Everything Can Work - Position 4 Sniper Edition
Image by Lothrean
Introducing a brand new series from the Dotabuff team - Everything Can Work. Inspired by two-time TI champion OG.N0taill, we hope to shed some light on some strategies that may or may not get you reported.
In the first edition, position 4 
Sniper, is it a bad idea or genius?
Pro scene and history
The history of position 4 Sniper is a short one. The Dota world first saw support Sniper in the pro scene during ESL One Los Angeles 2020: Europe & CIS. 
Nigma Galaxy and their captain KuroKy are no strangers to experimenting but they took it to another level by picking position 5 Sniper in this game.
That game was game two of their lower bracket first round match up in the ESL One Los Angeles playoffs. They were up 1-0 against 
Chicken Fighters ! and they decided to pick position 5 Sniper in game 2. It was a risky pocket pick and it ended up in a loss for Team Nigma. They then lost game 3 and were upset in the lower bracket, ending their playoff run. Unsurprisingly, that strategy wasn’t copied by other teams for the rest of the playoffs.
Public game stats
Despite the poor show out of support Sniper in the pro scene, it’s not unseen in the pub scene.
In the Dotabuff meta page, when you sort by offlane roles, since position 4s go to the offlane, and find Sniper, his win rate in the Divine/Immortal tier is 53.42% with a 1.96% pick rate. In the Ancient tier, his win rate is 53.74% with a 2.11% pick rate.
That’s good for 17th best win rate amongst all heroes in the Divine/Immortal tier in the offlane role, and 10th best win rate amongst all heroes in the Ancient tier.
So why has position 4 Sniper gained such popularity, and why is he doing so well?
Aghanim’s Scepter update
In the 7.23 patch, Sniper’s Aghanim’s Scepter was changed to:
“Reduces cast time on Assassinate from 2 to 1 and causes it to disable the target for 1.8 seconds.”
In the 7.25 patch, it was updated again to:
“Aghanim's Scepter cast time reduced from 1 to 0.5 seconds.”
This rework is what prompted people to theorize Sniper as a support. A long range, near instant, low cooldown, 1.8 second stun, that does high amounts of damage, sounds great in theory. It can lead to long range initiations, it can stop teleports, it can do a lot of things.
In theory, it sounds great, but in the real game, that’s still up for debate. What isn’t up for debate though is the fact that Sniper in the offlane is winning more games than all but 16 heroes in the Ancient/Immortal tier, and all but nine heroes in the Ancient tier.
My experience with position 4 Sniper
When discussing position 4 Sniper, I was excited to try it out. I enjoy the idea of playing Sniper but when it comes to the actual game play, the idea is better.
The first game I played, one of my teammates said, “What’s with support Sniper everywhere?” and to stop watching Youtube videos. I said I’m doing research for an article.
The lane stage went pretty good, me and Underlord won the lane against Slark and Lion and during the early mid game everyone was farming so I farmed as well and got an Aghanim’s Scepter by 25 minutes.
It’s surprisingly great. You need a lot of mana to use it often so was ferrying clarities constantly and ended up buying Mana Boots. It stops initiation, channeling spells, and does everything a 1.8 second stun would do, but you can do it at a safe distance and do it often.
We ended up losing that game and I felt pretty useless when I wasn’t casting Shrapnel or Assassinate. My teammates also got tilted easily and I ended up muting three of them.
So expect your teammates to get tilted very quickly and you’ll probably have to mute a few of them. If you don’t play spectacularly, expect to get flamed.
Final thoughts
It was an interesting idea to try out, but I’m not a buyer of support Sniper. I am a buyer of the “Everything can work” philosophy and if my teammate decided to pick a supper Sniper, I wouldn’t be against it. But after playing two games of it, I personally would not choose to do that again.
You need a line up that is heavily constrained to work with a support Sniper. Having a frontliner that can demand attention like an Underlord or Axe or Mars would pair well with a support Sniper.
You also need farm and Sniper isn’t the fastest farmer, especially when you’re a support. You’ll be taking away farm from your cores and if you’re playing a carry and your support Sniper is farming the jungle, that can be tilting.
One good thing that can come from playing a support Sniper though is the all chatting potential when you’re about to win.
Would you guys be supportive of your teammate if they picked a position 4 Sniper? Would you try it out yourself?
By nature I never flame anyone I just want everyone to try to win. I'm supportive of anything. My teammate may know more than me. I've been seeing a lot of success from Techies players as well lately.
The reasoning behind a pos 4/5 clinkz or sniper is to make hg and late game sieging easier. It works when you're playing with Miracle or Arteezy but not with randoms in pubs.
Since heroes like lycan are in meta , techies , who naturally delays the game just by being in it , has more success .
Recently i had a team with pos4 sniper, it felt like he didn't fit in our draft at all and used to be useless in all engagements. We got stomped.
I believe pos4 sniper could work if the team would heavily draft around sniper and his weaknesses, but in my pubs cores rarely draft around support picks and even if they would, sniper would be an achor to be carried.
Fighting against one couple days ago, either because of my pick as Storm Spirit or the Sniper is terrible, Sniper post 4 is just high risk mediocre reward.
