Huskar

Huskar the Sacred Warrior is a ranged Strength hero who is an effective ganker and carry, with both great benefits and risks offered. He is known to be a powerful adversary in most games, as his damage per second can easily kill other heroes at any point in the game assuming no one is near by to save them. Unlike most heroes, he doesn't use mana much to use his abilities, rather, he sacrifices his own health to inflict the highest damage possible. His passive Berserker's Blood defines the power of sacrifice; he gets more dangerous the more he gets hurt. This gives him increased magic resistance and attack speed depending how much life is missing, and the given magic resistance and attack speed are staggering, potentially having the highest damage output in the earliest stage. Huskar can use his own life force to attack using Burning Spears which scorches foes and gives him an advantage early on. Due to the health cost of Burning Spears, his Berserker's Blood activates, granting him the ability to decimate any target. Inner Vitality magically heals Huskar or his allies, regenerating health each second based upon the target's primary attribute, and heals more when the health is on a critical level. His Life Break is his most dangerous ability and a risky one too. Charging towards his target, Huskar sheds a large amount of life force to cut a target's current HP to fractions. This is great to use as an initiation spell, as it deals immense damage based on the target's current health, breaking it down, allowing Huskar and his allies to feel the pain that the Sacred Warrior felt. Courageous and fearless, Huskar is powerful at any stage of the game, and is willing to suffer and face death, for him to contribute and deliver a marvelous victory to his team.

