Introduction
“We must meet this threat head-on!”
Ursa is a melee agility carry who is well known for his ability to solo Roshan as soon as he has a source of life steal (even at level 1!) and for being able to deal huge amounts of burst physical damage, making him a fearsome snowball carry.
Although a common pick in non-competitive Dota, where he is often played as a jungler, he is also occasionally played in competitive Dota, most notably by the pro player Mushi. He is viable as a safe lane farmer, a jungler, and as an aggressive laner if paired with a stunner.
You can find our complete character profile for Ursa here.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Amazing burst physical damage
- Can solo Roshan very early on
- Amazing in level 1 Roshan line-ups
- Quite tanky
- Can jungle or farm the lane
- Great snowball carry
Cons
- Needs Vladmir’s Offering or some other source of life steal in order to do Roshan
- Lacks mobility (requires a mobility item to be truly effective)
- Reliant on his abilities to kill enemy heroes
- Mana issues
- Somewhat trails off in the late game
Item Build
Starting Items
An all-round good starting build on Ursa, regardless of whether you’re laning or jungling (either way, his item progression is pretty much the same), is the following:
- A set of Tangos, a Stout Shield, a Ring of Protection, and an Iron Branch.
Important: Do not get a Quelling Blade on Ursa, like you would most melee farming carries and junglers. The bonus damage to creeps from Quelling Blade does not stack with Ursa’s Fury Swipes.
Core Items
Your goal in the early stages of the game is to get your two key core items – Phase Boots and Vladmir’s Offering – up and running as quickly as possible.
Quickly upgrade an Iron Branches you have into a Magic Wand if you’re laning, and then go straight to Phase Boots, which will give you some much-needed mobility, allowing you to chase down heroes and avoid body/creep blocking.
Vladmir’s Offering gives you some much-needed lifesteal, which allows you to jungle with ease. It’s also very easy to build into. Once you have Vladmir’s Offering, and so long as you also have at least one point in Fury Swipes (which you most definitely should!!), you can solo Roshan straight away.
A good tip is to buy a Smoke of Deceit after you’ve bought your Vladmir’s Offering. Smoke yourself up inside your own territory where you know there are no enemy wards and then go straight to Roshan and kill him. This way, you will not be spotted entering the pit by any enemy wards that may be looking out for an early Roshan attempt.
Initiation Item
Once you have your core you’re a serious threat on the battlefield… but only if you can actually get in range to dish out your physical damage. One of Ursa’s major weaknesses is his lack of mobility or lockdown. It’s quite easy to be kited at this stage of the game and you may struggle to make your impact felt.
This is why an initiation item is core on Ursa as well. With it, you’ll be able to close that frustrating gap between yourself and the target, allowing you to actually dish out the incredible physical burst damage you’re capable of.
Top of the recommendation list of mobility items is Blink Dagger. This gives you superior positioning capability, ensuring you can always get right into the face of your opponent, at which point you can unleash your damage combo (a fairly standard combo is: Enrage > Overpower > Blink > Attack > Earthshock > Attack > Overpower > Attack).
The downside of Blink is that that is all it gives you – mobility. It’s expensive, has no components (making its build up expensive too), cannot be used defensively unless you can avoid being attacked by juking, and gives you no damage or stats of any description). You’re buying it solely for the superior positioning it gives you.
That is why Shadow Blade is a popular alternative to Blink Dagger. The upside of Shadow Blade is that it gives you stats (attack speed and additional damage), and it can double up as an escape mechanism thanks to the invisibility active.
But Shadow Blade is an inferior positioning tool. You will not be able to guarantee that you can initiate on your target, and it is hard countered by True Sight (Sentry Wards, Dust, Gem). If you do manage to go undetected and can close the gap to your target in time then you will deal significantly more damage than if you went for the Blink option, but the higher up the matchmaking rankings you go the less viable Shadow Blade becomes, and if it does get countered by vision then it becomes the poorer investment.
Either one is fine, and to some extent it comes down to personal preference, but most guides (including this one) will recommend Blink Dagger.
