No-lifesteal Huskar?

I've been trying out Huskar for a bit, and I like Burning Spears a lot. Since lifesteal does not stack with it, I've been trying a high-regeneration build instead, with an Urn of Shadows, Armlet of Mordiggian and even a Hood of Defiance. During fights, I use Inner Vitality on myself to boost my regeneration to staggering amounts, even overriding the armlet degen. It seems to work quite well, and I carried many games thanks to that.

My question is, do any of you play Huskar without lifesteal as well? If you do, could you tell me your overall build order? If you don't, please give reasons why :)

I do play huskar without lifesteal and honestly it gave me better results than a lifesteal husk.
My general build order was bracer,treads, armlet. Basicly getting my strength up as high as i can to make the most of IV.
Now though after the buff getting berserkers blood is more effective and therefore u wont generally max spears 1st.

I've never gone lifesteal on him, and though I haven't played him since the change to Berserker's Blood, I'd think it would favor skipping lifesteal and focusing on maxing STR, since you don't have to worry about nukes as much, it's less risky to hover at low HP with the high magic resistance, and you no longer get damage from low HP. I generally go for urn>armlet>BKB as core (hood seems unnecessary with all the res. from berserkers blood), with heart as luxury.

If you're doing well early, try rushing reaver (by 15 minutes or skip it) into heart and proceed to steamroll the rest of the game.

Not convinced lifesteal is worth it anymore, better off with maxed Burning Spear. You do need better health regen to go with this though if you're going to use them much.

Personally I've been trying out a semi-carry/tank build (largely against magic damage heavy teams):

Urn of Shadows
Phase Boots
Armlet of Mordiggian
Pipe of Insight
Aghanim's Scepter
Heart of Tarrasque / Black King Bar

Basically own the lane, go for kills once 6, getting good chase/damage. Pipe is for team/health regen. Combined with the magic resistance from Berserker's Blood it makes you a real sponge for nukes, and the base health regen is great on top of Inner Vitality. The main thing I need to work out at the moment is when to buy the Scepter - being able to inflict multiple Life Break's against the opposition in a single fight is great.

Agreed - your inner vitality should do well to regen your life.

Drop the Pipe or defiance - I went through the statics in another post, on how magic resistance stacks - based on the benefit, I think the reduction in damage was only something like 8% average (magic dmg reduction) for an item that cost 2k, and this wasn't even calculated based on fully stacked beserkers blood - better to spend 2k on boosting your strength and adding hp by MORE than 8%, offsetting the damage lost and increasing your own dmg.

Better to get a mecha - it will give huskar a better team fight presence, and it's nice to ulti - get a few spears in, (eat the counter initiate) and ****ing heal + armlet toggle. same cost as a hood as well, plus the armor to reduce physical damage. you can also get the headress early, and just spam spears in the early game to control lane..

things to remember - maim and chain lightning (maelstrom, mjo) will stack (in a way) with burning spears - maim in particularly is deceivingly good - especially if you ulti 1 and attack another who is equally slowed - SNY or halberd, is situational, depending on your opponents. (though the MS is a welcome buff from the SNY..)

Abysall blade is also very good as a late game item - 10% stun chance only but with your insane MS - WHAT DFQ! also good against bkb users, as your active on abysal can shut them down.. +plus of course the damage buff moving into the late game..

BTW - here's the post regarding the magical damage reduction.


25% base resistance, which is actually calculated to 0.75 of the magic damage.
IE - 100dmg magical, with your base resistance, will only do 75 dmg.
so they take each resistance individually. we will use 100dmg to make calculations easier.

so you take the damage, and multiply the answer with the next resistance

25% base resistance = 0.75 reduction = 75dmg
75 dmg X hood (40% resistance) = 0.6 reduction = (75x0.6) 45dmg (item reduction is always calculated before skill reduction)
45 dmg X (take your example of 76%) = 0.24 reduction = (45x0.24) = 10.8 damage, or 89.2% magic resistance.

^ this is how it is calculated, unfortunately, as strong as it would seem, a hood of defiance is not 'cost effective' on huskar - as he has a high magic resistance already, thus wasting 2k gold. same example, without the hood.

25% base resistance = 0.75 reduction = 75dmg
75dmg X (take your example of 76%) = 0.24 reduction = (75x0.24) = 18 damage, or 82% magic resistance

as you can see you are only gaining an extra 7.2% in magic resistance (which for huskar is only 1 tick of his passive at level 4) for 2k gold.. better to get items to help with physical damage, such as armor or hp.

Quite true. I was thinking more about the high regen the hood would bring, but then again, more strength = more regen, and strength also gives you damage, so I'd go for a more strength-oriented build as opposed to regen next time (unless I don't feel like carrying for some reason :P).

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

It's a viable strategy but i prefer lifestealer huskar. The reason is when you are low, with atack speed from berserker's blood you can recover easily. Especially if you built a satanic. I activate burning spear when i'm not low and deactivate it when i am. With armlet tricks, life steal and inner vitality you will be very hard to kill.

Ghost Scepter is pretty great on Huskar, because you will have Magic Resist from your passive and you can still use your Burning Spears if cast manually while in Ghost Form.