Is spell snare a dead card in this format now?

[Mr. Safety]

I am a firm believer in Spell Pierce over Spell Snare, hands down. Removal is for the 2-mana dudes, Pierce is for everything else. If someone is playing Green Sun's Zenith that also translates into an opportunity to use Spell Pierce. Probably the best reason for using Spell Pierce is that it's a better response than Daze to protect your threats against opponent's removal. Many decks such as RUG or Team America that leave mana open for instant-speed removal can't pay the extra 2.

Long story short: Pierce is better at protecting your own threats, and you definately want to be the one playing the threats. Spell Snare is best described as a counterspell that 'occasionally, randomly works and also pitches to force'. Blah, not good enough for me. Pierce all the way.

[DragoFireheart]

Spell Snare would be much better if Mental Misstep were legal.

Counter spells at CMC 1 and 2 for free or one mana.

[ThomasDowd]

Or you can just cut daze and play snare over that.

[Dark Ritual]

Or you can just cut daze and play snare over that.

Except daze costs zero mana while snare costs 1. And daze can counter a wide range of spells while snare is quite narrow in what it can counter.

Spell snare wasn't good when misstep was legal. It wasn't uncommon to be misstepped when you cast spell snare. Misstep made snare worse when misstep was legal.

Right now pierce is leagues ahead of snare. And pierce, when it was spoiled, wasn't even looked at closely is the funny thing outside of vintage. I've always thought that pierce should be a heavily played card in a spell based format since it's really really good in terms of what it can counter.

[Mr. Safety]

Except daze costs zero mana while snare costs 1. And daze can counter a wide range of spells while snare is quite narrow in what it can counter.

Spell snare wasn't good when misstep was legal. It wasn't uncommon to be misstepped when you cast spell snare. Misstep made snare worse when misstep was legal.

Right now pierce is leagues ahead of snare. And pierce, when it was spoiled, wasn't even looked at closely is the funny thing outside of vintage. I've always thought that pierce should be a heavily played card in a spell based format since it's really really good in terms of what it can counter.

QFT, I was using Spell Pierce before I got my Forces, and now I play both. Word.

[Piceli89]

I don't know if the answers given in this thread can be taken as a worthy representation of the (american) players' thought, but it's so funny to read "Spell Pierce is hands down the best, miles ahead Snare"; very flattening, and in some degree it may reflect lack of playtesting.
If you're playing a pseudo-mirror match against a blue-based midrange like Stoneblade, Miracle or BUG, and most of all against good players, you'll find out that the pivotal plays (Jace, Top, Counterbalance, and so on) are always done playing around Spell Pierce. Its efficiency in stopping those spells greatly decreases from turn 5 and so on, and you'll find yourself wanting Spell Snare and not Pierce as their Snapcasters, Tourachs and Mystics wreck your plan with card advantage while you sit on your pierces that are taking the rust.
Unless you're playing a very aggressive deck -like Threshold or Delver Burn- which puts a lot of pressure and forces to play under Pierce to keep up tempo, every other deck with a slower clock is better to run a split of those. Even against Maverick, although not stellar, Spell Snare can hit Thalia, Library and Pridemage on the draw. And later on, too. Pierce will nail a Zenith here and there, but if things go for the long route, it will be played around.
Spell Snare is also a hard counter against ANT, complementing Force and being a valid way to win if hidden under a Top; Pierce is quickly played around even by Show and Tell, because of Sol-lands (it's obviously better than Snare, but later builds are leaning towards Omniscience, making Burning Wish a valid reason to keep Snare).
I'll repeat myself, I've seen good pilots biting the dust to Spell Pierce really rarely, and even in the deckbuilding process they always prefer a 2-2 split of the two. The key is understanding that several powerful tools of the tier decks and still within the cc2 drop, and you want to be able to consistently cover them. It's pretty rare that you don't have to fear any cc2 drop because the rest of your spells are able to cover the major threats; maybe I could see BUG an exception to the rule because of the usual four cc-1 discard spells.

[death]

Spell Snare would be much better if Mental Misstep were legal.

Counter spells at CMC 1 and 2 for free or one mana.

No, Spell Snare will be unplayable if Mental Misstep is unbanned. To answer the question, both are good but Snare is better in decks that want the long game. Spell Pierce is a dead card mid-late game, Tempo might like this card though it's garbage in control where boarding into Flusterstorms seem much better.

[Umezete]

I'm at a 4/2 pierce/snare split in rug delver atm.

Snare hits less than pierce atm but is still really strong and much better against certain decks. Pierce is just stronger in rug delver if you are able to get and maintain the early aggro.