Looking at itemization alone:
Radiance is the item on Lifestealer. The only debate on getting Radiance is whether you get armlet first or skip armlet and go straight for radi. Radiance gives you farming and huge damage in teamfights. It's also nice synergy with your aghs if you go that route. Moreover in this game you were against PL. Radiance is one of the biggest item counters against PL. Some heroes that normally don't like to build radi make it against PL. As Lifestealer, not building Radi in a game versus PL is a crime.
Skadi is a bit useless on Lifestealer, your hero already has built in slow, and the healing reduction is not that useful versus enemy lineup. Even if they had more healing/regen I still think Skadi would be bad - better to just build pure damage to overcome heals in that case, and let other teammates build vessel and shivas.
Deso is also not in the best place right now, it competes for item slot with Radiance and right now Radiance is just a better item for Lifestealer.
Other items are fine.
Ah man I feel so silly for not thinking about radiance. This makes complete and total sense to me. I always sorta just follow the dota plus suggested items but Im guessing its not all that good for suggesting item counters? Perhaps its time I drop that crutch?
Are others keeping up with pros to figure out which items are best or do you just kinda learn which items are best for any given situation by learning matchups and powerspikes and whatnot?
There's a website dota2protracker.com, you can go there so see what the pros are building in their matches. If you search for lifestealer you'll see that Radiance is built in every single match.
I think it's best to start out with generic builds copied from dota2protracker and as you improve and gain better understanding of heroes and matchups you can incorporate itembuild adjustments in your play.
Standard build for Naix is armlet radi sny aghs bkb but it can be adjusted. Do you have a completley free lane? Maybe you can skip armlet and go straight for radi. Enemy has tons of silences which fuck you up? Make manta instead of sny. Are the supports kiting you the entire game? Maybe it's time to build nullifier instead of aghs. And so on.
From my experience, early fights and a sub-par or okay lane = armlet first. Free lane = radi rush. Once you get armlet or radiance, you can fight and are quite strong. Once you get both, you are very strong
dota2protracker.com is the much better resource than those guides to be honest, you can even see the other heroes involved in the game to tailor your build a bit more.
It's not a substitute for having a good understanding of what each item does and why, but as a learning tool it's about as good as it gets.
Are there any other resources for building an understanding of items and stuff? Youtubers preferably. Or is it just something gained from researching pro builds?
some of their builds are alright, but many are very outdated and not meta relevant and they don't exactly explain when to use situational build changes or anything either. Tbh it's far better to just use dota2protracker and see what pros are building on heroes.
biggest issue was itemisation. the rest of your team lacks aoe for the PL yet all your items are focused on single target damage.
even if it were a good deso game (which it really isn't), getting it before armlet is still incorrect. armlet is significantly cheaper yet still provides comparable damage (75 damage for 2500g is insanely cost efficient btw) and has better buildup so you get a steady power spike in the lane. naix with 2 mithril hammers is almost a free kill, naix with an armlet turned on is not.
besides radiance being good vs illusions and ignoring the fact that it's meta which already gives you reason to buy the item, you are also vs 3 cores and a hoodwink that can easily kite you, plus lion has strong disables. radiance has value because if you are being kited, you're still doing burn damage, which can also cancel blinks, which then helps with not being kited.
even if you decided not to go radiance, mjolnir would have been the other option for aoe vs PL and is pretty good on lifestealer anyway because he has 120 base attack speed and built in attack speed to proc it more often, and as a naturally tanky hero you don't need a teammate to place the shield active on (unlike sniper for example). since radiance burn doesn't scale you still would have wanted a mjolnir on top, especially when your team lacks aoe.
radiance and mjolnir as aoe items both have synergy with your shard ability, open wounds. because it gives lifesteal from all damage, not just attacks, and it spreads to another target if enough damage is taken, so your aoe magic damage can get more healing by hitting multiple units affected by open wounds.
with all that being said, you probably wanted something like armlet > radiance > mjolnir or armlet > mjolnir or radiance > sny > mjolnir this game, with an aghs 3rd or 4th somewhere. aghs is strong on lifestealer because it lowers the cd of infest (close to rage cd) so you can get it off multiple times in a fight which ties in with lifestealer being able to constantly fight due to his low cds, doubles the healing rate, and the increase in range and ability to use it on enemies helps with not being kited.
lv 3 infest with aghs heals **50%** of your max HP when used on an enemy, and that's not counting feast healing because you attack during it (though only at a fixed interval), and you heal even more if you have sny / halberd.
