General DiscussionNightstalker

つ ◕_◕ ༽つ Summoning Yorkey

mid ns rushing bottle>boots>oov ganking from when night starts. Go phase>basher>bkb>whateevr the fuck u want. PLay the hero something akin to a puck, weave in and out of battle with your insane ms using q and only dive after a few rotations of this when the enemy is sufficiently low, max q and e placing priority however u want, get ulti at only around the 8 minute mark. You have now won your game CONFUCKINGGRATYS

^if u ever try to do smthng like this in 4k+, you ll probably get 4 reports. rightclick builds for ns suck.

there does exist only 1 option for first item on NS, which is aghs. b4 that you can phase (optionally pt), and urn. sometimes vanguard is worth it, sometimes not.
after aghs you get gem, bkb, ac, moonshard, utility items. NS is not a rightclicker, hes a walking ward with vision going through obstacles, and longest silence in the game. his carry potential is very low tho.

why is his carry potential low? he's got good stat gain, attack speed bonus and is hard to kite as a melee hero

also miss chance on W

@androgynous
dunno, i just saw ppl doing it over and over again and tried it myself back in the days, too; he sucks as a carry, and sucks hard.
im so good in reasoning lmao.

okay actually i played a lot of NS, it was one of my main heroes in dota1, and i tried all kinds of stuff. rightclicking NS is something like rightclicking lina but a bit worse.

greedy 4 is the way t go

He sucks as carry hes a 3 or 4 position, lategame you dont do shit with your autoattacks in the middle of a teamfight.

Yeah greedy position 4.

I've played him a fair bit too during dota 1 days, although only started picking him again more recently, because of his now increased space-creating value in disrupting enemies' laning phase.

He's better when built as a semi-support, frontline tanker, rather than a carry.

You farm as efficiently as possible before the first night, then start moving or tp to the lane you want to gank just 5-10 sec before the first night hits (at the very earliest), then start the gank.

I play fairly aggressive on this hero, similar to spiritbreaker, basically ganking whenever it's night time (and safe to do so) and farming during the day.

For the laning phase, I like playing him on the safe lane, particularly radiant, when double pulling is an option.

My 3k friend also tells me solo mid NS can be desirable in terms of efficiency, i.e by the first night you get to a higher level faster than if you were on the side lanes, which makes a difference in your kill potential.

But obviously the enemy mid hero cant be something like SF, which would be terrible for Balanar in terms of getting the necessary farm/exp early on.

Here's one of my NS games:

http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1843991477

I bought orb of venom right from the start, then followed it up with an urn, then bottle into phase boots. Sold the bottle and urn late game of course. I then got halberd and cuirass respectively to counter the high number of right-clicker heroes the enemy team had.

After getting the oov/urn/phase/bottle you want to get scepter to maximise your team's night vision and dramatically reduce the enemies'.

To me, these items are core on NS: orb of venom, urn, bottle, phase, scepter. You will need the first four items to maximise your early game ganking-snowballing potential. Scepter comes into play from mid game onward when the laning phase starts to break down and teams group up more to gank.

After the scepter I'd say his itemisation becomes situational. What does your team need?

In that game i listed, halberd was especially effective against the enemy windrunner and cuirass more so to protect my team against their two desolator carriers.

Against more balanced lineups, bkb might be necessary, just to survive enemy counterinitiation and stay in the fight. Otherwise you can expect to be locked down first and blown up.

Heart is also an option for the huge hp boost and hp regen, since NS goes in and out of fights, he can make the regen work for him.

On the flip side, you could even transition the hero to carry build after scepter, if your team really really needs a carry. But it's already been said, the stalker is a crappy carry so avoid doing this if possible.