Bristleback

Rigwarl the Bristleback is a melee Strength hero famous for his array of synergistic spells with low mana cost and cooldown. He is able to slow his enemies down and reduce their armor with Viscous Nasal Goo, then hit them with a barrage of Quill Sprays, making him an effective chaser when ganking enemies. His low strength gain makes him less tanky than most strength heroes, but he becomes substantially more durable when he turns around due to his passive Bristleback, which reduces damage taken from behind. In the right hands, Bristleback is a powerful ganker in the early stages of the game, and a powerful hard carry in the later stages depending on how much farm he gets.

Tips

 * Use your passive ability to your advantage; anticipate enemy attacks and turn your back on them, so that you can reduce as much damage as you can.
 * Please note that you should not turn your back towards projectiles flying towards you, but the original damage source.
 * An early ability point on this ability during the laning phase can help you stay in the lane a while longer, especially if you are having trouble against attacks.


 * Even if your enemies can easily defend against you with a, you can still heavily damage them with Warpath; as long as you're stacking your spells against them, the bonus damage will do its job.
 * has extremely useful effects, provided that you keep casting it against your target, as it slows their movement speed for a lot when stacked up. Since each casts fully refreshes the whole stack's duration, and the duration is more than twice as long as the cooldown, after reaching the stack cap, you can time it so that you refresh the debuff before it expires, instead of continuesly casting it whenever off cooldown. This way, you waste less of the duration, save some mana for your quills and can catch up faster to your target.
 * This ability is very effective when combined with 's, as the damage inflicted on the gooed target from other bound creeps or heroes is applied to the armor reduced hero at said reduced value. This makes the Bristleback/Warlock lane combination very potent, even into the late game. When combined with area of effect items and attacks, a lot of damage can be dealt very quickly.
 * Bristleback's mana woes can easily be remedied by a or a, since his abilities have extremely low mana costs.
 * One of Bristleback's main weaknesses is his lack of disables, meaning he cannot silence or interrupt an enemy from casting spells. You can either rely on your teammates for disables, or buy an item of your own, so long as it benefits him in some way (a good example would be a, since it gives him good mana regeneration for his abilities, and a devastating hex disable).
 * Beware and, as both of them have abilities that force you to turn and face them for a few seconds, ensuring their and their teams damage is not directed to your back and thus making you far more vulnerable in a teamfight.

Trivia

 * In DotA, Bristleback's hero model was a quillboar, having a much more boar-like appearance. His loss of boar-like features in Dota 2 was likely made to distinguish him from the quillboar race in the Warcraft universe. As well, his hero title shares the name of a large quillboar tribe in World of Warcraft.
 * Beta information revealed that Bristleback's original name was supposedly to be "Bristlebog", probably to avoid conflict with the aforementioned Bristleback tribe in World of Warcraft.
 * A silhouette of what appears to be can be seen in Bristleback's splash artwork, seemingly still having a beta model/texture.
 * The brawler mentioned in Bristleback's lore is most likely, judging from both their lines when engaging each other.