Pharoah sniping guide

The Hellbourne unearthed this creature from
the shifting sands of the Great Waste.
He could originally speak but a single word, which
has become his name — Pharaoh. It seems he must
once have been a mighty king, wrapped as he is in golden finery,
but now he is simply a monster, summoning forth his dead
servants from the grave and conjuring fire and fear across the land.

The Introduction————————————————————————

I’ve always loved Clockwork and his ability to snipe people from any distance with some practice. I remember spending hours in a single map just shooting rockeing ts and counting the seconds it would take to get the right timing on these shots. Pharaoh actually brings alot more to the table with his soul then rocket did. For one the soul does seem to have a much larger radius that rocket did in DoTA. The radius of the soul is enough to take an entire lane compared to rockets 2/3 lane. This added radius makes sniping with the rocket much easier.

In truth this “guide” is more of a concept to be taken and used to improve your chances of sniping a hero. It is not a guide that tells you where to snipe but more along the lines of methods to teach yourselves how to find those locations to snipe from. I hope this “guide” helps in some matter or form.

The Spell————————————————————————

Tormented Soul

Pharaoh unleashes a tormented soul toward a target
location anywhere on the map. The soul self destructs
when it reaches the designated location, releasing its
dark energy to damage nearby enemies.
Level 1 : Launches projectile dealing 80 magic damage and revealing area for 5 seconds.
Level 2 : Launches projectile dealing 120 magic damage and revealing area for 10 seconds.
Level 3 : Launches projectile dealing 160 magic damage and revealing area for 15 seconds.
Level 4 : Launches projectile dealing 200 magic damage and revealing area for 20 seconds.
Mana cost 50
Cooldown 30/25/20/15 seconds

The Concept————————————————————————

To start one thing you will want to do is get a feel for the speed of the soul itself. The best way to get a nice feel and good accuracy with your soul is to find you’re own sweet spots. A sweet spot is a measured distance of which distance and time you know.

For example.

A soul fired from the world tree will take:
18 seconds to enemy fountain
7 seconds to middle river
13 seconds to Bottom demon tower 1
15 seconds to Bottom demon tower 2
16 seconds to Bottom demon tower 3

These are approximations but because of the incredible radius of the soul the odds of hitting are in you’re favor

The difficulty in hitting the soul correctly however is calculating the move speed of the enemy. I use a base of 350 move speed for my vision. I have found that walking about 3/4 of a inch on the map at 350 move speed is 10 seconds worth of movement. So lets take this scenario.

You see a hero at low hp after a fight with a teammate. You’re teammate died trying to kill this player but failed to do so leaving him with but a sliver of hp. With that mentality most people would simply begin running straight backwards, the shortest distance to the fountain. You are running to help him but as he die you are at your first tower, one of your sweet spots. You’re last glimpse of him as he runs is as he leaves his first tower escaping into the fog of war. Now lets go further to say that this hero has a base move speed of 305 with marchers bringing him up to 355. That means about an inch is about 10 seconds of movement. You know that 10 seconds of movement from the first bottom tower to the second bottom enemy tower is 10 seconds. You let it fly and you get the kill.

Conclusion————————————————————————

In the end sniping with the Pharaohs spirit comes down to 3 things. Practice, reflexes, and luck. If you really want to make the Pharaoh’s soul as deadly as Thunderbringer’s ultimate in last hit killing then you will need to put in the time to find more spots and remember more times and distances. However knowing just the ones from world tree to key locations will give you a good enough feel to snipe on the run. Remember to take into account heroes with movement increasing abilities, Scout Pestilence Phase boots all can throw a good soul off leading to a wasted cool down. I can’t give you set methods to doing this because very much like Devourers hook, there is no set method. It is a matter of remembering how things went the time before then compensating to do better next time. However if you do manage to take the concepts and put them into strong effect then pharaoh easily becomes one of the more deadly heroes in the game even without his ult, mummies, flame own age combo.