General DiscussionLifestealer players?

lvl 1 jungle sucks with iron talon first item

The hero sucks lol

hes okay as safelane carry or offlane

wait for sam fuckin peckinpah to see this thread

Just a normal skill thing nothing else

^thats not true

Best build:
1: iron talon jungle
2: farm radi
3: get in ancient creep
4: ??
5: ????
6: profit
>inb4 leafeator uses this shit

Snowballing lifestealer is actually pretty hard to deal with unless you have the right lineup, and he's sometimes picked in competitive as an offlaner or safelane carry (sometimes even jungle but please don't). Also has a potential to fight early and doesn't give much of a fuck about a ton of popular magic-based heroes since he has early game magic immunity, much like jugg. Still not tier 1 pick material of course, but he's viable.

Also a good pick if you have a good "vehicle" to roam around in, spirit breaker, QoP, Puck and even antimage if you're playing pos 3 lifestealer are all good to jump into fights with, as are most invisible heroes and initiators that build blink.

I haven't really been on board with the radiance build yet, I usually do a more traditional build with s&y, basher, ac, etc

Yeah, don't go radiance build, it's shit.

@triple

Its my experience from LS players in my games who are mostly enemy team and russians
They just fucking sucked

I wasn't actually suggesting someone use that build lmao I dont imagine that ever working
If you want a hero that rapes with radiance pick Wraith king

@goethe
whats the average mmr of your games?

edit: nvm checked skill bracket
thats the reason, the strength of different heroes varies across brackets.

I'm currently playing 1k ranked pubs with retarded friends ama

I would almost think lifestealer would be stronger in 1k games just cause people wouldn't know what to do against that magic immunity, could be wrong though.

Get midas and win game

"I would almost think lifestealer would be stronger in 1k games just cause people wouldn't know what to do against that magic immunity, could be wrong though."

But at the same time a 1k player will also time his spells badly, get kited anyway etc. It goes both ways, if you're as bad as your opponents, lifestealer is kinda bad. If you are better and can capitalize on good judgement and timing for your spells, you'll win a lot.

That is true, I found him to be a good pubstomper when I had calibrated originally for those reasons

^"if you are better and capitalize on good judgement... you'll win a lot"
Isn't that true for almost any hero tho? I think you could win more in 1k with legion, jugg, slarkk etc following good judgement etc. than lifestealer.

I kinda think that people don't know lifestealer that well in low mmr. they all know the slark and juggs just from seeing them so much, but I find lifestealer gets really underestimated and you don't get focused as much in fights

"Isn't that true for almost any hero tho? I think you could win more in 1k with legion, jugg, slarkk etc following good judgement etc. than lifestealer."

Not really, you can pick some low impact shit that doesn't do anything 25 minutes into the game and the enemy is at your rax and you can't do anything. Lifestealer can fight early, as can legion, jugg, slark, etc, people just seem to misunderstand how much damage and sustain he can have if he times his spells right and manages not to get kited, while everyone knows jugg will pummel you down with just a fucking wraithband and spinnin'.

I guess so, also in 1k jungling is a breeze, you are rarely ganked and a single ward will always spot it, smoke is unheard of. You can farm better in relation to enemies simply because in 1k enemies cant last hit. In jungle you're always gonna get similar farm, for example:
1k: lifestealer 100 last hits, enemy carry 50 last hits
4k: lifestealer 110 last hits enemy carry 150 last hits
This is because people are much worse at last hitting in low skill and much better in vhs. But you can't greatly improve jungle farm except through timing etc. I inflated values for emphasis but this is essentially what happens. This means in lower skill games the jungler will have a higher net worth relative to the teams than in high skill, thus making it easier to win. Notice I say higher relative networth rather than simply higher net worth. A high net worth does not dierectly contribute to victory or defeat, but someone with 1k nw beats someone w 0.5k nw, just as someone with 40k beats someone w 15k.
If you come out of jungle with armlet, s&y, maelstrom and treads while the enemy has treads aquila and drums, you will rape them. Hence why junglers are good at lower levels. Check my recent LC game for reference.

^I jungled LC from 1.6k to 3.0k pretty much, most of it was jungle LC, but I mainly kept leaving the jungle at 7 minutes just to go "surprise surprise mutterphukr" on the enemy team.

Mate, if you want Lifestealer lessions, add one on Steam.

I have a fucking Lifestealer picture 1 meter wide above my bed.

Jungle Lifestealer is fine, but by jungle I mean you get Talon, then Stout then Boots+OoV and go gank mid/safe.
You must gank as a jungler.

^Pretty much this, and doesn't apply to LC/Lifestealer only, always spend sub 7-8 minutes in the jungle and just go fucking kill everyone, you've already made the lanes weak, i's payback time.