Luxury Items
By now you should have an initiation tool, a set of Boots, a Vladmir’s Offering, and possibly a Magic Wand. At this stage of the game you are at the height of your power. Go ganking, get involved in fights, and try to steamroll your team to victory. If the game goes on too much longer then you risk being eclipsed by harder carries (assuming the enemy team has one), so you need to make your presence truly felt using the combo noted above (or a variation on it).
There are really two primary luxury items you can start working towards now you have your true core items. One is a Skull Basher (which will later be upgraded into an Abyssal Blade), and the other is a Black King Bar.
Skull Basher will give you some damage and a nice strength boost, which will augment your health pool and increase your damage via your ultimate, Enrage. But the primary reason for purchasing a Basher is for the passive chance to stun through Spell Immunity for 1.4 seconds. This gives you lockdown your sorely lack otherwise, having to rely solely on your teammates for lockdown or from the slow of your Earthshock ability.
It’s well worth upgrading into an Abyssal Blade too, as that not only increases your damage significantly it, it also gives you a secondary, active stun that lasts for 2 seconds and also goes through Spell Immunity. The only downside (aside from the huge cost!) is that it costs 150 mana to use. Ursa has such a limited mana pool that it’s all too easy to have less than 150 mana left over, so try to remember to save 150 in reserve.
Black King Bar - If the enemy team is able to lock you down hard then consider going Black King Bar as your first luxury item in order to be able to actually get stuck into the fights and not stun-locked to irrelevancy. It naturally makes you tankier as well, which also increases the damage buff provided by your ultimate.
Post-Luxury Extensions
You only really have room for one more item, even if you swap out your Phase Boots in the super late game for Boots of Travel. But there are plenty of options for that 6th item slot:
Scythe of Vyse – Not as odd an item choice as it might seem at first. Ursa has mana problems, doubly so once he gets an Abyssal Blade because the active is so expensive to use. Scythe fixes that issue and at the same time gives you yet another disable, thus increasing your chances of being able to pull of your combo.
Heart of Tarrasque – Will give you incredible tankability, health regeneration, and a decent damage boost via your ultimate.
Monkey King Bar – More direct damage, and most importantly True Strike, which will allow you to continue shredding through any agility carries which opt for Butterfly, or those with built-in evasion like Phantom Assassin.
Daedalus – The other high damage item; this time you swap out True Strike and some attack speed for a critical damage chance.
Assault Cuirass – A no-brainer if no one else on your team is building into it/can afford it. AC is not just the defensive item it looks to be on paper, although it will make you tankier. The minus armour reduction means you'll hit that much harder in the late game, and all three auras benefit your team. The attack speed benefits will also increase the damage output of your Fury Swipes.
There may be a hero in your line-up which typically picks up Assault Cuirass much earlier in their item progression than you, which is fine, but it’s strongly recommend as your 6th item if not.
6.81 - Ursa's Attack Modifier Options
The recent patch 6.81 has changed Ursa's mid-to-late game considerably. He now has access to a whole new array of viable items because Fury Swipes is no longer classed as a Unique Attack Modifier. This means it stacks with attack modifier items that were reviously no-go areas for Ursa. Here are some of the more popular options (remember you should only purchase one!):
Eye of Skadi -The stat-heavy option. Skadi's going to give him a lot of survivability whilst the slow will make it much easier to keep on top of enemies if your burst combo fails to insta-kill them.
Diffusal Blade -One that'll probably be overlooked a fair bit in public games, but which actually has a lot of potential. Huge mana burn from your burst physical attacks and a purge to prevent enemies from kiting you.
Mjollnir -For huge attack speed outside of your burst combo and Static Charge & Chain Lightning - they will hurt enemies.
Desolator - This is expected to be the most popular choice in public matchmaking. Ursa will be able to blow up enemy heroes with his burst physical combo even more effectively once he has access to Desolator's minus armour.
Satanic - As an alternative to a Heart in the late game this has a heck of a lot to recommend it - strength to boost your ultimate, damage, armour, and crazy life steal capacity.
Skill Build
I’ve listed two different skill builds for Ursa below. The first one is for jungle Ursa, which is by far the more common in public matchmaking. The second is for a laning Ursa.
