Necrophos continues to climb in the Dota 2 meta

The changes brought by Dota 2 patch 7.34c have created at least a dozen different monsters that are now spammed in pubs. But nobody expected Necrophos, a hero who seemed to be dead and forgotten, to be back with a vengeance.

Necrophos now has a 14.6% pick rate and a 54.1% win rate. These stats are spectacular for this hero and suggest that he can be played in very effective ways.

The strengths of Necrophos

One thing that Necrophos excels at is long-duration fights. Implicitly, he’s also a strong laner because the entire laning phase is a continuous series of skirmishes. Most players prefer to pick Necro for the offlane, where he can quickly level up and sustain himself thanks to Death Pulse and Heartstopper Aura.

Necrophos is particularly strong against strength-based heroes because he damages them with his passive based on their maximum HP. Losing 2% of that HP per second is quite brutal.

On top of this ability, which will usually keep you in good condition (you get HP and mana regen after each creep and hero kill), Necrophos also has his ultimate, which deals a massive amount of damage. This damage is based on how much HP the target is missing. The lower the target’s HP, the bigger the damage.

This mechanism is similar to that of Anti-Mage’s ultimate, except it works for HP.

The other two abilities in Necrophos’ toolkit allow him to heal himself a lot more, slow the movement speed of nearby enemies and make himself untargetable by physical attacks. As a penalty, his magic resistance is decreased substantially. But this is offset but the massive amount of heal that you receive.

Necro’s Ghost Shroud tends to make him really strong against heroes that rely on short bursts of physical damage, such as Phantom Assassin.

What makes this green monster terrifying in the laning phase is his Death Pulse, which deals 280 damage to all surrounding enemies and heals Necrophos for up to 130 HP. This creates a 400+ HP difference between Necro and his targets. And this happens every 5 seconds at level 4.

On top of these abilities, Necro also has great talents that upgrade his skills in significant ways. Finally, his item build in the current patch is full of great options. No matter what you buy on this hero, it will serve you well.

Header: Valve