How do I deal with Faceless Void?

It seems that whenever I play against Faceless Void, we can never stop him before he gets his items, then in the end we can't splitpush or anything because every time Chronosphere and we all die.

What are some heroes and/or strategies that can stop him before he gets to this point? (I'd assume it's possibly best not to ask how to beat him once he gets there, not sure if it's really possible).



There are some heroes that are pretty good "Faceless Void counters" that can deal with him at all parts of the game to a certain extent. I'll list some that I can think of.

Shadow Demon: Disrupt him/his target inside the  Chronosphere. Demonic Purge should work too (it also goes through Black King Bar) so that'll make it harder for him to move around and kill people. (I'm not sure if movement-speed slows work in Chronosphere though, someone help me with this...)
Viper: Black King Bar - piercing attack/ movement speed slow with Viper Strike

Eul's Scepter of Divinity: Euls Faceless Void in his Chronosphere and he most likely just wasted his ultimate.

Ranged stuns in general until he gets Black King Bar

When you're in a teamfight against a Faceless Void who isn't very strong yet, ideally you want to single him out before he jumps on your team and make sure he's unable to commit. This is really positioning and hero-dependent though, of course. I'll give you an example. Say you're radiant defending your mid tier-two tower in a 5v5 clash. You know thatFaceless Void 's gonna want to jump in on your team from somewhere, so where's the most likely place? Probably from the cliff to the left of the tower. If you go up there and stun him/smack him around a bit before he jumps on your team, then that severely discourages him from initiating on your team and getting himself killed. Just a tip, I guess.

For ganking a Faceless Void early, you really want stuns or silences. 

This hero is tanky and is pretty good at with Time Walk, so a lengthy silence from someone like skywrath mage is great for keeping him from just Q'ing away. (Stuff like this is why skywrath mage supports often max the silence first.) Also keep in mind that his manapool is garbage, so if you can force him to Time Walk away from you once or twice, then he won't have the mana for another jump.

How you deal with greedy heroes like him in general is to group up as 5 and take a lot of early towers (or gank (with Smoke of Deceit) and then push towers off of that.) Doing his limits the amount of the map he can safely farm, making him a much smaller problem. Against Faceless Void specifically, you have to watch your positioning and remind your team to do the same, and try to catch him out before the fight if you can do so without getting killed yourself.

Item wise buy a sheep stick and sheep and murder him.

Hell Silencer or an Orchid Malevolence or other form of silence before he active Global Silence. Silencer can disarm him. Also you can get Heaven's Halberd and disarm him. Lich has  Frost Armor. Shiva's Guard slows his attack speed. Your teams positioning be spread out so you don't let him get more than 2 in a  Chronosphere. Many solutions.

The thing about hard carries like Faceless Void is that they tend to be weak laners (also true of Doom, Anti-Mage, and Phantom Assassin). What I like to do against them is to pick an all out lane dominating team in every lane, no exception. You get heroes like Viper, Lich, Shadow Demon, Silencer, Undying, Exort Invoker, Outworld Devourer, Ancient Apparition, Keeper of the Light, Batrider, Bane,.... Do not pick any hard carries. Do not get Hand of Midas on anyone, just Phase Boots/Drum of Endurance type of early fighting builds. You just have to resolve yourself to dominate each lane and finish the game at around the 30 minute mark. You have to plan to get early smoke rotations, dive their towers, get kills, and (most important) take objectives after kills (either tower or Roshan). Once you take an objective, you back out to heal up and rinse/repeat.

Don't spend too much time just AFK farming (although early in the game, farming to get your next set of items after a kill is, in and of itself, an objective). Take early map control and finish the game before their hard carry has a chance to farm his core items. I generally love this strat in just about all game since most people will almost always take a hard carry and/or get a  Hand of Midas. You have to punish them for these tendencies.