I also experimented with Troll, Lifestealer and Lycan support. The difference between them is that Sniper has no real "supporting feature" aside a 1.8 second stun + nuke and slow area.
For most time, i saw several soft support is just 4th core as hard support tend to need less gold anyway. Unless you want to play 60+ minutes game,
Что бы это работало, нужно просто перед покупкой аганима сначало взять некра, после их появления фарм ускоряется в несколько раз и импакт в драке тоже. Аганим появится примерно в тот же промежуток времени 22-25. Для быстрой покупки аганима советую стакать 2 кемпа при помощи 3 скила и фармить их шрапнелью заброшенной по середине от спавнов крипов. Порядок предметов: хэдреска, сапог, первые некра, нейтральный предмет на ману, аганим, (форс или лотус), хекс. Также вместо форса можно взять дагер, а вместо лотуса линку. И не апайте сапог в пт, пожалуйста.
Jesus, this post will fuck more yet my ranked games... Sniper support = report, no more...
Been doing this since the aghs got rewoked, with about 65% winrate.
Get early midas and you'll have all the farm you'll ever need, never take farm from your lane partner or the jungle. Lowered cooldown on midas more than makes up for any farming problems.
Jungle items are Philosopher's Stone, if not available, any cooldown reduction item, and if that's not available, Nether Shawl.
its better for mid snip to buy agha after dragon lance. then make him sup
better than pos 5 pudge
We had one in our game yesterday and it worked out better than I expected. Early game the shrapnel was causing issues due to the damage and our sniper could also roam and cause chaos in the mid game with assisinate.
turned out to be a good pick
I think support sniper works with specific lineups who can balance his strengths and weaknesses. The main strengths I can see about support sniper are 1. Triple shrapnel early into the game 2. Aghs assassinate 3. 25% cdr talent at level 10. The first two have been theorycrafted to death but the third seemed underexplored. I think sniper could go for team oriented items like arcanes, force staff even veil. Is it possible that sniper could forego aghs rush and go for a deathball build with those items instead?
Why are you even trolling with click bait headlines like this???
I agree almost with what you are saying... I would reword it as "a lot of stuff can work"...
But the problem is supports should pick early because core picks are much more vital to the snowball trash meta we live in...
So the chances of you being able to do something fun and original on a static low skill hero like Sniper support are VERY VERY low...
I think even think a talented Windranger or Pango player as support is much, much, more viable in your average pubs than a pepega Sniper for support.
Shame on you for even posting this on a mainstream Dota website... it's 100% click bait garbage article, you even admit yourself you wouldn't recommend it under most conditions but your title is "Everything can work Sniper Edition"...
You're going to hell in the world of journalism, you just pulled some deep dark lying shit with this article title...
I agree with your basic idea that stuff can work, but this specific article is literally the bottom of journalism yikes dude
Can you trolls please just check out the winrate data. Btw I don't think the "everything can work" title in any sense is a click bait.
Tried 5 games with it, 0% win rate. Behavior score went from 10k to 8k. Getting flamed from minute 1. Thanks a lot dotabuff, please do proper research before making me lose mmr
@Tokadub
- Over 6000 games played
- <50% win rate (honestly, play another game, even your dog is disappointed on you)
- Legend bracket FOREVER <3
- Using a quality service without paying a single cent
- Decided to tilt when reading a random article
- "Mom I got clickbaited sob sob" when this isn't even a clickbait.
ono my rnakd gams
Those who play support sniper, pls tell me how many camps you stacked!
This "brand new series" look dumb af
pls no
just tried. Seems good in theory. But in fact it took a lot of time for sniper to be online. 17-28 mins agh seems so hard in this meta to do anything.
If you need agh to be a decent supp, you're basically a lane creep with bigger bounty. NGL this gonna spread like covid in SEA this month
I think support sniper shouldn't rush agh. Getting some supportive item before agh would help, such as forcestaff, medallion, mek, works better for me. But I am an archon, you can ignore me XD
As a sniper player and also he is one of my favorite heroes, I have won like 14 straight games with my sniper 4, im currently sitting on like 23-6 sniper support. Ancient tier btw
Me and my friends have been memeing roaming sniper for ages.
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good way for this to work is mind games, enemy will go for countering mid sniper who will rule the game and then they notice that sniper is in offlane just hitting enemy safelaner, they will also pick good heroes against sniper so ally team can pick good heroes against their pick.
Seen couple of sniper pos 4 (always the random players) and always enemies countered sniper (in 3k bracket with friends). didn't see any other use for pos 4 sniper
Sniper pos 4 is really freakin' good if you can manage your mana usage properly and positioning yourself in the best & unreachable spot at every war to spam the shit out of shrapnels and assassinate
https://www.twitch.tv/kimademi here streaming sniper pos 4 xD
this guide ruinned my pubs :)
unlike clinz , sniper 4 is best role for sniper - better than mid lane sniper - aghanim is great punish for going out of position , deal dmg and slow , also stun , provide night vision - best role for sniper
пиздатый хуй, охуенные яйца