[ Updated for the Rexxar bug fixes ]
Hello it's Raptorspank or Raptor again and this is my guide on Rexxar. Since his release I've been loving the challenge and rewards that come from mastering this warrior. He's not the easiest tank to get the hang of but he offers a variety of unique advantages that make it worth while. Most people tend to think that Rexxar can't serve as his team's central tank but I hope to convince you that this isn't true, especially by the late game.


Pros
-Can easily solo any mercenary camp
-A decent amount of peel and lockdown
-Great 1v1er
-Bear has a low respawn timer
-Ranged attacks (better poke than any other tank)


Cons
-No escapes (This is mitigated by the fact that misha can follow behind and stun while you run)
-Easier to kill than warriors like Johanna, Chen and Muradin
-Weaker initiates than warriors like Diablo or Anub'arak
-Bear can be killed and if Rexxar dies, so does the bear

When do you pick Rexxar?

When you want heavy mercenary camp pressure or safe retrieval. What does the latter mean? Well when you are playing Tomb of the Spider Queen or Blackheart's Bay and you want some easy way to gain and hold onto coins or gems. Rexxar although not as tanky as the rest of his brethren from a health stand point can fulfill this goal relatively easily by using Misha to get the tokens off the ground without risking himself directly. In addition his ability to solo siege camps at level 4 and Bruisers by level 7 make him a very good pick if you are looking to control the mercenary camps around the map, denying your opponent a way back into the game if you are ahead or securing yourself a life-line if you are behind. These are the main reasons to pick Rexxar into a team composition.

Trait : Misha, Attack! ( D )
Your trait toggles whether Misha is aggressive or passive, and a key mechanic to master with Rexxar. When Misha is aggressive she will attack whatever target you attack, you can walk away and she'll stick to that target until you reach a certain distance away, at which point she will return to you. When you toggle it to passive Misha will immediately stop what she is doing and head towards Rexxar. You want to make sure to toggle it if you charge into tower range early or if you have forced the enemy laner back and you can't secure the kill.

Another important note to make with this trait, if Misha dies without Rexxar at some point then her personal Respawn timer will be displayed as a cooldown on this trait. Once that cooldown ends Misha will respawn wherever Rexxar currently is.



Spirit Swoop ( Q )
A little lack luster ability, it provides some decent damage and a short slow. The slow is pretty minor and the range on this ability is pretty sure, so make sure to get use to the range. Not always the best to peel with, since you have to get into the danger zone usually to land it. Great for locking down kills however.



Misha, Charge! ( W )
Arguably the best ability in his kit. When you use this ability Misha will charge in the direction of your cursor, stunning anyone she passes through on the way. The stun is a pretty decent stun as well as doing some good damage. This is your primary means of locking down target, controlling the fight and peeling for your teammates. This ability also toggles Misha to aggressive when used.



Mend Pet ( E )
This ability heals Misha. Important to note, it does NOT heal Rexxar, only Misha. And it is a heal-over-time not a burst heal. It heals her for a considerable amount of health, just slowly. So remember to pop this BEFORE Misha is critically low or else it will likely be too little at a time to save her. For reference it heals her for approximately half her health bar usually.



Bestial Wrath ( R )
This heroic greatly empowers Misha's basic attacks for 12 seconds. This is a great talent to pick if the enemy team tends to ignore your bear and focus you, as well as a great talent to pick if there is only one or two high priority targets on the enemy team. The damage increase is significant and will help Misha quickly burst down some targets.



Unleash the Boars ( R )
Rexxar is rare in the fact that both of his heroics are extremely useful. Unleash the Boars provides Rexxar with a very good slow with insanely long range. It is almost far enough to go from a fort to a keep for reference. The slow also reveals enemies and lasts for 5 seconds. Once you activate this heroic Rexxar will send a boar to each enemy hero that was in range and hit them, which applies the slow.

The goal of this build is to serve as your teams' main tank. Most people have the misconception that Rexxar cannot solo tank and this build is aimed at showing how he can accomplish that. You may have looked at the build above and thought, wait, there are some tankier talents you can take at this tier but I will explain in detail later why some of the talents that don't sound tanky are in fact tanky. Going forward, talents in orange are my personal choice, talents in green are also very good substitutes while talents in red are useful in very specific circumstances and talents in purple I wouldn't recommend in pretty much any situation.

Level 1

My Choice : Survivalist Training
Mana is a pretty big problem for Rexxar so this talent actually helps out far more than it sounds like. Keep in mind globes drop from mercenary camps so you're mana return is pretty consistent. This talent doubles the mana you get from regen globes so essentially it just rewards you more for picking them up. And more mana means more charge stuns and damage. That said, still currently evaluating this talent compared to hunter-gatherer, the early game mana problems still seem to give this talent the edge.