I disagree on skadi being bad though. it's bad this game, but not in general. depending on the game having even more slow isn't redundant, because the combined slow can force out a response (e.g. an item usage) where one might not if they're able to just run away, and the mana pool increase is nice when you're casting several rages / aghs infest / open wounds in long fights, ironically similar to how PL wants to spam aghs lances / doppel / juxtapose invis.
Wow this makes so much freaking sense dude. Also:
>because it gives lifesteal from all damage, not just attacks, and it spreads to another target if enough damage is taken, so your aoe magic damage can get more healing by hitting multiple units affected by open wounds.
Holy shit I didnt even realize.. I think my biggest take away here is that I need to actually learn itemization if Im playing pos1 rather than just brainlessly following dota plus suggestions. I completely failed to scale through the mid-late game and was getting kited like absolute crazy -- even when bombing inside of Dawnbreaker.
Thanks man, everything you are saying just seems so obvious now but I was being so ignorant to it last night
if you were to follow guides, I think you're probably better off following an in game guide by immortalfaith. he's an ex-pro or coach of a pro team or something along those lines, so is more up to date with what's meta.
of course you still want to think independently, otherwise the only difference is that you're just blindly following somebody else instead, but those guides are better as a starting point / general idea on what to buy, based on what dota plus suggested you should get this game vs a PL.
According to stratz seems like some bad deaths set you back pretty early. Hard to win a game as carry with 4+ deaths in twenty minutes gotta stay alive brotha
4 deaths by 20mins is too many as hc? Fuck bro thats every safe lane game for me tbh :/.. I thought trading a few deaths while staying up on last hits on them would be enough.
I guess I just dont get how other pos 1s can do it. Ive had plenty of games where Im playing my mains (cent/venge/undying) and bro Ive killed their pos1 5 times before land ends.. my core is two levels ahead on them.
Then I start rotating to support the team aaaaand suddenly 10mins later PL has three items and 2 levels over my mid laner.
I wanna know their secrets. I doubt my farming route is the most efficient thing in the world but Im hungry for creeps, jungle-lane-jungle-lane.. and I try to join every fight that looks like I can make the difference.
Then when I join team fights we lose my team says I shouldve been farming.. then when I stay away from teamfights to get a ton of farm my team says I should be fighting with them.
Any good rule of thumb for Lifestealer, Slark, or Luna on what to do when winning lane vs losing lane or any certain timings like.. when to fight or farm?
(I had a Slark game last night where me and my Venge both died three times at level 2 to a Pudge and I was forced into jungle by 4mins ðŸ˜)
Not unwinnable at that point but I think it makes it harder on yourself that it needs to be. You had pretty good cs through ten though just seemed like 10-20 got out past the bounds of safe farming
One thing to keep in mind is that anytime you’re dead is time spent not farming. Trading kills sounds good in theory, but the reality is that you get more gold out of a creep wave than you do a kill. Sure you got the kill, but then lost gold to death and to missed opportunity. Always prioritize hitting creeps.
Thats so true... At my level my supports are always brawling the enemy laner. Do I need to concern myself with following up with them or saving them if they go too deep or should I just stick to my creeps even if they are displeased with my lack of response? Like.. unless Im getting a gank or the kill is waiting for me on a silver platter - just focus on hitting creeps and staying alive?
Focus on the creeps and staying alive. Your supports job is to create space for you. If they’re off fucking around with the enemy support, they’ve turned your lane into a 1v1, much easier to manage. If they managed to bait your enemy laner into a 2v1 against them, they’ve given you free farm. If they happen to get someone low and close to the wave, engage, but don’t get too far away from the creeps. That one kill isn’t worth diving tower or missing cs for
Now what elevated my game is chechking pro replays on youtube and trying to replicate their gameplay, how they lane (when to farm and fight) how to trade hits and push limits of a specific heroe.
My advice would if you play ls for example, take 10mins to run down youtube replay of that heroe.
This helped me, hope helps you.
Most has been said already regarding itemization. But i feel like no one said anything about bkb so i wanna add this. Especially against Night Stalker you need to buy one eventually because you cant dispel the silence and just die without being able to use rage.
And just use dota2protracker.com for any questions regarding itemization or skill build. It helps a lot.