Tips

 * Remember that Huskar becomes more powerful with less health, but can still die. Figure out when enough is enough.
 * You can use Inner Vitality on yourself before jumping into a fight to counteract the damage you take.
 * Burning Spear and Life Break both use up health, and feed your Berserker's Blood.
 * Remember that Burning Spears will stack on an enemy. You can manual cast them repeatedly on laning phase to harass enemies without drawing creep aggro. When you can regenerate HP enough to sustain Burning Spear, switch it to auto-attack and burn them down!
 * Life Break lowers the target's current HP by 1/4 (1/2 if upgraded), and lets Huskar jump to his target immediately. Consider between chasing a wounded enemy and dealing damage to a tough one.
 * You should be warned not to use your ultimate on a hero who has an active spell immunity or else you lose a percentage of your health while the target does not. However, the slow will still pass through spell immunity.
 * is important to keep in mind on Huskar since you don't lose a percentage of your health when you use your ultimate.
 * Huskar is effective at dealing with lone targets, but often time struggles when enemies are grouped up. Don't get too cocky, even if you can take on anybody on the enemy team. It's usually best to let somebody else initiate, and then come into the fight when the enemies are spread out, that way, you can take them on one at a time and most likely win each of the duels.
 * When faced with physical damage dealing carries and you have no counter-pick on your team, it is wise to build items that specifically counter them so that you can duel them such as, or in special cases  for heroes with escapes like  or.
 * Huskar's Berserker's Blood increases your survivability significantly. At 30% health, and level 4 Berserker's Blood, you have 83% magic resistance, allowing you to keep your HP in place while taking physical attacks if you have lifesteal and decent damage from items. It is also worth noting that with enough stacks and HP left, it can help you survive execution spells that deal magic damage such as 's Assassinate and ' Reaper's Scythe.
 * While with Berserker's Blood Huskar is nigh impossible to be killed by spell casters, be very cautious of pure damage and HP removal. Dealing with heroes such as Bane and Timbersaw can result in death, as using Life Break in their presence can have dire consequences, since their spells aren't reduced by magic resistance.
 * Huskar is a great counter against heroes that rely mostly on magical damage such as, and . If an enemy team consist of mostly or even entirely of spellcasters consider maxing Berserker's Blood first.
 * Pudge is a special case since his Meat Hook deals pure damage. If he uses Meat Hook to initiate a one-on-one fight, Huskar will almost always win assuming he has put levels into Berserker's Blood. However be careful if you initiate with Life Break since Pudge can use Rot and Dismember to reduce Huskar's health to a point where Pudge can use Meat Hook as a finisher.
 * is a dangerous counter to Huskar due to Thirst, Blood Rite and Rupture. If Huskar is Ruptured then uses Life Break, it will remove a huge portion of his health because it deals pure damage and the fact that Life Break makes Huskar travel a significant distance.
 * is arguably the most dangerous counter to Huskar because his ultimate disables Berserker's Blood when upgraded. Not only does it deal pure damage, it also removes Huskar's durability against magic damage, reduces his attack speed significantly and prevents him to use Burning Spear and Lifebreak, essentially reducing Huskar's ability to deal damage akin to a creep and rendering him useless in a fight.
 * deals a huge amount of physical damage and her Blur makes Huskar's attacks miss by 50% effectively reducing the number of times he can stack Burning Spear and lifesteal.
 * Berserker's Blood also gives Huskar a huge attack speed bonus when at a low enough HP. This enables Huskar to deal a significant amount of damage with Burning Spear and damage increasing items like . 's Shallow Grave makes Huskar even more dangerous at team fights because it enables Huskar to maintain the maximum number of stacks for a short duration before dying.
 * One can build a or  to proc Chain Lightning as much as possible.
 * Huskar can also build a if against low mana pool heroes such as  to prevent them from using their abilities.
 * a is a good pickup due to its 35% chance to deal a 100 damage mini-stun and if against heroes with evasion such as  and.
 * Use Inner Vitality before you use Life Break because Inner Vitality has a fairly long duration.
 * With enough mana regeneration, you can even use Inner Vitality constantly, mitigating the need to return to base. This makes heroes such as and  a good ally of Huskar.
 * Huskar's armor is relatively low even until the middle stages of the game and thus if your ultimate is used carelessly the enemy team will only require one or two disables to allow their own carries to kill you. In this respect you must pay special attention to heroes with long duration disables such as, , , etc.
 * This can be mitigated by buying early when planning on building a . Due to Huskar's reliance on Burning Spear for damage and not from physical basic attacks, an early Helm of Iron Will offers more benefits than buying an early Morbid Mask and will allow Huskar to regenerate more in the laning phase. You can even buy 2 Helm of Iron will if you plan to build an, a +10 in armor will reduce physical damage in the laning phase significantly.
 * As Life Break deals Magical damage to an enemy relative to his current HP, it is possible through damage amplification to kill any enemy in one hit provided it is not spell immune or has access to very high Magical resistance (e.g. Spell Shield).
 * It is possible to use certain combinations of items and heroes together with Huskar to kill any hero instantly. For example applying the effects of, , to a target and then hitting them with an  upgraded Life Break will cause an instant death. However building all these utility items onto Huskar himself will destroy a great deal of his carry potential. This same effect can be achieved using 's Soul Catcher instead of Veil of Discord or 's Decrepify instead of Ethereal Blade.
 * BEWARE of heroes with as they can destroy you if you use Life Break on them recklessly.
 * A special mention goes to who can use Culling Blade immediately after countering your Life Break.
 * A similar case is who can reflect Life Break using Spiked Carapace and then follow up with Vendetta.
 * Also it is worth noting that any hero using Blade Mail with sufficiently high HP will kill you if you use Life Break on them assuming that you don't have spell immunity.
 * Building an enables Huskar to destroy enemy heroes with high HP very quickly. The reduced cooldown will allow Huskar deal magical damage equal to 73.74% of the enemy's HP in 4 seconds if he is able to use Life Break twice in succession. You can also use Life Break on multiple different enemies in a team fight making it easier for the rest of your team to finish them off.
 * It is also worth noting that building an will enable Huskar to constantly apply a 60% slow that pierces through spell immunity.
 * If timed just right, Life Break can be used to chase an enemy with a or a similar escape skill. In most cases, if an enemy hero used their escape skill while Huskar is airborne, Huskar will still be able to finish his jump.

Trivia

 * Huskar's name might be derived from the old Norse word "Huskarl", the title given to the highly-skilled bodyguards of important Norse lords and kings.
 * His name might also be derived from Huáscar Inca, a leader of the Inca Empire in the 16th century. Huskar's lore also connects him to, who is a Shadow Priest (Fits in the Native American shaman role).
 * Before 6.79, you could use a and then manually cast  on enemies. You would take little Magic damage since the Magic Resistance provided by  reduced the incoming magic damage significantly.