Night Stalker Counters

This is a new hero that has been popping up in many of my games, and most of the time, he just manages to destroy us with his team. I find it so hard to lock him down in every fight, and there is not much that we can do when we are alone. Every time i manage to kill him, it is always at least a 3v1 with 2 CC at least. Obviously night is when NS fights us, and he is such a good ganker early on. His str gain is insane and his armor is no joke either, unlike other heroes with similar str gain. His right click damage is no joke either. At 10mins into the game, he can have up to 1.2k hp while everyone else sits at 800-900. The most irritating part of this hero though, in my opinion is that during nighttime, you just have so little vision. Everyone on the enemy team gets reduced vision to a pitiful amount, even other heroes that have a connection to the night as well(eg. luna, slark). I feel that at the very least heroes like that should retain their nighttime vision. Come lategame, vision becomes all the more important, and NS can reduce your vision so much its not even funny. In the lategame, the biggest contribution a NS gives is the reduced vision advantage his whole team can abuse.

I am aware that the obvious counter to NS is to keep ganking him during the day and prevent him from snowballing, and that certain heroes have an innate advantage against ns, mostly illusion heroes since ns is a single target hero. However, no NS with decent ability will just give you kills freely during the day. Heroes that don't give a **** about silence and just stands there to manfight like wk also can be pretty useful against NS. however, a good NS knows to leave such heroes to his team and kills the supports and the CC first before they can do anything. By the time NS actually fights me, i find that it is almost always a 1v3 fight in NS's favour.

So, I want to have a listen to your opinions about how to fight against a NS, especially in the night because that is when i really need help with playing against him. I don't really like advice like hide during the night because i have tried that, and the result is our towers slowly getting destroyed every night and eventually costing us the game.

Although he is one of my favorites, I don't know how to counter him at all :|

I guess, what you said about manfight heroes is true. Remember that, a night stalker will not use his ultimate during night time (mostly) so its more dangerous during the day (with darkness ofc!!)

This is exactly my problem. come lategame, the downtime to his ultimate is only 30sec, and that basically means that we spend 5/8 of our "daytime" in darkness come lategame. if he gets octarine core, it only gets worse and you will never see the light of day for more than 10sec continuously. the fact that NS wins most 1v1 situations against most heroes in the midgame doesn't help and it is so hard to lock him down.

Countering Night Stalker isn't necessarily a 'pick this hero to win' thing. There's a lot of heroes that counter him in some way, shape, or form, but the most effective counters are gameplay-related ones.

1) Get vision up on the map, particularly at the rune spots. If you can see a Night Stalker when he picks up a rune, you can predict where he'll go and respond accordingly.

2) Don't over-extend. It's true, Night Stalker wins a good portion of 1v1 manfights in the early to mid-game, but there's a simple solution for that: don't 1v1 him. Either hug the tower so he has to tank the shots, or be within range of your allies so they can respond. Your team should have Town Portal Scrolls at all times and be ready to TP in response to a gank if the situation can be turned into a winning team fight.

3) Shut him down in lane. Night Stalker's biggest weaknesses are his poor laning capabilities and his slow farming speed. Think about it, in the first four minutes of the game, he has a nuke that mini-stuns and does ok damage, a silence that only lasts like, 3 seconds, and a passive that does literally nothing. He's also melee, so he's wide open to harass anytime he wants to go up and take a last hit.

If the Night Stalker goes mid-lane, a dominant hero like Queen of Pain or Storm Spirit will make his life a living hell, and probably force him to go back to base at least once. You could also consider picking up a Bounty Hunter and having him snipe the courier when he's sending out his bottle, though this works far better if you're Radiant.

If the Night Stalker is off-lane, have your support(s) zone him out of experience range. If the creep wave pulls close to your tower, you can wrap around and gank HIM. If he doesn't get a decent start, he'll be a non-issue later on. If he's safe lane, the same rules apply, harass him down so that he's scared to go and last hit, and if the creep wave pulls close to your tower GANK that sucker.

4) Lastly, just having solid lockdown on your team is a good way of dealing with Night Stalker early on. Lion, Vengeful Spirit, Sven, anyone with a stun to hold him in place can turn his dives into deaths. There's also Bristleback: while he doesn't have a stun, he's got Viscous Nasal Goo to slow NS down, and with Bristleback, he negates a lot of Night Stalker's damage just by running away. Timbersaw can be a good pick-up too, with Timber Chain as an easy escape and Reactive Armor to negate a lot of his right clicks.

One last, last thing you can do? Once he casts Void on you, just TP home. The cooldown is 8 seconds, and it's his only crowd control until he picks up a Skull Basher, and even that's down to luck.

I hope this helps!

support tps are rare in my games, i can probably count the number of players i that have ever made a support tp to save a teammate, including myself. hiding under the tower seems to be a nice deterrent, but Night Stalker is pretty good at tower diving come nighttime.

Shutting him down in lane has some moderate success for me, but when that happens, he just goes to another lane and ganks my team instead. I had a game where Night stalker died 6 times before the second night but once he got to level 8, he just started to massacre my supports and every teamfight after that was a 3v4 on my side and ns killing the 2 supports while the rest are busy handling the rest of the team.

Here's another question tho, What if Night Stalker is in a duolane with a support that has very good cc( Earthshaker, Lion)? How do you shut him down in lane in that situation? Btw, i play random draft mostly now, side note, probably not helpful.

no no no he means you tp away after the first void hits you. since most NS will use it straight away you just insta tp home and he cant do anything about it.

He did? wow how did i miss that. Thanks for the tip, that is something i never really noticed much, although i also did fail to interpret his words the way you did smuggels. However, If you really have to stay and fight, what would be your best move? I mentioned the reason why i don't like running away all the time because our towers will slowly get seiged until we eventually lose everything, how do you prevent that from happening.

Observer Wards. And TP out when he Voids you.

He's really scary in the first two nights but he's pretty weak later in the game.

Keep buying wards later because of his Aghanim's Scepter vision otherwise you can't get a clean initiation.

"hiding" doesn't mean give up free towers. It means only teamfight the enemy team under your towers. NS is really weak in teamfights.

I find NS to be pretty strong in a teamfight, but not straight up fighting in one. He acts like a riki or a clinkz, the way he takes out the support/nuker before they can do anything, or through his 8sec silence.

Even after the first 2 nights, i still find ns to be a scary beast. He just keeps ganking and doesn't ever let up. If our team goes as 5, they just splitpush and get an even trade for towers, while we just die if we try to defend with anything less than 3 heroes

I'm just going to link Cuttleboss' Guide to Countering Every Hero because I think it's great.

TP out after Void has already been mentioned, it's a bit more tricky than against a Bloodseeker because good players will try to hold the spell for as long as possible. If you do have to fight him, handle him like any other ganker - try to extend the fight for as long as possible and hope help arrives in time to save you or at least get a return kill (items like Eul's Scepter of Divinity, Force Staff and, to a lesser extent, Ghost Scepter, help with that). Sometimes you'll just have to accept that you're going to die, though. After all, the hero is designed to be an absolute menace at night, so in the hands of a reasonably good player, he will have some success.