Huskar the Sacred Warrior
The Item Build
The Starting Items
x2
x2
The Item Build
The Starting Items
x2x22 gauntlets is an affordable boost to your hp and damage, making your harass more effective with extra damage and you have more hp to cast Burning Spears with. The Salve and dual tangoes are pretty crucial, the Tango is for over-time regeneration and the Salve for when you're real low. You'll most likely need to use both due to the opponents harassing you and spamming burning spears, don't expect to head back to the fountain for a long time.
Soon After
(x2) Boots of speed is actually a pretty major item for Huskar, by having a movespeed advantage quickly, you'll be able to orb-walk much more effectively, or if the enemy gets an early boots as well, you'll be able to keep up. The Helm of Iron Will is a good early game item, providing armor and the ever-helpful regen, but naturally the main use is to upgrade to a Hood later. If you're farming exceptionally well you can grab 2 of them, since eventually you'll be getting both Armlet and Hood, but generally upgrading to Hood with one right away is your best bet.
The Core
Treads is the natural upgrade choice to your boots, only costing an easy 950 gold to upgrade, they give you more IAS, damage and hp.
Blink Dagger is a fantastic and powerful item that Huskar can utilize very well. Your ultimate has a short range of 135, putting you in basically melee range of your target. Naturally anyone with a brain will immediately back away when a Huskar comes charging toward them. Blink Dagger fixes this problem, granting the element of surprise and mobility, (there is no faster way to get anywhere than blinking.) Of course, outside of using your ultimate it is also simply great for chasing, junking, escaping and overall mobility.
The path splits, Hood and Armlet are both great items on Huskar, and you should get both. Armlet grants 65 damage, 475 hp, 5 armor, 25% IAS and -62 hp regen while activated, and since you have IV to help with the degen, I'd say the huge dps bonuses make it worth it's unbelievably cheap 2850 gold price. Hood grants a huge 8 hp regen and the ever-useful 30% magical resistance, making it the top-tanking item in today's spell-ruled metagame. On top of that it further-benefits Huskar reducing the self-damage from Life Break by an addditional 30%.
Depending on your enemies lineup, you can decipher for yourself which to get first, Hood against a highly magical damage lineup, and Armlet on a more passive lineup, where you can utilized the huge dps to blink in and dominate your targets as quickly as possible. Now as I play more and more competitively I find Hood a better first choice, as you won't get to utilize the damage from Armlet or Berserker's Blood if you're instantly nuked to death before you can strike.
Generally I go Hood > Treads > Blink > Armlet, but factors such as how fast I'm farming, the enemies lineup and my role on the team change these things. While Armlet, Treads and Hood come in nice convenient useful parts, with blink you have to save up a solid 2150 gold.
Extension, Optional and Luxury Items
BoT are also an available choice, but it should never be rushed on Huskar. Although the extra movespeed is beneficial, as is the tp, it's high cost makes it less desireable, and in-battle your usefulness won't be amplified as much as one of your other more important items, (blink, Armlet, Hood, Heart, Treads.) Only get this in games where you need to be all over the damn map tping and fighting, and it's a good idea to sell your Treads for these if the game drags on late.
Aghanim's enables Huskar's ultimate to take out 65% of the enemy's hp with Life Break while only having an 8 second cooldown at level 3; Best of all it's not like Spirit Breaker who'll need mana support for continuous ultimate casting, as long as you have hp you can use your 0-mana ultimate whenever you want! It's a good extension for imba-ganking after the core items if you're not going hard-dps carry, in which case just getting more dps items would be my choice.
Black King Bar is a viable extension item, but not always. Huskar is made to tank damage, by tanking damage, both physical and magical your hp drops, and in turn your dps increases. You get Hood so you can live to tell the tale after you take in the nukes, but with BkB all of this is avoided, so you probably won't get much of a damage boost. Get BkB if you're going hard-carry and the enemy team has lots of disables though.
