Welcome

Welcome to bOne7's Book of the Bristleback, a hero guide part of the Book of Dota series!

Here you will find all the information you need to learn to play Bristle on a high level – from drafting and builds to the optimal playstyle in different lanes and situations. We hope you’ll enjoy this guide and find it useful!

TL;DR:

Draft: Pay more attention to your team rather than the enemy team – you need to have a lineup that is good at 5-man Dota in the mid and late game. If your teammates want to play very passively, your impact will be much lower.

Early Game: Make sure you can get resources in the lane. Bristleback doesn’t work as a sacrificial offlaner because he needs farm.

Mid & Late Game: Get your core items. Control Roshan - you can get Rosh fast because of Goo and you are good at Rosh fights because they are cluttered and your Quills will hit a lot of people. Force 5-man engagements and push down towers. Your best timing is in the mid game when the enemy carries don’t have enough damage (or Silver Edge) to kill you fast enough. Nonetheless, don’t push if you are not sure you can win the fight – it is easy to throw your advantage away by doing this and Bristle is terrible at playing from behind. You are not bad late game if you have enough items so you can afford to be patient.

Authors

Pittner "bOne7" Armand

Endorsement & Info

bOne7 is a professional Dota 2 player playing primarily in the offlane position.

He rose to fame by being part of the legendary C9 lineup that made the most 2nd place tournament runs in premier events in the history of Dota. A TI veteran, bOne7 is without a doubt one of the most creative players out there and a great guy to learn from.

Nikolay "CTOMAHEH1" Kalchev

Info & Editing

CTOMAHEH1 started his pro career as a support in Basically Unknown together with Mind Control. Since then he has consistently been playing on the European T2 scene, most recently on Unchained Esports.

His highest placement on the EU ladder is top 100 - he plays all roles (mainly support), which is untypical for high-ranking players and shows his great versatility and understanding of the game.

Martin "BRING IT ON" Slavov

Writing & Info

Martin has lots of experience writing about Dota and he is no pushover in the actual game - a Divine III player, Martin plays mid and carry heroes on a very high level.

He has been playing Dota since Guinsoo's Dota Allstars (more than 12 years) and he loves thinking about new builds and strategies.

Kyril "MrNiceGuy" Kotashev

PM & Editing

Esports and gaming enthusiast since forever and founder of Dotahaven.

Has been playing Dota since 2005 (5.84). An Ancient I player in Dota 2.

Bristleback

Bristleback is very, very tough - perhaps the hardest hero to kill in the entire game when he has his core items. He’s also able to deal serious damage in fights to multiple enemies, provided the fight lasts long enough.

Bristle is, however, a bit one dimensional. He is terrible at ganking or split-pushing, so he relies only on winning 5-man fights. Bristle is a snowball hero – with a great early and mid game, you can easily become unkillable (you can even fountain dive: Bristle is one of the best heroes to do that, be we don’t endorse this behavior). If you have a bad start, however, and you cannot win 5-man fights, you have a problem on your hands.

Stats

Level 1

Level 15

Level 25

STR

22

High

57

Medium

82

High

AGI

17

Medium

42

Medium

60

Medium

INT

14

Very Low

53

High

81

High

Attack

44-54

Low

79-89

Low

104-114

Low

Armor

2.72

Medium

6.752

Medium

9.632

Medium

Resistance

25

Medium

28

Medium

30

Medium

HP

695

Very High

1483

High

2045

High

MP

243

Very Low

711

High

1047

High

MS

287

Low

291

Low

293

Low

STRENGHTS

MAJOR:

Walking tank:
Did we mention he’s tough? Well, thank’s to the skill he’s named after, he is. Unless the enemies have direct counters against him, the hero can just tank 5 heroes for an almost insulting amount of time.

Good in prolonged fights: Thanks to the stacking Quill Spray damage, Bristle is able to deal large amounts of sustainable AoE physical damage in fights. The longer a fight goes, the stronger Bristle becomes.

