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3 Votes

Kiting With Kardel

October 9, 2012 by AceofSpikes
Comments: 7    |    Views: 13940    |   


Hero Build

DotA2 Hero: Sniper




Hero Skills

Keen Scope (Innate)

Shrapnel

13 14 15 17

Headshot

2 4 8 9

Take Aim

1 3 5 7

Assassinate

6 11 16

Talents

10 12 18


Kiting With Kardel

AceofSpikes
October 9, 2012


Introduction

Sniper has the longest range in the game, and why not abuse this? Who better to kite around enemies keeping them out from harming you while still dealing solid damage.
Well, there are a lot of obstacles to overcome to be sucessful this way, but in the end, you will wreck everyone.

Pro/ Cons

Pro's

Longest range in the game
Amazing kiter late game
1500, 2000, 2500 range single target nuke
Shrapnel pushes towers
Longest range in the game
Good stat gain
Built in mini-stun
Ult mini-stun penetrates bkb (black hole)

Con's

Very low base stats (very low starting damage, very low starting hp)
Squishy most of the game
Mini-stun damage is too low (averages 30 damage per attack rank 4)
No escape mechanism
Slow

Items

The Aquilla is completely optional. If you really want more damage early on for last hitting, go ahead and grab it. If not, skip ahead and get yourself the magic wand, and drums.

Sniper needs mobility. The more you get, the better off you are. I start with a drum because for a low price of 1750 you get 9 of each stat, 5 AS and 5% MS.
This item is extremely easy to buy, as the steps are quite small to get to it.
Pop the active in order to run away if you see a gank coming your way (I assume someone warded) and you are quite close to the enemies. Pop it when you gank (or an ally ganks your lane) to improve the success rate of getting a kill.

Now, depending on how well you have been doing in lane, you need to make a choice. If you are doing great on farming, but not getting any kills, grab a yasha. If you are getting a good amount of kills and are keeping up on your farm, skip the yasha and grab a ghostblade. Ghostblade will help you advance a lead you already have, but it will not help you turn around a lead you do not have. Yasha is a much more steady choice as we will probably upgrade it later, and the movement speed is not lost at the time you need it most.

I say Skadi is Core. With Sniper having the longest range in the game, and needing a larger than normal health pool, this item fits perfectly into what any kardel will want. With your high mobility from both drums and your choice item, you can essentially kite any hero in the game. The debuff only becomes more effective as the game goes longer and this item will provide you with cc to help your team in teamfights.

Kite away my friend. Do it right, and victory is yours.

Luxery Items

The reasoning by classifying manta as luxury, and yashas as core is quite simple. The upgrade to manta is very nice. However, applying a skadi to your auto attacks is devastating and makes you contribute more to a team. Sniper is probably the best skadi user in the game, and I'm extremely surprised to see no one else putting skadi as a core item (one other build has skadi as a luxury). Skadi is built nicely, as you get pure stats along the way. Once you have it, you'll start to wreck people. Manta is the easiest to build into item, and provides many great utility features. Great item against a team with alot of slows and debuffs.

After you acquire your skadi though, you can finally start focusing on providing ridiculous damage output. Manta provides an immdediatly noticeable dps output, as is quite nice, it also gives you even more stats.

Why is a Satanic up here you may ask? This late in the game, the item provides great armor, great health, and an amazing lifesteal active. Your headshots count as physical damage, and I believe apply to your lifesteal. I've often gone from low hp, to full hp while being ganked, because I popped the active on it. Of course, without support from your team, you'll never regenerate back up your health. But adding another layer of durability to your carry will help a lot. This item is luxury simply because you can easily just decide, hey, we're far enough ahead, I don't need more durability, lets get better damage, crit. This is the best choice of item for adding in even more tankiness if you need it.

Butterfly I put up here as a strong luxury item, it benefits you in many ways, as by this point in time, you will have the perfectly ideal ratio between health and armor, and 2200 health to add to that. Putting up the dodge from butterfly gives you SO much more physical damage resistance, perfect if your going carry v carry at this point in the game. The large amount of attack speed buff on the item also reduces the time of you spend idol when kiting, as well as allows you to proc headshot after headshot, further decreasing peoples chances of escaping with more .2 seconds stuns. Very solid choice later on by sniper.

Daedulus is in here simply because, MASS DAMAGE OUTPUT. If your team has good initiation, and if you are the primary source of damage output on your team, this is the best luxery item to go for. If your team lacks good crowd control, and you have another carry or two on your team, you may want to opt for a butterfly instead, as it provides more usefulness in helping melee carries.

Skills

Max your take aim first, it keeps you as far away from harm as possible. Remember, you do not have an escape, so never overextend. Take aim helps you not overextend.

Headshot provides you with an amazing passive, built in minibash. This effectively helps you kite people even more, while providing moderate damage. Max this when you get the chance, usually 2nd but occasionally first, depending on the lanes.

Shrapnel. This spell is quite ineffective in most situations. You might as well use it in a team fight, but really you get this skill solely to push down towers. It is quite effective against a tower with people guarding it as its cast range is even longer than your attack range. Get a few points in stats before touching this so you can hold up a bit more.

Assassinate. Typically you do not want to initiate with this. Its best use in on a fleeing enemy, or an invis your team needs sight on. Max this whenever possible as its a great nuke. The only time you can spam this is when your safe underneath your tower without creeps around you.

Creeping

You need CS. You need lots of CS.
Get lots of CS. Get Lots of Denies.
Your animation should make this extremly easy.
If you fail this part, all is lost for Sniper.
Please get CS.

Team Work

With sniper, you need to prioritize these things in the following order:

1: easy kills on people who still have spells that can contribute off cooldown
2: Sniping any easy fleeing kills from the battlefield with your ult
3: Maintaining Skadi debuff on the enemy right clicker
4: The primary enemy your team is focusing down.

Always keep good position.
With your excessively long range, you should stay out of harm for the start of every fight.
However, people tend to all try and jump on the sniper.
If your in a safe position behind your team, the amount of stun's they provide, along with your durability (you built really durably), you shouldn't end up dyeing.
Positioning is everything with sniper, if you don't understand where good places are, a few things to note are:

1: uphill battles suck
2: if you are standing next to any two heroes, your out of place, unless you built Satanic, in which case if your next to any four heroes your out of place.
3: Make sure that you're attacking
4: Usually your regular right clicks do greater damage per second than your ultimate does, do not use your ultimate if you can right click your target

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