Night Hound

Night Hound is a melee Agility hero in Heroes of Newerth equivalent to Stealth Assassin in Dota.  The only hero with permanent invisibility, he is a sneaky fucker that likes to get farmed up and becomes a very strong individual hero killer if not ganked heavily with detection items like Dust of Revelation or Bound Eye.  From the picture above we can also see he likes to roll with dinosaur skulls strapped to his forearms and sports a mean loincloth.  Not to mention he looks like the lion from Wizard of Oz had a baby with a smurf werewolf.  What a fucking baller.  Here is a look at his abilities:

Smoke Bomb (q)

Smoke Bomb is an AOE spell that silences enemy units, slows their movement and attack speeds, and causes them to miss on their attacks.  This is a great way to disable multiple heroes in a team battle and to slow enemies, preventing their escape or allowing your own.  Additional levels of Smoke Bomb increase its radius of effect.

Pounce (w)

Pounce is a blink strike that moves you quickly to an enemy unit and deals additional damage.  It also sets you up behind that unit so that your next attack will be a Backstab.  You can also use Pounce on an allied unit (without dealing damage) to escape from trouble, etc.  Each level of Pounce improves the bonus damage and decreases the cooldown of the spell, but the range is the same at all levels, which makes it a great escape mechanism at Level 1.

Backstab (passive)

When Night Hound hits a unit from behind, Backstab adds bonus damage based on Night Hound’s Agility.  The amount of the damage is 1 extra damage per Agility at Level 4, and is displayed in red text like a Critical Strike when a successful Backstab is made (see above).  This scaling of this ability makes Night Hound a dangerous late game carry as all Agility items are nearly twice as powerful on him as on other Agility heroes.

Invisibility (passive) (ultimate)

Night Hound is always invisible except when using a spell (Pounce or Smoke Bomb), an item ability (like teleporting with Homecoming rune or using a Codex), or attacking.  These actions make him visible for a short time before he fades back out of sight (fade time decreases with successive levels of Invisibility ultimate).  He is also revealed during stuns or while being disabled by certain other spell effects like Pollywog Priest’s Magical Bindings or Arachna’s Spider Sting.

Invisibility makes it easy for Night Hound to farm and escape ganks, or to scout out and sneak up on enemy heroes undetected to set up kills.

Strategy

Recommended Skill Build

1. Pounce (1)
2. Backstab (1)
3. Pounce (2)
4. Smoke Bomb (1)
5. Pounce (3)
6. Invisibility (1)
7. Pounce (4)
8. Backstab (2)
9. Backstab (3)
10. Backstab (4)
11. Invisibility (2)
12. Smoke Bomb (2)
13. Smoke Bomb (3)
14. Smoke Bomb (4)
15. Stats
16. Invisibility (3)
17. Stats -> Level 25

Explanation: Pounce is great to have at Level 1 as an escape mechanism.  Getting more levels to max this out early pays off with increased blinkstrike damage and spell cooldown, which makes chasing enemy heroes a lot earlier early game.  Alternatively you can substitute more levels of Pounce for additional Backstab levels to get more last hitting and harass damage early.  Grab a level of Smoke Bomb at Level 2 or 4 as an added slow and escape mechanism.  Your allies will expect occasional smokes to get them out of a bad spot, but further levels aren’t important till after Backstab is maxed out.

Early Game

Recommended Early Game items:

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Logger’s Hatchet, Iron Shield, Soulscream Ring, Steamboots (Agility)

Since Night Hound’s Backstab ability adds bonus damage based on how much Agility you have (+1 damage added per Agility at Level 4), any items that add Agility are extra good on Night Hound.  For example, a Dancing Blade on a normal Agility hero adds 25 damage because of its 25 Agility, but on Night Hound it adds an extra 25 to make it 50 more damage when he is backstabbing.

For this reason, items like Iron Shield, Soulscream Ring, or Agility Steamboots will really boost your damage early game (and attack speed too!).  Iron Shield is good if you are getting harassed a lot by attacks, whereas Soulscream Rings will be better to increase your hit points if you are being hit by a lot of spells in your lane.

Even if you have a disastrous game and are getting killed all the time and can only farm cheap items from the Initiation shop,  with Steamboots and a bunch of Soulscream Rings in your inventory you’ll still be pretty strong thanks to Backstab.

Mid Game

Recommended Mid Game items:

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Elder Parasite then Nullfire Blade or Frostburn

While Elder Parasite doesn’t increase Night Hound’s Agility, it adds lifesteal and, most importantly, attack and movement speed when activated, which is just what Night Hound needs to get additional attacks in when chasing down enemy heroes.  Remember that Backstab is a bonus damage on your attacks which is basically like a Critical Strike that hits 100% of the time whenever you are chasing an enemy.  Since total damage output is the product of attack speed and damage per atack, by increasing our attack speed with an already high damage per attack due to Backstab, we greatly improve our total damage output and are able to take down individual heroes in a few seconds.

After Elder Parasite, Nullfire Blade or Frostburn are great choices to increase your Agility for more Backstab damage and also add slow or mana burn to your attacks.  Nullfire Blade is very versatile and can be used to slow enemy heroes that you are chasing down or to remove annoying spells like Pestilence’s Swarm ultimate or Jeraziah’s Protective Charm.

Some players are tempted to use Invisibility and gank heavily before farming up much.  Usually this is a waste of money since you can become a lot stronger if you find a quiet lane to patiently farm in until you have at least some Steamboots and Elder Parasite or more before going off to attempt to rack up hero kills.

Late Game

Recommended Late Game items:

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Wingbow, Geometer’s Bane

Wingbow and Geometer’s Bane are two very good late game options on Night Hound.  Both add a lot of Agility to boost your Backstab damage and some increased survivability.  Wingbow gives evasion while Geometer’s Bane allows you to create two images, which is a very good confusion and escape mechanism, and also puts out a ton of damage especially when used in combination with Nullfire Blade since the images burn mana off as well.

Counters

Get Wards or Dust of Revelation, a Bound Eye, or Puzzlebox Level 3 to reveal Night Hound.  Use heroes like Pestilence, Rampage, Arachna, or Thunderbringer that have abilities to reveal and kill invisible heroes.  Gank Night Hound early in the game so he can’t get farmed.  If he has gotten farmed, use Kuldra’s Sheepstick to disable him, Barbed Armor to return his damage, or a Void Talisman to prevent him from attacking you.

Tags: hero guide, HoN, Night Hound

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 20th, 2010 at 6:45 PM by daggius and is filed under Guides: HoN. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.