Thoughts on huskar right now?

I really like huskar but I'm not sure on how to build him, Here is what I've thought of wall of text incoming!

Huskar is a great hero, with his near-immunity to magic damage and ridiculous attack speed at low HP. His DoT from Burning Spears is insane, and his dunk is great against high HP enemies. However, he is very easily counterable. Do not pick Huskar when the enemy has 2 or more counters. These counters include:
Disable-heavy lineups, especially BKB piercers (Bane, Beastmaster, Doom etc)
ANY pure damage nuke (Bane again, Omniknight, OD, Lina with aghs)
Physical burst damage (Dazzle, Slardar, etc)
Skill Build: You almost always want to max Burning Spears first and Berserker's Blood second, taking the ult at 6. But you don't want to level your ult again at 11, since it only offers an increased slow duration. Instead, max Inner Vitality, and max the ult after.
It should look like this: W E W E W R W E E Q Q Q Q R stats R.
Early game: You'll want to be in a lane you can farm safely, so go either safelane or mid. Then use your orb to win lane hard. Manually casting Burning spears lets you attack the enemy without drawing creep aggro, and the DoT will make most enemies afraid to come near you. But don't ignore last hitting - getting your own farm is just as important as denying farm to your enemy. I usually go brown boots into armlet, but you can get phase boots first. Either way, Armlet is your first major purchase. If you're snowballing and your team doesn't have one, an Urn is an option, but usually you can stay healthy between ganks with your Q and your lifesteal. Early game is when you're strongest, after getting level 8 or 9. So make sure you're active during this time. Gank the enemy carries to keep their farm behind, and get kills on their supports when you can. Most squishy supports will die from 4 or 5 burning spears once it's maxed.
Mid game: Your options open up a bit at this point. You'll want to strike a balance between ganking, farming, and pushing. And once you have armlet, the only other core item you need is Helm of the Dominator. For your next item decide between Haleberd, BKB, and Satanic, depending on whether you need a disable, spell immunity, or more durability. Aghs is also an option if you need the extra ult damage and mobility in fights (since it reduces cooldown to 4.) With good armlet toggling, you can also SOLO ROSH by level 11 or so. Don't forget to do so if you get the opportunity. Check the slahser video if you want to see how to do it.
Late Game Hopefully you've more or less won by this point since Huskar isn't the best late game carry. But you'll definitely want to have your helm upgraded to Satanic by now. Make sure you don't go in first in teamfights. Huskar is very durable, but having the entire team's focus is a great way to die. Use your ult as a secondary initiaton or counter initiaton. Play like a carry, not like a Clockwerk or Tidehunter. Stay in the back and chuck spears.

I would argue that in low to medium level pubs, Huskar is over-viable. I have 1 v. 4ed with him by using heal + armlet toggle. Granted this does require good timing but Huskar is also known for getting a lot of kills right after he dies. The burn damage is insane.

Why doesn't Huskar see more competitive play? I've always been curious. Like I understand he suffers against disables, but even then surely he'd get some use as like a niche 4th or 5th when he's harder to pick counters with. And yet, I've seen more competitive Spirit Breaker games, and more Riki games than Huskar games out of all the Pro games I've watched (Which is like almost every major event since the D2CL Seaon 2)

I mean, Burning Spear is such a silly ability given it stacks rather than reset, and yet I seem him the least out of the like F tier heroes.

It's difficult to say at the moment...it's easy to think he looks better on paper than he does ingame. Partly it's because he's so reliant on snowballing to be effective, partly because he requires careful/late picking to be truly effective:

1) He can win lanes for you very easily given the right matchup.
2) He's a great tank with a good midgame.
3) He's not truly a carry anymore, even though he needs farm.

Huskar is very effective at both dishing out, and absorbing, magic damage. I almost wouldn't build him for physical damage/lifesteal anymore - he's just not that good at it. I'd rather see a Veil of Discord on him than a Helm of the Dominator.

He's not a good enough carry for a traditional carry, and I wouldn't say offlane solo works for him...so that pretty much leaves him as a situational mid, or an aggro trilane carry, or safe lane solo.

I'd build him as either a magic damage based midgame semi-carry, or a utility tank...either way you need a swift end or a harder carry to back him up.

Magic damage carry build:

Phase Boots
Urn of Shadows
Veil of Discord
Armlet of Mordiggian
Maelstrom
Black King Bar

Utility Tank:

Pipe of Insight
Power Treads
Blade Mail
Aghanim's Scepter
Armlet of Mordiggian
Heart of Tarrasque

Those kinds of items anyway. The semi-carry version is all about throwing out lots of Burning Spear and lightning procs combined with the Veil debuff...works well if your team has more magic damage to back it up. Countered pretty heavily by magic immunity, but a lot of damage output midgame.

Utility tank is pretty handy - absorbs damage and draws focus - he's not the kind of tank who can be easily ignored when he can take off 65% of somebody's health every 4 seconds and throw out burning procs.

Ultimately I think you can have to pick him with a definite lane opponent in mind - he can dominate the right matchups, but is pretty ineffective otherwise. A big part of his game is ruining the enemy's as well as snowballing himself.

I think his biggest problem is probably that his playstyle is so predictable - you know pretty much how he works and what he's going to do. He's also easily countered by physical damage and armour reduction.

he is very viable.

he is in captains mode .... no one expects him.

IF you ban correctly.

http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1020729378

also a lot of the heroes people say are "bad" are so because they have counters that basically wreck them no matter what they do.


heres another example:

http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1020578076

I've been experimenting with running Huskar as a split-pusher, actually. With an Armlet of Mordiggian, you can tank a tower indefinitely for your creep wave with good timing on Armlet toggles, and the attack speed you get from Berserker's Blood from being so low really helps you push them quickly.

For this kind of strategy, something like a Desolator is pretty good. True, it doesn't make Burning Spear do more damage, but that skill doesn't work against towers anyways. Plus, in team fights, a Desolator gives you a decent mix of magical and physical damage output... almost like you're dealing good old composite damage... sniff... curse you 6.82!!!!!

Definitely aren't the hard carry with this kind of build, though.

^isn' this true for everybody who makes armlet?except for the attackspeed ofc

he is quite strong in pubs.

in competitive he is debatable.

but never ever first pick him.

^ pretty much that ^

Wow. I may have just found the reason why Mushi always bans Huskar