Linken's Sphere is now a useful item with the Spell Block actually working on many single-target spells. A situational item at best when you are in need of 3 things: to block single target disables, more mana since you go oom from casting IV on yourself and your allies in pushes, and the stats for an overall boost. Consider these factors before purchasing this highly defensive item.
Monkey King Bar is a good item to get if you're going for straight up dps. In a higher-level game you probably can't farm this much, but if you can, feel free to get it. With True Strike this item is even better than before especially against carrys with evasion or butterfly, but be wary that auto-casting Burning Spears with True Strike activated will cause interference.
Buriza-do-Kyanon is a powerful dps item that scales excellently as the game goes on. Unfortunately this item is pretty expensive and Huskar may not have to pure-damage and godly IAS to utilize it's crit to full potential.
Heart of Tarrasaque was changed as of late, and not granting regeneration in combat is far less appealing to Huskar. It's rather justifiable, since the regeneration on a hero like Huskar was completely imbalanced. Still, it grants a massive 1060 hp boost, which is the most hp from any single slot possible. Get this if you need some raw hp, also as long as your mana pool isn't depleted, you'll never have to visit the fountain again with the unbelievable 2% hp regen outside of battle. This is my personal favorite extension of choice, granting hp and damage for Huskar to utilize late game.
Assault Cuirass is a possible Luxury item, granting you godly EHP and even better attack speed, I'd recommend this after HoT if you ever manage to farm that much in a game.
Guinsoo? DTC is noob, banned.
But really, Guinsoo is the item that never goes wrong. Granting some stats and highly unnecessary int on a hero like Huskar, the hex is what takes the cake. 3.5 seconds disable can easily shift the tide of battle, in some leagues having more than 1/2 Guinsoos on a single team is banned due to this items potential. If you aren't the carry and are playing a support/ganking Huskar, get this if you find yourself rich late game, it's simply a fantastic item.
Items Not to Get
Orb-effects. When manually-casted Burning Spears overrides all orb-effects, and when auto-casted is overridden by orb-effects. Burning Spears is just too powerful of an orb to give up.
Basher is a terrible item to begin with, and is 100% unnecessary on Huskar. Huskar is built to kill and last through it all, not to disable. Huskar has better things to build.
Radiance is an amazing item when on the right hero, and especially at the right time. Huskar has neither the speed to stay in immolation range of a fleeing enemy nor the capability to power-farm a relic. His lane-control is just too strong to pass up in power-farming. The majority of gold comes from Huskar's kills and last-hits in lane.
You don't need intelligence items at all, if you become low on mana have an ally with Arcane Ring cast or something, or grab a Clarity.
Dagon. YOU ARE NOT A NUKER. KTHXBAI. But for real, your burst damage comes from your ultimate and your orb, you can't afford to buy it, nor to cast it, your mana pool is pathetic.
Vanguard is an item for heroes that need to tower-dive, and directly attack an enemy hero triggering creep-aggro. Huskar is neither of these, as his goal is to kill quickly and effectively, and his orb-walking does not attract creep-aggro. He doesn't really need the hp with an average strength growth, and if you desperately want hp, grab a Vitality Booster and upgrade it to HoT later. You need regeneration? Get a HoD. Honestly right there I just granted good reasoning not to get Vanguard, so I'll say it again. If you want hp, feel free to buy an early game Vitality Booster to upgrade to a HoT later, and if you want regen, feel free to buy a HoD. A Vanguard only grants 50 more hp than a Vitality alone, and the regeneration from a Vanguard is inferior to a HoD. Also as I stated above, and I'll say it again, Huskar doesn't need the damage block, he neither needs to tower-dive extensively nor does he attract creep-aggro.
Mekansm. What are you a support hero? No, you're a hard-core ganker/carry, your job is to build up your core while dominating your lane, not being your team's healing bitch. You want your hp to drop, it makes you a powerful dpser, if you just heal back all the damage Life Break deals to you, then you kinda just ruined the point. On top of the fact that you don't want to heal your damage like that, Huskar doesn't nearly have the mana-pool to support Mekansm, he can barely support casting his own innate heal; which btw is at least 10x better than Mekansm.
