Lifestealer — hero grid for mains

Every Dota client, Russian included, shows the name Lifestealer. Short names for Lifestealer you will see in chat: “ls”. On Russian servers you will hear “Лайфстилер” (or “гуля”, “найкс” and “гуль”).

The hero's line in Valve's list reads: “Infests other units for mobility and strength”.

Search in the hero picker is forgiving: “Lifestealer”, “Лайфстилер”, “ls” — each of them lands on Lifestealer.

Lifestealer is a Strength hero (36 of them in the game), melee, complexity 2 of 3 by Valve's rating.

Role dots from Valve: Carry ●●○, Durable ●●○, Disabler ●○○, Escape ●○○ — no role at the full three.

In the ready layouts that means the “STRENGTH” (12th of 36) block of By attributes and the “MEDIUM” (22nd of 59) band of By complexity.

No doubt about the role: Lifestealer is carry (1), and the best of the other positions scores 0.03. All five scores (best = 1): carry 1 · mid 0.03 · offlane 0.01 · soft support 0 · hard support 0 — which is why the editor's Auto-pick places Lifestealer in the “1 · CARRY” row and nowhere else.

Lanes over 3,250 parsed OpenDota matches as of 23 Sept 2026: safe 96%, mid 2%, off 1%. Median GPM 609, XPM 864 — core-level gold on the site's scale (540 and up).

For a layout by role, take Classic: positions 1–5: Lifestealer is already there, 2nd of 18 in “1 · CARRY”.

Other ready grids with Lifestealer: Meta by stats — “CARRY”, 4th of 10; Two columns — “CORES”, 2nd of 44.

For a main, the handiest layout is Mains + situational: the button above puts Lifestealer first in MAINS with the biggest portraits, next to Sven, Alchemist and Tiny: all three share the same main position (carry), the same attribute and melee attack.

Then it is “Download grid” and hero_grid_config.json into Steam\userdata\<number>\570\remote\cfg while Dota is closed; load your current file in the “Your grid is ready” window and your old grids stay (install guide).

Lifestealer has 718,556 games in the OpenDota snapshot of 23 Sept 2026, Herald to Divine — 11th of 127 by games played — and a 52.0% win rate, 22nd of 127.

The win rate is flat across brackets — 51.3% low, 52.1% high. Players pick Lifestealer more than usual at Ancient (+10%) and less at Herald (−34%).

Pros ban Lifestealer more often than they pick the hero: 45 bans against 13 picks (5 wins) in the snapshot. Turbo: 228,385 games at 51.3%, about the same as in ranked brackets.

Main in a skin covers arcanas and personas only, and Lifestealer has none there yet; to draw the hero anyway, upload any art to Picture to dots. Among the heroes with skins that are also played as carry, the closest to Lifestealer are Faceless Void, Spectre and Phantom Assassin — their dot drawings are ready for a carry grid.