Other Choices


Hunter-Gatherer
Well the bug with this ability has been fixed and so its become viable now. That said I still currently prefer Survivalist Training over this talent do to a couple reasons. Most tanks who get worth out of this talent get 1.5 health regeneration compared to the only 1 health regeneration Rexxar gets. This does not sound like much but trust me, at 20 stacks Rexxar is only getting 20 regen compared to 30 on Johanna or another warrior with this talent. That adds up really fast very quickly. That said, if mana hasn't been an issue for you on Rexxar then this talent is a worthy pick up.


Flare
The range on this ability is pretty bad, it is not global. However it reveals stealthed enemies and can be particularly useful on bush heavy maps like Cursed Hollow. Since the cooldown is only 20 seconds it is actually pretty good. Just heavily contingent on whether you are facing two stealth heroes like Nova and Zeratul or whether there is a lot of bushes you want to not face check.


Grizzled Bear
Honestly this talent isn't worth very much, it's so rare that opponents will toss basic attacks into Misha and even rarer that mitigating them will do anything. And even for those really rare occurrences, the other talents will still have saved you more during those games. So in short, dodge this talent pick.

Level 4

My Choice : Hungry Bear
This talent is the bread-and-butter of a tank Rexxar. It boosts Misha's sustain by a mile and makes it trivial to take mercenary camps solo. It can really help you in lane as well by reducing the amount of mana wasted on mend pet. It does a lot of work keeping Misha alive.


Other Choices


Taking Flight
Honestly as a main tank you really need Hungry Bear, playing without it is a massive handicap since you rely on the bear for your most important ability, i.e. charge. That said, this talent does a lot of work for you. The big gain here is the range increase. I mentioned that your spirit swoop is extremely low range? Yeah this fixes that. It will help you lock down fleeing targets and help to curb the mana burn as well. You lose a lot of tankiness but you gain some utility boosts.


Crippling Talons
Again, here is another talent trap. Sounds good, it does. But that extra 10% slow amounts to virtually nothing. It is a lackluster slow before and after and you lose the hungry bear which is the biggest cornerstone of this build. In addition the duration increase is pretty marginal, really the only important boost from this talent.


Easy Prey
The problem with this talent isn't that it's bad. The problem is that hungry bear does this talent's job better. This talent will let you clear mercenary camps a lot faster, but you'll waste more mana with mend pet to keep misha alive. With Hungry Bear you can clear the camp without using mend pet once and Misha staying at full health, albeit a slower clear time. Really if you want to pretend you are a jungler and solo camps like crazy as Rexxar, Hungry Bear is a better pick up and let's you solo camps much earlier in the game. (Including boss)

Level 7

My Choice : Aspect of the Beast
The more basic attacks Misha lands, the faster you get charge off cooldown. And charge is the best ability in your kit. Enough said. This is part of the reason why Hungry Bear is so important, it lets Misha spend more time basic attacking and thus getting more charges off.


Other Choices


Bird of Prey
This talent is better than I originally gave it credit. I still prefer aspect over this since your goal is to tank. However it is VERY useful on minion-heavy maps such as Infernal Shrines and even on lower-minion-count maps like Blackheart's Bay this talent can let you clean up mercenary camps a lot faster, freeing you up for team fights more often or solo camps more often.


Blood of the Rhino
Not worth it, the healing coming out of Hungry Bear will be enough to sustain Misha through any damage other than heavy burst damage, and this ability won't help against burst damage either. Very few situations you would really get a benefit out of this talent whereas the other talents will give far more.


Throwing Axes
I've hemmed and hawed over this talent but in reality I'm never picking it because the other talent choices are far more useful. The range increase from this is really marginal so it won't do much to keep Rexxar out of harm's way and the only thing it can help with is preventing Rexxar from getting accidental camp aggro when doing mercenary camps and this can be avoided by just having better positioning or using Misha, Charge! (which aspect gives you more often) to fix that.

Level 10

My Choice : Bestial Wrath
Honestly, both heroics are extremely strong. The reason I give this ability the nod over boars is because it really helps Rexxar be the central main tank. This may not seem so obvious right at this point but the level 20 talent that this heroic enables is extremely good for this purpose. At this point it is mostly intended to burn bosses faster and pressure key targets.


