DotA2 Skill: Assassinate

Assassinate isn't op at all: in the early game Sniper doesn't have enough mana to spam it, in the late game it's outclassed by basic attacks. It's only good for snowballing, as most of the (early) gold a Sniper gets comes from killsteals with his ultimate.

I don't think this skill needs a nerf but it needs a rework instead. You see, the 1.7 casting time actually backfired him, because you could have spend the 1.7 seconds to attack and cripple an enemy hero with Headshot and abuse the advantage of his Take Aim. Assassinate is only useful when your target is far away from you and you can land a killing blow with it, or harass before team-clash (one nuke at beginning of teamfight, lock on the hero who relies on channelling big skill like Enigma, another nuke on someone who is running away when the clash is ended.).

Most of the time we can't just look on 1 single skill, for example : Shadow Fiend's Shadowraze deals total damage of 900 magical damage with just merely 225 mana cost and 10 seconds of cooldown, and it's very spammable due to the low mana cost, low cooldown and big mana pool sf naturally has. We have to take a look on the hero and his limitation.

One factor affecting another, there is some reasons why a 9-seconds godlike mode has only 20 seconds of cooldown and 200 mana cost.

Sniper has unnaturally high INT gain for a hero like him.

He can roam and gank a lot mid game, especially with a bottle. Just wait 30 seconda and mana is back.

Low cooldown is only useful when someone can spam it.

Unless you play Bloodstone Sniper, that cooldown is irrelevant, he's completely limited by the mana cost anyways not by the cooldown. His max mana is around 900-1000 at most in the late game, so he can use it twice that's it.

On the other hand Sniper players *should* build mana-boosting items like drum, forcestaff, skadi or even orchid to use this skill more often instead of nooby shadowblade. Or even soul ring for more spammyness.

Are you to not take account the cooldown?

10 seconds on a 655 nuke is ridiculous.

The only factor which makes this skill seem to be OP is its huge range (3000 range!). Best way to avoid being assassinated is to own him before he own you, under-farmed sniper is just a walking 655 nuke.

Meh? What's OP about this skill?

There are just so many ways to dodge it. Smoke of Deceit, Eul's Scepter of Divinity, Manta Style, Blink Dagger, Blink, True Form etc. More than half the heroes in the game have a reliable way of evading it with either their skills or their core items.

Seriously, Blink Dagger dodges it. And since you're playing against Sniper you need blink on every hero anyways.

And the ultimate counter :

Focusing Sniper first at the beginning of every fight.

The very existence of Blink Dagger is the reason why Sniper is such a horrible hero.

Wow am I seriously the only one who screams OP at this?

Also the guy abive two years ago.

needs a nerf.

Take time to draw a bead, and then deal a large amount of damage to the target at a huge range.