Lycan has multiple strengths as a carry hero. He is a very fast farmer even at early levels and one of the fastest pushers and split-pushers in the game. Moreover, Lycan is one of the fastest Roshan killers, which gives his team an invaluable advantage when it comes to objectives. The hero deals a lot of damage and boosts the damage output of his whole team thanks to his summons and Howl. Last but not least, he is a hard hero to counter because he not only farms fast but is also very hard to kill due to his mobility and tankiness.

Lycan is always played as a carry. The hero’s playstyle revolves mainly around pushing and split-pushing, killing Roshan and out-farming the enemy team. During team fights, he provides his team with high physical damage output.

If his team plays around his timings (Helm of the Dominator, Necro, BKB, etc.), it is relatively easy to gather up and take objectives and often the enemy team wouldn’t be in a position to contest in time due to the speed with which Lycan takes towers/Roshan. The hero is one of those carries that can afford to pressure the enemy team from early on and even create space for his allies. Lycan can use his ultimate from early on to pick-off squishier opponents. The high MS allows him to even dive towers and run away safely, so even though he is usually a split-pushing carry playing aggressively and looking for fights with him is not necessarily a bad idea.

Last but not least, the scouting information that Lycan provides with Wolves is very valuable – it allows his team to constantly track enemy positioning.

If you want to ensure access to farm and a good start to your Lycan the best option is to give him the safe lane farm. The hero isn’t the best laner and can have trouble farming if he doesn’t get support. In addition, Lycan can quickly get his core items and levels and move into the jungle. This will leave the safe lane free for supports to farm up. Therefore, if you have resource dependent supports placing the Lycan safe lane could be the best option.

You can run Lycan in more difficult lanes mainly because of his very high health regen thanks to Feral Impulse. Nonetheless, usually you still want to have a support with him – he is not particularly strong in the first few levels and if the enemy safe lane is strong they will be able to zone him out.

Sending Lycan to the offlane frees up the safe lane for another carry and allows you to run a draft with multiple cores.

Good friends to have are:

Strong Against:

Weak Against:

Generally speaking, Lycan’s build is quite inflexible. You want to max up your Wolves first because they increase your farming speed and make your fighting presence much better early on. You always want to get your ultimate at level 6/12/18 as well.

You start with Stout Shield to be more survivable against harassment and a Quelling Blade for increasing farm rate and get easier last hits. Afterward you want to get your Boots and as quickly as possible. Next, you want to usually rush Helm of Dominator in order to get a creep early and start pushing towers. Afterward, you want to get Necro book to increase your pushing and fighting potential. In the mid to late game, you need most of the times BKB in order to participate in team fight without getting controlled. In this build AC allows you to push faster together with your Wolves and Necro units, while Abyssal allows you to disable a target and bring it down together with your army. 

If you think you won’t be able to push or split-push effectively and the game is going to be long, it is an option to gear Lycan up for a late game hard carry. The idea is to focus more on your own damage and survivability instead on building an army.

The build focuses on getting minus armor with Medallion, Deso and AC. Moreover, Heart in combination with AC makes you a front line tank good at sieging towers. Upgrading the Medallion into Solar Crest could be done at any point.

In the safe lane, you should work together with your support to zone out the enemy by using your Wolves to harass. Keep in mind that you deal quite a lot of damage with your summons. If your support has good disables, you can attempt to get a kill even early on.

You can transition to the jungle even earlier if you are at a matchup disadvantage mid or if you are facing an offensive dual/trilane in the safe lane.

Most spells of Lycan help him last hit in the laning stage. First, his passive increases his damage– for that reason it is worth getting a level in Feral Impulse as early as possible. Second, Lycan’s Wolves are a great tool for last hitting. You can last hit together with your hero and your Wolves to increases the overall damage dealt so that you can ensure a last hit or deny. Alternatively, if enemy heroes have too much harassment, you can stay at distance with your hero and last hit only with Wolves.

Bear in mind that your wolves are squishy to physical damage on low levels and could easily die to a couple of right clicks if you keep them next to the creep wave for too long. Try to avoid this because the Wolves give a considerable amount of resources to the enemy hero that kills them.

Your main tool for harassing is your Summon Wolves spell. Your wolves are faster than most heroes and relatively tanky due to their magic resistance - enemies can hardly kill them with spells. You should use them to pressure heroes that can’t deal with them, i.e. don’t have high physical damage spells (like Anchor Smash) that can easily bring them down. Simply give an attack command of your wolves on the enemy hero and micro the wolves when they get too close to the enemy tower or when they are about to die from attacks.

