Nyx Without Dagon! (Fuzzgun91)

Introduction

Most builds with Nyx involve him isolating an enemy and gibbing them solo with Dagon. This build more emphasizes getting your carries the kills, while not dying (even after they have invis reveal).

Nyx is a very important team fighter. By going survivability and minus armor (rather than even more burst damage), you are a very valuable asset in mid and late game teamfights. Using his spiked carapace you can exit and reenter teamfights and sustain a steady team damage flow by using abilities and armor debuffs.

Nyx is a very underrated stunner. If properly used, your line stun can hit 3 targets with ease. With enough experience, you will start to recognize that spiked carapace can be used as an offensive ability. Things like Doombringer and Sandking's aoe abilities can be ran straight into for an offensive turn around.

Skills

In my eyes, this is the only way to build Nyx's skills. I don't think there's much to explain here.

One thing to keep in mind is to use your mana nuke on squishy intel heroes. Remember, it does more damage based on their intel.

More Intel + Less Health Pool = big life % nukes. This is especially deadly on heroes like Pugna who get huge intel gain. Anyone who has a Sheepstick is also a great target for this.

Make sure you use your spiked carapace smartly. This is what makes or breaks a Nyx. Many times I see them use carapace in the wrong situation, and their team ends up paying for it. Its hard to describe correct scenarios, you just have to use your brain and learn them. If one of their main sources of DPS has an initiation, make sure you counter it. Especially characters that use many abilities in conjunction with eachother, its important to stop them before they even start (Tiny, I'm looking at you!).

Your invis can become less useful late game if the other team gets reveal... so you should instead just use it exclusively for its bonus damage backstab. Use Medallion on the target then go invis with the backstab for a huge nuke during teamfights.

Items

Early Game
By getting Aquilla, Poorman's and Arcane early, you are able to do large amounts of damage, while keeping your team's mana at a maximum. The armor and shield deflection help to deal with physical attacks, while your spiked carapace will counter any high damaging magic attacks.

Essential
Next is Medallion. This is a great item for early and mid game kills, yet is still effective in later teamfights. If you can initiate on two players (with your teammates present) at once with your stun, your Medallion will pretty much guarantee the double kill.

First Luxury Item
From there you have to analyze their team. This is the branch off point in your build, where you have to decide what will work best with your team, and against theirs. Usually this is a good time to go Bloodstone or Desolator. You just have to analyze if your team needs more DPS (Deso) or if you will personally have problems sustaining yourself in a team fight (Bloodstone). Most of the times bloodstone is the proper option. Just remember that Desolator provides a debuff on the target so your whole team gains the bonus damage from their armor reduction for a certain amount of time. This in combination with your medallion will make any target squishy to physical attacks.

In very rare cases where your carries are under-performing heavily, not getting sufficient farm; while you are succeeding exponentially... or maybe even an early game win strat didn't pan out... it may be your time to step it up! Use your gank money to slip into a semi-carry role. An early Butterfly will give you huge DPS, as well as evasion for further survivability. If this is gotten soon enough, you will take over the game.

Next Luxury Items
It is viable to either go one of the "first" luxury items, or two. Usually after committing to one of those, you might want to move on to one of these.

In one of the "usual" items, I put a Heart of Tarrasque. Depending on the flow of the game, this can be an interesting choice. You can make yourself go from hard to kill, to impossible to kill. With the heart, there is no way that your cooldowns wont be ready to propel yourself to an escape. You will be able to initiate and draw aggro while your team stomps their faces in.

Against teams that rely on physical damage, getting an Assault Cuirass for your team could make you an even more reliable asset in teamfights. The combo of Medallion+Desolator+Assault Cuirass+Backstab will tear through everyone. Thinking about that combo, why would you ever want to buy a Dagon!?

Creeping / Jungling

The glory if Nyx is that he can be played both mid and side lanes and be extremely effective for different reasons in both. This makes him very flexible and easily fit into any team comp. He can step to the side and allow anyone else to get mid levels, or he can take mid and really do a number on the sidelanes.

I find putting a carry or semi-carry mid, while he plays sidelane/roamer works best for a team in the long term (of course, pending the matchup).

Sidelane
He is nearly ungankable because of Spiked Carapace and his stun. Because of thees two abilities, he can help save his teammate from ganks as well. What he lacks in harass, he makes up for in teammate saving and gank setups. If mid decides to gank for Nyx, it will be a guaranteed kill. Once you get Medallion and your ult, double kills will come very easily.

