:Huskar:

Alt-Tabbable skill/item build:
1. BurninSpears
2. Berserker's Blood
3. Burning Spears
4. Berserker's Blood
5. Burning Spears
6. Life Break
7. Burning Spears
8. Berserker's Blood
9. Berserker's Blood
10. Inner Vitality
11. Life Break
12. Inner Vitality
13. Inner Vitality
14. Inner Vitality
15. Stats
16. Life Break



A Brief Intro to the Guide


I had once posted this guide on DotAportal.com, the place where I was introduced to and became a serious DotA player. Learning many things from superior and respected players, (such as KillerDraco,) I wanted to return the favor, but continuing the flow of knowledge. So I created this guide on Huskar, one of my all time favorite heroes. It thrived and received good ratings, so I posted it on PlayDotA.com where it recieved likewise reviews. But with the disappearance of DP, now this guide shall live on here in FN, my new home of DotA! Since it's on FN now, I figured I'd post the updated and improved version on PD as well. So I hope that the information I can relay to you here can make you a better Huskar player, and truly grasp the unique playstyle of this all-or-nothing Troll Martyr. Enjoy!

-DTC

Quote:
This guide is best read on the PlayDotA guide-reading tool, go here for the best quality/presentation of my guide: Laughing In the Face of Death - DotA Guides
Huskar's Story


The Trolls of the Darkspear tribe, long since exiled from their ancestral lands in Stranglethorn Vale, are considered by many to be the most savage race of creatures to ever grace the battlefield. This reputation is well earned by their Sentinel representative Huskar, who's abilities revolve around shortening his own lifespan to spear his foes to burning pieces. Considered a blessed martyr by his people, the Sacred Warrior is not afraid of death, and will even run towards it willingly, sometimes desperately, in order to bring the Undead Scourge to an end.

Stats


Affiliation: Sentinel
Primary Attribute: Strength
Strength: 18 +2.4
Agility: 20 + 2.4
Intelligence: 18 +1.5
Base Damage: 21-30 (39-48)
Base Armor: -1 (1.9)
Movespeed: 300
Base Attack Time: 1.6
Attack Range: 400
Acquisition Range: 800
Missile Speed: 1400
Attack Animation: .4/.5
Casting Animation: .3/.24
Line of Sight: 1800/800

Huskar has some pretty average starting stats, but notice though how he has natural higher agility than strength, this will provide some good natural attack speed and armor come later game. At the same time the mediocre strength growth leaves Huskar relatively less-buff than most other strength heroes. He has little-to-no mana all game, he only has one spell that requires it, but it has a high cost of 170 mana, so do not spam it.

A generic movespeed, nothing special. Most heroes have a BAT of 1.7, notice that Huskar naturally attacks faster than most. His attack range is 400, as is the maximum range to cast all of his skills.

His missle speed is 1400, faster than the generic 900, making last-hitting and denying slightly easier. Notice his attack animation time, the amount of time it takes to release the missle, (.4 seconds,) is shorter than the unnecessary animation that Huskar has, we will take a huge advantage of this in Orb-Walking. When manually casting an orb you will be using Huskar's Cast Animation, and notice that it is even shorter than his attack animation, only .3 seconds are required before the spell is cast, we will take complete advantage of this in an attempt to shave off the other .24 seconds.

Who is Huskar?


Huskar is a unique hero in many ways. Let's look at the pros and cons:

Pros:
A ranged hero
Has one of the game's strongest single-target healing abilities
Can tank/carry and has ganking ability
Has one of the game's strongest means of lane control in Burning Spears, which also makes him a powerful First Blood candidate.
Is an excellent bait hero, and actually becomes stronger as you deal more damage to him
An excellent attack animation in terms of orb-walking
His missile speed is 1400, excellent for last-hitting denying.
Has an excellent Base Attack Time of 1.6
Although he is strength type, he has a high agility growth, granting him natural Attack Speed and armor as the game goes on.

Cons:
Although he is very powerful early-mid game, his orb becomes far-less potent late, and therefore needs items too supplement.
If you're not orb-walking, his animation has a lot of un-necessary action.
For a strength hero, has rather low base-damage.
For a strength hero, has a rather sad strength growth.
His single mana-consuming spell costs a lot of mana for one who is lacking in it.

