Undying/Guide

Hero

 

Strategy

 

Equipment

 

Gear

 

Talents

 

Relics

 

Responses

 

Sounds

 

Animations

 

Lore

 

Old Abilities

 

Changelogs

 

Known Bugs

 

Gameplay

Playstyle
Undying usually serves as a lane support/tank role in the team. His abilities allow him to harass enemies off the lane to secure space for his carry to farm. Undying truly shines during every coordinated teamfight due to decay and tombstone, forcing his enemy to either kill him or suffer the debuff consequences.
Pros	Cons
Strong harassing ability. Formidable team fight presence. Aggressive in the early game. High intelligence and growth for a strength hero.	Relies on items and Decay stacks for durability due to mediocre strength gain and abysmal agility gain. Requires farming for late game items. No hard disables, needs to be relatively close to enemies in order to contribute to fights. Tombstone gives significant gold to the enemy each time it's destroyed.

Ability Builds

Generic Undying
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	20	25

Talents

Hero Talents
+6 Tombstone Attacks to Destroy	25	+60% Flesh Golem Strength Bonus
-2s Decay Cooldown	20	Tombstone On Death
+10 Soul Rip Damage/Heal	15	+20 Tombstone Zombie Damage
-15s Tombstone Cooldown	10	+50 Decay Damage

Notes:

• The Zombie attack damage talent is added to the base damage, and not as bonus damage.

Tips & Tactics

General

• When supporting, use Tombstone and Flesh Golem to slow the enemies while spamming Decay, then let your lane partner get the kill. Otherwise, use Soul Rip to finish a hero while there are many creeps nearby: this way it deals more damage.
• While initiating, use Tombstone and Flesh Golem, then Decay/Soul Rip: this way these abilities deal more damage.
• Though his spells are individually quite cheap, you almost always have mana problems since both Soul Rip and especially Decay are very spammable. Consider getting items to sustain mana such as Arcane Boots.
• Another good item for Undying in the early game is Soul Ring. After using Soul Ring, you can use Decay for free. If you hit 2 or more heroes with this ability, you make up for the HP cost for Soul Ring.
• Alternatively, try to make yourself as tanky as possible: if you are initiating, enemies will target you first. That is why you need an early Vanguard if the opposing team has a lot of nukers. Other useful items that increase your HP are Rod of Atos – which solves most of your mana problems too – and Heart of Tarrasque.

Abilities

Decay

• Decay steals strength of the enemies and gives to Undying, making them squishier while Undying beefier and harder hitting
  • Thus, use Decay a couple times and attack the enemies to dominate the lane.
• Since Decay has low cooldown and high mana cost, spamming it too frequently in the early game will leave Undying low on mana for other abilities.
• Decay is a spammable, low cost spell, and the enemy laners might buy a Magic Stick to offset some of the health they lose from your Decay casts. However, Magic Stick and Magic Wand only gain charges if you are in vision, so you should always try to cast Decay from the fog-of-war or behind trees whenever possible to avoid giving them a reliable form of health and mana recovery in a pinch.
• Prioritize Decay on strength carries to reduce both their HP and attack damage.
• Use your Decay more efficiently by casting it on the two enemy laners at once, giving you twice the strength steal for the price of a single spell, and you can interrupt the enemy Healing Salve and Clarity too because Decay deals a tiny amount of damage to all enemies hit by it. This includes enemy creeps as well.
• Before the first steal debuff wears off, can have a total of 0/0/0/2 ( ) strength stolen.
  • Can have a total of ( ) strength stolen when the duration increasing talent is chosen.
  • Can have a total of 0/0/0/4 ( ) strength stolen when the cooldown decreasing talent is chosen.
  • Can have a total of ( ) strength stolen when both talents are chosen.

Soul Rip

• Avoid using Soul Rip to harass, but use it to heal allies or to finish off enemies.
• Soul Rip will damage or heal more when there are many units nearby, such as creeps if you are laning, or heroes if you are fighting.
  • Tombstone's zombies also count as units for Soul Rip.
  • Units counted for the purposes of Soul Rip are those around Undying, and not those around the target unit, so position yourself around both creep waves or a lot of units in general before Soul Rip for greater effect.
• Soul Rip works well with heroes that can summon additional creeps or create illusions, such as with Broodmother's spiderlings or Phantom Lancer's illusions, often maximizing effect of Soul Rip.
• When using Soul Rip to damage an opponent, remember to use Decay before. Since Soul Rip deals a static amount of damage, it will deal more if the enemy's maximum health is reduced before rather than after.
• Use Soul Rip to keep Tombstone alive. The Tombstone heal does not depend on how many units are around you.

