Strategy
Gameplay[]
| Playstyle | |
|---|---|
| Huskar is a resilient ranged attacker who sacrifices his own health to inflict greater damage, and this is emphasized by Berserker's Blood, as his attack speed and health regeneration increase the lower his health is, making him deadly at low health. Inner Fire prevents enemies from retaliating with physical attacks while he burns them down with multiple stacks of Burning Spears. His deadly Life Break is suited to killing enemies one-on-one, especially during the early to mid game. He fulfills the roles of carry and ganker, although the damage over time from Burning Spear will not match heavier carries in the late game. | |
| Pros | Cons |
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Ability Builds[]
| Generic Huskar | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 20 | 25 | |||||
 |  | | | |  | |  | |  | | | | | | |  | | | | |||||
Talents[]
| Hero Talents | ||
|---|---|---|
| Burning Spears Pure Damage | 25 | +20% Life Break Damage |
| -5s Life Break Cooldown | 20 | +25% Berserker's Blood Regen |
| 15% Lifesteal | 15 | +4 Burning Spears DPS |
| +2s Life Break Slow Duration | 10 | +0.75s Inner Fire Duration |
Notes:
- Stacks additively with other lifesteal sources.
Tips & Tactics[]
General[]
- 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 Burning Spear's magical burn damage, meaning that high magic resistance from the enemies makes Huskar much less effective.
- Huskar's abilities synergizes well with each other, as Burning Spear and Life Break both use up health and allow Berserker's Blood's effect to increase.
- Huskar's reliance on being at low health and lack of armor and magic resistance make him susceptible to burst damage. Building armor and resistance items may be necessary later in the game.
- Huskar can take on Roshan early on with Armlet of Mordiggian and Berserker's Blood.
Abilities[]
Inner Fire[]
- Inner Fire's disarm can often help Huskar survive against enemy attacks since he has low armor, buying time for Huskar to kill them first.
- The disarm works on Roshan.
- Life Break into Inner Fire is Huskar's standard initiation, scattering enemies and preventing them from fighting back as he focuses on a target.
Burning Spear[]
- Burning Spears is useful for harrassing enemies during the laning phase.
- The cast range of Burning Spear is 450 (
), but Huskar's attack range is only 400 ( 420). Therefore, you can increase your range by 50 when manually casting Burning Spear. However, putting Burning Spear on autocast will not increase the 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 autocast and burn them down!
Berserker's Blood[]
- Berserker's Blood's bonus to health regeneration sustains usage of Armlet of Mordiggian. At level 4, you can keep the Armlet toggled on indefinitely without losing health, while the Armlet's health drain keeps his health at a comfortable threshold.
- 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 Assault Cuirass to further boost your DPS.
Life Break[]
- 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 that have high natural magic resistance (like Anti-Mage and his Counterspell) because using Life Break against them might deal more damage to you than to them.
- Same can be said against heroes that usually build Hood of Defiance or Pipe of Insight.
- 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 they are not spell immune or has access to high magic resistance.
- Beware of heroes with Blade Mail as they can destroy you if you use Life Break on them recklessly.
- Any hero using Blade Mail with sufficiently high health will probably kill you if you use Life Break on them (assuming that you do not have spell immunity).
- Aghanim's Scepter forces the target to attack Huskar, preventing them from using abilities or escaping.
- 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 while they're focused on you.
- Remember that Life Break applies a dispel 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.
- Activate Armlet of Mordiggian after Life Break to regain some of the lost health.
Items[]
Starting items:
- Tango helps Huskar regain lost health from Burning Spear before Berserker's Blood is leveled up.
- Healing Salve also restores health to Huskar.
- Iron Branch gives cheap attributes and builds into Magic Wand later, or Huskar can use it with Tango to get more healing.
- Magic Stick can save Huskar from burst damage when he is fighting a very low health.
Early game:
- Power Treads give Huskar some stats and much needed attack speed.
- Armlet of Mordiggian 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 the enemies do not have abilities that deal damage over time.
- Morbid Mask allows Huskar to lifesteal from attacks, sustaining the health cost of Armlet of Mordiggian and Burning Spear. It upgrades to Satanic in the late game.
Mid game:
- Black King Bar negates Life Break's self damage and most enemy disables, letting Huskar jump into the fray with little risk of dying.
- Heaven's Halberd gives some strength, status resistance, amplifies the health regen from Berserker's blood, and provides disarm to halt an attacking enemy carry.
- Shadow Blade makes Huskar into a much better ganker. It also gives attack speed for more Burning Spear stacks.
- Bloodthorn will give Huskar bonus attack damage, attack speed, bonus intelligence, bonus health regeneration, bonus mana regeneration and bonus magic resistance. And it will also allow him to silence an enemy hero on which he intends to use Life Break, to have every of his attacks have true strike on the affected target, and to weaken spell damage of the enemy heroes he attacks.
Late game:
- Satanic allows Huskar to sustain his health while under focus from the enemy team. It provides strength, damage, and lifesteal. Its active could also be used in a pinch to keep yourself from dying.
- Assault Cuirass grants much-needed armor, making Huskar much harder to kill alongside Berserker's Blood, and greatly improves his damage output.
- Aghanim's Scepter will give Huskar's Life Break extra cast range and will also allow it to taunt enemy hero affected by it, forcing him/her to attack Huskar.
- Aghanim's Shard will reduce the cooldown of Huskar's Inner Fire allowing Huskar to use it more often, slow enemy movement speed and to heal him whenever it damages enemy hero.
- Silver Edge will give Huskar bonus attack damage, attack speed and the ability to escape while also allowing him to prepare a surprise attack with Life Break and disable passive abilities of enemy heroes. Huskar's Burning Spear will also be able to apply a break on a hero it hits.
Situational items:
- Daedalus will give Huskar great amount of attack damage and will also give his attacks chances to inflict critical strikes, which will proc very often thanks to the attack speed from the Berserker's Blood
- Heart of Tarrasque allows Huskar to keep Unholy Strength active indefinitely and it gives enough health to allow Huskar to be at a low enough percentage to increase stacks from Berserker's Blood but not low enough to be burst down.
- Mjollnir will give Huskar great amount of attack speed and good damage, along with the ability to have his attacks bounce between targets, damaging them. And the Chain Lightning will trigger frequently thanks to the attack speed bonus from Huskar's Berserker's Blood.
- Monkey King Bar will give Huskar bonus attack damage and attack speed, and it will also allow Huskar's attacks to counter enemy evasion and pierce through armor.
- Revenant's Brooch will give Huskar bonus attack speed, bonus armor, bonus intelligence, true strike every 9 seconds and will also increase the attack projectile speed of Huskar's Burning Spears. Revenant's Brooch's active ability will also allow Huskar to have his next five attacks have true strike, deal magical damage that can also weaken enemy heroes's magical resistance by 20% for 3 seconds, making them more vulnerable to Inner Fire's, Burning Spear's and Life Break's magical damage output, and will also allow Huskar to attack ethereal units with Burning Spears.
- Abyssal Blade procs Bash at a decent rate due to Huskar's high attack speed, even with the reduced chance, and Overwhelm is a powerful follow-up to Life Break.
- Blade Mail gives Huskar an edge against high-damage opponents by turning their damage output against them. Blade Mail can be combined with Aghanim's Scepter upgraded Life Break that can cause enemies to carelessly kill themselves by attacking Huskar, similarly to Axe's initiations with Blink Dagger, Berserker's Call and Blade Mail.
- Solar Crest provides armor reduction to let Huskar focus down targets faster and bonus armor to make him more resilient.