As you can see the pros of Huskar out-weigh his cons. His skills make him an excellent tank/dpser in a small convenient package. Let's check out his skills.

Huskar's Skills That Kill

Inner Vitality - [V]


A potent healing skill that will heal based on the first percentage of the target's main attribute, but if the target drops below 40% of their hp, then it will heal by the 2nd numbers percentage. Heroes that have a high base-attribute will gain more regeneration, and remember to cast this on allies in need. We get this skill later on, early game Huskar's mediocre starting Strength and Strength Gain doesn't grant him a lot of heal from this, and his pathetic mana pool can hardly support multiple casts of this. The heal of this skill is dynamic and completely triggered. What I mean by this is if you're below 40% hp you'll get the strong heal, but the moment you hit 41% hp the slow heal kicks in instead, so don't expect an imba heal the entire time past 40% hp heal.

Burning Spears - [R]

Huskar's signature skill, this grants him killing ability, harassing ability, and lane-control all in one. This should be maxed ASAP, as without it you have just wasted Huskar. Notice that it doesn't cost mana to cast, but hp. You cannot cast if your hp is under 100. Burning Spears can stack indefinitely, thus increasing it's usefulness vastly late game where you'll have much higher IAS, and has great synergy with your next skill...

Berserker's Blood -

Huskar's steroid spell, and your battle-reverser. As you lose hp, you get increased damage and you attack faster. IAS = Increased Attack Speed. Once you are at 49% of your max hp your spears are coated in a red crystal-like object, the same as BloodSeeker's hands in Bloodrage. You can still stack IAS and damage after that. At a maximum of 2% hp remaining, you attain 112 damage and IAS from Berserker's Blood!

Life Break - [F]


Huskar's ganking spell. Keep in mind that that the damage dealt to you and your target is the percentage of their current hp. Also remember that it deals magical damage to you and your target. Heroes have a natural 25% magical resistance. 500 hp hero is life-breaked, 187 damage is dealt, not 250. The same is applied to Huskar.

The Skill Build

1. Burning Spears
2. Berserker's Blood
3. Burning Spears
4. Berserker's Blood
5. Burning Spears
6. Life Break
7. Burning Spears
8. Berserker's Blood
9. Berserker's Blood
10. Inner Vitality
11. Life Break
12. Inner Vitality
13. Inner Vitality
14. Inner Vitality
15. Stats
16. Life Break

The Reasoning

Burning Spears is what makes Huskar, Huskar. Without maxing it asap you are completely wasting his potential. What makes Burning Spears so effective early game compared to other slowing orbs is the amount of damage dealt after you attack, it really adds up. On a single enemy hero the Burning Spears damage from 5 stacked spears alone over 6 seconds is 360 magical damage after reduction, and that's not even mentioning the damage you yourself deal from Huskar's attacks. Later there will be a section extensively covering this skill.

Now here's where the debate beings, Berserker's Blood or Inner Vitality? Honestly there is no argument, Berserker's Blood wins hands down. By spamming Burning Spears on your enemies your own hp drops too, and although some say that you don't have enough hp to utilize it, remember it's percentage based. That means that early game when you have the lowest amount of hp, it activates faster than in any other stage of the game. The huge damage and IAS boost really makes Huskar a devastating dpser all game, and playing mind games with this skill give you such a good-feeling as you take down the full hp enemy while you're at red hp the entire fight.

In the item build below I start with 6 tangoes and a salve, that's 1210 hp worth of regeneration. That is far more than Huskar should need in an average lane, and that should cover for him in a harsh lane as well. Inner vitality is simply pathetic early levels. Remember that it is percentage based, because of that the later in the game the more effective it is. Huskar's stats early on aren't that terrific, and he has a shitty strength growth. On top of the fact that it won't heal much, look at it's mana cost! Huskar has a terrible intelligence growth, he can't afford to use spells that cost a whopping 170 mana per cast! Save this till later.

Life Break is a powerful battle-turner and slow, and later on I'll show you how to utilize it to perfection. Half of it's use is to slow and damage the enemy, and the other half is to actually damage yourself. By hurting Huskar you just pumped him full of damage and IAS with Berserker's Blood, making him far stronger. Get this whenever available.