Sidelane gives Nyx the option to become a roamer and free up another solo lane for his team.

Mid
Obviously he is a ganker. Even though he is effective as hell sidelane, he can really shine taking advantage of those extra early levels. Depending on his matchup mid, he can really give the other player a tough time, and punishing them for trying to do something about it. Ganks are very simple, go invisible and initiate with backstab, or stun. Make sure you try to hit both targets with the line stun to try and get a double kill, or at worst a kill and a hero who has to heal/back.

If a carry is struggling in a sidelane, Nyx can permanently roam while the carry farms the midlane.

The only thing I would really change about building Nyx for mid is a Bottle somewhere early in your build; as Nyx can have some mana issues before he acquires mana boots.

Team Work

Your multiple stuns that can both stun multiple targets, sustained damage throughout battle, mana burn, mana give (via Ring of Aquilla and Mana Boots) and armor reduction can really make you a huge asset to your team. If you can stay alive in the battles, keep your Medallion on the prime targets, and use your wealth of abilities effectively; your team will be glad you were on the team. Especially when they check your score.

A few things to remember
Mana Burn works best on people with HIGH Intel and LOW Health Pool. If you find yourself late-game nuking Pudge with it, when a delicate little intel support is cowering right behind him, then you have failed your team. There are some rare exceptions. Keeping in mind it takes away mana from the target, some low-intel heroes who need their whole mana pool to use all their abilities can be sabotaged by a quick mana burn. Early game, for example, you can keep Pudge from having enough Mana for his hook/ult combo (this makes it so even if you do get hooked, you can spiked carapace his dust and scurry away safely).

Spiked Carapace will be set off by AOE abilities like Pudge's dust, Sandking's invisible cloud, or Doombringer's aoe. This can be very useful in both offensive and defensive situations. A heads up stun can be the difference between you or a teammate surviving easily, or dying with only you to blame.

Vendetta Keep in mind that if your auto attack is the thing that breaks your invis, it deals massive bonus damage. You can use this bonus damage in a teamfight, even if you don't need the invis, just to sure up some kills. About 80% of the time you should be breaking invis with an autoattack. Their can be exceptions like a perfectly timed stun initiation that is too good to pass up (Nothings more satisfying than waiting for them to line up, and stunning their whole crew all at once).

Impale actually has more range when not unit-targetted just like Lion's. As a Nyx player I rarely actually use the target for the ability unless it is close range on an isolated target (no chance of multistunning). Use this ability as a skillshot and get some clutch chasedowns or precise multistuns.

Pros / Cons

Pros of this build:

More freedom to decide your build as the game progresses
Frees up your economy to be used to cover up weaknesses in team matchup
Allows Nyx to be useful against almost any team composition
Can make you seem like less of a threat and delay the other team from feeling the need to buy reveal
Frees up your mana pool to allow you to stay useful in fights longer (using multiple cycles of your abilities)
Makes your team's overall teamfight DPS increased

Cons of this build:

Less burst damage (you may have to choose your targets a bit more wisely)
Have to cooperate with team (could be a con for some people)

So Why Not Dagon?

Dagon:

Level 5 Dagon: 7980 gold, final scaling 800 magic damage (before reductions)

High mana cost early, huge cooldowns early
Not enough damage late
Only single target damage
Doesn't scale or improve in teamfights
Very expensive
Leaves Nyx as a selfish hero that is easily countered by reveal and magic resist

Leaves Nyx useless against BKB (No damage), Linkins Sphere (No damage), Pipe (600 damage before reduction) or Hood of Defiance (large reductions).

Armor Reduction Combo:

Medallion (1075) + Desolator (4100): 5175 gold, -12 armor (about 50% damage amplification)

Scales with Nyx and rest of team through duration of game.
Synergizes with Nyx's backstab ability (while adding an extra 60 damage before armor reductions)
Gives Nyx's physical attacks much use while abilities are on cooldown
Medallion allows Nyx to gain assistance from items earlier, and stay effective later.
Overall a better asset to have in teamfights, and increases the effectiveness of your carrys exponentially, when Nyx is usually less of a factor in terms of DPS

Assault Cuirass (5350) can also be added in to swing the numbers in your favor even more. This can add up to -17 armor, while adding armor to your team to really swing the numbers in your favor in those carry heavy games.

This can make Nyx unavoidably an anti-carry. While the other team looks at your team comp and sees Nyx as a magic threat ("Oh, just get BKB or a Pipe and Nyx is out of the equation!"), you will find yourself only countered by lack of team coordination on your team's part :)