Bristleback/Guide

General

 * 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.


 * 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 continuously 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 target from other bound creeps or heroes is applied to the armor reduced hero at said reduced value. This makes the Bristleback/ 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.


 * can be used to secure last hits, whether at range or timing it with your regular attack.


 * 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 ; as long as you're stacking your spells against them, the bonus damage will do its job.

Items
Starting:
 * is a strong pickup, as it helps cut down on lane harass when Bristleback is at his least tanky state and builds into.

Early-game:
 * builds into both and  and can be picked up in the Side Shop, letting Bristleback weather almost any harass in lane.
 * makes you slightly tankier and significantly increases your mana regen in the early game, as Bristleback starts with low intelligence, but has high intelligence gain. This means that disassembling the ring to make an or a  is viable after Bristleback reaches 33 intelligence, naturally reached at level 7.
 * and are great on Bristleback, as he wants to be in a fight for as long as possible, giving him a chance to potentially use up charges twice for very large amounts of healing, and every two charges will grant him enough Mana for an extra Quill Spray or.

Core:
 * are the boots of choice on Bristleback, as they make him tankier and increase his attack speed, which goes well with.
 * is one of a few strong early to mid-game pickups on Bristleback. It is best against teams that have a large amount of physical damage, and especially against teams with summons (,, etc) or dominated creeps . Note that the damage block is deducted from the full attack damage, before any damage reduction (such as from armor or the ability) takes place. Builds into a.
 * , as opposed to, is a much stronger choice when the enemies rather rely on magical damage. It upgrades into a.

Situational:
 * is a hybrid pickup of damage and defense. It is strong against teams with high amounts of burst damage, either causing the enemies to take the damage themselves as well, or forcing them to not use their burst damage, giving Bristleback some time to deal with them.
 * is a strong pickup if you're not the hardest carry on your team or the enemy team only has one physical damage dealer that it can be used on. The evasion as well as the strength increase can add a lot to Bristleback's effective health.
 * has amazing synergy with Bristleback, as it is one of the few items that can increase the damage of his . It also increases his and his team's tankiness against physical damage, and the attack speed greatly increases his attack damage output thanks to . It also is a great pickup if there are other carries on your team which rely on physical attacks.
 * is built off of a, which is also a good item on Bristleback, and is an item any team should have one of if up against a physical damage heavy lineup.
 * is built off of a, which is also a good item on Bristleback, and is an item any team should have one of if there are any dangerous nukers on the enemy team.
 * is another large armor item, and it fixes any mana issues Bristleback can have. The active ability also gives Bristleback more presence in teamfights, damaging and slowing enemies in a huge area.
 * grants a huge amount of health and gives you significant regeneration when not in a fight against heroes. It helps in siege situations, where you can soak up lots of damage and then wait a short time to be back at full health. The immense health boost allows Bristleback to use the passive to their full potential, as he can tank significantly more, retreat to heal up and then repeat.
 * is great on Bristleback if you can get it early in the game after a couple of items to tank up. This is basically a get-more-ahead item, as if you're hard to kill despite putting so much gold into an offensive item, it can be the best item to snowball the rest of the game by farming quickly and dealing massive area damage in teamfights. However, if you get this item at the cost of being tanky, this is a terrible item to pick up.