Strategy
Gameplay[]
| Playstyle | |
|---|---|
| Lifestealer is a durable frontliner that can outfight even the tankiest of heroes. Obtaining exclusive lifesteal from his passive, Feast, Lifestealer thrives facing high health enemies. Rage grants Lifestealer spell immunity and bonus movement speed, making him an even scarier threat. Although being melee, Lifestealer still has some means of keeping his target in place through the use of Ghoul Frenzy, providing a significant slow to the enemy . With Lifestealer's kit, he is best suited in the middle of the fight so he may sustain health off his attacks and make use of his spell immunity, but that does not mean he has to be the first seen. Lifestealer's ultimate, Infest, allows him to hide inside an allied hero, or, the body of a creep, putting himself right in the action before enemies can react to his presence. While his kit has many benefits, players must be careful using Lifestealer's spells too liberally, as his small mana pool will quickly be depleted and could leave Lifestealer in an unfavorable situation. | |
| Pros | Cons |
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Carry[]
Lifestealer is most often played in the safelane, and with only a few levels can be left on his own without being in significant danger. With enough levels and items, he can reliably fight against most heroes 1-on-1 but struggles against multiple targets. Heroes relying on their high health pool to be relevant can seriously punish their team if they allow Lifestealer to Feast off them, as each of Lifestealer's attacks restores him a health amount based on a percentage of the units max health. This allows Lifestealer to remain in fights as he can gain large amounts of health back and whittle down the enemies while his team cleans up the rest.
During laning, if against heroes lacking mobility or means of escape Lifestealer can easily zone enemy heroes as their harass can quickly be regenerated through means of his passive. Depending on the lane, Lifestealer can take a couple levels in Feast to sustain harassment, or if dealing with heavy spell damage and lockdown, can opt to level Rage early on. Once strong enough to fight, Ghoul Frenzy will allow Lifestealer to get many hits in while the enemy is slowed.
Ability Builds[]
| Generic Lifestealer | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 18 | 20 | 25 | ||||||
 |  | |  | |  | | | |  | | | | | | | | | | ||||||
Talents[]
| Hero Talents | ||
|---|---|---|
| +1.5s Rage Duration | 25 | +1.2% Feast Lifesteal and Damage |
| +15% Ghoul Frenzy Slow | 20 | +15% Infest Target Movespeed/Health |
| +30 Damage | 15 | +350 Health |
| +12% Rage Movement Speed | 10 | +150 Infest Damage |
Notes:
- Grants bonus attack damage.
- Does not benefit illusions and is not affected by most percentage-based damage increasing or reducing effects.
- The health talent increases the max health capacity and keeps the current health percentage.
Tips & Tactics[]
General[]
- There is a term called the Infest bomb among players which includes a Lifestealer infesting a high mobility hero such as Storm Spirit, Puck, Queen of Pain, Magnus, Spirit Breaker, and invisible heroes like, Riki and Nyx Assassin 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.
Abilities[]
Rage[]
- Rage has an instant cast time, a careful casting of the ability will allow Lifestealer to dodge disabling spells such as Storm Hammer and Magic Missile.
- Unlike many other carries, Lifestealer does not need to invest in Black King Bar since Rage grants spell immunity with similar duration and a significantly lower cooldown.
- Although Rage renders Lifestealer spell immune, he is still vulnerable to being affected by passives and auras.
- Take note that some abilities, such as Quill Spray, Viper Strike, and Nether Swap, pierce spell immunity.
- Be aware of enemies that have the ability to silence, stun, or hex, as Lifestealer will be left helpless and unable to use Rage to break out of such disables.
Feast[]
- Feast allows lifestealing based on target's max health. The larger health pool a target has, the more health Feast will restore. This ability is particularly helpful when dealing with high strength heroes.
Ghoul Frenzy[]
- This passive provides Lifestealer with a good amount of attack speed as well as percentage slow, which helps him farm faster as well as slow enemies down in teamfights. The slow synergizes well with items that provide a slowing effect such as Orb of Corrosion, Eye of Skadi and Shiva's Guard.
Infest[]
- 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 above 50%.
- Be aware of your opponents' skill set when attempting this, as spells like Demonic Conversion can instantly destroy creeps regardless of their allegiance.
- Make sure to activate armlet before infest since the bonus HP means more regeneration during the ability.
- When upgraded with Aghanim's Scepter, Infest can be applied to enemy heroes, which is useful in teamfights after Rage runs out or when Lifestealer's health is low.
Items[]
Starting items:
- Tango regenerates health early on until you can sustain yourself with lifesteal.
- Healing Salve for situations where you need to heal quickly.
