DOTAFire is a community that lives to help every Dota 2 player take their game to the next level by having open access to all our tools and resources. Please consider supporting us by whitelisting us in your ad blocker!
Want to support DOTAFire with an ad-free experience? You can support us ad-free for less than $1 a month!
Go Ad-Free
Healing Salve
Null Talisman
Soul Ring
Mekansm
Arcane Boots
Bloodstone
Clarity
Blade Mail
Boots of Travel
Dagon 1
Assault Cuirass
Black King Bar
|
2 | 4 | 5 | 7 |  |
|
6 | 12 | 13 | 14 |  |
|
1 | 3 | 8 | 9 |  |
|
10 | 11 | 16 |  |
|
15 | 17 | 18 |
As many of the guides on Dotafire mention, Necrophos is best played as a strong mid-game pusher/carry rather than a traditional support. This hero is all about the regen and the auras, both positive and negative. the trick is to stay alive and keep the battle going on for as long as possible.
Death Pulse (Q)
This is your core spammable skill, a six second cooldown for a short range 275 HP AoE nuke/heal. Many guides suggest taking this as you first skill, but early game its rather mana intensive, you don't really have the capacity to use it properly, and its not actually that effective at farming/pushing until the later levels.
A key early game priority is boosting your mana levels and regen to allow you to spam this spell almost every 6 seconds. Soul Ring, Arcane Boots and finally a Bloodstone will give you this ability. You can quite easily push a lane almost at the speed of walking with this skill.
Heartstopper Aura (W)
A key decision is when to take your first level of Heartstopper Aura. Early game it has the effect of free passive harassment. At level 1 against a 500HP hero, 0.6% = -3HP/s, which is more than a ring of regen. The tradeoff is that this will significantly push your the lane towards the enemy tower.
If you are in an evenly balanced lane, its best to wait until until you are ready to really start pushing before getting an early level in it. However if you are outnumbered or trying to hold a 1v2 lane by yourself, this constant passive harassment can be quite good at evening the odds and letting you play the lane defensively, whilst giving your teammates a hero advantage in the other lanes.
Late game, this is the skill you max last, 1.5% per second is -3/4 of a Heart of Tarrasque for the enemy during the entire duration of the teamfight, or until they kill you. If you combine this with Mekansm aura and spamming of Death Pulse, which acts as both a mini-nuke and a heal, this will heavily tip the balance of most DPS exchanges.
Sadist (E)
This passive ability give you free regen for every last hit you make, and 10x that for every hero killed. Unlike other guides, I prefer to start with this as my opening skill and get a few levels in it before maxing out death pulse. This early regen will allow you to stay in lane longer, thus farming more gold and gaining experience quicker.
Reaper's Scythe (R)
Again, this is another mana intensive skill thats not really that effective until level 2+. It does damage based on the negative health of the hero, so its totally ineffective against a hero at full health, but can instantly kill a hero when it is at 23%/31%/40% (31%/40%/47% with Aghanim's Scepter). It provides an instant stun, and a 1.5s window to do additional damage on the target. If you score a kill with it, it adds 30s to the hero's respawn time, plus 6*(4*10) = 240HP and 6*(10*10) = 600 Mana from level 4 Sadist, which will effectively repay the cost of the casting it.
Early game this hero is rather squishy and needs to quickly farm his early and core items.
The Null Talisman is good for stats and last hitting, then its pretty much a rush for your Bloodstone and Mekansm. I usually go Soul Ring, Mekansm, Arcane Boots. This gives you barely enough mana to spam Death Pulse, so maybe a few Clarities will also help. Then you just have the Point Booster, Vitality Booster and Recipe to go, before finally splitting your boots and assembling the Bloodstone, but this will most likely require a trip back to base and little juggling with the number of items in your slots.
The important thing is to stay alive and farm your Mekansm and Bloodstone as quickly as possible before the big teamfights start to break out. Once you have this all you really need to do is turn up to the fight, you will be pretty tanky at this point and the longer the fight goes on the better. If you can get to this point, you have strong chance of winning the game.
In pub games, one of two things is likely to happen, either the enemy team will mostly ignore you as an unfamilar and seemingly ineffective hero best suited to fighting creeps, thus letting you wander around the battlefield without attracting too much attention. Big mistake as your auras and Reaper's Scythe can often turn the fight.
Alternatively, they will understand your true potential and focus on you as the first target, which means staying alive for as long as possible, and taking defensive items such as Blademail which you may need to acquire before your Bloodstone if you start getting targeted.
DOTAFire is the place to find the perfect build guide to take your game to the next level. Learn how to play a new hero, or fine tune your favorite DotA hero’s build and strategy.
Copyright © 2019 DOTAFire | All Rights Reserved
Quick Comment () View Comments
You need to log in before commenting.