Tombstone

• Try to put Tombstone on high ground, like on top of ward spots for example, so enemies cannot see and attack it too easily.
• Attacks from illusions count as creep attacks for the purpose of destroying the Tombstone, making enemy heroes such as Phantom Lancer and Naga Siren a little dangerous for Tombstone.
• If Naga Siren is on your team, know that Tombstone keeps summoning zombies even when the enemies are sleeping and untargeteable.
• Should the enemy team have an Earthshaker, avoid placing Tombstone at the beginning of a teamfight. Each zombie causes Echo Slam to deal extra damage, likely obliterating your entire team.
• Zombies have spell immunity and require a certain amount of attacks to kill. Therefore, they are unaffected by most AoE spells but take full damage from multishot-type abilities.
  • Be aware of heroes with these abilities that can easily deal with your zombies, such as Gyrocopter's Flak Cannon.
• Use Tombstone to spawn zombies to intercept the incoming enemy creep waves so allies can push.
• Use Tombstone to spawn zombies who can tank Roshan for teammates.
• You may also use the Tombstone as a temporary ward anywhere thanks to its long duration and large vision range, though its lengthy cooldown makes it not worthwhile.

Flesh Golem

• Take advantage of Flesh Golem's long duration to use it right from the beginning of team fights.
• The Flesh Golem gives Undying a bonus amount of HP based on his Strength, making Undying tankier for its duration, especially if you have a lot of Decay stacks. Keep casting Decay on enemy heroes during your ultimate for even more health and damage.
• Undying may use Flesh Golem in order to escape, as the slow effect, coupled with Undying's increased movement speed, may be just enough to outrun a number of melee heroes.

Items

Starting items:

• Tango gives health regeneration to sustain in lane.

• Healing Salve also restores health in lane.

• Clarity restores mana to help Undying use more abilities in the early game.

Early game:

• Arcane Boots increase Undying's lackluster mana pool, as well as provide mana to his allies.

• Magic Stick restores health and mana during ganks.

• Observer Ward provides vision on the enemies so Undying and his allies can gank them effectively.

• Infused Raindrops provides Undying with cost-effective mana regeneration in the early game as he wants to spam spells. The magic damage block also adds to his tankiness, which translates to casting more Decays and Soul Rips in fights.

Mid game:

• Magic Wand gives attributes and a way to restore health and mana.

• Mekansm's attributes, health regeneration, and armor help Undying and allies survive engagements.

Late game:

• Guardian Greaves give more armor and health regeneration for team, also the active ability does not cost mana.

Situational items:

• Soul Ring produces mana on demand, and gives a good bit of strength and health regeneration.

• Blade Mail grants armor and returns damage done back to the enemies, discouraging them from targeting Undying. It is especially effective when paired with his Flesh Golem form, as Undying is granted extra HP during the transformation.

• Spirit Vessel can heal Undying and allies, or combine with Soul Rip to increase damage output in fights.

• Pipe of Insight grants Undying and teammates magic resistance to help them stay alive longer in teamfights.

• Crimson Guard helps Undying and teammates block physical attack damage.

• Shiva's Guard provides both of Undying's needs in tankiness and mana.

• Scythe of Vyse gives a great disable and mana regeneration for Undying.

• Radiance wears down enemies in teamfights, and accelerates Undying's farming speed.

• Black King Bar prevents disable-heavy teams from shutting down Decay and Soul Rip.

• Holy Locket gives you several bonuses, like increased HP and mana, some HP regeneration and extra stats. With the maximum amount of charges the active ability can restore up to 300 health and mana. Undying also benefits from the 35% heal amplification since it boosts outgoing healing from Soul Rip, Mekansm and the upgraded Guardian Greaves; granting huge amounts of burst healing.

• Lotus Orb gives useful bonuses to Undying, and Echo Shell makes disables and nukes more dangerous to the caster than to him.