MINOR:

Not very farm dependent but scales well with items: Aside from a few small core items, the hero can work pretty effectively without a lot of farm. He can still benefit from farm, which means he is useful from early to late game.

No downtime: Unlike many other heroes, Bristle does not depend on long cooldowns at all and can fight at any stage of the game.

Creates space in fights: Bristle is the very definition of a space creator, he’s literally running at the enemies in every single fight and draws attention with the increasing Quills damage.

WEAKNESSES

MAJOR:

Mana issues early on: Without mana, you’re just a big melee creep. In the early game, you want to spam Quill Spray a lot, but you’re limited by the low mana pool and regen. That also makes mana burners very effective against Bristle.

Bad stats: We’re talking about low STR, STR gain, AGI, AGI gain, INT, Base Attack Time and starting speed. In fact, the only good thing is high INT gain. As a result, the hero hits slow, doesn’t have much HP and Armor and relies on his abilities and some core items to be effective.

MINOR:

Not effective against high armor heroes: Bristle deals only physical damage and his source of armor reduction is pretty weak, which means his DPS is reduced significantly by armor. The good thing is that the enemy team can’t have only high-armor heroes.

No disables, No nukes: Bristleback lacks any form of immediate threat to the enemy. His damage increases gradually with time/stacks, as does his disable - Nasal Goo’s slow.

Slow Farm: Quill Spray is not very effective for farming creeps as it takes time to build-up and the hero is rather bad in hitting creeps and neutrals. He can, however, farm Ancient stacks efficiently.

Replays

Team Secret vs Pain Gaming, PGL BUCHAREST MAJOR 2018

MATCH ID 3766752458
Replay:

A flawless game on Bristle by Fata. Secret know that pain are going to pressure their safe lane with Chen. In order to deal with this they swap the alnes of Ace and Fata – the PL goes to the offlane with the supports, while Fata goes to the safe lane where he will be able to get farm despite Chen’s presence. The plan works out well as both Ace and Fata have very good levels of farm on the 10^th minute mark.

Fata goes for a Greaves build in order dispel Slardar’s ultimate, which otherwise would make him much squishier.

Drafting

Bristleback plays as a space creator in fights, so you want to play with heroes who need space – ranged damage dealers, for example. He also has no disables, so he works well with heroes who do have some, especially spammable disable spells – huge CD disables don’t work that well for him since he needs a bit of time to accumulate stacks for damage.

Moreover, since he loves long fights, he works great in lineups that can prolong fights – usually with sources of HP and Mana sustain.

He can be strong at any stage of the game, so you don’t have to worry about having hard carries or an early push lineup. Nonetheless, he doesn’t play well from behind, so don’t pick him with heroes who are likely to lose the early-mid game.

Positions

Offlane Semi-carry

Bristle is usually played on the offlane. He is strong there mainly because of the Quill Spray spam which allows him to pressure the opponents forcing them to help their carry rather than focusing on the other lanes. The offlane also offers him solo experience and he wants to reach level 9-10 as soon as possible.

Safe/mid lane carry

The hero can also be played as a carry on the safe lane or even mid. The goal here is to farm his core items easier so he can fight as soon as possible. After the laning stage, the strategy is to group up with your team and push or force fights using your resilience to outlast the enemy.

Synergy

Good friends to have are:

HP sustain: Omni, Wisp, Dazzle, Abbadon

The longer you survive, the more damage you will be able to deal in fights. You are extremely tanky anyway, these heroes could make you unkillable and allow you to own the mid game.

Any disablers: Shaker, Kunkka, Tusk, Lion, Rhasta

You just want to have a lot of disables or slows on your team so you can execute your role more effectively – to stick to the enemies and deal enough damage to break their formation and force them to somehow deal with you.

Mana givers: CM, KOTL, OD, Wisp, Arcane Boots

Those heroes help you deal with your mana issues early on allowing you to spam Quill Sprays more than usual.

KotL’s Chakra is insane because it lowers your cooldown on the next spell which allows you to cast 2 Quill Sprays instantly, while Io gives you not only mana but also HP and movement speed, making the two of you an extremely scary combo, especially in the early game.

