Lifestealer/Guide

Generic Lifestealer
Lifestealer is mostly played in the safelane. With enough items, he becomes a terrifying carry that can challenge most heroes in a 1-vs-1 fight, especially heroes with a lot of health, increasing the damage dealt while healing Lifestealer in the process.

If you're paired with a good support, and the enemy offlaner has no abilities to shrug off slows (such as or ), you'll probably want to start off with a point in Open Wounds, which is your only disable. If you have no chance to get an early kill on the offlaner, you might as well level Feast and heal up a couple of hp each time you hit a creep. Finally, if you're (team-)fighting at the 00:00 rune, 3 seconds of spell immunity can go a very long way to dodge an incoming nuke or two and secure the precious, so Rage can be the correct decision. Overall, keep your first skill point until you need it, and if you don't, take your passive.

Since all three of your abilities are so useful, you should probably be 1-1-1 at level 3. Open Wounds' cast range is very small at level 1 so many players like to take at least a second point in it at level 4 to improve it. But the slow doesn't improve, and the cooldown is too long to get it off twice in an early engagement, so if your supports already have enough disables to get you close enough to your target, you can keep leave Open Wounds at a single point.

General

 * There is a term called the Infest bomb among players which includes a Lifestealer infesting a high mobility hero such as, , , , , and invisible heroes like, and  to initiate upon enemies by having these heroes enter the fray and unleashing all of their own spells in quick succession before Lifestealer himself comes out of them and dealing the nuke damage of Infest while following it up with his DPS using Rage.


 * Rage increases his attack speed, allowing items like or  to proc more often and reliably.
 * Rage has an instant cast time, careful casting of the ability will allow Lifestealer to dodge spells such as an incoming, and possibly faster projectiles like , wasting your opponent's mana and indirectly protecting your allies.
 * Unlike many other carries, Lifestealer does not need to invest in since Rage already gives him spell immunity with similar duration and significantly lower cooldown.
 * While Rage renders Lifestealer entirely spell immune and grants 100% magic resistance, he is still vulnerable to being affected by passives and auras.
 * Take note that not all spells deal magical damage, such as, and some abilities, such as , pierces spell immunity.
 * Be aware of enemies that have the ability to silence, stun, or hex, as Lifestealer would be left helpless and unable to use Rage to break out of such disables.


 * Feast deals bonus damage and lifesteal based on target's max health. The more health they have, the more Feast will help you, making him great at dealing with high strength heroes, but not necessarily high armor ones since Feast deals physical damage.


 * Open Wounds heals for a percentage of the damage dealt to that unit, regardless of the source or type of damage being dealt.
 * This means that spell and item abilities will heal a proportional amount to the damage it deals. This includes abilities that instantly destroys enemies, such as 's Transmute.
 * Open Wounds slow's potency decreases with every passing second. So, opponents will be able to recover their movement speed and escape if Lifestealer does not have disable items or support from allies to keep them in place.


 * Infest can control Ancient Creeps at level 2.
 * Infesting a creep will not break the creep's cover.
 * Infesting an enemy creep can be an effective way to escape from a losing battle, as the enemy will not be able to deny the creep so long as its current health is about 50%.
 * Be aware of your opponents' skill set when attempting this, as spells like can instantly destroy creeps regardless of their allegiance.


 * Assimilate keeps toggled auras running. Lifestealer can assimilate a friendly with  active, or a friendly  with  active, and the aura will stay on without costing any health or mana.

Items
Starting items:
 * regenerates health early on until you can sustain yourself with lifesteal.
 * also restores health.
 * helps deal with harassment in lane. Later can be upgraded to and a future.

Early game:
 * makes last hitting easier.
 * are needed to gank in combination with Open Wounds.
 * sustains Lifestealer if the enemy has a certain number of spammable skills.
 * increases Lifestealer's early game damage, and builds into later.
 * is a nice early game pickup if his lane has a moderate level of kill potential, as the slow helps Lifestealer to catch up with the enemy.

Mid game:
 * allows the Lifestealer to close distance on his targets in order to get within Open Wounds' short range. Furthermore, the attack speed bonus complements Feast, dealing damage based on enemy max health.
 * shines with the extra HP, armor, and damage from the active Unholy Strength, all of which Lifestealer wants. Feast and Open Wounds negates the health loss to some extent, while the rest of the abilities offer a chance of armlet toggling.

Late game:
 * increases Lifestealer's damage output greatly as it reduces armor of the enemy, allows him to tear down supports and carries with the help of extra attack speed and Spell Immunity of Rage. The item helps with farming and pushing towers as well.
 * compensates for Lifestealer's low base armor, and gives more attack speed for use with Rage. The armor reduction allows for a faster tower pushing and farming presence.

Situational items:
 * allows Lifestealer to comeback from a bad laning stage. Note that the item would delay your mid-game power spike as better items could be purchased with the gold spent.
 * offers extra movement speed and attack speed with the active Endurance. The attributes also boost Lifestealer's mana regeneration and Strength. The item could be bought if a lot of teamfight is happening in early game.
 * gives Lifestealer movement speed, attack speed, and attack damage. The movement speed bonus helps Lifestealer catch up with the enemies.
 * gives Lifestealer a reliable source of stun, allows him to disable his prey long enough for him to tear down. Again Lifestealer has almost no damage output outside of melee range, so it is really crucial to stick to his target as a melee carry.
 * helps with the problem of evasion. The magical damage procs also help improve damage output, but the main draw for this item is the attack damage it offers.
 * allows Lifestealer to crit with his feast damage. Against high health heroes, such as and, Lifestealer can deal huge crits to his enemies.
 * is generally an alternative of and  as it provides extra attacks speed, mana pool, and mana regen. The active Soul Rend allows him to rip your opponents apart with silence.
 * could be useful if illusion happens to be a problem, as both Static Charge and Chain Lightning helps with dealing illusions. As a frontliner, Static Charge could be triggered towards its maximum effect. Meanwhile, the item helps with farming and wave-clearing.
 * provide evasion against physical-attacks based enemies, as well as disarming an enemy carry for a while.
 * serves as an extra source of attack speed with enough gold in late game, or a quick add-up of attack speed in mid game with having an advantage over the other team.
 * gives Lifestealer a chance to close the gap between vulnerable heroes who like to keep their distance from fights, escape after using Infest. This is useful if you find yourself unable to get in range for what would otherwise be free kills. Keep in mind that with the help of allies, Infest could do the same job as well.
 * provides decent attack damage and attack speed boost, and an unreliable initiate and escape method. It gives Lifestealer solo pick-off potential if the game goes towards the direction of split pushing and requires a gank method.
 * gives Lifestealer both physical damage and magical damage through Burn and accelerates his farm speed. The ancients (or siege) serves as a nice vehicle with Infest.
 * gives Lifestealer immense durability and some damage, permitting permanent activation of . It is a good item pickup if Lifestealer could be completely invincible after the purchase of.
 * gives Lifestealer a new ability Assimilate, which serves as a niche pick with extra initiation and saving potential, as it renders the ally invulnerability through the assimilate period.

Lifestealer/Руководство 噬魂鬼/攻略