Most of the times it isn’t worth it to harass with Wolves until you get level 4 of the spell. At level 7 your wolves will have invisibility and high HP regeneration, which will make them much stronger.

Generally, Lycan has very high HP regen and it's pretty hard to kill him. Hawl is also very helpful in that regard – keep in mind that it makes you more survivable during the night.  After level 6 you can use Shapeshift if someone is ganking you to simply run away.

Lycan’s kill potential comes mainly from his ultimate. Usually, you want to have your Wolves summoned, use your ultimate (together with Howl if you have it to increase your DPS) and chase down an enemy. Keep in mind that your Wolves can block your hero and you might not be able to attack the enemy in clustered areas. Therefore, it is good to try to control your wolves separately when attacking a target. You can even use them to body block an enemy hero so that you and/or your allies can reach him for a disable or simply to deal damage.

Killing immobile targets is easiest because they cannot disengage. Even diving the enemy tower is not a bad idea. If you see enemies are teleporting to counter-gank you can still run away because of your ridiculous MS before the TP animation finishes. However, you have to be very careful about your ultimate duration. If it ends when you are under the enemy tower a rotation of an enemy can easily lead to your death.

It is generally much better to go for a kill if you have an ally to provide control – even though you are very fast in your Shapeshift Form, an opponent can still use his escape mechanism to disengage and a stun for an ally would usually ensure the kill.

Typically people underestimate Lycan’s kill potential without his ultimate. The hero deals a lot of damage even at lower levels thanks to his wolves and passive. This means that together with an ally who provides a long-lasting disable you can easily score kills even without Shapeshift.

Lvl6 is an obvious timing - when you get your ultimate you can start fighting/ganking enemy heroes or even attempt solo kills.

At level 7 you get wolves maxed out which allows you to farm up very fast and also to start pressuring towers. You rarely want to attempt ganks before level 6-7. You will have relatively low HP and your priority is farming – you want to quickly get your Vladmir’s so that you can attempt Roshan and accelerate your farming speed.

If you get pressured too much in the lane, you should consider going to the jungle. Lycan can farm the jungle very fast when he gets higher levels in Wolves. Because of this lvl5 is a good timing to rotate there. In some situations, e.g. when you don’t get a lot of farm in the lane, it will be even better to go there even earlier. Try to leach experience until you get level 3 and then rotate.  

The laning stage starts passively – Lycan concentrates entirely on last-hitting and denying. He knows he cannot really pressure the enemy ET easily and doesn’t even waste mana to harass with his Wolves.

Once he gets a Dominator and lvl6, however, he demonstrates the strength of Shapeshift in combination with the units: he gets a double kill under the enemy tower on his own. The units tank the tower shots, so he is not ever in danger of dying or getting counter-ganked. Immediately after the double kill he takes the tower with the catapult wave, which propels him very far ahead in resources.

On minute 09:15 he overextends and dies under the enemy tower, but he still forces a 4-man rotation because he is very hard to kill with his army (with ultimate he might have even survived).

In terms of items you have two important timings:

First, your Helm of Dominator is a very important timing as it allows you to farm up faster pressure towers and take Roshan at some point.

The second timing is your Necronomicon or/and BKB. Necro allows you to push/split-push much faster. You can use this timing to group up with your allies and push down towers before enemies get strong enough to deal with your summons. BKB, on the other hand, allows you to move freely in fights without getting disables, which makes you more efficient in team fights.

Your third timing is when you get your first luxury damage or survivability item – usually Abyssal Blade or Assault Cuirass. You can use the former to gank targets or to lock down elusive enemies in fights. When you have AC or Heart you can use the timing to start pushing the enemy Tier 3 towers.

In terms of levels, you get gradually better the higher level you are. Your ultimate’s CD gets significantly reduced at level 3, which allows you to use it more often for fighting, ganking, disengaging and even farming, especially when you reach your level 20 talent which is +8 sec ShapeShift duration.

Lycan depends on a good start to get his farm going but is nonetheless a very good catch-up hero since he can farm up fast with the help of his summons. If you have a bad start (usually in the lane), you should best transition to the jungle as soon as possible and try to catch up there. It is very important to get Roshan if you had a bad start since the kill will give you EXP and farm that will compensate the resource disadvantage.

If you have a good start you should use the advantage to push towers or secure Roshan very early on before your enemies are strong enough to even contest.

Starting the fight:

Lycan has two options to engage. Either you wait for an ally to initiate or you run in with your ultimate and summons and then allies jump in. Running in first is usually only a good option if you know you would be able to latch onto a target (e.g. you have Abyssal Blade) and you have BKB to protect yourself from counter-initiation. In all other cases you typically want to wait for the initiation of your allies - enemies will instantly start running and kiting as they see you approaching in ultimate form.

