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 health 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 becomes more powerful with less health, but can still die. Figure out when enough is enough.
 * You can use on yourself before jumping into a fight to counteract the damage you take.
 * Don't worry about casting it too early before a team fight as it has a fairly long duration and its cooldown at max level is just as long as its duration. This will reduce the chances that you are caught off-guard and become disabled long enough before being able to cast it.
 * Always use Inner Vitality before you use to increase your chance of surviving a fight.
 * 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.
 * and both use up health, and feed your.
 * Remember that 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 health enough to sustain, switch it to auto-attack and burn them down!
 * lowers the target's current health by about 1/4 (1/2 if upgraded), and lets Huskar jump to his target rapidly. Consider between chasing a wounded enemy and dealing damage to a tough one.
 * Be wary of heroes who has high natural magic resistance like due to his  because using  against them might deal more damage to you than to them. Same can be said against heroes who usually build  or.
 * You should also 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 pierce 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 while spell immune.
 * 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 heroes 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.
 * increases Huskar's survivability significantly. At 30% health, and level 4, you have 83% magic resistance, allowing you to keep your health 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 health left, it can help you survive execution spells that deal magical damage such as ,  and.
 * While with Huskar is nigh impossible to be killed by spell casters, be very cautious of pure damage. Dealing with heroes such as   and  can result in death, as using  in their presence can have dire consequences, since some of their spells aren't reduced by magic resistance.
 * Huskar is a great counter against heroes that rely mostly on magical damage like, and . If an enemy team consist of mostly or even entirely of spellcasters consider maxing  first.
 * also gives Huskar a huge attack speed bonus when at a low enough health. This enables Huskar to deal a significant amount of damage with and damage increasing items like . 's  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. However this is not recommended as it does not provide neither strength nor damage and is quite a hefty investment.
 * a is a good pickup due to its 35% chance to deal a 100 damage mini-stun and if against heroes with evasion like  and.
 * His attack speed even makes and  a viable item to take as it will allow him to proc Bash at a decent rate. Not to mention that he can make use of Overwhelm after using Life Break.
 * 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 like, , , etc.
 * This can be mitigated by buying early when planning on building a . Due to Huskar's reliance on  for damage and not from physical basic attacks, an early  offers more benefits than buying an early  and will allow Huskar to regenerate more in the laning phase. You can even buy 2  if you plan to build an, a +10 in armor will reduce physical damage in the laning phase significantly.
 * As deals magical damage to an enemy relative to his current health, it is possible to kill any enemy in one hit with the help of damage amplification, provided it is not spell immune or has access to very high magic resistance (e.g. ).
 * 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, and  to a target and then hitting them with an  upgraded  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  instead of  or 's  instead of.
 * Beware of heroes with as they can destroy you if you use  on them recklessly.
 * A special mention goes to who can use  immediately after countering your Life Break.
 * A similar case is who can reflect Life Break using  and then follow up with any of his other abilities to finish you off.
 * Also it is worth noting that any hero using with sufficiently high health will kill you if you use  on them assuming that you don't have spell immunity.
 * Building an enables Huskar to destroy enemy heroes with high health very quickly. The reduced cooldown will allow Huskar deal magical damage equal to 73.74% of the enemy's health in 4 seconds if he is able to use  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, 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.
 * Huskar has a huge early game presence, however there are many heroes that is difficult for Huskar to fight.
 * is a special case since the ability he uses to initiate deals pure damage but the abilities he uses to secure a kill  and  deals magical damage. If he uses  to initiate a one-on-one fight, Huskar will almost always win assuming he has put levels into . However be careful if you initiate with  since Pudge can use  and  to reduce Huskar's health to a point where Pudge can use Meat Hook as a finisher. He can also ruin your positioning and disable you long enough so that his team can kill you.
 * is a dangerous counter to Huskar due to Huskar's tendency to stay low in health. will make it easy for enemies to track Huskar and give Bloodseeker a free buff even if he's away from Huskar, and both of his damaging spells  and  deal pure damage. If Huskar is d then uses, it will deal a huge portion of damage because it deals pure damage and the fact that Life Break makes Huskar travel a significant distance. It is best to increase Huskar's durability when facing Bloodseeker. Also don't forget to cast Inner Vitality to yourself if you think you cannot dodge Blood Rite because your survivability will be drastically reduced without it.
 * is arguably the most dangerous counter to Huskar (as well as most heroes) because his ultimate disables  when upgraded. Not only does it deal pure damage, it also removes Huskar's durability against magical damage, reduces his attack speed significantly and prevents him to use  and, 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 makes Huskar's attacks miss by 50% effectively reducing the number of times he can stack  and lifesteal, and she commonly builds a . However her early game presence is limited, if you manage to build an  and a  in time, you will have a great chance of defeating her.
 * is a dangerous hero to face if the match reaches the late game. Her when upgraded with an  deals a huge burst of pure damage and her  makes her a decent hitter. Be cautious and don't allow her to farm, press your advantage as she does not pose significant threat to Huskar in the early game save for her lengthy disable.

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, while also being immune to physical damage because of the ethereal state.