Counters

Strong Against:

Weak laners: Slark, Rubick, Spectre, Drow Ranger, Phantom Assassin, CM

As an offlane Bristle, you just love playing against squishy and slow carries and supports who don’t deal much damage. If they have a weak safe lane that can’t deal with you in the first few levels, you can completely run them over.

Low damage lineups: Besides weak laners, Bristle is also very strong against drafts that don’t deal enough damage in the early-mid game for the same reason. If you cannot threaten to bring Bristle down, he will get Roshan and he will come knocking at your base’s doors at the 20-25^th minute mark.

Low armor cores: Lycan, Visage, Centaur

Bristle deals a lot of physical damage and has an armor reduction mechanic, which logically makes him good against cores with low armor. Lycan and Visage are even more affected as Bristle can also easily kill their summons with his AoE damage.

Weak Against:

Mana drain: Lion, Invoker, OD, KOTL, Anti-mage, Diffusal Blade

You desperately need mana to stay relevant, especially in the early game. It the enemies manage to drain your mana on the lane, you’re basically an oversized melee creep.

OD's mana drain isn't as powerful as the others but he deals a lot of pure damage, which could be a problem as the armor and magic resistance items you build don't help you against it.

Break: Shadow Demon, Viper, Doom, Silver Edge

If someone disables you and Viper uses Nethertoxin on top of you, it’s extremely easy to kill you, because he breaks your passive damage reduction and Quill Spray.

Silver Edge is just as much of a threat: for example, even though Slark is terrible against you in the lane, once he gets a Silver Edge he becomes the bane of your existence.

Shadow Demon and Doom need Aghanim’s Scepter for their ultimates to break so they’re not that huge of a threat.

More specific counters:

Legion Commander forces you to face her for a very long time, which gives her team a big timing window to kill you. Axe does the same thing but for a shorter duration, so he’s less of a problem.

Necro has abilities that deal % based damage and the aura is not reduced by Bristleback at all.

Void stops your cooldowns for up to 12 seconds with Time Dilation which is horrible for you, as you want to spam spells to deal damage.

Razor can drain your damage, forcing you to run away to break the link which is pretty much the opposite of what you want to be doing in a fight.

PL’s Doppleganker dispels your Quill stacks so he’s hard to pressure on the lane. Even more importantly, he always builds Diffusal Blade as a first item – it’s hard for him to kill you especially when you have Vanguard, but he can quickly make you useless in fights by draining your mana.

Skills

Covers a target in snot, causing it to have reduced armor and movement speed. Multiple casts stack and refresh the duration.

STATS

Cast Animation: 0.3+0

Cast Range: 600

Radius: 0

Max Stacks: 4

Base Armor Reduction: 2

Armor Reduction per Stack: 1.4/1.8/2.2/2.6

Base Move Speed Slow: 20%

Move Speed Slow per Stack: 3%/6%/9%/12%

Hero Duration: 5

Creep Duration: 10

CD: 1.5

Mana: 12/16/20/24

Aghanim`s Scepter

Viscous Nasal Goo becomes a no target area of effect ability, applying to all enemies within range.

Viscous Nasal Goo

Mechanics:

The goo travels at a speed of 1000.
The Aghanim's Scepter upgraded version still uses the same cast time and disjointable projectiles.
Does not pierce spell immunity. Slow and armor reduction persist if debuff was placed before spell immunity and when not dispelled.

Uses and tips:

The base move speed slow of 20% makes the ability a great value point in the early levels, however, it still uses too much mana to constantly use, so most players skip it.

Once you have enough mana to spam it, use it as much as possible to stack the armor reduction/slow.

Unlike Quill Spray and Warpath, Nasal Goo IS refreshed every time you cast it on the same enemy, upgrading the debuff.

Sprays enemy units with quills dealing damage in an area of effect around Bristleback. Deals bonus damage for every time a unit was hit by Quill Spray in the last 14 seconds.