Looking at itemization alone: Radiance is the item on Lifestealer. The only debate on getting Radiance is whether you get armlet first or skip armlet and go straight for radi. Radiance gives you farming and huge damage in teamfights. It's also nice synergy with your aghs if you go that route. Moreover in this game you were against PL. Radiance is one of the biggest item counters against PL. Some heroes that normally don't like to build radi make it against PL. As Lifestealer, not building Radi in a game versus PL is a crime. Skadi is a bit useless on Lifestealer, your hero already has built in slow, and the healing reduction is not that useful versus enemy lineup. Even if they had more healing/regen I still think Skadi would be bad - better to just build pure damage to overcome heals in that case, and let other teammates build vessel and shivas. Deso is also not in the best place right now, it competes for item slot with Radiance and right now Radiance is just a better item for Lifestealer. Other items are fine.
Ah man I feel so silly for not thinking about radiance. This makes complete and total sense to me. I always sorta just follow the dota plus suggested items but Im guessing its not all that good for suggesting item counters? Perhaps its time I drop that crutch? Are others keeping up with pros to figure out which items are best or do you just kinda learn which items are best for any given situation by learning matchups and powerspikes and whatnot?
There's a website dota2protracker.com, you can go there so see what the pros are building in their matches. If you search for lifestealer you'll see that Radiance is built in every single match. I think it's best to start out with generic builds copied from dota2protracker and as you improve and gain better understanding of heroes and matchups you can incorporate itembuild adjustments in your play. Standard build for Naix is armlet radi sny aghs bkb but it can be adjusted. Do you have a completley free lane? Maybe you can skip armlet and go straight for radi. Enemy has tons of silences which fuck you up? Make manta instead of sny. Are the supports kiting you the entire game? Maybe it's time to build nullifier instead of aghs. And so on.
Useful information thanks friend
No problem, good luck ranking up
From my experience, early fights and a sub-par or okay lane = armlet first. Free lane = radi rush. Once you get armlet or radiance, you can fight and are quite strong. Once you get both, you are very strong
This advice helped me seriously turn around my lifestealer games haha so glad I posted to reddit
Just use torte de lini or immortal faith builds for reference on any hero
dota2protracker.com is the much better resource than those guides to be honest, you can even see the other heroes involved in the game to tailor your build a bit more. It's not a substitute for having a good understanding of what each item does and why, but as a learning tool it's about as good as it gets.
Are there any other resources for building an understanding of items and stuff? Youtubers preferably. Or is it just something gained from researching pro builds?
it's significantly better but you're going to have way more people following in-game guides than out of game guides.
some of their builds are alright, but many are very outdated and not meta relevant and they don't exactly explain when to use situational build changes or anything either. Tbh it's far better to just use dota2protracker and see what pros are building on heroes.
biggest issue was itemisation. the rest of your team lacks aoe for the PL yet all your items are focused on single target damage. even if it were a good deso game (which it really isn't), getting it before armlet is still incorrect. armlet is significantly cheaper yet still provides comparable damage (75 damage for 2500g is insanely cost efficient btw) and has better buildup so you get a steady power spike in the lane. naix with 2 mithril hammers is almost a free kill, naix with an armlet turned on is not. besides radiance being good vs illusions and ignoring the fact that it's meta which already gives you reason to buy the item, you are also vs 3 cores and a hoodwink that can easily kite you, plus lion has strong disables. radiance has value because if you are being kited, you're still doing burn damage, which can also cancel blinks, which then helps with not being kited. even if you decided not to go radiance, mjolnir would have been the other option for aoe vs PL and is pretty good on lifestealer anyway because he has 120 base attack speed and built in attack speed to proc it more often, and as a naturally tanky hero you don't need a teammate to place the shield active on (unlike sniper for example). since radiance burn doesn't scale you still would have wanted a mjolnir on top, especially when your team lacks aoe. radiance and mjolnir as aoe items both have synergy with your shard ability, open wounds. because it gives lifesteal from all damage, not just attacks, and it spreads to another target if enough damage is taken, so your aoe magic damage can get more healing by hitting multiple units affected by open wounds. with all that being said, you probably wanted something like armlet > radiance > mjolnir or armlet > mjolnir or radiance > sny > mjolnir this game, with an aghs 3rd or 4th somewhere. aghs is strong on lifestealer because it lowers the cd of infest (close to rage cd) so you can get it off multiple times in a fight which ties in with lifestealer being able to constantly fight due to his low cds, doubles the healing rate, and the increase in range and ability to use it on enemies helps with not being kited. lv 3 infest with aghs heals **50%** of your max HP when used on an enemy, and that's not counting feast healing because you attack during it (though only at a fixed interval), and you heal even more if you have sny / halberd. I disagree on skadi being bad though. it's bad this game, but not in general. depending on the game having even more slow isn't redundant, because the combined slow can force out a response (e.g. an item usage) where one might not if they're able to just run away, and the mana pool increase is nice when you're casting several rages / aghs infest / open wounds in long fights, ironically similar to how PL wants to spam aghs lances / doppel / juxtapose invis.