The Item Build

The Starting Items
2 gauntlets is an affordable boost to your hp and damage, making your harass more effective with extra damage and you have more hp to cast Burning Spears with. The Salve and dual tangoes are pretty crucial, the Tango is for over-time regeneration and the Salve for when you're real low. You'll most likely need to use both due to the opponents harassing you and spamming burning spears, don't expect to head back to the fountain for a long time.

Soon After


(x2)

Boots of speed is actually a pretty major item for Huskar, by having a movespeed advantage quickly, you'll be able to orb-walk much more effectively, or if the enemy gets an early boots as well, you'll be able to keep up. The Helm of Iron Will is a good early game item, providing armor and the ever-helpful regen, but naturally the main use is to upgrade to a Hood later. If you're farming exceptionally well you can grab 2 of them, since eventually you'll be getting both Armlet and Hood, but generally upgrading to Hood with one right away is your best bet.

The Core



Treads is the natural upgrade choice to your boots, only costing an easy 950 gold to upgrade, they give you more IAS, damage and hp.

Blink Dagger is a fantastic and powerful item that Huskar can utilize very well. Your ultimate has a short range of 135, putting you in basically melee range of your target. Naturally anyone with a brain will immediately back away when a Huskar comes charging toward them. Blink Dagger fixes this problem, granting the element of surprise and mobility, (there is no faster way to get anywhere than blinking.) Of course, outside of using your ultimate it is also simply great for chasing, juking, escaping and overall mobility.

The path splits, Hood and Armlet are both great items on Huskar, and you should get both. Armlet grants 65 damage, 475 hp, 5 armor, 25% IAS and -62 hp regen while activated, and since you have IV to help with the degen, I'd say the huge dps bonuses make it worth it's unbelievably cheap 2850 gold price. Hood grants a huge 8 hp regen and the ever-useful 30% magical resistance, making it the top-tanking item in today's spell-ruled metagame. On top of that it further-benefits Huskar reducing the self-damage from Life Break by an addditional 30%.

Depending on your enemies lineup, you can decipher for yourself which to get first, Hood against a highly magical damage lineup, and Armlet on a more passive lineup, where you can utilized the huge dps to blink in and dominate your targets as quickly as possible. Now as I play more and more competitively I find Hood a better first choice, as you won't get to utilize the damage from Armlet or Berserker's Blood if you're instantly nuked to death before you can strike.

Generally I go Hood > Treads > Blink > Armlet, but factors such as how fast I'm farming, the enemies lineup and my role on the team change these things. While Armlet, Treads and Hood come in nice convenient useful parts, with blink you have to save up a solid 2150 gold.

Extension, Optional and Luxury Items



BoT are also an available choice, but it should never be rushed on Huskar. Although the extra movespeed is beneficial, as is the tp, it's high cost makes it less desireable, and in-battle your usefulness won't be amplified as much as one of your other more important items, (blink, Armlet, Hood, Heart, Treads.) Only get this in games where you need to be all over the damn map tping and fighting, and it's a good idea to sell your Treads for these if the game drags on late.



Aghanim's enables Huskar's ultimate to take out 65% of the enemy's hp with Life Break while only having an 8 second cooldown at level 3; Best of all it's not like Spirit Breaker who'll need mana support for continuous ultimate casting, as long as you have hp you can use your 0-mana ultimate whenever you want! It's a good extension for imba-ganking after the core items if you're not going hard-dps carry, in which case just getting more dps items would be my choice.



Black King Bar is a viable extension item, but not always. Huskar is made to tank damage, by tanking damage, both physical and magical your hp drops, and in turn your dps increases. You get Hood so you can live to tell the tale after you take in the nukes, but with BkB all of this is avoided, so you probably won't get much of a damage boost. Get BkB if you're going hard-carry and the enemy team has lots of disables though.



Linken's Sphere is now a useful item with the Spell Block actually working on many single-target spells. A situational item at best when you are in need of 3 things: to block single target disables, more mana since you go oom from casting IV on yourself and your allies in pushes, and the stats for an overall boost. Consider these factors before purchasing this highly defensive item.



