Necrophos/Guide

Durable Caster
Necrophos is most effective when he stands in the middle of a fight, thus, in the front line. In early game, can turn small skirmishes in Necrophos's team favor as it bolster his allies while wither his enemies away. Later, when is obtained, Necrophos can effectively swing a losing fight back to his favor immediately combining  with  for massive AoE healing. Due to low cooldown and how quickly  can tick away affected enemies' health, Necrophos can slowly and eventually shift the balance of health between his team and the opponents to his side, take away an important member of his enemies' team with  and win the fight. Despite being a front-line caster, Necrophos should never be the center of attention as he is naturally squishy and can only out survived his opponents when a fight is dragged long enough for him to take advantage of the weakened enemies.

is crucial for this build as it provide the much needed survivability for Necrophos. The earlier you get, the better.

A or  can be obtained to cover Necrophos weak mobility and allow him to quickly position himself after his team initiation or to escape a losing fight.

Should Necrophos be noticed and frequently focused in teamfight, consider to get and/or  to temporally divert his enemies' attention.

It is better to get armor/resistance items like or  over flat HP bonuses like  due to how Effective HP work with healing.

can be considered to prevent important target from coming back by buying back.

Durable Caster style is effective for early 4-5 man pushing, provided that is obtained early enough.

Being a Durable Caster is standard for Necrophos and should be used as the first step of playing Necrophos before considering other styles.

Heavy Nuker
With Necrophos can nuke an important target into smithereens immediately when a fight begin with the help of,   and/or. When Necrophos successfully pulls off a combo off >  >  >  (note: Reaper's Scythe has 1.5 second delay before damaging the target, thus, all abilities cast after  must be fit within this time window) he can take out most heroes, and with  equipped, he can make sure that whoever the poor soul was cannot return to the fight by using it's gold to buyback. This capability of preventing buyback of Necrophos is extremely valuable in late game as most players will have excessive gold to buyback else they have to wait for a long time due to how death timer scale with level. Therefore, denying buyback and adding 30s to the death timer is deadly in lategame. With, Necrophos can either take down an extremely durable target or delete 2 heroes from the fight. Heavy Nuker Necrophos is very aggressive but also extremely squishy as his only way to survive is to make use of and  by killing his opponents as fast as he can.

and/or must be obtained to cover Necrophos weak mobility and allow him to position himself properly to surprise and pick off important target, shadowblade and silveredge is possible for escape and works well with radiance

A and/or  are core for this playstyle as Necrophos cannot effective burst a target by himself without any helps.

must be considered for this build, more than Durable Caster style as it expand the 1 hit KO threshold (from 40% health to 47% without any other resistance items) and it also deny buyback which is crucial for Heavy Nuker style as the top priority for it is to take out important target as fast as you can and prevent them from coming back.

is also crucial as double with  can single handedly win a game by taking out 2 important targets like carry or semi-carry or just to pick off an important core for a final push.

Ability Builds
A very standard build for Necrophos. It is important to know that every cast count as  is not invested enough to sustain you in favor of higher offensiveness. When early game combat start, you must linger around your opponents within the range to deny your enemies low early game health regeneration, advance with  available to make sure that you can survive incoming damage or bait your opponents aggressiveness near your tower just only to swing it back at them with. The hard part of this build is to sustain yourself in lane, thus, try your best to take last hit without using or at least harass your opponents with  while also take out at least a creep per cast.