Necrolyte

Introduction

At first, I would like to say that this is my first guide. Sorry for any discrepancy. If you have any problem, just post it into the comment bellow.

After seeing many Necrophos players who had no idea about this powerful char, I decided to create guide to share some of my personal experience about this hero. It is my 2nd best hero, and I love him because of his ability to play as semi-support/semi-carry/tank.

There are 3 things everyone should know about Necrophos.

1): He is NOT a support. Yes, he usually uses items like Mekansm or Arcane Boots, but does not mean he should be the only team member who will do the warding/de-warding, etc. He needs at least 1-2 items early on in order to be effective.

2): Necrophos is SLOW. If you are looking for a char that will charge in the enemy team, kill all of them in 2 seconds and laugh, then Necrophos is not the char you are looking for. All your skills consist of slow damage over time (even the Death Pulse is not ultra high magical damage nuke so count with it). You are tanky, you are slowly killing anything that comes in contact with you, but you have no movement speed and no real burst damage (unless some enemy is at low HP).

3): Heartstopper Aura does NOT interrupts Blink Dagger.

Pros / Cons

+ One of the most tanky supports in DOTA. Especially late on.
+ Can quickly kill enemy carry that has been Overfed by other members of your team with Reaper's Scythe.
+ Can kill several enemy heroes while running away from them by using Death Pulse.
+ Can cover some supporting ( Mekansm, Harrassing enemy at lane while your carry farm last hits..)

- Not really durable early, making him easy target to nuke down with Lion/ Pudge etc...
- If played as only support in team, his potential is wasted and he will not be able to do anything usually.
- Lack of right click power. Your enemies will laugh about your 10 damage worth autoattacking. You will teach them later, hovewer.

When to Pick Necrophos

When to pick him:

+ When you already have some carry and support and you are looking for char with strong early to late game pressence that do NOT need 30+ minutes of free farm to kill someone.
+ If enemy team has one char which will make whole their game and you need to quickly destroy it.
+ When you love kill stealing but you are too bad in killstealing with any regular char, so you need Reaper's Scythe.


When NOT to pick him:

- If enemy team has long-lasting silences ( Night Stalker, Bloodseeker).
- If you are playing the only support.
- If enemies have strong burst damage (especially in early game is our Necrophos REALLY nondurable).
- If enemy team has some of your arch enemy chars (We will speak about them bellow).

Items

And now something about Items of Necrophos.

Starting items
If none of your team mates buy Animal Courier, you should do it yourself since you dont need to spend all of your starting gold for your own items. If other support has already bought a courrier, you should consider buying starting set of Observer Wards (however, later in the game you should go for your core items and the other support should cover wards).

After the cour, buy 1x Mantle of Intelligence for some extra mana for Death Pulse and some more right click power (early on you need to deny/lasthit creeps. Later you will not need your autoattack anymore). Also you should buy 2x Iron Branch. They improve your stats and help you to build Mekansm later.

After that, buy 1 set of Tangos. You will probably not need it, because you will heal your HP and MP by denying/lasthitting, but anyway there may come a situation when you will really need some extra regen, or your lane-mate (probably team carry) will need some Tangos from you.

Early game
You will probably lane with your carry, so you will not have many items early game. Items you should buy first are Boots and Headdress. Headdress is needed for some extra regen aura, and later you will buy Mekansm from it.

Boots
Almost all of the boots are played on Necrophos by many players. However, after some studying of Necrophos abilities, I realised that Arcane Boots are his boots of choice.
At first you can support whole your team with the Mana restoration active skill. Secondly they improve your maximum mana, together hiving you mana for 2 extra Death Pulses/death pulse and level 1 Ulti. This is they difference between the life and death in many cases. Also Arcane Boots can be later disassembled into Bloodstone.

Power Treads gives you mana/hp which is good, but the +30 attack speed is wasted on Necro since he has (as stated already) no right click power. Also the mana they give cannot be compared with mana given by the Arcane Boots.

Core items
Fast after the early game, you will need to buy your bread and butter item: Mekansm. It is the MUST item for Necrophos. Necro without Mekansm is like Void without Chrono or PA without Crits: nothing. Even if you have other support in team, Necro should ALWAYS build Mekansm. No other char synergises so well with Meka. If your other support have money for Meka, better tell him to buy wards/any Luxury item for him.

Second item you must have as Necro is Aghanim's Scepter. It gives you stats and max MP and HP, so finally you will start becoming that terrifying and unstoppable durable Necrophos. Also (and maybe mainly) it slightly improves your Ultimate, now you can kill almost any enemy as soon as he is under 50% HP. Also dying under the effect of your ultimate will prevent the enemy from Buybacking, which is aspect you should NEVER underestimate.

