As I said before, every character has good and bad points.

Strong Points

• Can stun and damage multiple enemies for good damage even early game –
  This means that you can use this for quick ganks early game, as you can prevent the enemy from escaping while they are stunned.
• Can drain mana and it hurts the character for the amount of mana drained as well –
  This means that hero’s who do have the ability to stun or inflict some massive amount of 1-hit damage, aren’t really a threat early to mid game, because you can sap them out of their mana to prevent them from being able to do such attacks. It also means they will be returning to their base more ofter to get their mana back.
• Can go invisible –
  Normally this is a great skill as it lets you get away OR do a good first hit on an enemy when they least expect it. Basically if you start the game with an Intellect player on the enemy team in your lane, and they aren’t smart enough to hug their tower, you can pretty much get an instant gank once you hit level 6 and get this. Luckily this invisible skill isn’t the only thing that makes nerub good though (unlike hero’s like clinkz), so if someone get’s a gem, it’s not like you will have a hard time fighting anymore, you will probably just be able to gank a little less.
• Has damage return –
  If a melee player hits you, they get a portion of their damage returned back at them. How’s that for a defense!

Weak Points

• Medium-Low Health -
  Being an agility hero, his life is always between the extremely low HP of an intellect hero, and the crazy huge HP of an strength character. Getting things like Sange and Yasha can help with this, but usually by the end of the game I only have like 1500-2000 HP depending on what items I have.
• Low starting mana –
  Seeing how one of your is to drain mana, your task early game is to harass and drain mana like crazy. Unfortunately draining mana costs a good amount of mana itself, so you can only do this a couple times before you run out. Luckily there are ways to fix this, albeit not by much – but enough to make you still capable of doing some strong harassing

So basically, the first thing you always want to do is get more mana for harassing. To accomplished this, after picking nerub get two mantle of intelligence and a Circlet of nobility. This will give you +8 int, +2 strength and +2 agility. Also get a Ancient Tango of Essification so you can heal yourself. You want to try and get in the lane that is closest to the secret shop, so if you are on Sent, go top, if on Scourge go bottom. Mid often works good too as it’s normally a place for int characters (meaning you mana drain them and they are useless), depending on your skill level, how many ranged are there, and how good at harassing they are. Get mana drain at level 1 and impale at level 2. Just fight and try and deny and get creep kills until you get to level 3, as mana drain doesn’t suck enough mana out and you don’t really have that much to begin with.

At level 3, the mana drain now sucks down 120 mana per hit with mana drain level 2 – now we’re talking. Go ahead and mana drain the enemies down – harass them like crazy. If there are two enemies in your lane, you can normally mana drain one of them down enough that they go back to heal at the fountain at around level 5. Once you get 875 gold, either go get a void stone (preferred) or get ring of health if you are out of trees and damaged pretty bad. If you can manage to get the void stone, then you can REALLY start harassing.

At level 6, you get Vendetta – so save up some mana, go invis and try to gank someone. Basically hit them first with the Vendetta strike, then impale them, then hit them until they start to run away (trust me, they WILL try to run away). Once they get out of range, hit the mana drain to try and finish them off. 9 times out of 10 you will kill an enemy with this combo.

Good items for nerub early game are a dagon – as it just increases 400 damage to your combo above. Try to make this an early game item (I nroamlyl go for perserverane first, then immediately start on a dagon). Don’t upgrade the dagon though (unless thegame goes on VERY long) – and normally by end game hero’s have so much HP that this combo doesn’t work that great anymore anyways, so you can sell the dagon and get something more suitable.

Other items for nerub:

Battlefury: This gives you regen, damage AND splash damage. If you like to farm instead of gank, go for this early on and you will get money faster

Butterfly: Gives Damage, Attack speed, and evasion. If they game ever goes on REALLY long, I get two of these and pretty much become unstoppable because the evasion rate is so high.

Sange & Yasha: Good for HP, Attack, Movement speed, Attack Speed. All around good weapon

Power Treads: I might even say that just getting normal boots is fine – but if the game goes on longer, you might need these to be able to chase down the enemy.

