Introduction
“Oh Master, behold all these lives for the taking!”
Lifestealer is a popular melee strength carry. He is frequently picked in both competitive and non-competitive Dota. In the case of the former he is typically given space on the safe lane and played as a 1 position carry. He is often combined with a highly mobile ganking hero such as Storm Spirit or Puck in order to perform ‘N’aix Bombs’ using his ultimate, Infest. In the case of the latter he is often picked because he is one of only a handful of carries who are viable in the jungle.
His in-built spell immunity ability – Rage – gives him both an escape mechanism and a way of living through teamfights, whilst the high DPS and life steal granted by his other core abilities – Feast and Open Wounds – makes him a great anti-carry.
You can find our complete character profile for Lifestealer here.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- In-built Spell Immunity thanks to Rage
- In-built life steal
- Great one-on-one carry/anti-tank
- Great DPS’er
- Good escape mechanisms
- Viable in the lane and the jungle
- Very survivable
Cons
- Keeps being nerfed(!)
- Mana issues
- Needs farm
- Not the hardest of carries – will tend to trail off late game.
- Abilities are not spammable, so requires good game sense and a bit of luck
Item Build
Lifestealer’s item progression is fairly universal, regardless of whether you’re jungling or farming with him, although your starting items may well be different. The most significant points of divergence are related to his skill build.
Starting Items
If you’re jungling, or offlaning, or safe laning but expect some early harassment, then Lifestealer’s typical starting item build is as follows:
- A Stout Shield, a Quelling Blade, and a set of Tangos.
If you’re safe lane farming and expect to face a solo offlaner that won’t be dishing out much harassment then you can opt for these starting items instead:
- A Quelling Blade, 2x Iron Branches, a set of Tangos, and a Gauntlets of Strength.
With the second starting build you have the flexibility to add more regen if you want, swapping out the extra Iron Branches; it depends how comfortable you are largely relying on Feast to sustain your health pool.
Early Game
Avoid dying, only go on the aggressive if you’re highly likely to secure a kill, and farm creeps (either in the safe lane or in the jungle). Your goal is to farm up so that you can go for an early Hand of Midas. It’s such a ridiculously strong item on Lifestealer. The attack speed benefits Lifestealer more than most, and it will rapidly accelerate your farming and levelling.
The only downside is that it’s an expensive first item to go for. If you die then you’re going to put your progress towards it back quite significantly, and may be forced to skip it in favour of simply getting something that allows you to take part in fights. This is why I stress so heavily that you need to avoid early engagements unless they’re low risk and high reward.
Once you have your Midas, your item progression will become much more rapid. Grab some basic Boots of Speed if you weren’t forced to get them ahead of a Midas and then start working on your core.
Core Items
My upgraded boots of choice on Lifestealer are Phase Boots. It’s tempting to go for Power Treads, because they give good stats and attack speed (all stuff Lifestealer greatly benefits from, right?). And you won’t be lacking in damage anyway once you start working towards your next items, so you don’t gain much from Phase Boots’ damage increase. And Power Treads are recommended by the default in-game guide.
Why Phase Boots then? Quite simply because of the active phase ability. With Power Treads you really will feel far too slow to effectively chase down enemies, and being a melee unit the lack of phase will become a real annoyance. Phase Boots will allow you to keep on top of an enemy who decides to flee you, even once Open Wounds wears off, and ensures you can’t be path-blocked by annoying creeps or enemy (or even allied!) heroes who get in the way and body block.
The other core item for Lifestealer is Armlet or Mordiggian. Despite the recent nerf, which made Armlet toggling slightly less effective, it’s still very much possible to toggle. Armlet also gives Lifestealer a nice damage boost, additional armour and health, and health regeneration on top of the active toggle ability.
| Tip: ‘Toggling your Armlet’ is the process by which you turn off and on Armlet’s active ability in order to quickly regenerate your health when you’re low, and effectively save your life when you would otherwise die. The key is to turn Armlet off when you’re at very low health and expect a killing blow, but to do so before such a blow hits. Then straight away turn it back on, so that your health pool regenerates. If timed correctly - between instances of damage - you will regain enough health to survive most auto-attacks/abilities. |
With that you have your core, and so can take part in fights and be an effective damage-dealer. There are a couple of situational items you may wish to pick up at this stage: Drums of Endurance and/or Sange & Yasha. Drums is a popular early pick-up in competitive Dota, as it allows you to fight much earlier, giving you great stats for its cost and being quick and easy to build into. Sange & Yasha is much more controversial, but it will make pursuit of targets much easier (the so-called ‘race car’ build).
Luxury Items
When it comes to your luxury item choices there’s a lot to choose from for Lifestealer. Some of the more effective pick-ups include:
Basher into Abyssal Blade – All of the stats synergise well with Life stealer – strength and damage – and the lockdown a Basher provides will make it easier to wail on your chosen target. The Abyssal Blade upgrade gives you even more damage and a second, active 2 second lockdown. Both also go through Spell Immunity as well.
Assault Cuirass – Assault Cuirass is often picked up as N’aix’s second luxury item (following or before Basher). A nice attack speed boost, good auras for your entire team, and a minus armour aura that affects enemy heroes, creeps and buildings makes this a great pick up for Lifestealer; he becomes tankier and much more deadly at the same time.
Monkey King Bar - Huge attack damage, mini-bash, and a little bit of attack speed. It also grants you True Strike, making it the ideal pick-up to combat agility carries that would typically build into a Butterfly or which have evasion built-in (such as Phantom Assassin).
Mjollnir – Another infusion of attack speed which will allow you to kill enemies that much faster. If you’re up against a pushing or illusion-based line-up then it’s worth considering even more so.
