About to throw laptop out of window.

I am raging hard right now. I'm a pretty laid back guy but this game absolutely makes me rage so hard and it is due to three specific heroes that I feel absolutely destroy the game for newer players.

Riki
Sniper
Viper

Let's start with the hero which needs deleting from the game: Riki. I've read a hell of a lot on how to counter him and how to subdue him. Sentrys, Dust and then Gem. So, that's all well and good when you have a team which understands when you explain this. When you are trying to do this without an understanding or competent team then it's pointless and has barely any effect. The situations you can manage to get him out of invisibility then he is already so farmed up it makes no difference because by this point he 2/3 shots you and you've wasted all your gold buying sentrys and dust so you have no items to counter with.

What is the point in a hero who is never used in the pro or even intermediate levels of play? He is there purely for people to pubstomp in beginner levels. Absolutely pathetic hero and the developer needs a good hard slap in the face. (I volunteer)

Sniper and Viper: These heroes could be made so much better if they weren't purely right click. Viper for example: instead of being passive, W & E should be separate spells. Sniper just has far too much range to justify passive stun. Again, making stun a separate spell could make him a little less overpowered.

With Sniper I understand he is extremely squishy and has no escape which is his downfall, that's fair enough but the problem especially for new players is that he spirals out of control so fast. Once he's got his shadowblade then it's practically game over. Again I understand that is the whole point of a carry but it is simply not fair when he is so powerful from the start of the game. He can totally escape any possibility of a gank with his range (assuming he goes mid) and it is very very easy to last hit on him. (and therefore deny.) All it takes is for someone to not call missing and he's instantly got an easy gank in the lane. Not to mention he can attack towers without getting hit! (insane pushing potential)

Viper's passive Q make it nigh on impossible to have any chance to gank in the laning phase (assuming mid) when combined with the fact he's quite tanky. I would just recommend making him a bit more squishy. My point being that simply right clicking dominating is no skill whatsoever it is unfair they have such powerful passives without any skill or timing or knowledge of when to use the abilities.

I know I will get flamed the hell out of for posting this but these 3 heroes ruin my game. I'm not pro, I'm not even particularly good. I've only played around 300 games total. I'm still learning a lot. I try my hardest to use good tactics against heroes I find hard but it's got to the point where no amount of skill actually helps. It's simply a case of one hero being insanely overpowered in spite of any skill from the player.

I've played Sniper and never lost out of 12 games. I've lost once with Viper out of 9 games and I point blank refuse to play Riki I'd rather cut my balls off. I know that is a tiny amount of games but it was incredibly easy to dominate with those two and I am a thoroughly average player like most of the community.

I am currently learning Puck because I think of any hero he has the most chance to be able to counter these horrible pathetic heroes.

Flame on..

The thing that makes these heroes so strong in low level pubs is that they are really good against bad players, not becouse they snowball extremely fast.

What i used to see whenever riki was snowballing is that he got fed in the laning stage, even before level 6.
After that people tend to run away from him and get bursted down as a result. You should NEVER turn your back on riki, it is better to wait for your allies to come then to take 3 times more damage from backstab.
You can also get a force staff to get out of his smoke cloud and stun him.

If i remember correctly, when i played people stopped dominating with riki around 300 games.


Sniper isnt actually strong early, he is just annoying and also good agaisnt bad players.
The trick is to call his bluf and go all out on his face, if you shut him down early he cant farm his way back into the game easily.

His strength is lane domination against passive laners. So he needs a good start. Try to deny it from him by killing him over and over.
You can easily do this by playing something like weaver, he cant manfight you becouse of geminate attack, he cant hit and run like you can. You can also play timbersaw and just burst him down.
And if you manage to kill him once or twice he will become so weak he cant even come into lane becouse he will die again, and again, and again.

In some time you will be glad if an enemy picks sniper and angry if an ally picks him.



Viper's skillset is completely focussed around lane domination, he has high rightclick damage early that falls of later unless you can get a lot of items.
I havent found viper to be much of a problem most of the time, just accept the fact that he will dominate the lane and play more passive.
If he doesnt get early kills he will fall behind.
Plus most of the vipers will go a bad itembuild with vanguard shadow blade anyway.

Pudge is the usual counter to Sniper Mid, it's easy to just Rot him to death, even at lvl1 if he gets out of position, or gets Hooked. With his high Base Damage and some skill at Last Hitting and Creep Control, you can easily stop a Sniper from farming, at which point he'll try to Harrass you, coming into Meat Hook Range. Just keep slaughtering him until you're well and truly fed, while keeping up Ganks on other Lanes.