Jungle Ursa
Fury Swipes is what allows Ursa to Jungle effectively (and also what allows him to kill Roshan at such an early level). With Fury Swipes, each consecutive hit on a single target increases the damage dealt to said target, making even the hardiest of creeps easy to take down quite quickly. As such, you want to prioritise Fury Swipes if you’re jungling.
You should grab value points in both of your other abilities (a 1-1-2 build), before focussing on maxing Overpower second of all. Earthshock is maxed last; the AoE slow is useful for ganking and early engagements, and that’s why a value point should always be put into it in my opinion, but the bonus slow and damage from extra points isn’t enough to make it worth prioritising over your other abilities if you’re jungling.
Finally, your ultimate, Enrage, is always skilled (so levels 6, 11 and 16). This converts 5/6/7% of your current health into bonus damage, so at level 1 and with 1,000 health you’ll deal an extra 50 damage for 15 seconds. Better still, there’s no mana cost, and the cooldown is relatively low (25 seconds), so you can use it liberally.
Ursa works well in the jungle, although you will struggle to keep your health topped up until you get your Vladmir’s Offering, at which point you’ll no longer have any problems staying alive whilst jungling and can kill Roshan on your own.
Laning Ursa
If you’re going to be laning as Ursa you really want to team up with a lane support that has a stun, like Vengeful Spirit or Lion. If you do, you have a very potent kill lane right from the start.
Unlike a jungle Ursa, you should prioritise Overpower, rather than Fury Swipes, for two reasons. Firstly, you shouldn’t be auto-attacking the creeps anyway, so the bonus stack damage from Fury Swipes should never come into play whilst last hitting. Secondly, you’ll get more out of additional levels in Overpower when trying to kill an enemy hero.
Earthshock is also very useful in the laning stage, so make sure you invest an early point in it. You can use it to slow an enemy that is coming out of a stun, allowing yourself and your lane support(s) to get in more attacks and hinder the enemy’s retreat.
As when jungling Ursa, you also want to get your ultimate, Enrage, at every available opportunity (levels 6, 11 and 16).
So, bringing all of that together, I recommend a 1-3-1 build when laning Ursa. Value points in Fury Swipes and Earthshock mean you get the initial benefits from those abilities, and maxing Overpower first allows for the highest DPS on enemy heroes. Fury Swipes is maxed second, and Earthshock last.
| Note: you only actually need 1 point in Fury Swipes to be able to Roshan once you have your Vlad’s, so you can still Roshan as soon as you get Vlad’s with this build. |
Gameplay Tips
Overpower has a very low cooldown (10 seconds) and last for 15 seconds, so cast it before attempting a gank. That way you won’t have to cast it at the start of the actual engagement and, if it becomes an extended teamfight, you’ll be able to use it again in the middle of the fight.
| Note: Fury Swipes is no longer considered a unique attack modifier, so it will stack with items like Desolator, Diffusal, and Satanic. |
Enrage converts 5/6/7% of your current health into bonus damage, so at level 1 and with 1,000 current health you’ll deal an extra 50 damage for 15 seconds. Remember, what matters is your current health, not your max health.
Enrage has no mana cost, and the cooldown is relatively low (25 seconds), so you can use it whenever it’s off cooldown if jungling with Ursa.
As soon as you’ve finished your Vlad’s try to Roshan; the earlier you do it the more impact the extra gold and experience will have on you and the less likely the enemy team is to be scouting Roshan in anticipation of your attempt. For that reason also consider using a Smoke of Deceit on yourself before walking into the Rosh pit, so that you’re not spotted by enemy wards.
| Tip: Ursa can actually kill Roshan at level 1. If your team decides to attempt a level 1 Roshan make sure you put your first point into Fury Swipes. Also make sure you keep Fury Swipe stacks on him (i.e. you have to hit him once at least every 15 seconds, or the Fury Swipe stack will reset). |
Ursa really needs a mobility item like a Blink Dagger or Shadow Blade in order to gank and initiate. Once you have one of these, remember to cast Enrage and Overpower before initiating, so that you don’t have to waste precious attack time casting them during an actual engagement. The other benefit of doing this is that they may come off cooldown mid-way through the fight, allowing you to use them twice.
Last Updated - Patch 6.82.