Satanic – Satanic gives you direct damage benefits as well as increased survivability. The chance to heal yourself back up when low on health using the Unholy Rage active makes it similar to the health effects of Roshan's Cheese. As long as you're able to attack, you basically get your health pool completely regenerated, and since N’aix has in-built Spell Immunity thanks to Rage he almost always will.
Situational Items
Heaven’s Halberd – Halberd will make you a lot tankier and will also give you more anti-carry potential. 20 strength is a nice boost to your health pool and damage, whilst 25% evasion means you'll mitigate a lot of damage. The ability to Disarm an enemy physical DPS'er for 3.0-4.5 seconds while you go to town on them can be clutch if they’ve been relying on lifesteal to stay alive in teamfights.
Force Staff – A very, very niche pick up. It’s sometimes seen in competitive games in order to counter certain forms of lockdown that create impassable terrain (most notably Clockwerk’s Cogs, but also abilities such as Earthshaker’s Fissure). If you find you’re being frozen out of teamfights because of an ability like this then Force Staff will allow you to re-position yourself so that you can actually attack.
Skill Builds
Lifestealer’s skill build is actually fairly flexible, so if there’s a particular ability you would prefer to have access to over the others then feel free to prioritise it. There are significant skill build differences between jungle and laning N’aix, so I’ll suggest three potential skill builds below: one for jungling, one for defensive laning, and one for aggressive laning.
Jungle N’aix Build
N’aix is viable in the jungle thanks to his Feast ability, which grants him lifesteal when he attacks. As such, skill Feast first, and get at least two points in it so that you can viably jungle. Even then it can still be quite a challenge to stay in the jungle without regen or without most of your Armlet built, so you may also want to max Feast straight away too.
Value points in both Rage and Open Wounds are gotten at levels 2 and 4 respectively. Rage so that you can avoid magic damage/stuns for a brief period of time (for example, should the enemy supports rotate into your jungle early on in the hopes of an easy kill), Open Wounds so that if you see an opportunity to rotate into the safe lane in order to secure a kill you have a slow at your disposal.
Infest is also skilled at every available opportunity (levels 6, 11 and 16), and can be used in the jungle to recoup lost health, to escape from ganks, or to quickly kill off a stack. Try not to waste it though, as it’s such a useful tool when combo’d with a mobile initiator for ganking, so you’ll want access to it ready for teamfights.
As of patch 6.83, when you use Infest on a creep you can gain mind control over it, using the Control sub-ability. This allows you not only to control the unit's movements but also use its abilities. The unit in question acquires Lifestealer's own movespeed, making it a useful ganking and/or escape tool.
Defensive Laning N’aix Build
If you’re dual laning in the offlane, or the enemy team decides to aggressive tri/dual-lane your own safe lane, you’ll need to adapt accordingly. Here you only want a value point in Feast, in contrast to the jungle build, to get some regen from last hitting creeps.
You prioritise Rage, followed by Open Wounds. Rage will allow you to dodge any projectile stuns, as well as avoid any burst magic damage the enemy team is capable of throwing at you during early engagements, and so it is maxed first.
As with all of these skill build you skill Infest whenever you can (levels 6, 11 and 16), because it’s such a useful escape/ganking/teamfight tool.
Aggressive Laning N’aix Build
This build is similar to the defensive laning build, in that you only get a single value point in Feast and prioritise you two active abilities. The difference is that you skill and max Open Wounds over Rage.
Open Wounds is the more aggressive ability, and the range scales with extra levels, so if you are dominating your lane or searching for early kills you want to have Open Wounds maxed as soon as possible.
After that you max Rage, for the extra Spell Immunity duration and attack speed, and you always get your ultimate, Infest, because as already mentioned above it has such great utility.
Gameplay Tips
As Rage makes you Spell Immune and lasts 6 seconds once maxed, you can use it to safely teleport away. You cannot be stunned for the duration of Rage and only a handful of disables go through Spell Immunity, so usually you’ll be able to teleport away safely.
| Tip: You CAN toggle your Armlet whilst teleporting and it will not cancel your TP Scroll. Use this trick to give yourself some burst health if you expect to die to right clicks for the channel duration of the TP Scroll. |
The long cooldown on Rage (it was recently nerfed) means you’ll typically only be able to use it once in a teamfight, so make sure you don’t waste it. Try to time it so that you avoid the brunt of any burst magic damage or if you anticipate a stun.
Feast’s damage and lifesteal is percentage-based, which makes Lifestealer particularly good against tanky heroes with typically high health pools, like Axe or Pudge. The same goes for the life leech component of Open Wounds.
Infest is a great ganking tool when combined wit highly mobile initiating/ganking heroes like Puck, Queen of Pain, or Storm Spirit. Infest inside them prior to a gank/initiation and then pop out of infest when they arrive at the enemy hero. These so-called N’aix Bombs allow you and your teammate to deal tremendous burst damage, and it gives you the initiation/mobility tool that you usually lack.
Infest can be used on allied heroes as well as any creeps on the map (aside from ancient creeps), but remember that the amount of health you get back once you trigger Consume is entirely dependent on the unit you infested having plenty of health left. Remember that if the unit dies whilst you’re inside it you will not get any health whatsoever.
| Tip: Infest can be used to heal back up again if you’re low on health and clear stacked creep camps more easily. Simply target a creep with full life remaining and then pop straight back out of him. |
Controlled creeps will maintain their cover, however keep in mind that enemies will still be able to attack it and kill it.
One of the neatest aspects of the Control ability is that you acquire access to the unit's own ability/abilities, so for example you can Infest and then Control a Wildwing Ripper, and then use its Tornado to take out large jungle stacks with ease.
Last Updated - Patch 6.83.
