the best way to be right is to prove your thoughts with arguments/stats so new players don't go all crazy while I think trying to get out of the box even if it's not as good as the original (or totally suck) is still a good way to learn the hero itself. I like your input, most of the time, don't get me wrong, but I think a good mix of our 2 mindset is what makes a good player, well a good player.

Sorry for the offtopic.

Well if there is one person bring out a new idea, it is supposed to be supported or rejected right?

Yes everything is situational, in some game you have to play #5 but it's really sucks for sniper. The only nuke that Sniper has is his assassination. While you have money for veil, octarine, eul, orchid, why not just get a dagon-laser gun and an ethereal-shotgun? You blink in pew pew and pew, it's about 2k damage there. Shrapnel is not a nuke because if you expect someone to stand there for 30 seconds, then Sand King go rampage with 8000 damage AOE nuke are totally legit.

To OP:
I just realized that getting a veil is a waste of gold under this situation. To support the other 4 carry, you should be building AoE item like drum, or armor reduction like MoC, and maybe some heal like urn so you can heal your carry after each gank.