Items you should build after your Core items
After your Core items, it is up to you what you will buy.

Option you usually should consider is Bloodstone. You already have Arcane Boots, so you can build it with discount of 1000 gold. It gives you mana regen (for spamming Death Pulse), HP regen, Max MP and HP, Suicide active skill and heals your team mates after you die. All of those things are great for you.

Second good item is Heart ot Tarasque. It gives you massive HP boots and HP regen, making you extremely tanky. That is the thing any Necrophos wants.

Skills

Death Pulse is your core skill. It is the first skill to max. Is it the main source of your damage and also it heals you and all allies around you. It has relatively short cooldown, so make sure to spam it as soon as you are in fight. Remember, that if you get a kill, you will get your MP back thanks to Sadist, so dont hesitate to spam and spam this.


Heartstopper Aura is extremely annoying skill for your opponents. It destroys percentage of nearby enemies HP per seconds. Of course, the damage of this skill is bigger on enemies with higher HP pools (so it does more damage mid-late game, when enemies have more HP), but it is really useful at harrassing at lane too.
Just remember that this skill also damages creeps and pushes lane, which is giving Necro disadvantage unless he wants to push fast and he is sure noone will attack him from his back.
Dont underestimate this skill, much of Necrophos's kills comes from this.


Sadist is your main source of HP and MP regen at lane. It is the reason why Necro dont need many Tangos at lane usually. If Necro kills a hero, he usually gets back MP and HP he needed for the kill, thanks to Sadist.
As stated - this is really useful skill at lane. However, Necrophos needs to max Death Pulse to be effective early, so I recommend spending only one point to this skill at early levels.
Also dont hesitate to use death pulse to kill creeps and finish them off with 1 autoattack. You will get your MP back immediately.


Reaper's Scythe is one of the most dangerous skills in DOTA. At early levels of skill, damage is just pathetic. However at 2 - 3 (preferably with Aghanim's Scepter), this skill is powerful enough to kill any1 at half of his HP - making it extremely useful against Tanks or overfed Carries.

There are 2 things any Necrophos should consider before using this skill.
First of them is the fact, that the stun from this ulti goes throught Black King Bar, but the damage not. It means that you will be able to ulty magic immune target, but you will not damage them. Wasting this ulti just to stun for 1.5 sec is generally bad idea (unless you will get important kill and you are sure you will have this skill reused when you will need it again).

Second of them is the fact, that some Heroes has more magic resistance then the others, so ultying them at half of their HP can result in leaving them alive with more or less HP remaining. Of course, your heartstopper aura can kill them later - but still, they may do quite a mess in teamfight if they are considered dead and they are not. Also they may flee, resulting in completely wasted Reaper's Scythe.
Heroes like this are for example Pudge with Flesh Heap, Viper with Corrosive Skin, or Meepo who has natural magic resist 35% instead of 25% like normal hero.


Also never forget that some heroes like Templar Assassin, Dazzle, Omniknight have abilities that will mess up your ulty.

Your arch-enemies

There are some Chars that counters Necrophos really hard and you should not even consider picking Necro against them.

Templar Assassin
Her Refraction can block your ulti, making you waste its damage. That can be the difference between life and death of you AND your team. You are supposed to kill strongest and most useful enemy char with Necro. Wasting of your ulti can lead into terrible consequences.

Riki
His silence is pain for Necro. Also his ability to inflict bonus damage on you while you are running away from him and deathpulsing makes him excellent counter char.

Lifestealer
His Rage makes him immune to Death Pulse damage. His Open Wounds makes him impossible to escape from. He is able to tear apart durable enemies in a second thanks to Feast. Nothing more to say.

Omniknight
This guy could be very annoying for you. He will not be probably able to kill you by himself. However, his heal can mess up your ulti pretty hard. Imagine yourself ultying enemy hero at 40% HP to instantly kill. However, suddenly Omniknight's Purification heals him and you will only do 100 - 200 damage instead of instant kill.

Even more importantly, his Repel will make enemy carry immune to damage from your Death Pulse and (!) Reaper's Scythe.

Black King Bar
This is not char, it is the item. But anyway, it makes enemy immune to Death Pulse and damage from your ulti (however stun from your ulti and your Heartstopper Aura are NOT blocked).

Guide Edits

Edit 1: changed starting items after some useful suggestions in comments

Edit 2: added Omniknight to arch-enemies section and added Skills section