Huskar/Guide

General

 * Huskar should be played aggressively to make full use of his early game dominance. Don't be afraid to tower dive.
 * Huskar is not a true initiator. Try to let another team member initiate, then jump in to single out soft targets.
 * A good amount of Huskar's damage comes from 's magical burn damage, meaning that magic resistance makes Huskar much less effective.
 * Huskar's abilities synergizes well with each other, and  both use up health, and feed your  increasing your damage output while  makes you more durable.
 * Due to his low base armor, Huskar is susceptible to physical burst damage.
 * Good examples of this is and  as well as any carry who has a  or  completed.


 * Use Inner Vitality on yourself or your allies before jumping into a fight to increase their durability.
 * Do not worry about casting it too early before a team fight as it has a fairly long duration and its cooldown at max level is a few seconds shorter than its duration. This will reduce the chances that you are caught off-guard and become disabled long enough before being able to cast it. This will also increase the chance that you can re-cast it during a fight in case that you are Purged or another team mate is in dire need of regeneration.
 * Always use Inner Vitality before using your ultimate to increase your chance of surviving and reduce the toll on your HP done by your ultimate.
 * 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.


 * Burning Spears is useful for harrassing enemies during the laning phase.
 * Keep in mind the cast range of is 450, but Huskar's attack range is only 400. Therefore you can increase your range by 50 when manually casting . However, putting  on autocast will not increase your range.
 * 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 health enough to sustain Burning Spear, switch it to auto-attack and burn them down!


 * Berserker's Blood makes Huskar very potent against heavy magic damage teams.
 * With enough stacks and health left, Berserker's Blood can help you survive finishing spells that deal magical damage such as, and.
 * Berserker's Blood does not protect against pure damage. Dealing with heroes such as and  can result in death, as using your ultimate in their presence can have dire consequences, since some of their spells are not reduced by magic resistance.
 * It is important to remember that the magic resistance from Berserker's Blood DOES NOT equate to magic immunity, a common mistake for new players is to treat it as such. Huskar is still vulnerable to huge burst of magical damage when at nearly full health. Examples of this would be at point blank range (most likely after using Life Break) with the maximum amount of souls and stacks of  both of which could kill Huskar even at full health.
 * Berserker's Blood works best against gradual magical damage or damage spread over multiple instances like, , , , , , and , all of which are almost impossible to be used to insta-kill Huskar since their damage will be greatly reduced. But keep in mind that some of these also provide debuffs like stun, slow and silence that could hinder Huskar.
 * The attack speed from Berserker's Blood is unreliable as it depends on your current health. If you are your team's main carry, consider building attack speed items like and  to further boost your DPS.


 * In most cases, if an enemy hero used their escape skill while Huskar is airborne, Huskar will still be able to finish his jump.
 * Be wary of heroes who has high natural magic resistance like due to his  because using Life Break 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 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.
 * As Life Break 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 Life Break will cause an instant death. However, building all these utility items on Huskar himself will destroy a great deal of his carry potential. This same effect can be achieved using  instead of Veil of Discord or  instead of Ethereal Blade.
 * Beware of heroes with as they can destroy you if you use Life Break on them recklessly.
 * Also it is worth noting that any hero using Blade Mail with sufficiently high health will kill you if you use Life Break on them assuming that you do not have spell immunity.
 * 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 Life Break twice in succession.
 * Life Break can also be used on multiple different enemies in a team fight making it easier for the rest of your team to finish them off.
 * The low cooldown from Aghanim's Scepter can also be used to jump from one hero to another. If you are being focused on by a melee carry who happen to have spell immunity, jump to another hero to kill them off, or stall enough time so that the enemy's spell immunity runs out.
 * Jumping to a different enemy is also useful for timing out debuffs on Huskar. Jumping to another enemy while you are slowed, rooted or disarmed will give you a chance to turn the tables against your enemy.
 * Aghanim's Scepter's upgrade will also apply a 60% slow that pierces through spell immunity.

Items
Starting:
 * es and a help Huskar to regain lost health from.
 * give extra attack damage and health to draw from when using . They also build into.

Early-game:
 * give a nice movement speed boost.
 * helps Huskar recover health in a pinch.
 * helps Huskar to restore health after a gank.

Core:
 * provides every stat that Huskar needs to be more effective and its Unholy Strength provides a way for Huskar to control his health. If you are able to practice armlet toggling, it will drastically improve Huskar's damage output and allow him to use it to survive fights as long as there is no Heartstopper Aura or Radiance Aura or you are not afflicted by any DPS debuff. An important fact to remember is that its active ability also adds to Inner Vitality's regeneration.

Situational:
 * will cause Huskar to take no self-damage from, allowing him to use it to initiate with little risk of dying.
 * allows Huskar to sustain his health while under focus from the enemy team. It provides strength, armor and 25% lifesteal. Its active could also be used in a pinch to keep yourself from dying.
 * gives a massive HP regen bonus from Inner Vitality, it allows Huskar to keep Unholy Strength active indefinitely and it gives enough health to allow you to be at a low enough percentage to increase stacks from your Berserker's Blood but not low enough to be bursted down. This also complements an Aghanim's Scepter pickup as it will allow you to use Life Break sparingly, even against Roshan or creeps.
 * gives protection from physical damage, which synergizes well with which gives magic resistance.
 * increases the effectiveness of.
 * makes Huskar into a much better ganker. It also gives attack speed for more stacks.
 * gives some strength and evasion, and it is also able to disarm an attacking enemy.
 * or is a good item to pick to proc Chain Lightning as much as possible and to increase your farming potential.
 * is a decent item 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 either strength or damage and is quite a hefty investment.
 * is a good pickup due to its 35% chance to deal a 100 damage mini-stun and if against heroes with evasion like, or any carry who is planning to or already built evasion items like Heaven's Halberd or Butterfly.
 * and are also viable items because Huskar will proc Bash at a decent rate due to his attack speed. When Skull Basher is upgraded to Abyssal Blade, he can make use of Overwhelm after using Life Break. Keep in mind that melee carries will still proc it more even if you have the same attack speed, you do however have the range advantage.
 * is important to keep in mind on Huskar since you do not lose a percentage of your health when you use your ultimate while spell immune.
 * could be bought first when planning on building a Helm of the Dominator. Due to Huskar's reliance on Burning Spears for damage and not from physical basic attacks which you rarely use against creeps in lane, 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 Helms if you plan to build an Armlet of Mordiggian too, a +10 in armor and the bonus 6 HP regeneration will reduce damage in the laning phase significantly and will allow you to spam Burning Spear.
 * will drastically improve Huskar's survivability and can be used to build an or a  or both if you plan to stack armor. Since Huskar is already durable against magic damage, Stacking armor will help reduce his second biggest weakness which is physical damage. However, against a pure damage heavy lineup, stacking strength or HP items is still the better solution.
 * and its upgrades ,and provides a good amount of strength to cost ratio and gives a fair amount of utility.