As for Riki, a 5-8 second Silence from Crippling Fear makes [Night stalker the bane of his existence before he gets a Diffusal Blade (Puck does work quite well too though). Not to mention, you can always build an Aghanim's Scepter and Gem of True Sight to ensure he never gets close.

Viper is tricky to counter in lane, and the only way I've ever beaten a Viper is that I'm simply better than all the ones I've met recently. He wins his lane, but eventually his Damage will drop off. Puck can work, since he can disjoint Harrass

lol, this is so very true, they never go Mek, BKB, Aghs X{D

There's nothing I love more than deciding how to grill a Sniper Mid...I usualy go Night Stalker, but then again, he is my favourite Mid Hero <}3

ive had some great fun solo killing a 13 minute Shadow Blade Sniper who was fed on bot and came to top.
i was timbersaw that game.

clockwerk is also great against sniper since you can snipe him.

Chaos Knight is also fun to play against sniper becouse if you snowball a bit you can oneshot him with Phantasm into Reality Rift combo.

basicly any gap closer destroys him if you go really agressive.

queen of pain also loves enemy snipers, you can also make him unable to lane if he dares to step foot into mid.

Riki is completely useless, trust me: he can snowball how much he wants, but he'll still deal little damage unless hitting from behind. If I'm playing a carry, I always make sure I have a Black King Bar (so Smoke Screen doesn't bug me) and some Dust of Appearance and he's dead as soon as I spot him: I remember this match with a farmed Riki that had even a Butterfly, but sadly he didn't pick a Heart/Linken's and ended up dying over and over after a good mid game. Riki is only good versus people without detection (check out that video if you want to have a good laugh), unless he's intelligent enough to disspell Dust with Diffusal Blade and Manta Style (in which case you're pretty much forced to buy a gem).

Viper is annoying, but any Hero with a blink-like ability (AM, Mirana, QoP, Slark) doesn't care that much about him. And if he doesn't buy survivability items like Mek, Drums, Agh's or BKB, he's also pretty squishy. In competitive he's mainly picked to counter fast Heroes without gap closers with his ultimate ( Lifestealer, Doom etc.), but other than that he's simply an aura holder like Bristleback.

About Sniper, though, I have to say he still annoys me even after 1400+ hours of Dota 2: the problem with him is that - whether or not he has a Shadow Blade - he can stay back and kill your entire team before anyone notices him. You'd have to focus him first, but since in pubs coordination is non-existent (hell, me and my friends can't even focus him when we're on Teamspeak), it's very difficult to do so unless you have a gap closer. SB is just an excuse to overextend: a good Sniper doesn't necessarily need it to do well as it's easy to counter ( Dust of Appearance) and it's easy to snowball with this Hero anyway because of Assassinate. TL;DR:

Every time the enemy picks him, I get an Anti-Mage if a friend(s) of mine can grant me a good laning phase. Slark works wonders too, you can basically one-shot him at level 10-11 with full points in Pounce and Dark Pact.

ah the good old days when i would go shadow blade on leshrac and destroy the **** out of sniper players who wouldnt get anything for survivabilitity :')

I have played a game VS a riki, and our addadon mirana lane fed him 10 kills by ten min, and after me and my friend asked the other team to report for feeding with really had heros to feed with, they said "Your just bad, don't feed riki".


And on sniper, my biggest problem with him is that i can lane against him, but he gets first blood on me so often because "40%" my ***, i get 5 headshots in a row on me and it is so annoying.

I wouldnt call riki comepletely useless, i think he is kind of underestimated by the pro scene becouse he his really good against heroes like ember spirit and anti mage.

The thing is that faceless void does the same thing but is a harder carry and counters those kind of heroes harder.

Seconded. Nearly all Rikis are feeding scrubs.

The other two aren't a big deal, but Sniper is obnoxious. Maybe that's because I'm sick of seeing him, or can't really work out how to crush him repeatedly as Invoker, but for once I'd like a game without a Sniper - especially an autoattacking one.

Hey - I'm new.

I hate it when my team pick these heroes. They are so easily countered and very easy to out carry. All of them have very strong pick-off abilities, but are useless if they get jumped, or caught out in a teamfight, which is very easy to do. I used to have this problem with them, but if you have any idea what you're doing they are really not a problem.