So I'll start with the heroes I play. I mostly play Shadow fiend, Leshrac, and Invoker. But the advice I'm looking for can be as specific or as general as you're willing to give, anything is appreciated.

Specifically, I want to know what it is I should be doing against sniper, I've tried various strategies, and he seems like a hard hero to deal with.

I'll make a list of my issues, numbered.

1: Shrapnel makes it fairly difficult to trade with him. If I commit to a bad trade, and have to retreat through a shrapnel, it's going to be rather tough, if not a death outright. If I want to go in, Shrapnel is fairly strong deterrence and will make it very difficulty to close the gap. I've had more success engaging as leshrac than the other two heroes I play.

2: Playing passive. Assuming both sniper and I play passive, go for denies and last hits where I can, sniper just pushes the lane in with shrapnel, and then goes to farm the jungle while I'm stuck getting last hits under tower. I got to see the effects of this in a game, played out over like 15 minutes. He ended up a few thousand gold ahead of me. What can I do about this?

3: Setting up ganks. Ganking sniper, which I initially thought should be very easy, turns out to be somwhat difficult. If I walk through a shrapnel while getting shot and headshot by sniper, either he gets wise and realizes I'm making an obviously stupid play to setup a gank, or he just kills me. How can I help set up ganks against this hero without either dying to him or giving the gank away?

4: Roaming. Against sniper, I find he's often untouchable in 1v1 scenarios, unless you're playing certain heroes that can get on top of him and bother time. I played QoP once into him, and it was much better than any of the heroes I regularly play, but I don't like how QoP plays. So onto the roaming part. It seems that if I roam, and he's just farming, or he's pushing my towers, it's just a gamble that might not pay off. If I roam and we don't get anything, or we get one support kill. I'm not even sure that was a worthwhile use of my time. So how can I better use my time when playing against sniper?

Here's what I've learned, and found online, which I've tried to build on.

1: People say he is weak early, like, very early. I can understand where this idea comes from, but I think I'm not playing it right. What seems to happen to me is, despite his low auto attack damage, it's super fast, and I get denied most of the farm, he gets most of the last hits. Walking close to the creeps helps, but then i usually lose hp to his basic attacks. How can I better attack his early weakness?

2: Gank him. I've written about the issues I have ganking him above, but this one makes sense to me. He has no movement abilities or escape mechanisms, maybe besides his Q slow.

This mostly has to do with the early game, again, I mostly play Shadow fiend, Invoker, and leshrac. Probably had the best success playing agressive on Leshrac, invoker mostly becomes a farm lane, and I try to roam more often than lane as shadow fiend.