Anyways, the strategy pretty much stays the same after level 6. After playing with him for a while you can get better at performing this attack and other better attacks. I have gone godlike so many times with this char I don’t even know where to start. Give him a try, he’s a great character

Note: The only problem I have with Nerub is the impale skill. When you impale a character, you will automatically start attacking the next closest enemy after the strike, instead of attacking to character you impaled. Since the stun from impale only lasts a couple seconds, this can be a huge waste of that stun time. MAKE SURE AFTER YOU IMPALE YOU ALWAYS TELL YOUR CHARACTER TO ATTACK THE ENEMY YOU IMPALED AGAIN, this will save you those few seconds. I just wrote IceFrog (the current map maker for DotA) and asked him if the impale then attack could be written to always work this way, but who knows if he’ll think that is a good idea or not.

DotA differs from Warcraft III in that you only control 1 hero, and you don’t make buildings or anything like that. There are two sides: Sentinel and Scourge. Every game of DotA is played on the same map, although this map does change a tad every now and then with patch updates to the game. There are five members to each side (although the game can be started with fewer players). You have to gain experience and money through killing the enemies creeps, which spawn in waves, and/or neutral creeps, which spawn on a time interval. Once you gain money, you buy items to make your character more powerful. In example, you can get Lothar’s Edge to gain invisibility, or Sange & Yasha to increase movement and attack speed, or even a Dagon, which can let you deal 800 damage with a single blast. The end goal is to move into the enemies base, and destroy the source of their power – for the Sentinels it is the Tree of Life, for the Scourge it is the Lich Kings’ Throne (the game is based on a Warcraft III world after all).

It takes quite a while to learn all the items, what shops to buy them at, and certain other aspects of the game such as runes (which give you special powers for a limited time), Roshan (a huge rock monster that can be defeated to award 200 gold and an Aegis that makes one team member instantly come back to life if they are killed), and general experience gaining methods. However once you spend the time to learn these things, the game becomes even more addicting.

I’ve been playing DotA since November of 2007, and I must say that I’m just as in to it now as I was then. I’ve played all the hero’s multiple times, although I prefer Strength and Agility hero’s to intellect hero’s. Each hero has some good points, and some bad points – there is no perfect hero. Anyways, my favorites are Barathrum, Clinkz, Phantom Lancer, Gondor and my most favorite – Nerubian Assassin.

If you want to play DotA, you’ll need a copy of Warcraft III and Warcraft III : The Frozen Throne (legal copies so you can play on Battle.net ), and you’ll need to download the DotA map from www.getdota.com. Check this game out, it is unbelievably fun.

Anyways, this guy’s strategy was pretty simple. Basically he brought his hero and like seven archers over to my town and just started attacking. That wasn’t so much of a problem, I mean afterall I had enough guys and upgrade to fight them off. So I come out of my base to attack, and he immediately goes invisible. I wait a minute, then decide to go out and do some creeping – the instant I leave my base, he starts attacking again. I come back – he goes invisible. Basically anytime I leave my base, he attacks, anytime I try to attack him back, he becomes invisible. I had already made a blademaster hero, so it was too late to get the far seer for his far sight (See invisible units) ability. Also this was early on where I didn’t have a witch doctor yet so I couldn’t make any sentry wards.

Anyways, the effect that it had was that I didn’t leave my base, and he must have had some other units out creeping because his hero kept gaining levels, even though he never left the area. In the end I didn’t know what to do and he brought his units in for the final kill.

I think in the future, I need to implement the following strategy. First, make sure I attempt to upgrade to a stronghold early on so that I can get with doctors and make sentry wards. Second, fight fire with fire – attempt to make more ranged guys if he is only going to make ranged archers – you HAVE to get him out of your base, at least long enough for you to go out creeping or at least send some units out to go creep. Third, just hold him off till morning, even make towers in your base for defense. Once it’s morning, night elves lose the ability to go invisible. Also if you haven’t made a hero yet by the time this guy implements the strategy, then make a far seer so you can see him.

I think just that strategy should help in the future. Like I said, about 1 out of 5 games I come across a new strategy I’ve never seen before, the important thing is to learn from each new strategy and know how to defend against it.