STATS

Cast Animation: 0+0

Radius: 700

Base Damage: 20/40/60/80

Stack Damage: 30/32/34/36

Damage Cap: 550

Stack Duration: 14

CD: 3

Mana: 35

Quill Spray

Mechanics:

The quills spread at a speed of 2400 and take 0.29 seconds to reach maximum range.
The stacks' durations are independent of each other. Successive casts do not refresh previous stacks' durations.
With the normal CD and stack duration, it can be stacked up to 5 times. To reach the cap, additional procs from Bristleback are required.

Uses and tips:

This is your main weapon, you can use it to harass, last hit, clear ancients, etc.

You should always try to stack it (like Batrider’s Napalm for example) – if an enemy on the lane is hit by 2-3 stacks and doesn’t back away to clear the stacks you can attempt to dive him under tower as the stacks start dealing a lot of damage. Make sure you have enough mana and HP do make such aggressive plays.

Bristleback takes less damage if hit on the sides or rear. If Bristleback takes 210 damage from the rear, he releases a Quill Spray of the current level.

STATS

Rear Angle: 70°

Side Angle: 110°

Rear Damage Reduction: 16%/24%/32%/40%

Side Damage Reduction: 8%/12%/16%/20%

Damage Threshold: 210

Bristleback

Mechanics:

Bristleback takes less damage from all damage types except damage flagged as HP Removal.

Checks the damage source's current position and compares it to Bristleback's facing angle on each damage instance - This means on e.g. damage over time effects, damage of an instance is only reduced when within the right angle.

Passive Quill Sprays procs when Bristleback's back (not sides) collectively takes 210 damage (after all reductions).

The damage counter has no time limit. It only resets once a passive spray occurs.

Uses and tips:

This is your main survival tool. In theory, you always want to turn your back to enemies when they’re focusing you-you take less damage and you deal Quill damage from the procs.

Although not very useful for farming, you can use it to clear out ancient stacks, along with Quill Spray.

Bristleback works himself up into a fury every time he casts a spell, increasing his movement speed and damage.

STATS

Max Stacks: 5/7/9

Attack Damage Bonus per Stack: 18/24/30

Move Speed Bonus per Stack: 3%/4%/5%

Stack Duration: 14

Warpath

Mechanics:

Using items does not trigger Warpath.

Stacks up to 5/7/9 times, meaning it can give at most 90/168/270 (190/308/450 with talent) attack damage and 15%/28%/45% movement speed.

Each stack has its own duration, successive spell casts do not refresh the duration of previous stacks.

Uses and tips:

It synergizes well with the Nasal Goo’s armor reduction, so you deal even more physical damage.

Make sure you enter a fight with at least a few accumulated stacks. When you have the needed mana sustain you need to use Quill Spray every once in a while even when you are not fighting and farming, to keep your MS and damage high. This, of course, does not apply for the early game, when each drop of mana is precious.

Visualization of the Bristleback damage angles:

Skill Builds

Standard Quill Spray Build

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

18

20

25

pros: high survivability; high damage potential

cons: low control

Quill Spray is your source of everything – harass, kills, stacks, etc. No contest here, we always max this one.

Bristleback is our second choice as it makes the hero extremely fat (and they named the hero after the ability, so it must be good).

As we mentioned earlier, you might want to invest 1 point in Nasal Goo at some point if you fight a lot and you want a slow. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to spam it, but you can use it as a one-time 23% slow. If you want it, just get it at level 4 instead of Bristleback and after that proceed as usual.

Warpath doesn’t cost you anything to use, so no reason to skip it at any level.

Talents

+30 Warpath Damage Per Stack

25

15% Spell Lifesteal

+25 Quill Stack Damage

20

+20 Health Regen

+6 Max Goo Stacks

15

+250 Health

+2 Mana Regen

10

+20 Movement Speed

Level 10: Definitely the mana regen here, it’s just too good at level 10.

Level 15: In order to benefit from the Goo stacks, you need to cast it on the same enemy more than 4 times, which is something very rare. On the other hand, +250 HP is always valuable.