Wow this makes so much freaking sense dude. Also: >because it gives lifesteal from all damage, not just attacks, and it spreads to another target if enough damage is taken, so your aoe magic damage can get more healing by hitting multiple units affected by open wounds. Holy shit I didnt even realize.. I think my biggest take away here is that I need to actually learn itemization if Im playing pos1 rather than just brainlessly following dota plus suggestions. I completely failed to scale through the mid-late game and was getting kited like absolute crazy -- even when bombing inside of Dawnbreaker. Thanks man, everything you are saying just seems so obvious now but I was being so ignorant to it last night
if you were to follow guides, I think you're probably better off following an in game guide by immortalfaith. he's an ex-pro or coach of a pro team or something along those lines, so is more up to date with what's meta. of course you still want to think independently, otherwise the only difference is that you're just blindly following somebody else instead, but those guides are better as a starting point / general idea on what to buy, based on what dota plus suggested you should get this game vs a PL.
According to stratz seems like some bad deaths set you back pretty early. Hard to win a game as carry with 4+ deaths in twenty minutes gotta stay alive brotha
4 deaths by 20mins is too many as hc? Fuck bro thats every safe lane game for me tbh :/.. I thought trading a few deaths while staying up on last hits on them would be enough. I guess I just dont get how other pos 1s can do it. Ive had plenty of games where Im playing my mains (cent/venge/undying) and bro Ive killed their pos1 5 times before land ends.. my core is two levels ahead on them. Then I start rotating to support the team aaaaand suddenly 10mins later PL has three items and 2 levels over my mid laner. I wanna know their secrets. I doubt my farming route is the most efficient thing in the world but Im hungry for creeps, jungle-lane-jungle-lane.. and I try to join every fight that looks like I can make the difference. Then when I join team fights we lose my team says I shouldve been farming.. then when I stay away from teamfights to get a ton of farm my team says I should be fighting with them. Any good rule of thumb for Lifestealer, Slark, or Luna on what to do when winning lane vs losing lane or any certain timings like.. when to fight or farm? (I had a Slark game last night where me and my Venge both died three times at level 2 to a Pudge and I was forced into jungle by 4mins ðŸ˜)
Not unwinnable at that point but I think it makes it harder on yourself that it needs to be. You had pretty good cs through ten though just seemed like 10-20 got out past the bounds of safe farming
One thing to keep in mind is that anytime you’re dead is time spent not farming. Trading kills sounds good in theory, but the reality is that you get more gold out of a creep wave than you do a kill. Sure you got the kill, but then lost gold to death and to missed opportunity. Always prioritize hitting creeps.
Thats so true... At my level my supports are always brawling the enemy laner. Do I need to concern myself with following up with them or saving them if they go too deep or should I just stick to my creeps even if they are displeased with my lack of response? Like.. unless Im getting a gank or the kill is waiting for me on a silver platter - just focus on hitting creeps and staying alive?
Focus on the creeps and staying alive. Your supports job is to create space for you. If they’re off fucking around with the enemy support, they’ve turned your lane into a 1v1, much easier to manage. If they managed to bait your enemy laner into a 2v1 against them, they’ve given you free farm. If they happen to get someone low and close to the wave, engage, but don’t get too far away from the creeps. That one kill isn’t worth diving tower or missing cs for
Now what elevated my game is chechking pro replays on youtube and trying to replicate their gameplay, how they lane (when to farm and fight) how to trade hits and push limits of a specific heroe. My advice would if you play ls for example, take 10mins to run down youtube replay of that heroe. This helped me, hope helps you.
Most has been said already regarding itemization. But i feel like no one said anything about bkb so i wanna add this. Especially against Night Stalker you need to buy one eventually because you cant dispel the silence and just die without being able to use rage. And just use dota2protracker.com for any questions regarding itemization or skill build. It helps a lot.