Do you want to learn How to Play Night Stalker in Dota 2?
The Night Stalker despises the sun and transforms into a very mighty offlane hero at night. He makes an excellent Ganker and Initiator, thanks to his nighttime boosts. Along with this, his remarkable strength increase and armor enable him to take damage and serve as the team’s tank. This makes it vital to learn how to play Night Stalker in Dota 2.
He can set up effective team battles and capture weak opponents, thanks to his additional night vision. He has the potential to create space for his carry because of his high base damage and strong early-game presence. In addition, he may snowball without feeling threatened because of his strength surge at level 6.
Moreover, Night Stalker is already quite beefy at the start of the game. This enables him to be at the forefront of his team in both the Early and Midgame. Apart from this, he also has an exceptional potential to hunt down enemies in other lanes. All his advantages make it a must to learn how to play Night Stalker in Dota 2.
With his vast capacities to get kills and buff his team, he can work well with many heroes. Some of these heroes are Oracle, Magnus, and Luna due to their well-balanced fighting potential. In contrast to this, there are also many enemies that he can easily counter. These include Storm Spirit, Puck, Tinker, and Clinkz due to Night Stalker’s abilities.
Night Stalker’s Abilities
Early on, Night Stalker controls the night, making it difficult for the adversary to Farm camps effectively. As a result, this frustrates the other team, making it difficult to postpone the game to later stages.
Void, Night Stalker’s first ability, damages a single target while slowing their attack speed. Additionally, this spell slows down opponents, which makes it simple for Night Stalker to catch up with them. It gets stronger at night, slowing and briefly stunning enemies, which can stop channeled abilities. It has quite a minimal Mana Cost per cast.
With Crippling Fear, Night Stalker silences all enemies around himself within a radius of 375 units. The spell allows him to instantly silence any enemy unit, helping provide him with a solid disable. Like most of Night Stalker’s abilities, this spell also improves at night with an increased silence duration of 7 seconds.
Hunter in the Night, Night Stalker’s third ability, is responsible for providing him with a significant nighttime advantage. Night Stalker’s mobility and attack speed increase by vast margins thanks to this spell, allowing him to win engagements. But because this spell only works at night, it has a mediocre effect on Night Stalker during the day.
How to Utilize his Abilities
Even though the consumption costs are quite low for Void, Night Stalker still has very low Mana. Because of this, Night Stalker cannot afford to use this ability constantly. As a result, one should only use it to harass enemies when they step up to Lasthit. Moreover, it can also be of use to prevent enemy heroes from teleporting or escaping at night.
Crippling Fear is an incredible silencing ability at level one and thus, is a priority to level up. Moreover, it is great to have a massive impact on fights over a relatively large area. This helps him be an absolute menace in team fights as he can silence almost everyone. One should try to focus this ability on supports as they are easy to kill off.
Though the Hunter in the Night spell is a passive ability, understanding it is quite important to winning games. Firstly, one should ensure that they max the ability second, as it allows them to be potent in fights. Knowing that Night Stalker’s stats get so buffs at night are integral in engaging good fights whenever daytime ends.
Dark Ascension is a menace of a spell, however, it has an incredibly long cooldown. While this ability is active, Night Stalker can destroy anyone in the Mid Game. To ensure one is maximizing its impact, they have to use it while ganking other lanes. Furthermore, it is perfect while initiating fights, and allows players to gain excess vision.
Item Build
As an aggressive Offlaner or Tanky Core hero, there are a lot of items that the Night Stalker can go for. First, for the Laning Stage, Night Stalker, though tanky, still needs healing to trade effectively. For his healing, he can buy Tangoes, Healing Salves, Clarities, and Enchanted Mangoes. Lastly, he needs a Quelling Blade for Last Hitting easily in Lane.
While still in the Laning Stage, Night Stalker can usually build items like Bracers or a Soul Ring for tankiness. Besides this, it is a must to purchase the Magic Wand because it gives him a good amount of survivability. After completing these, he can start on his choice of Boots. These are mostly the Phase Boots, as they give him extra mobility.
In the Midgame, there are two items he needs more than most. These are first, the Aghanim’s Shard and the Echo Sabre to boost his Farming and Fighting potentials. After they finish, he can either go for a Blink Dagger for extra movement or a BKB. The Black King Bar is a must to make sure he can survive in fights.
Moving to the Late Game, there are plenty of options for Night Stalker to go for. These vary on a situation-to-situation basis. For a more aggressive game, he can pursue a Skull Basher, which he later upgrades into an Abyssal Blade. Another possibility is to go for the Assault Cuirass, another solid item.
Laning Stage and Gameplay
As an Offlaner, Night Stalker’s main goal in the Lane is to delay the Farm of the enemy carry. Getting a good amount of Farm himself while managing to bully enemies is ideal to succeed later on. Apart from doing this, Night Stalker can actually be quite aggressive if the right Support joins him. Getting kills is extremely easy once the clock strikes 5 mins.
Controlling the Lane is an extremely important aspect of winning the Lane. To do this successfully, one must first control the creep equilibrium. Night Stalker and his Support can achieve this by dragging or pulling the wave into Neutral Camps. Moreover, it is incredibly important to deny one’s own allied creeps is incredibly important while securing enemy ranged creeps.
Once the Lane is over around the 8 or 9-minute mark, Night Stalker should ideally have a few basic items. With these items and his buff in the Nighttime, he can easily go to other Lanes. In these Lanes, he can annihilate enemies and can run through Supports with minimal difficulty.
The key to mastering and winning games with Night Stalker is using one’s time effectively. This means that one must ensure that they are always using the nighttime efficiently. Getting into fights in the nighttime allows him to have an advantage like no other. Smoking and invading the enemy jungle is also the appropriate way to win games.
Not as popular nowadays, Night Stalker is still a hero that works in most Metas. His balanced arsenal and insane buffs make him a great Offlaner against most heroes. Knowing how to utilize his abilities and using his time correctly are surefire ways to victory. His abilities make it a must to learn how to play Nightstalker in Dota 2.
