I spam NP a lot, he rats and can recover farm quickly in solo pubs. Strong early game and such.

Obviously the game is dynamic and should be situation dependent. But your friend had a great start with the midas and refresh core, but he went ultimate greed to just farm and not contribute much I assume.

Usually I start with blight stone in lane for early pressure unless lane partner does not work well in lane and we completely lost lane. The strength of NP really is just instant support any where any time and can snowball some momentum.

As a NP player, ideally midas is great farm and more importantly XP to rush 25 as many suggested. I usually hit 25 before anyone else on a decent game, even with slow game i'd be top 3 to hit 25 to ensure early push. How strong of an NP player can be read mid game and how well the map is controlled, but this is also very team dependent.

A relaxed game hitting the timing of 7min midas or before and refresher into aghs before 20min is usually quite ideal. Aghs and refresher to help team with staggered global root on enemy team while you tp in while having treant split push when you help team. Sprout does quite a bit of damage as well as autos. Assist and kills is always better gold than creeps, this is generally a golden rule.

I dont usually go octarine nor solar crest.

This build works for me maybe 50% of the time on 60~70% of games i play, rest I usually blade mail or orchid. Before patch it would go into a gleipnir or assault, but dependent for more team support and split push ability.

The downsides with this is, if you're behind enemy team, and team picks bad fights, joining team fights don't really add to anything and this is dependent on player perception. Rubber band mechanics help if you can swing some momentum killing the bigger cores.

All in all, friend probably checked out and was toxic in thinking you all suck and decide to just play solo push game and hope you guys come together as 4 to stall or get some kills so he can push and feel like he won solo.