A sniper player's perspective on the shrapnel changes

I know this is a controversial subject, a lot of people are dissatisfied with the power of Sniper right now, as well as his Mask of madness-skadi combo (and the combo in general) and I'd thought I'd shed some light [with my experience with sniper](http://www.dotabuff.com/players/58685276)

**The old headshot, and why it's relevant:**

To understand the shrapnel changes, one must understand what sniper gave in exchange. The headshot changes were only a buff to sniper if you built attack damage. Because the slow from headshot lasts .5 seconds, it cannot stack with itself: it can only reset the timer on headshot. Thus attack speed snipers lost effectiveness in [locking down single heroes](https://www.www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKGdfxtEHbo), but attack damage snipers (players who built desolator, Daedalus, etc) benefitted from the new change. Over the course of the headshot, it doesn't completely slow you down. You can still finish that attack animation, where the old headshot you could not. The old headshot would make you restart any animation you were doing, which was great when coupled with insane attack speed

Of course, sniper also lost the ability to stop tp'ing heroes, interrupt channeled spells such as black hole and reset animations, such as attack or spell casting animations. Because snipers who get attack speed attack faster than once every half a second, you could easily stack headshots and completely remove a hero from the fight, whilst dealing lots of damage.

*"So what does this have to do with the shrapnel changes?"*

Shrapnel was very lackluster before the change. It's pushing power contradicted sniper's need to play it safe and farm. Also, it made a sniper choose between a powerful take aim or powerful headshot, where the combo of both was frightening (and still is). So, to buff shrapnel, it was given charges, and a HUGE mana reduction. Sniper can now make an entire teamfight covered with shrapnel, which is pretty good. The old shrapnel was ineffective, because heroes could just move out of the aoe and take very little damage. Now, all 5 enemy heroes must take shrapnel damage and slow for the full ten seconds.

*"but you didn't answer how it related to the new headshot"*

The new headshot has 100% slow. It can't stack with shrapnel, the old headshot would AND IT WOULD BE RIDICULOUSLY POWERFUL.

**The thing is, the new shrapnel gave sniper a lot of variety as well as a counter to blink dagger spam. Aggressive teams with lots of blink daggers can be shut down but sniper.** I imagine Icefrog wanted to give sniper some interesting mechanics besides global-range-midget-with-basher, and I agree. It made sniper very interesting, but the slow is ridiculous with the addition of skadi+MoM. Is it too good?


...sort of.


Sniper's still sniper. He still dies incredibly fast, and heroes who can jump on him still have no problem killing him. However, blink dagger has lost a LOT of it's powerful against a sniper, and pushing high ground is very difficult with a 30% attack speed and movement slow. **This is an issue because the 6.83 mechanics work gloriously with the shrapnel changes. Games can go on for a very long duration (good for losing teams) and sniper can make it last very long.**


I would say that the mechanics should be changed, but that doesn't seem likely.

Personally, I'd like it if sniper got a new ability like a shotgun blast: a cone that pushes enemies away and deals damage. I'd like it if sniper became a more teamfight oriented semi carry than a ultra squishy, hard to get to hard carry. Headshot is still incredibly strong, and I'm interested in where this hero will go.