Necrophos — hero grid for mains

The in-game name is Necrophos — the same in the English and the Russian client. Short names for Necrophos you will see in chat: “necro”. The game files call the hero “necrolyte”, and the site's search knows that name too. Russian-speaking players say “Некрофос” (or “некр” and “некрофас”).

Valve's one-line description from the hero list: “Damages enemies and heals allies simultaneously”.

In the editor's hero picker, typing “Necrophos” or “Некрофос” or “necro” or “necrolyte” brings up Necrophos.

A ranged Intelligence hero — one of 34 — Necrophos gets 1 of 3 on Valve's complexity scale, one of the 55 easiest heroes.

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

In the ready layouts that means the “INTELLIGENCE” (11th of 34) block of By attributes and the “EASY” (30th of 55) band of By complexity. Necrophos is also in Beginner: easy heroes — column “2 · MID”, 1st of 9.

Necrophos is played in two positions — mid (2) and carry (1) — like 38 other heroes with two scores of 0.5 or more; the main one is mid. All five scores (best = 1): carry 0.57 · mid 1 · offlane 0.39 · soft support 0 · hard support 0 — which is why the editor's Auto-pick places Necrophos in the “2 · MID” and “1 · CARRY” rows and nowhere else.

Where the scores come from: in 2,345 parsed OpenDota matches (data as of 23 Sept 2026) Necrophos went safe lane 31% of the time, mid 43% and offlane 26%. Median gold per minute is 579 — core-level gold on the site's scale (540 and up); experience per minute is 801.

For a layout by role, take Classic: positions 1–5: Necrophos is already there, 17th of 18 in “1 · CARRY”. The rows are filled in turn, carry to hard support, each with the 18 most popular heroes of that position not placed above — that is how Necrophos ends up there; by the highest score, add the hero to “2 · MID” as well — it has two free slots.

Other ready grids with Necrophos: Meta by stats — “MID”, 3rd of 10; Two columns — “CORES”, 21st of 44.

The “Make a grid with Necrophos” button opens Mains + situational with Necrophos first in the MAINS block, followed by Lina, Leshrac and Invoker — all three share the same main position (mid), the same attribute and ranged attack.

In the OpenDota snapshot of 23 Sept 2026 Necrophos shows up in 645,841 games (16th most played of 127) and wins 50.8% of them (43rd).

Results drop with rank by 2.1 points: 51.8% at Herald–Crusader against 49.7% at Ancient–Divine. Players pick Necrophos more than usual at Guardian (+4%) and less at Divine (−11%).

Pros ban Necrophos more often than they pick the hero: 37 bans against 15 picks (7 wins) in the snapshot. Turbo: 288,688 games at 51.4%, about the same as in ranked brackets.

For a grid with a Necrophos portrait, bring your own art: Picture to dots draws it in dots right on the field. Among the heroes with skins that are also played as mid, the closest to Necrophos are Lina, Invoker and Queen of Pain — their dot drawings are ready for a mid grid.