Level 20: A quick math check shows us that the total damage from 5 stacks is 400 vs 650 with talent. The difference is not that significant but it’s still an option. The regen is also not game-breaking but it is pretty good if you have high HP.

Level 25: The Warpath damage is a 100% increase over level 3 Warpath – this is pretty good if you’re using a right-click build with Assault, Solar Crest, S&Y, etc. On the other hand, if you’re using a Radiance + defensive items build you’d rather have the spell lifesteal.

Item Builds

Bristleback has a very versatile item build. You can go for almost any item in the game and still be useful. The most common strategy is to build a cheap defensive item (usually Vanguard, Hood or even both) and then try to figure out what would be best in the specific situation. Besides more survivability, you also need some mana sustain to keep spamming your abilities. Nonetheless, even if your build doesn’t include mana sustain items, a couple of Clarities could solve your problem.

Radiance Build

How do you deal damage in Dota while keeping your back turned to the enemy?

By buying Radiance. The Radiance Burn makes your sustained AoE damage potential even stronger. This is great both for fighting and for farming. Moreover, it deals magical damage, which is good in case the enemy team stacks armor against you.

Don’t rush the Radiance on Bristle – you need your core survivability item first.

In the late game your options are open but Shiva and Octarine synergize very well with Radiance as they increase your survivability and AoE damage potential even more.

Starting items

Early game

Mid game

Late game

Phase Boots: the standard boots choice for BB because he uses very well all bonuses. The MS burst helps him chase down enemies with Quill Spray, while the armor makes him tankier.

Magic Wand: Magic Wand is always good against some spammable heroes in the lane( PA, Sky).

Vanguard: a very effective survivability item, also works synergizes well with the Bristleback ability. It allows you to farm ancient stacks easily. Build it when the enemy has more physical damage. It can also be upgraded to Crimson Guard which is great in certain situations where the enemies have a lot of minions or if their damage is low and attack speed is high (for example it’s good against Troll, but bad against Tiny). It also works on buildings so it’s very good against heroes like Lycan who want to push early on.

Clarity: Very important for mana sustain especially if you don`t have Soul Ring. You cannot use it in fights, but it helps you to farm jungle/lanes much more efficiently.

Crimson Guard: If you are going for Vanguard, Crimson might be a very good choice to go after. It protects your whole team from physical damage and gives some additional armor, which you usually need.

Radiance: a good ‘tank’ in Dota needs to have 2 qualities. First – to be tanky; second – to be able to draw the attention of the enemies. Bristle is an extremely tanky hero. What he lacks in the mid/late game is a way to draw the attention of the enemies – if they build a lot of armor they can simply ignore you in fights and kill your team instead. Radiance allows you to deal more damage in the fights so the enemies can’t afford to ignore you. It’s particularly good against the heroes with high armor as it deals magical damage. It also helps you to farm more. Take a note that Radiance is not 100% mandatory in this build, it can be hard to farm and your teammates might need the space more than you. If your teammates need you to build more supporting items for them (like Crimson, Pipe, Halberd, etc.) feel free to skip it.

Shiva's Guard: a great defensive item and the attack slow aura is noticeable in team-fights. The active helps you stick to enemies easier.

Octarine Core: it reduces the Quill Spray cooldown by 0.75s and it provides a lot of survivability in the form of raw HP as well as spell lifesteal.

Heart of Tarrasque: It makes you almost immortal and allows you to heal up very fast after a fight. You can even disengage, heal up and re-enter the fight if it is going on for very long.

Physical Damage Build

A more aggressive approach to the hero (while still maintaining high armor and average HP) – this build is good against heroes with low armor or low mobility, it makes you more mobile and the armor reducing items synergize with Quill Spray and Warpath. If the game goes late, the Warpath talent at level 25 is also huge.

This build, however, relies on you having a good early game – if you think the game is going bad you can still switch to the more defensive build (it also offers more support to your teammates). The good thing is that you have time until completing the Solar Crest to decide which build would be more appropriate for the game.

