Undying/Guide

General

 * Undying can be played in many ways: if you are going for a more supportive role, use your Tombstone and your Flesh Golem to slow the enemies while spamming Decay, then let your lane partner get the kill. Otherwise, use Soul Rip to finish a Hero while there are many creeps nearby: this way it deals more damage.
 * While initiating, use Tombstone and Flesh Golem, then Decay/Soul Rip: this way these abilities deal more damage.
 * Though his spells are individually quite cheap, you almost always have mana problems since both Soul Rip and especially Decay are very spammable. Consider getting during the laning phase, then disassembling it once you have enough to buy the remaining pieces of a . You can then convert your standard boots to  allowing you the mobility and chase power to keep Flesh Golem's powerful aura on the right targets during a teamfight.
 * Another good item for Undying in the early game is . After using Soul Ring, you can cast decay for free. If you hit 2 or more Heros with this spell, you make up for the HP cost for Soul Ring.
 * If you do not have enough gold to buy a in time or you would prefer cheaper items, try to make yourself as tanky as possible: if you are initiating, enemies target you first. That is why you need an early  and/or a  if the opposing team has a lot of nukers. Other useful items that increase your HP are, which solves most of your mana problems too, and.


 * Decay is very useful even if left at level 1. Max it when team battles begin to start: you can spam it even more and make enemies squishier.
 * Be aware and take note of your mana consumption, however. With it's incredibly low cooldown and rather high mana cost, it's very easy to end up in a situation where you are unable to cast your other spells or item abilities.


 * Do not use Soul Rip to harass, but use it to heal a friendly hero or to finish off enemies. This is more effective if there are many units nearby, such as creeps if you are laning, or heroes if you are initiating.
 * is often a great way to maximise the damage/healing potential of Soul Rip, especially when the creep waves from both factions have just begun to engage in battle.
 * Soul Rip works very well with heroes that can summon additional creeps or create illusions, such as with 's spiderlings or 's illusions. The mass amounts of summons and illusions can easily bring your Soul Rip to maximum effect, making such heroes powerful partners to gank with.
 * When using Soul Rip to damage an opponent, remember to use Decay before. Since Soul Rip deals a static amount of damage, it will deal more if the enemy's maximum health is reduced before rather than after.


 * If a ward spot is nearby at the outset of a fight, remember that you can cast your Tombstone on top of it, making it invisible to enemy heroes (unless they have a ward up there). You can also use the Tombstone as a temporary ward anywhere thanks to its long duration, but this is not usually advised as it has a lengthy cooldown.
 * Attacks from illusions will count as hero attacks for the purposes of destroying the Tombstone. Keep that in mind when placing the Tombstone if the enemy team has heroes like or.
 * If is on your team, be aware that Tombstone summons zombies even when the enemy targets are sleeping and untargetable. This can be used to your advantage.
 * Should the enemy team have an, it is unwise to place a tombstone at the beginning of a teamfight. Each zombie causes the echo to deal extra damage, likely obliterating your entire team (or at the very least severely injuring them).
 * Zombies are spell immune and require a certain amount of attacks to kill. Therefore they are unaffected by most AoE spells but take full damage from multishot-type abilities. Be aware of heroes with these abilities that can easily deal with your Tombstone zombies, such as 's.


 * Flesh Golem increases the damage done to and slows down any nearby enemies, and it should be cast early in order to maximise its effect to the fullest.
 * The damage amplification and slow are affected by the distance between Undying and his enemies, being greater the closer he is to them. As such, you would need to be in the thick of it to ensure that the effect are at its greatest.
 * Flesh Golem heals Undying for his own maximum health by 2% per non-Hero units and 6% per Hero. Building up HP-items would thus greatly increase his survivability and allow him to make use of the healing to its fullest effect.
 * Do not be afraid to activate Flesh Golem in order to escape, as the slow effect, coupled with Undying's relatively high natural movespeed, may be just enough to outrun a number of melee heroes.

Items
Starting items:
 * and are standard regeneration items that should be bought to sustain in lane.
 * helps Undying spam out more spells in the early game.
 * allows Undying to put up with a lot of harassment in the early game.

Early Game:
 * provides a good amount of mana regeneration and armor for Undying to use.
 * can heal you after killing an enemy, and combined with increases your nuke power in a fight.

Core Items:
 * are another way to help with Undying's lackluster mana pool, as well as provide mana to his allies.
 * 's stats, health regen and armor help you and your allies. Can be upgraded later to.

Situational items:
 * and are a great way to deal with magical and physical damage on the enemy team, respectively.
 * is a direct upgrade to that can be used to benefit your whole team.
 * provides both of Undying's needs in tankiness and mana.
 * is a great choice if you are getting focused down in teamfights too much.
 * is an obviously great disable and mana regeneration item for Undying.
 * Purchase if you are going to build  combined with . Guardian Greaves give more armor and health regen, also the heal is mana-free.