Snipers Guide

Oddities (Skips, Stalls, Drifts)

Skips

A skip occurs when your sniper's firing animation is interrupted. You'll see your sniper raise their gun as if to shoot, and then lower it again.

There are three types of skip:

Double lock skip. If your sniper is raising their gun, and you lock again, your sniper might get interrupted. You'll see them raise and lower their gun without shooting, and just stand there. If you wait a while, the sniper will eventually shoot.
Unlock skip. If your sniper is raising their gun and you unlock (click to move somewhere else on the ground), your sniper might get interrupted. You'll see them raise and lower their gun without shooting, and walk off to the unlock location. You'll have to lock for the sniper to shoot again, though you'll also have to wait for the reload.
Touch skip or hug skip. If you lock someone while very close to them (basically touching) it's possible for your sniper to fail to shoot. You'll generally see the sniper twitch and not attempt to shoot. Your sniper will never automatically shoot once it's done a touch skip. You'll see it continually face the sniper you locked but it won't ever shoot. You'll have to unlock and lock again to get the shot. Touch skips are rare since snipers don't usually get that close together, but it's useful to know what to do in that situation.

You'll often see people get mad at skips. Dont. Keep in mind that if you skipped, it's usually your fault. It means you relocked late, or pulled early, or MCed enough to hug another sniper.

Examples of skips. First is a double lock skip. Second is an unlock skip.

Old video of a double touch skip. Notice how my sniper doesn't shoot after skipping, even though I don't give it another command.

A stall occurs when the sniper is just about to shoot, but the enemy moves out of range. Sometimes the sniper will just shoot slightly beyond their max range, but other times it'll stall, where it stops and stares at the fleeing sniper for a second before continuing with its lock. You are vulnerable while you're stalling. In general you probably want to click out of the stall, either to pull away or to force your sniper to close the distance to the target.

Examples of stalls

Drifts

A drift is when your sniper veers off the path you give it. Instead of taking a direct line to the place you've told it to go, your sniper will wander off temporarily. Drifts are caused by imperfections in the path finding algorithm in StarCraft. It's trying to find a path from point A (your location) to point B (the location you ordered the sniper to go to) by analyzing the map terrain, and it can get it wrong.

Drifting makes you vulnerable. You lock someone but because of a drift, your sniper does not face them directly and so will take longer to shoot. The same drifts always occur in the same place on the same map, so you can gradually learn them and work around them.

To avoid a drift, you can click closer to your sniper. The further away you click from your sniper, the more likely it is to drift.

Example showing a common drift, in the top base. If you're standing near the right RS, and you lock someone standing below the flag, you'll drift badly. I first show that drift, then I show how you can click to avoid falling into that drift.

Airs

Sometimes, your sniper will just shoot and miss. This is called an air (shot). There's nothing you can do about airs. They're pure luck. We just have to live with them. Luckily, they don't happen very often.

Example showing a double air! (Quite rare)

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