Take a note that you can still build all the defensive items from the other build if you feel you need them. Vanguard, in particular, can be upgraded into Abyssal Blade later on, so it wouldn’t disrupt the idea of the build.

Starting items

Early game

Mid game

Late game

Power Treads: they make you tankier and give you the option to switch to INT to reduce your mana problems when farming.

Raindrops: you want to buy those as soon as possible for the cheap mana regen. They can also save your life on the offlane.

Magic Wand: Magic Wand is always good against some spammable heroes in the lane( PA, Sky).

Medallion of Courage: Generally, you are going for Medallion if you want to upgrade it later to Solar Crest. It can be very good early on as it gives you more survavability and more kill potential.

Sange and Yasha: Sange and Yasha gives you both more killing potential and survivability.

Solar Chrest: Upgraded Medallion and another good option for survivability early on which also has an offensive use to further increase your physical damage.

Assault Cuirass: One of the best late game items for Bristle if you have problems with high Physical damage enemies.

Abyssal blade: Abyssal blade goes thru magic immunity (BKB, Rage) which can allow you to lock down a target late game and kill him.

Nullifier: Nullifier increases your Damage, but most importantly can Mute enemies and don`t allow them to use items.

Other items

Early & Mid Game

Late game

Soul Ring: a way to deal with your mana issues. As the mana only lasts 10 seconds, you want to have that value point in Nasal Goo that we talked about earlier. You can basically cast 2x Goo and 3x Quill Spray for free.

Vlads is a great early-mid game 5-man Dota item. It also gives you valuable mana regen and also helps you sustain your HP when farming camps. If noone else is getting it on your team, you should probably go for it.

Arcane Boots: they solve your mana problem in the early game but are inferior to PBs in terms of survivability and right-click DPS. You only want to build Arcanes when you intend to upgrade them to Guardian Greaves.

Drums of Endurance: Gives you a little bit of everything you need early on - HP, Mana, MS.

Hood of Defiance: an early alternative to Vanguard for when the enemies have more magical damage. You can still build both Vanguard and Hood if you feel you need them.

Pipe of insight: The upgrade to Pipe offers a lot of survivability to your teammates and i it is very good if opponents have AoE abilities.

Blademail: it’s not a bad item but it has one major flaw – if the enemies don’t focus you, it’s not that effective, and enemies don’t usually want to hit you in the early/mid game. So build it only if you feel you can return some damage, for example against heroes with a lot of AoE.

Spirit Vessel: it’s easy to build because it has a lot of small and useful parts. Urn is useful in the early game and the Spirit Vessel’s active ability is pretty good when you need to deal with heroes with a lot of heal or regen.

Heaven's Halberd: the Disarm ability is great against heroes who deal a lot of physical damage like Ursa, TA, Clinkz (against those heroes it’s almost mandatory). It also offers great survivability overall.

Guardian Greaves: they make you even more survivable and could save your squishier teammates from bad situations. The dispel is also useful if you are playing versus annoying slows and silences..

Lotus Orb: gives a decent amount of armor and mana and also allows you to save teammates with the active ability.

Mjollnir: You will not be the first target most of the times, but if the enemy team tries to kill you, you can return a lot of damage with the active effect on you.

Aghanim's Scepter: Situational item, but if you can sustain the mana that you will need, you might go for it.

Early Game

As a safe/mid laner, Bristle’s game is much like any other carry hero’s – you just want to farm and eventually harass/kill the enemy if you catch him out of position or your support ganks.

The offlane is more tricky as you have to play against 2, sometimes 3 heroes. It’s important that you assess the situation. If you’re playing against strong laners, you have to be very passive and just leach experience. If the enemies have weak lane supports (like Earthshaker, Rubick) or they leave their carry alone, you can pressure them to some extent.

Farming:

As an offlaner, you probably won’t be allowed to farm creeps too much. If you can leech experience – it’s fine, stay on the lane. Bristle wants to get as much experience as possible early on, you don’t want to get behind the enemy carry with levels or he’ll be able to control the lane alone if he gets a big advantage.

