Dealing With Lycanthrope

Dealing with Lycan
 

Banehallow the Lycan is one of the strongest forces coming out the jungle. His ability to farm jungle quickly and solo Roshan at an early level make him a formidable opponent. Once he gains momentum, and Vladmir's Offering, he's hard to stop. His contribution to team fights and pushing are invaluable. This is why he's so consistently a first stage ban in pro games.

A few things to note in order to be successful:

- You need to have map and clock awareness.
- Coordination with your team is the only way you'll be able to gank anyone.
- Keep in mind Observer Wards only last 6 minutes and Sentry Wards last 3 minutes.
- Smoke ganks are worth the 100 gold if successful. Smoke of Deceit is very important to get the jump on a hero you plan getting them out of position.

The best thing you can do to prevent Lycan from steamrolling your team is to take care of him early by warding their jungle and ganking often. This is essential to slowing down or even preventing his farm outright. Lycan has the potential to quickly farm the jungle, this can allow him to catch up, don't let him. Keep ganking and turn his poor farming into your advantage and easy gold. Ganks can be taken care of with roaming supports like Crystal Maiden, Venomancer, Vengeful Spirit and Sven. Make sure that part of your team is dedicated to regularly interupting Lycan's farm. 

Stuns and slows make strong ganking abilities. Use these against Lycan.

What you Need to Do
Blocking the spawns in their small and pull camps will be a huge boon to Lycan's farm as well as the laning heroes. Lycan's first objective is to start farming the small camp, it's a camp he can manage early on and it's very important to getting him traction in his game. Without the small camp he'll be forced to try the pull camp for farm.  After that he'll go to medium camps and if none are available he'll be forced into lane. His presence in lane will sap exp and gold from the other heroes making your laning a bit easier. Lycan has nothing to contribute to a trilane or dual lane with another farm dependent hero.

If you're really confident with your jungle warding (read this article if you aren't) you can use 2  observer wards to despawn 3 different camps thanks to the magic bush. While Lycan is capable of taking on the larger remaining camps, it's slow and leaves him low on health.

Remember, wards only last 6 minutes so keep placing them. A competent opposing team might attempt to counter ward with sentry wards. Be ready for this and prepare to gank them when they're trying to counter ward. Bring Sentry wards, you might need them.

You should frequently check enemy hero's inventory for sentry wards. Early game you should only expect the enemy team to have Sentry Wards as a gem and level 3 Necronomicon are expensive and heroes can't afford them early game. When you check their inventories you want to see 1 or 2 sentry wards. If they have 1 sentry ward and your wards are still up then they haven't found them yet. They just wasted 100 gold.

If they have 2 sentry wards then you want to keep pressure on their lane so they can't afford to place them without losing their lane. As you pressure the lane, try to coordinate with other lanes to get a gank on the under farmed Lycan. It's always great to continue setting Lycan back. When Lycan turns into an easy kill he becomes a huge detriment to his team instead of the team carry.

Lycan's goal in every game is to farm the jungle fast and either gank or go for Roshan.

If All Else Fails

If your offensive jungle wards get removed make sure there is at least a ward keeping an eye on the Roshan pit. This is critical. If Lycan defeats Roshan he will need to be killed twice and his entire team will be up 1000 gold. You can do more than just prevent this. You can benefit from Lycan's Roshan attempt. With the Observer Ward up you can see when Lycan goes for Roshan. When he does, get enough of your team to gank him and possibly finish off Roshan for yourself.

Like any instance of ganking you need to check the map and have as many enemies as possible accounted for. Any heroes planning on ganking need to check their lane. The tower needs to be reasonably safe and lanes should be pushing out.

 

In order to ensure a successful gank on Lycan, in the mid to late game,  you will need a stun and preferably chain stuns. Stuns like Invoker's Cold Snap, Enigma's Malefice, Beastmaster's Primal Roar, Rubick's Telekinesis and even Witch Doctor's bouncing Paralyzing Cask are great against Lycan. You need stuns because otherwise the life-steal Vladmir's Offering gives him would keep him alive throughout the fight. Without stuns, he can also easily retreat in his wolf form. Shapeshift grant's Lycan bonus health, armor, critical chance, critical damage and max movement speed while ignoring any slow. He still ignores slow even Hex'd.

With persistent ganking and spawn blocking, Lycan will quickly become your farm instead of the other way around.