It is best to cast your ultimate 1.5 seconds before your allies initiate so that you can have your Shapeshift as the fight starts. Lycan also deals good amount of damage even without ultimate. The only problem he has when in normal form is that he has no way to bridge the distance between himself and enemies.

During the fight:

You should choose carefully who you attack in fights. You can split your summons and your hero, i.e. you can let your summons attack a support and focus another hero with Lycan himself. Alternatively, you can use everything to nuke down a squishy target ASAP - it will usually take 2-3 seconds to get e.g. a squishy support killed. Keep in mind that you are a very fast hero – you should use that to your advantage. If you get focused, you can run out and then run back in again to finish a hero. You are vulnerable when your ultimate ends - you should keep track of its duration in order to be able to escape while hasted if you are getting focused. If the engagement doesn’t look favorable try to escape well before your ultimate ends in order to create some distance between yourself and the enemy team.

The strength of Lycan in 5 man pushing comes from the bonus damage and HP he gives to allies with Howl and from the single target damage he deals together with all his summons. When pushing, the most important decision you should make is whether you are survivable enough to stay up front and attack the tower, especially if you are sieging high ground. If you are not farmed enough, going uphill in your normal form can easily get you killed because your ultimate transformation time takes 1.5 seconds. As a result, you won’t be able to instantly run away after an enemy disable ends. If you are not that tanky you should send your summons in and slow-siege with Howl.

You can also get Aegis to ensure that you will survive. If you are tanky enough (for example with Heart) you can go uphill and rely on the fact that you will survive the initial burst if enemies try to kill you. Alternatively, if you have allies with good counter-initiation like Tidehunter, Puck etc. you can go in even if you are not that survivable and bait enemies into initiating. Afterward, your allies can counter initiate and allow you to use your ultimate and items to fight.

Split-Pushing

There are two ways to split-push. First, whenever you see the enemies that can kill you on the map, you can start pushing the wave and attack the tower together with all your summons. Second, if you are not aware of enemy positioning, you can send just your summoned units (Wolves and Necro units for example) and assist them with Howl from a safe distance (e.g. while you’re farming the jungle).  Don’t shy away from split-pushing with Lycan – in some situations when your team can’t take a 5on5 engagement it will be much better to push an enemy tower or trade barracks rather than attempt to fight. You deal a lot of damage and split-push extremely fast. In some situations, you could even force the enemy team to TP back in order to defend and in that way stop their push.

Right when Notail sees the enemy team showing mid (they are preparing to defend mid against his teammates), he activates his ultimate and units and starts split-pushing. This immediately forces the enemy team to react. He knows he is not going to die with ult, BKB and cheese, and because of this he stays and fights for a few seconds to buy his team some time. This decision leads to the death of the enemy OD.

Although ganking is possible, Lycan shines in pushing and farming – you should focus on those activities instead of roaming around the map. Moreover, ganking with Lycan is often a problem because you lack disables.

It is best to gank together with allies that have disables that will allow you to stick to the target and deal damage. However, ganking on your own is also possible provided that the enemy doesn’t have good escape mechanisms. You can easily take down a squishy, immobile support. For example, you can cast your ultimate out of vision and then quickly attack your target out of the fog together with your units. Once the kill is complete you can easily disengage with your ultimate form.

If you have a control item like Abyssal ganking becomes even easier. You can potentially kill even mobile targets if you deal high enough burst damage.

Your scouting tools are your wolves. Since they are invisible and are quite fast you can send them to scout around the map for enemy positioning. You can issue a follow command on an enemy hero for example. The wolf will automatically follow its target around the map and give you invaluable vision. This tactic is priceless in the later stages of the game. Wolves get relatively weak later on and will not increase your farming that much. Therefore, it is usually better to scout for enemy positioning than to use them for farming.

Farming is quite straightforward in the mid to late game. Don’t shy from using Necro units for farming if you are not about to fight or push. You can, for example, send your wolves and Necro units in a lane to push it out and farm there when you are not aware of enemy positioning (it would be risky to push out a lane on your own if opponents are missing).  If you are taking ancients you should use Howl to boost your damage. If you have Medallion you can use it on bigger creeps in the jungle to kill them faster.

Lycan is quite a fast farmer and you should use it to your advantage. Try to out-farm enemies and then use your item advantage to push or split-push. Don’t be afraid to position yourself aggressively in order to get farm if you have vision on the most dangerous enemy heroes. Your ultimate (and possibly tanky items) make you a very hard target to gank.