Night Stalker Counters

I love playing Night Stalker, and I can share some of my hardest experiences playing the hero.

The bottom line is that, Night Stalker is a super powerful early game ganker that snowballs into a decent semi-carry late game. However, he is extremely reliant on snowballing, think of him like a Tusk or Spirit Breaker, else he just doesn't offer anything to the team. So, the best counter to Night Stalker is to prevent him snowballing. Here are a few tips to help with that:

1. First couple of nights are when NS is at his most powerful stage. Enemy heroes don't have much farm, they don't have much in terms of hp/escape, so he feeds on them. To avoid this, ward runes, and common rotation spots to see which lane NS is going to gank. Have your teammates carry a TP so you can turn a gank around on NS. As powerful as he is during the early game, it's highly unlikely he can survive a 1v3 with a lock down or two.

2. If you get an early lead and start 5-manning towers, NS will hate you. Again, NS depends on picking off lone heroes in order to snowball. If your team is pushing a tower together, he loses that window. Co-ordinate with your team and push towers early during night time.

3. TP scroll. This is situational. If the NS is bad, and they initiate with Void, you can comfortably TP home. The good ones would save their Void for your TP, in which case, they take longer to kill you, which allows for TP rotations from your team.

4. NS hates being locked down. His Hunter in the Night is his steroid during the night time. Stuns/slows/CC of any kind can disrupt his ganks.

5. Take the game late. As much as NS is a fearsome early mid game hero, his late game isn't really impressive. If your team has a stronger late game lineup, just hold your base and try to get farm wherever you can. Come late game, you can beat him.

**** balanar. Most ******** hero ever, thx icefraud.
I pick Oracle to disarm this piece of **** or Disruptor to send his *** back to the lane he came from.

The only hero that's more ******** than balanar is bloodseeker.

The thing with offlane nightstalker (which is his best position IMO) is that he is less reliant on snowballing. He is the 3 position and therefore not required to be a large damage dealer, and focus on getting complete map control with aghanims vision and an eventual gem.

http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1604947613

heres a match of an offlane nightstalker in ranked.

watch it for tips on how to offlane a nightstalker.

uh smuggels, i asked how to stop night-stalker from dominating the map, not how to play a nightstalker... sorry if i come out as rude, that was not my intention.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
-Sun Tzu. The art of war.

Tl;dr Know your enemy and yourself.

OH YOUNG PADAWAN MUCH LEARN YOU HAVE TO DO BEFORE COMS UPON YOU GREATNESS IT DOES.

na all seriousness, watch your enemy, know your enemy, be your enemy and you shall defeat your enemy.

szun tzu stuff ya know!

watch how they reacted to him him and watch how he reacted to them. watch for mistakes and patterns. look at the playstyle of the enemy and of his own team. look at the skill builds and positioning of both teams during night and look at skill/item builds.

it helps.

I see..., thanks smuggels