You could also use hit + Quill Spray to last hit better if you’re contested.

In case you’re being zoned on the offlane, you can stack your ancients to farm later with Quill Spray. As Dire, you can only stack one camp at a time, however, as a Radiant, there’s a spot where you can stack the medium camp + ancient camp with quills which could give you a huge boost of gold and experience. See the picture for the exact spot:

Kill Potential & Harassing:

Carry:

As a carry, you want to harass the enemy, but also need to keep your creep equilibrium. So if you want to harass the enemy better don’t stay close to the creep wave when you’re hitting or using Quill Spray.

The first 2-3 Quill Sprays do not deal that much damage, so you want to start spamming it only if you plan to make 4 or more stacks. The general strategy is to stack it a couple of times and then see what the enemy does. If he instantly runs back to wait for the stacks to expire, don’t do anything. If he’s greedy and stays on the lane, you can start chasing him and spam quills. If a teammate comes to gank, you can easily make a kill.

Offlane:

As an offlaner, you pretty much do the same things, but you need to play much more cautiously. If the enemies have slows or disables, they won’t allow you to chase them while spamming Quill Spray, so there’s no point to chase. Most kills in the offlane with Bristle happen on over-aggressive slow supports (CM, AA, etc.) – if they get too many Quill stacks without retreating, you can chase for the kill.

You can pressure their carry if he’s left alone – a couple of quill stacks can make him retreat and miss some last hits.

Surviving:

In the offlane, what you can achieve depends mostly on what your enemies allow you to do. They can park 3 heroes in their safe lane and you won’t be able to do anything. Pretty much any 3 heroes will destroy you. However, in that situation, they can’t help the other 2 lanes.

So, you want to stay aggressively only if you’re up against the carry 1v1 or 1v2 (only against a weak lane support).

If you see a third hero joining the party, just back off, maybe stack the ancients if you can’t get close to the experience range.

Try to ask your teammates for a ward so you can see the enemy supports’ rotations.

In fights, you don’t deal that much right click damage, you just want to stack Quill Sprays. If the enemy is running you can chase them, but if they decide to man-fight you, better turn your back to them.

Timings & Rotations:

On the safe or mid lane, you want to farm until you have level 8-9 with Vanguard/Solar/Hood (or whatever else you decided to build first). At this point, Bristle is very hard to kill and as a safe/mid laner, you’re supposed to be at least in the top 4 net worth, so you can join fights. You’re not really scared of anything if you have backup from your team. You want to participate in every single fight.

As an offlaner, you need a bit more time to get your levels and some items. You can’t rotate effectively, but you can call your teammates to fight on your lane. That will pressure the enemy carry and if you win a fight, you can easily claim his tower as well.

Offlane Priorities:

The playstyle is like that of any other offlaner – you want to get levels. If the enemies focus on that lane, be cautious and don’t risk. If they focus more on the other lanes, you can play aggressively.

Stay Alive

Get levels if possible, otherwise stack ancients

Pressure the enemy if you’re having a good lane

Video Example:

In this replay, you can see how an offlane Bristle works.

He gets first blood with his team, so he’s able to start the lane with free boots. However, he’s up against Monkey + Shadow Shaman, which is a very tough lane. Shadow Shaman is zoning him almost all the time in the early levels.

Ogre is helping the mid lane, however, so Bristle manages to get experience and doesn’t fall behind the Monkey King in terms of levels.

Follow how he uses Quill Spray to get last hits occasionally.

The laning stage is very passive, but that’s how the hero works. You’re not supposed to be doing anything flashy unless the enemies make a mistake, so just get experience and if possible – creeps.

At 6.45 the enemies try to gank him, but he’s already level 5 and you can see just how much damage can Bristle dish out at this point, killing all 3 heroes who underestimated his Bristleback ability.

You basically always want the fights to happen on the offlane, so you don’t have to rotate – Bristle is really bad at those early rotations as he’s not very mobile and has no control.