Monkey King Bar is a good item to get if you're going for straight up dps. In a higher-level game you probably can't farm this much, but if you can, feel free to get it. With True Strike this item is even better than before especially against carrys with evasion or butterfly, but be wary that auto-casting Burning Spears with True Strike activated will cause interference.



Buriza-do-Kyanon is a powerful dps item that scales excellently as the game goes on. Unfortunately this item is pretty expensive and Huskar may not have to pure-damage and godly IAS to utilize it's crit to full potential.



Heart of Tarrasaque was changed as of late, and not granting regeneration in combat is far less appealing to Huskar. It's rather justifiable, since the regeneration on a hero like Huskar was completely imbalanced. Still, it grants a massive 1060 hp boost, which is the most hp from any single slot possible. Get this if you need some raw hp, also as long as your mana pool isn't depleted, you'll never have to visit the fountain again with the unbelievable 2% hp regen outside of battle. This is my personal favorite extension of choice, granting hp and damage for Huskar to utilize late game.



Assault Cuirass is a possible Luxury item, granting you godly EHP and even better attack speed, I'd recommend this after HoT if you ever manage to farm that much in a game.



Guinsoo? DTC is noob, banned.
But really, Guinsoo is the item that never goes wrong. Granting some stats and highly unnecessary int on a hero like Huskar, the hex is what takes the cake. 3.5 seconds disable can easily shift the tide of battle, in some leagues having more than 1/2 Guinsoos on a single team is banned due to this items potential. If you aren't the carry and are playing a support/ganking Huskar, get this if you find yourself rich late game, it's simply a fantastic item.

Items Not to Get



Orb-effects. When manually-casted Burning Spears overrides all orb-effects, and when auto-casted is overridden by orb-effects. Burning Spears is just too powerful of an orb to give up.



Basher is a terrible item to begin with, and is 100% unnecessary on Huskar. Huskar is built to kill and last through it all, not to disable. Huskar has better things to build.



Radiance is an amazing item when on the right hero, and especially at the right time. Huskar has neither the speed to stay in immolation range of a fleeing enemy nor the capability to power-farm a relic. His lane-control is just too strong to pass up in power-farming. The majority of gold comes from Huskar's kills and last-hits in lane.



You don't need intelligence items at all, if you become low on mana have an ally with Arcane Ring cast or something, or grab a Clarity.



Dagon. YOU ARE NOT A NUKER. KTHXBAI. But for real, your burst damage comes from your ultimate and your orb, you can't afford to buy it, nor to cast it, your mana pool is pathetic.



Vanguard is an item for heroes that need to tower-dive, and directly attack an enemy hero triggering creep-aggro. Huskar is neither of these, as his goal is to kill quickly and effectively, and his orb-walking does not attract creep-aggro. He doesn't really need the hp with an average strength growth, and if you desperately want hp, grab a Vitality Booster and upgrade it to HoT later. You need regeneration? Get a HoD. Honestly right there I just granted good reasoning not to get Vanguard, so I'll say it again. If you want hp, feel free to buy an early game Vitality Booster to upgrade to a HoT later, and if you want regen, feel free to buy a HoD. A Vanguard only grants 50 more hp than a Vitality alone, and the regeneration from a Vanguard is inferior to a HoD. Also as I stated above, and I'll say it again, Huskar doesn't need the damage block, he neither needs to tower-dive extensively nor does he attract creep-aggro.



Mekansm. What are you a support hero? No, you're a hard-core ganker/carry, your job is to build up your core while dominating your lane, not being your team's healing bitch. You want your hp to drop, it makes you a powerful dpser, if you just heal back all the damage Life Break deals to you, then you kinda just ruined the point. On top of the fact that you don't want to heal your damage like that, Huskar doesn't nearly have the mana-pool to support Mekansm, he can barely support casting his own innate heal; which btw is at least 10x better than Mekansm.



So what does this cast animation do? When you right click an enemy, Huskar will throw a spear at them, his attack. His attack animation is .5/.4. Now these numbers, (if you're no WC3 mechanics person,) basically mean that it takes him .3 seconds to begin a spell, then takes .24 seconds to backswing, (read: useless animation that's just for show and can be canceled with no negative affect on your spell.) And the same goes for his attack animation, except it's longer.