Dota Nerubian Assassin Hero Guide

Nerubian Assassin

Nerubian Assassin is the one of the best ganking heroes in Dota and, in my opinion, the most fun to play, because you can get shitloads of kills by yourself.  The optimal strategy is simple: kill heroes every time your ultimate is up, and farm items in between.  Here is a look at the abilities:

Impale (e)

Stuns and damages units in a line.  Use to stun more than one hero at a time or to last hit creeps and harass simultaneously early in the game.  Max this out first.

Mana Burn (r)

Burns mana and damages heroes.  While clearly useful for disabling casters early, spamming this too much is a waste and will leave you without enough mana when you actually want to make a kill.  Max this out second.

Spiked Carapace (d)

Passively adds armor and melee damage return.  Don’t bother learning this early game, but it’s great later on.

Vendetta (ultimate) (v)

Makes NA invisible with a bonus backstab damage when he makes an attack.  Make sure you cast this while fogged or your opponent will hear the characteristic “windwalk” sound and get out of the way of your gank.

Strategy

Early Game

With any hero that is a gifted ganker, it is easy to get caught up in trying to get kills and forget about items altogether.  While it is definitely ideal to attempt a kill every time Vendetta cools down, it is important to use the time in between ganks and before you reach level 6 to farm as much as possible, because Nerubian Assassin is actually very item dependent.  Even though NA has three great damage dealing abilities (Impale, Mana Burn, and Vendetta), adding a Dagon to this armada is what will make you really deadly and able to kill heroes on your own, without the aid of an ally.

Therefore, it is of crucial importance to focus on last hitting early and get a Bottle and Boots as quickly as possible.  This will allow you to control the runes and gank swiftly as soon as you are level six.  Get what kills you can at this point, and then get back to farming your Dagon intermittently, whenever Vendetta is cooling off.

Mid Game

As soon as you have farmed your Dagon, hopefully the game is still early, and you can have a sigh of relief as you have reached the “tipping point” where you can effectively kill a bunch heroes completely by yourself.  Any intelligence or agility heroes on the other team have now become your food, and you can completely kill them without them having any say in it, i.e. you Vendetta + Impale + Mana Burn + Dagon, and the target is dead before Impale’s stun has even worn off.  After which you get back to farming briefly, before grabbing another rune to refill your mana and going to pick off another helpless pub when Vendetta is up again.

Dagon kills are fun

Set two milestones for yourself: level 11 and level 16.  At these points Vendetta becomes significantly better, with a duration of 50 and 60 seconds respectively.  This is long enough for you to cast Vendetta from the fountain (and regain the mana), and then walk all the way to your target and kill it without the invisibility wearing off.  At level 16, the cooldown (60 sec) is equivalent to the time Vendetta lasts, which means you can gank continuously, getting one kill per minute, which is of course, extremely satisfying, and why you are playing NA in the first place!

Late Game

After your Dagon, set your sights on Stygian Desolator.  While it is incredibly tempting to spend the 4400 gold for this item on Dagon upgrades instead, getting Desolator is something that will make your hero much more dangerous in the long run, and not useless late game.  Desolator greatly enhances the initial damage done by Vendetta (since it reduces armor), as well as your following attacks, and will allow you to destroy much stronger targets.  Remember that wimpy heroes on the other team will be continuously tanking up, so you must stay one step ahead so that you are able to keep killing them whenever you want.

Good luck, and by following this guide you can have plenty of games like this.