Safe & Mid Lane Priorities:

Similar to most other cores - you want to passively farm until you have your core items (PT, Wand, Vanguard for example). However, after that, you want to start actively looking for fights, usually on the offlane, because it offers more space to chase enemies and you can pressure the enemy carry.

Farm core items

Harass and pressure your lane opponents

Start fighting after you have the core items

Mid and Late game

Bristle is not very tactically versatile, which means it’s pretty obvious what he should be doing in the mid and late game. He is a 5-man hero and his first priority is to fight with his team. Try to claim objectives with your allies to restrict the space on the map for your opponents and to dominate the mid game.

At the same time, it is important not to fall behind in terms of farm. Your major strength is that you are very hard to kill. If you don’t have enough items, enemy carries will start dealing too much damage to you, which is a very bad position to be in as Bristle. This doesn’t mean passively farming – it means using efficiently the map control you win from the enemy team by claiming the resources of the area you are in. For example, while trying to take the enemy safe lane towers, make sure to also farm the enemy jungle.

Fight with your team and claim objectives;

Don’t fall behind in farm;

Roshan;

Timings:

In the mid/late game, you can basically join every single fight. You don’t have a downtime where you have to wait for long cooldowns of ultimate or BKB.

The only situation where you want to farm is if you’re waiting for your teammates to finish their items or you’re close to Radiance and you need to finish it.

You want to be looking for team fights and objectives after them – towers and Roshan. You are strongest in the mid game, so make sure you use this timing to get map control and objectives.

Comeback Potential:

Playing from behind with Bristleback is very hard as the hero farms very slowly and doesn’t have any nukes or disables. This, unfortunately, means that you only have one playstyle in a fight – you have to stick to the enemy heroes and if you’re too weak to tank them, that’s really bad news.

Your hope is to drag the game to the later stages where you manage to get some defensive/supportive items and your carry/mid gets farm. The Bristleback ability scales very well into the late game (being % based) so you can be pretty hard to kill even if the enemies have a lot of items.

Team Fights:

The team fights with Bristle are pretty straightforward. You don’t necessarily have to be the first one going in as you have no way to initiate, but you always want to be in the middle of the fight. Your damage increases over time, so you want the fights to be as long as possible.

Spam your abilities as much as possible to trigger Warpath, which makes you faster and stronger.

If the enemies are not focusing you, hit them and stack Nasal Goo and Quill Spray.

If they start focusing you, turn your back to them and just spam Quills (unless there’s an enemy in the other direction on whom you can use Goo). Don’t man-fight cores – your damage reduction comes from your back and man-fighting and getting disabled and nuked is how you can easily die in fights.

You also want to be focusing low armor heroes, mostly supports or squishy cores to force them to change their position (wasting time and dealing less damage to your team).

This is pretty much the ideal position you want to find yourself in as Bristle – pushing the enemy base in the mid game while the enemy team focuses most of their abilities on you, which gives your team a lot of freedom to fight.

This is often done by simply hitting the tower, but this usually means you will have to take a fight inside the enemy base. In this example, Fata baits the enemy team to focus him and overextend. They believe he is far away from his team and jump on him, but his tankiness buys the rest of Secret more than enough time to get to him and turn the fight. In pubs such baits are riskier – make sure to communicate your intentions with your team to make sure they have your back.

Pushing:

5-man Pushing:

Bristle is good at sieging as you can park him on the enemy high ground and hit the tower with your ranged heroes. If you get focused, you can just turn your back to the enemies.

Split Pushing:

The hero is garbage at split-pushing as you don’t deal much physical damage to towers and you’re having a hard time clearing creep waves fast enough. It’s much better to fight with your team unless you’re playing at a massive disadvantage and you’re split-pushing because you have no other option.

Ganking:

Bristle is pretty much one of the worst heroes for ganking. If your teammates want to just gank someone, you’d better use the space to farm.

However, if your team is trying to pick someone off in order to push a tower or take Rosh, you have to be there. A gank in the later stages of the game can also easily turn into a team-fight so you don’t want to leave your team.