Night Stalker Counters

Pretty much as noted here, there isn't a single direct counter to him, it's a combination of things:

1) Give him a tough lane. He generally needs to go mid to get levels and try to compete for farm, if your mid is strong, he'll get very little.

2) Get vision up, and keep vision up. If you know where he is, you can react accordingly - if he doesn't get many kills and fails to snowball, he'll be pretty easy to deal with.

3) Heroes with good protection and CC skills are very useful - he can't silence everyone, if you can lock him down under a tower, or force him to stay longer trying to get a kill cos the target is under Shallow Grave, it's hard for him.

4) Group up. He needs to gank isolated (or reasonably isolated) targets - he's not good against deathball. TP to help team mates who get dived.

5) Yes, you can TP away once he's used Void - good players will wait, but that means they lose out on their slow/damage for longer.

Unfortunately you can probably see a lot of this requires a team effort, and a reasonable amount of basic work from your supports - part of the reason he's so good in lower level pubs.

A lot of it depends on what position he's in; 2, 3, or 4. (Because he's been known to perform in all 3 roles, usually 3 or 4 in this day and age. I'll say however 4 is rare outside of competitive)).

But as a general rule, defensive or controlling supports with good positioning, and TP Scrolls on hand are great. Position 2 night stalker especially, because he has to get something done in the first two nights. Because he is a pretty definitive snowballing core, in that he wants to get a lot done early, and then rely on his own momentum. Deny him that momentum and you never have to fear the heroes damage out-put past about 20-30 minutes.

However, against 3 and 4 position (Which shouldn't be building into damage unless they get crazy far ahead, but into like Urn Midas Ag's Gem, Octarine), you want to be ahead, or at least in a commanding position by the time NS gets his Ag's and Gem. Because that's the point of the game where the map goes dark, and essentially stays dark. Like, if you give NS the space to go around the map, and clear out your vision with this, the game becomes 10x harder, because the opposing team can almost always get better initiations. So being on the aggresive, and delaying the dewarding till you can say get a set of racks, or have a large gold lead is ideal.

I have read that guide, and found it very useful. Hopefully i can actually convince my team to help me out in carrying out the strategy. The chance to counterpick against Night Stalker is not very high in random draft, so the only consistent way to fight him is through a team strategy.

https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1612804098

This game happened when i was trying to start ny all hero challenge on abbadon(finally). It felt like a deathball of sorts where i was screaming at ursa not to keep jumping in the middle of 5 heroes and i was trying my best to save my team while they push.

I don't know how effective the deathball was, because the night stalker wasn't doing as well as the previous ones i've faced. He didn't try to lane our lane out and just sat there passively farming while taking our harass. However, once i started saying to push as a team, Night Stalker simply stopped trying to gank us.

Can i have an opinion of this game of how effective was the push against the enemy team?

Ps. I know i made a lot of mistakes, i haven't played a lot of abbadon and also only started to play melee supports recently, the previous times i tried abba i built him as a carry, which always failed. Many elementary mistakes were made, and i could have avoided at least 2 deaths. But, i just want to focus on Night Stalker

I'm actually sonmewhat inclined to download the game and have a look... though I think the answer is going to be 'the Night Stalker didn't accomplish anything because he farmed instead of ganking'.

Maybe I'll give it a look, if that's ok.

imo to counter ns or any ganker you need wards at key spots. If he cant surprise you he cant kill you, might overextend and die. Map awareness helps, also just get an euls and tp out from the shadow

In nighttime, vision is damn low, even with wards. I really feel that at the very least, slark, luna and all the heroes that have their lore based on the night as well should not be affected by the vision loss at night, it is ridiculous how far you can see at night.

However, i realised something. I never warded. At all. During the duration of the whole game, i bought 3 wards, and those 3 wards were bought at the start before 15min. We didn't have any wards at all when we fought... I feel so lucky that the enemy didn't take advantage if that.

Oh btw, the night stalker seemed as if he didn't know how to play effectively. He could have killed our sniper and drow so many times but he simply waited for his team and missed many chances. Or maybe he was wary of our team. But point is, that Night Stalker could have done much more in the course of the game and him not doing it probably cost them the game

...

Does nobody buy smoke on gankers here?

smoke on gankers? are u tryhard or something fool! putang ina bobo! i need no smoke i dive tier 3 at 2 minutes cause im pro noob!

seriously u wont see smoke bought much in pubs unless ur in a team or playing at a higher level.

also

* COUGH*noultontbtilllvl13*COUGH*

ahem

Not on my tier. I'm still in noob tier, especially when i was queueing with my friend who was newer to dota. this game felt very very easy honestly. Occasionally i see a support buy smoke tho. I myself have only ever bought smoke on 2 heroes. Ursa for early rosh ward bypass and Pudge when ganking before i get Blink Dagger and Force Staff. Very rarely though, when i have a surplus of gold during laning stage as a support and wards are on cd, i buy a smoke and ask to gank. like i said, this is very rare because most of the time, there is only one support per team and i never take last hits in lane from my carry.