Sniper/Guide

General
Sniper is one of those "tower" heroes, which means that in an ideal team fight, or when he has support to back him up, he should remain fairly immobile and right-click away on the most appropriate target. These kinds of fights rarely happen, and you should always be ready to side-step an incoming nuke or start taking steps forward between your shots to keep up with a retreating enemy for example. Therefore, positioning is likely the single-most important aspect of playing Sniper and one that makes him overall relatively difficult to master.

Sniper's huge range has this drawback that you often do not keep your focus on your hero, allowing enemies to sneak up on you with more ease than on other DPS-carries. Never forget your positioning, and keep tabs of your enemies and who amongst them you should be wary of.

As the "tower" hero with the most range, he is probably best played against other tower heroes, such as, or. But odds are there will always be a hero or two in the enemy team to jump on you and make your life miserable. At such, it is incredibly unlikely you can focus your items exclusively on DPS. You either need a and/or a  to allow proper usage of that  you plan on buying, or go for more hybrid, tanking items such as,  and  that should help you run away and/or not die immediately in fights.


 * Useful for providing vision during pushes, and scouting the tress next to a tower you're pushing, or inside the Roshan pit.
 * Shrapnel's damage has been buffed to considerable levels and will farm for you if you need to stay very safe. Drop one where creeps are clashing and retreat.
 * Shrapnel's 55 second cd per charge is huge, (one of?) the longest non-ultimate cd after and . Try not to waste any of them...
 * ... But three charges does allow for some leeway.
 * When running away from an enemy, typically a snotting, always drop Shrapnel in front of you, WITHOUT TURNING BACK. It's moderate duration will ensure your enemy will be fully slowed by it or make a big detour. Sometimes the damage it deals will be enough to turn the tides of a gank, whittling an enemy low enough to net a kill with.
 * When someone jumps on you, try to drop one on top of yourself as it will at the very least deal some damage instead of none...
 * ... But try not to panic and drop THREE right on top of each of other as they don't stack at all.
 * It's a good spell to farm the jungle. To get the most value out of it, don't use it on top of the camp. Instead, use it right outside of the camp you're farming as the creeps will stay inside as they aggro you and run back.


 * Only the damage increases from extra levels in Headshot. A single point is good value for the slow; get it at level 4 at the very latest.
 * But in lanes versus slow, tanky, melee heroes, it can be very interesting to max it out early to kick them away from your lane.


 * With two levels, you have more range than towers and you can safely start pushing. Your other skills don't help too much to push however so it's not an argument to level them over another point in Take aim.
 * The more range you have, the more targets you can potentially shoot and must keep tabs on.... and the more you have to remember to keep an eye on your actual hero.


 * If you realize the enemy won't die from this spell, it can be best to cancel it with your stop command and try to get an extra attack or another round of Shrapnel on top of your enemy before casting it again.
 * Though the target is not visible to enemies, they can see the debuff, with its timeout, next to all the others. It is the single most easy targeted-spell to dodge in the game and you should not rely on it to kill an enemy with any kinds of short-cd disjoint such as or.
 * It has huge range and you can usually cast it from a safe distance in lane to harass a puny support or someone with no disjoint. Try to keep enough mana for a Shrapnel or two, a and another assassinate for when you're actually trying to get a kill.