General DiscussionHow are people playing lifestealer these days?

so far for me treads/phase -> armlet -> mom -> basher -> abyssal/mjollnir/ac/skadi/diffusal/hex/butterfly has been giving fairly consistent results so long as i have a blink initiator on my team

@Zenoth, I see you going MoM on a lot of heroes recently, due to his low armor and just average STR gain, do you think MoM + Armlet is actually that good?

Just get Deso and wreck peoples faces.

usually losing with lifestealer

the thing is that armlet+mom gives you the best possible single target damage at the lowest cost. this means you can farm faster in the downtime, while relying on infesting a blink initiator for teamfights. i play lifestealer to burst down one target immediately after coming out of infest - you can comfortably take down most targets in your rage duration.

if the enemies have say, bristle, void, TA etc, then it is going to be a very hard game for lifestealer no matter what.

I hate lifestealer... I probably just suck but I think he is a pretty bad carry.

I've recently come across the Loda build which focuses on MS so as to not get kited then transitions into damage items (AC, Abysal, MKB) but without getting midas.

Do you guys think midas kind of hinders his fighting capabilities in the early/mid game? Or should he just go greedy?

If you have a harder carry than you in your team, you should never go midas. But if you are the only carry and have a great support cast, you can get it.

they dont

Haven't seen this hero for ages.

I like to pray upon supports that think im just a dominated neutral >:D

they dont

Midas is actually good on him because he needs attack speed, but the hero is not that good in this meta.

had a slark lifestealer bomb recently... dunno how good but since the pounce holds them close enough to get a few hits in before needing to cast open wounds it seemed decent... we got wrekt cos bad though...

Lifestealer is amazing against Strength carries, but fairly weak against agility carries, and agility carries are all the excitement now.

Zenoth's build does look pretty mean, all that attack speed, should be able to kill anyone during the duration of open wounds.

i plyed 2 games aganist him in 2 days, they build phase armlet blink basher etc

lifestealer has no place in this meta

Basher always seems key or people escape too easily.

In the current meta lifestealer just has a ton of issues. I used to crush games with him, but I have been awful my last dozen games or so and basically stopped playing him. Here's what I think changed.

People now pick more mobile heroes and good supports, or heroes that lifestealer can't really affect like jug. Supports spam eul's and blinks now. Maybe it was just cus my mmr was lower back when I was winning and players got smarter the higher up I went. My old build was exactly the same every time- jungle, get treads, armlet, hyperstone/dominator/basher in some order, ac, abyssal, satanic. It worked like all the time. Supports melted and I'd be ahead of "stronger" carries.

Now if you do this you'll get kited to death. So many disables and mobile heroes. So what do you do? Most people go phase boots, drums, s&y now for move speed. That's fine but they aren't ideal dmg increasing items on lifestealer. You won't be able to 1v1 many carries with phase, armlet, s&y, drums. You would with treads, armlet, basher, ac (obviously costs a bit more too).

So I don't know now. The ideal dps build is too easily countered and the mobile builds seem to have not enough dps. Some people also like to mix in a mjollnir or deso. Mjollnir is great if you're going to have more time to farm, good farming item on naix.