Mid Counter to Sniper

Lion mid is fun vs sniper, lock him down until 6, than ZAP!!
Rune control, sniper will sit the tower and ping away at creeps, you should most likely be able to freely run runes with most heroes.
Magnus can sit back, bottle crow, and shockwave farm, and nuke sniper out of lane with good aim.
Pudge murders sniper, patience on hooks is key.
Timbersaw, reactive armor laughs at his harassment.
Clockwerk can punish him pretty hard
Warlock: fatal bonds and that damn dot I never remember, at level 6 your demon will eat him.
Invoker: quas-extort is hell for him, I don't want to get into detail as he takes quite a bit of practice to play efficiently.
Shadow Fiend: get souls up, raze him out of lane
Qop: easy lane, too quick, and too much burst, sniper has a horrible starting health pool that she can chew through very fast
Storm Spirit: tread lightly here, takes a bit of attentiveness to manage his mana early on, but burst and a long disable, high mobility, if you can't kill him, you'll still force him out of lane.
Nyx Assasin: spike carapace when he harasses, and laugh, nuke away his mana etc, it's nyx.
Ogre Magi: stout shield, pretty much ignores snipers damage, can also nuke the **** out of him with a bottle and level 6
Templar Assassin: refraction ignores sniper, well aimed psy blades ruin his day
Outworld Devourer: improson, farm, harass when in range, repeat
Kunnka: Tidebringer splash damage will burn through his regen, and you can throw boats at people, and you're a pirate.
Hell just take keeper of the light mid and illuminate the hell out of the lane, or pugna and just keep nether blasting the hell out of the lane and tower, if he gets out of position, decrepify, blow his *** up.
Cheers :)

Damn! You beat me to Nightstalker! T-T

You may be thinking that Nightstalker would have a lot of trouble against that kind of Range, due to him being Melee, but this is why you buy a Stout Shield as part of your starting Items. With a pathetic Base Damage of ~39, when Stout Shield Procs, you'll block half of his damage even before your Armour kicks in.

Also consider that you have a starting Base Damage of ~59. If you suck it up and allow yourself to take a few hits, you can (with some decent Last Hitting skills) get every Last Hit and Deny in the 1st Wave with ease. If you keep Denying Creeps, Sniper won't be getting much Exp or any Gold, and you can just Heal up with a Tango after every wave. By the time you get your 2:00 Bottle, you should realise how easy it is to lane against Sniper.

You should also be able to kill him before he can reach Lvl6 too, since Night starts at 4:00 now, when he'll be lvl 4 at the most (though he should only be lvl 3), grab the 4:00 Rune and either Gank him, or if he's smart, chase him out of the Lane. You don't have to worry about his Auto-Attacks, because your Movement Speed will be enough to close the gap before he can do much Damage.

Finally, if at any point while you're Ganking him, you feel you've overextended, e.g. you Tower Dived and took too much Damage, then use Fear to Silence him and run, he can't Assassinate you while Silenced ;{)

I see a lot of people suggest silencer. Now that i think of it curse of the silent should destroy sniper since it is really high damage for the full duration.
So add silencer to the list.

Just pick Earth Spirit. End of story.

any ranged hero (or melee with a gap closing ability) with some burst will do the job. Puck Queen of Pain and Tinker seem like good options vs sniper. Bane and (as already mentioned) Silencer also look very good on paper .... Enfeeble and Last Word greatly reduce his physical dmg output making even Headshot redundant.

but as said ...rly any hero that can outlast sniper (which are quite a lot in the laning-stage) will do the trick. Another way to "check" (cant really speak of countering) sniper is to abuse his lack of sustain/escape/mobility, which makes gankers and disabler very powerfull vs him. Bloodseeker, Kunkka, Nightstalker and Nyx Assassin are some melee heroes that come to mind for instance.

Is Sniper really that difficult to deal with in the mid lane? He has no laning presence, poor autoattack damage (any INT Hero with a Null Talisman should be able to out-last hit him) and pub players don't even pick up a Bottle on him. His only advantages are the big range and annoying Headshots.

To me, the best counters are Heroes that can deal AoE nuke damage, preferably in a straight line like Dragon Knight, Puck, Magnus et cetera. Just stay a bit back and if he follows you between the creeps to harass you throw the Breathe Fire just when the health of the enemy creeps is low enough to kill them: you'll get extra gold, plus do some harass damage to Sniper who, not having a Bottle, will really suffer from it. Every time the rune spawns get it and, if it's a haste, double damage or illusion rune, try to harass him even more using it.


By the way, is bonbb's reply being counted as a necropost?