Phase oov basi sny assault/radiance etc. Ez and effective hero if no one is kiting.

Looks like you are doing fine in your recent matches but I'll just say my peace.

Jungle lifestealer is totally fine, the issue isn't even items most of the time but skill build. Most jungle lifestealers max feast or at least put many points in it. That's wrong. You need a value point then you need to get 3 into wounds asap so it's actually usable. It's pretty trash at lvl 1 and not that good at 2 either. And then you max rage. So build should be 2, 3, 3, 1, 3, 6, 1, 1, 1 so you are 4/1/3/1 at lvl 9. Doing that you'll be able to actually gank sidelanes with help at lvl 3, and easily at 5 with that added range to wounds.

And then items, don't build midas just pls no. Other than that everything is pretty much fine, phase vs treads really depends on game, drums, armlet, deso, medallion, orb of venom, sange and yasha, all good items.

The build you should go for is pretty much 2 1 3 1 at lvl 7, two points in rage is usually enough for some ganks, lvl 3 open wounds has a decent range and a lvl 7 lifestealer (same level as mids btw, since he can get that lvl 7 pretty fast) can actually pummel people down allied by his abilities and an ally or two. There's absolutely no reason to max feast on this hero first, it's fucking retarded, for jungle sustain you basically do the following thing:
1) Cast Open Wounds on a big creep with high HP pool
2) Use iron talon on it
3) Since spell damage also works with Open Wounds since that one patch, you heal up to almost full HP, and this is possible with LVL 1 Open Wounds too

not sure about safelane but offlane naix is legit

Lifestealer has a lot of pickoff potential with blink, armlet, and basher. He becomes a monster against tanky teams. The radiance ancient build is garbage. Don't do it.

^Ideally you really don't want to build blink because you can use somebody else's blink and go for more damage/lockdown/stats instead and blink won't help you much in fights once you commit since you try to outsustain people by eating them alive. Now, I'd say blink's pretty good if you can't communicate with teammates at all, and sb/silver edge is not a good option for the game, but in general you should try to be paired up with a typical blinking hero at most times when not just straight up farming, so you can jump into people and fuck them. I did get blink on some LS games and it felt really good, the mobility provided by it is really good if you're against elusive heroes or just have trouble getting in the right position by walking/infesting.

dont start with talon, get shield tango quelling to start, then make talon. Note this is much less useful in the radiant jungle, since volvo nerfed tf out of the distance between camps. Ls can be viable but his role is very finite and often there are better picks to supplement your team comp than a farm and exp reliant jungle, esp bc valve seems to abhor the idea of jungle heroes unless they are chen or enigma.

Someone above touched on it but a common strat in this meta is to get talon then tranq boots (i think the bonus ms applies to the ancient creep you ride in, i always get treads so i have yet to confirm this but i see no other reason for so many top tier players to take tranqs on him) into radiance followed by some ms buff items or auras like vlads/drums/yasha then just run around in your ancient creep proccing radiance damage until there is an opening to burst out and use your e/q combo to finish off an enemy core. One mistake i see a lot is lifestealer's spending too much time in the ancient creep, and essentially replacing a powerful carry with a radiance wielding ancient creep.

"dont start with talon, get shield tango quelling to start, then make talon. Note this is much less useful in the radiant jungle, since volvo nerfed tf out of the distance between camps."

You just farm the two camps next to the midlane, you farm two camps/minute (large and medium) or stack if you don't finish it. And no, you don't need tangos, get shield RoP quelling blade and then get talon.

"Ls can be viable but his role is very finite and often there are better picks to supplement your team comp than a farm and exp reliant jungle, esp bc valve seems to abhor the idea of jungle heroes unless they are chen or enigma."

Yeah, they abhor it so much that even ogre magi and abaddon can now jungle. Magical damage nukers can now farm the jungle less efficiently, but anybody who wants to rightclick it can, pretty much, though not everyone from lvl 1.

"Someone above touched on it but a common strat in this meta is to get talon then tranq boots (i think the bonus ms applies to the ancient creep you ride in, i always get treads so i have yet to confirm this but i see no other reason for so many top tier players to take tranqs on him) into radiance followed by some ms buff items or auras like vlads/drums/yasha then just run around in your ancient creep proccing radiance damage until there is an opening to burst out and use your e/q combo to finish off an enemy core. One mistake i see a lot is lifestealer's spending too much time in the ancient creep, and essentially replacing a powerful carry with a radiance wielding ancient creep."

I see a lot of ls buying radiance and throwing the game, the strat radiance/aura strat is just downright awful and I'm pretty sure it has a very low % of success.