Lifestealer: Why jungle?

The top five guides for Lifestealer all involve jungling and there are a bazillion jungling videos and jungling guides on youtube.

BUT- I haven't yet found a guide which explains WHY you should jungle, instead most assume it is self-explanatory. I feel it is not.

Could someone explain to me the pros and cons of sticking Lifestealer in the lane versus in the jungle? Benefits and risks of each?

Thank you kindly.

Generally Lifestealer is played as jungler in lower lvl of dota matchmaking, where people don't even think about ganking jungle, and such Lifestealer have free farm sitting here (usually for 30 minutes...). On lower mmr you can face 2-1-2 lanes, which mean you will have hard time trying to farm, especially if you have gay support on your lane that don't pull/harass and steal your farm.

As for me, Lifestealer have just too strong lane presence to let him go to jungle. He have free Black King Bar from level 2 and 70% slow, which just gives him or his lane partner a free kill. Also if you have good support, you shouldn't have problems finding farm, which mean more gold than in jungle.

If you want to know my opinion:
Jungle is good if you are playing on low MMR, as it will give you clearly more safe farm than lane.
Lane is good if you are playing on higher MMR, or have strong lane combo (which mean stunner or nuker). The combo I'm using with my team on team mmr is Lifestealer, Shadow Demon and Lina or Leshrac. You can go agressive trilane with this, and just **** up enemy carry farm, ofc if you know what you're doing.

I couldn't say it better: jungle Lifestealer should always be a last resort if your team has three or more carries. I remember a match in which I refused to jungle and headed to the safe lane with a friend of mine: even though our teammates were skeptical (my MMR was pretty high but my friend's wasn't) we got a lot of kills and won the mid game stomping the entire enemy team.

I was planning to make a laning Lifestealer guide but, since I don't have time and I'm working on a more important guide, I'm not sure about making it. Also, watching competitive games at YouTube channels like JoinDOTA is very useful for learning what the best way to play a Hero is.

He has a natural lifesteal and attack boost with Feast, plus some boosted lifesteal from Open Wounds and the ability to use creeps to heal and do aoe damage with Infest.

He just naturally has a lot of the stuff a jungler needs. He can definitely be a great lane partner from like level 3 on, but you can also get him to level 6 very quickly by stacking camps, at which point he has farm for his Armlet of Mordiggian, while his lane partner also has increased farm. Then he can use Infest + Open Wounds and really help win 2v2 fights or help gank by hiding in a Riki or Bloodseeker.

So pretty much, people suggest you jungle with him because all of his abilities lead to survivability, and from level 1 you never need to leave the jungle if you bought Tango at the game start.

Listen to Dzika and Peppo: don't jungle him. This used to be popular when Naix was still a Scourge creep (2 Stout Shields and 2 Gauntlets build hahahah), but buff after buff (I'm pretty sure this includes ms, dmg, rage, open wounds, feast, infest) have made Naix much better in lane.

Sad to see him nerfed, but he needs it.

Ya once Lifestealer gets geared up, he's so strong. Played a match last night where I ended up with:
Quelling Blade
Power Treads
Armlet of Mordiggian
Heaven's Halberd
Mjollnir
Soul Booster

And I got 2 Triple Kills and an Ultra Kill in the last 10 minutes.

I got the Soul Booster mainly because I ended up with way too much gold and I just bought it and built it in the enemy Secret Shop.

Well I'm no pro, but I find jungling to be very fun and jungling heroes really only appeal to me if they jungle. Plus it is the only thing besides laning which I fing is VERY boring for me.

You have poor GPM in the jungle, you get more gold in lane.You are more open to ganks in jungle, supports can just smoke gank you at level 2.

Jungling him is really really bad, jungling is boring as hell, the lane phrase is where it's at, trading hits and getting the kills.Tbh, if you find yourself harassed out of lane, that might be the problem why you find the lane "boring".

Lifestealer should go lane from level 4 onwards.....then let the support solo bot radiant or top dire....cause of the low dmg and hp to withstand large camps.....during the short laning phase...the support help to pull or stack camps...

I think it depends on your team comp where you'd play LS. If you have someone in lane with a good escape that can run solo bot (radiant) or top (dire), you can get them free farm/leveled faster. You might be getting less GPM early on but the experience is fine when you think about your teams overall level. When you out level the other team you should have an easier time moving to lane and make an effective kill/push. Like everything in Dota, it's situational where you play someone based on your team comp, the enemy team and how the lanes get configured