- Quelling Blade helps last hitting early on and allows you to cut trees
- Iron Branches provide stats early on and build into Magic Wand later on.
Early game:
- Boots of Speed are needed to gank in combination with Open Wounds.
- Magic Stick sustains Lifestealer if the enemy has a certain number of spammable skills.
- Blight Stone increases Lifestealer's early game damage, and builds into Desolator later.
- Orb of Venom 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:
- Phase Boots allows Lifestealer to close the distance on his targets in order to get within Open Wounds' short range.
- Magic Wand, as an upgrade of Magic Stick, greatly improves the hero's effectiveness mostly by compensating for low mana pool.
- Armlet of Mordiggian shines with the extra HP, armor, and damage from the active Unholy Strength, all of which Lifestealer wants.
- Desolator 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.Feast and Open Wounds negates the health loss to some extent, while the rest of the abilities offer a chance of armlet toggling.
- Heaven's Halberd provide evasion against the physical attack of enemies, extra heal from Feast and Open Wounds, status resistance as well as a disarm for the enemy carry.
Late game:
- Abyssal Blade gives Lifestealer a reliable source of stun, allows him to disable an enemy long enough for him to tear down. Lifestealer has almost no damage output outside of melee range, so it is really crucial to stick to his target as a melee carry. Besides, this item improves the hero's survivability with damage block and bonus health.
- Assault Cuirass compensates for Lifestealer's low base armor and gives more attack speed to use with Feast. The armor reduction allows for a faster tower pushing and stronger team fight presence.
- Aghanim's Scepter will increase the cast range of Infest and it's health regeneration, reduce cooldown and will allow Lifestealer to use Infest on enemy heroes, disarming them and attacking them from inside, even if they are debuff immune, similarly to Juggernaut's Omnislash and Swiftslash from Aghanim's Scepter. Aghanim's Scepter upgraded Infest can make Lifestealer strong even against most heroes he would usually have difficulties to fight against. But watch out for the enemy heroes who choose to buy Linken's Sphere, as they will be able to counter this tactic with it's spellblock.
- Aghanim's Shard will give Lifestealer access to Open Wounds that will allow him to severely slow down an enemy hero, and to make every type of damage the affected enemy hero takes heal Lifestealer's allies while attacking the affected target, even the one coming from abilities. Open Wounds will also deal 2% of the target's max health per attack on the target from real heroes and will fester and spread on the nearby allies within 700 radius of the enemy hero affected by it when they 500 damage.
Situational items:
- Hand of Midas 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.
- Sange and Yasha gives Lifestealer movement speed, attack speed, and attack damage. The movement speed bonus helps Lifestealer catch up with the enemies.
- Monkey King Bar 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 that can pierce through evasion it offers.
- Maelstrom is a very good item due to the attack speed provided by Feast allowing you to get more procs from Chain Lightning. It provides extra damage, early flash farming capability and overall improve Lifestealer's attack damage. If Lifestealer is going for this item, it is recommended to get this item early on and to forego Armlet of Mordiggian.
- Nullifier will give Lifestealer good armor and excellent attack damage, and it will allow him to dispel defensive buffs from items like Ghost Scepter, Glimmer Cape, Wind Waker, Satanic, Crimson Guard, Disperser etc.
- Radiance will give Lifestealer a great amount of damage and evasion, and will also allow Lifestealer to deal magical damage around himself, giving him much needed AoE capabilities.
- Revenant's Brooch, an alternative to Nullifier will give Lifestealer great attack damage and spell lifesteal. Revenant's Brooch can be activated to have Lifestealer's attacks deal magic damage that can bypass armor and attack ethereal units, making this item very good against heroes who rely on Ghost Scepter for defense against Lifestealer.
- Mjollnir can be purchased first to farm faster and play for late game but it makes you weaker in the early-mid game as it provides less damage and no survivability compared to Armlet of Mordiggian with Desolator. The attack speed of this item allows for maximum use of Feast and Open Wounds damage and lifesteal. It's useful against illusion heroes, as both Static Charge and Chain Lightning help dealing with them. As a frontliner, Static Charge can be triggered towards its maximum effect.
- Orchid Malevolence will give Lifestealer good attack speed and damage, along with the bonus health and mana regeneration, and intelligence and the ability to silence enemy heroes after catching them unprepared with Infest.
- Bloodthorn, an upgrade for Orchid Malevolence allows Lifestealer not only to silence an enemy hero, but also allows every of Lifestealer's attacks he lands on the affected hero to have true strike and weaken spell damage of the affected enemies, making it very good item against heroes with evasion.