Other Choice


Unleash the Boars
This heroic is great if you are looking solid and just need to lock down the enemies to help your team secure kills. It can also be used to shut down and enemy pursuit. The slow is pretty heavy and lasts a long five seconds so it can really completely negate the enemies attempt to stick to you. The damage is really bad from this though, so you are using it mostly for the slow and possibly the vision. I cannot stress just how massive the range on this is. It can literally go almost from a fort to a keep on Cursed Hollow.

Level 13

My Choice : Barkskin
Even if the enemy team isn't focusing Misha this is a great talent pick up. It's like spell shield only on the same cooldown as your charge, which is already getting reduced by our earlier talent choices. The importance here is that Misha takes considerable damage from AoE's and other unintentional damage sources. So this talent helps keep her alive from collateral damage as well as focused damage. And Misha living longer means peeling for you and your teammates longer.


Other Choices


Wildfire Bear
It's Rexxar's burning rage, only it applies to something at a short distance from you. It actually tends to do more work than burning rage does on other warriors because of the fact that Misha tends to very easily get in the the thick of things, either because the enemy team focuses her or ignores her. Good talent to grab if you need to clear camps like Infernal Shrines quickly or if you are ahead and want some extra damage to help close out the game quickly.


Thrill of the Hunt
Another great talent if you are ahead and looking to close out the game quickly. Thrill will help you stick to your targets by boosting both Misha and your speed everytime you land basic attacks. Important to note, Misha's basic attacks do not boost your speed, only Rexxar's basic attacks do that. This talent can also do decent if the enemy team is focusing Rexxar heavily by giving you that extra burst of speed to re-position Rexxar quickly. That said the duration of the buff is far too short to really work in that aspect. (If Misha's basic attacks increased your speed then this talent would be insane.)


Bear Necessities
Generally speaking this talent isn't worth as much as the others, especially as a tank. However it does provide some pretty good boost to camp/wave clear. Plus it gives you some lee-way so that if you accidentally miss a hero with Charge you can quickly charge Misha back out of the fight if she is in a bad spot or further in to guarantee the stun. I still prefer the other talents for most aspects of the game but if you're team is having a rough time clearing waves then this talent can be a good pick-up.

Level 16

My Choice : Feign Death
Welp I've come a full 180 on this talent. It's generally one of the best talents to take primarily due to the synergy with your level 20 talent. The key to using this ability correctly is to preemptively dodge high burst damage such as pyroblast or a Zeratul kit dump. More on this at the level 20 Spirit Bond. Once you pop this ability Rexxar will become invulnerable and immobile. You will lose access to your Q and E but you will still be able to use Misha's charge as well as her Bestial Wrath. ( You can pop Wrath WHILE Rexxar is invulnerable )


Other Choices



Primal Intimidation
The beauty of this talent is that it applies both to Rexxar and Misha. It slows basic attacks against both of you so it can be a great counter if the enemy team is prioritizing both of you. Just an all-around good tank talent, it is especially good to pick against basic-attack-heavy heroes like Illidan or another Rexxar.


Critical Care
Really not a generally useful talent. Hungry Bear combined with Mend Pet is usually enough to keep Misha alive anyways, especially if you have Barkskin on top of that. Still, if for some reason the enemy team is focusing Misha above all else, this talent can help you keep her in the fight longer, even against heavy burst damage.


Aspect of the Hawk
If you went for thrill of the hunt then this talent may be worth it. The idea here is if you are retreating from multiple enemies you can quickly turn around and throw the hawk through your pursuers and use the boost in attack speed to quickly throw off a basic to get the movement speed boost. This is a good escape because the enemies that are chasing are slower and you are now suddenly even faster. Still a relatively light use talent, so you are probably better off with one of the other three.

Level 20

This is where Rexxar's tankiness goes off the chart.


My Choice : Spirit Bond
And this is why we went Bestial Wrath. The healing Rexxar gains from this really helps to solidify his main tank role, even as both teams are reaching their pinnacle. Remember that feign death earlier? Well here is where it hits home. You essentially start the fight by dumping as much of your kit into the enemy team as possible. Once you get low in health however you are popping feign death. THIS IS WHERE YOU BECOME A HEAVY TANK. While Rexxar is immobile you pop your Bestial Wrath. Since you currently have control of Misha because of feign, you will be able to guarantee her basic attacks on the target of your choice and it will continue to heal up Rexxar, and will heal him considerably, leaving him in a good position once feign death ends.


Hardened Skin
At first I wasn't sure about this but if you time it correctly this really does massive work for Rexxar as a main tank. Essentially you want to pop this talent when the enemy switches focus to Rexxar. Misha more or less is fine on her own thanks to Hungry Bear and Bestial Wrath, so while this talent does great for her too you generally want to use it when Rexxar needs it. While warriors like Anub'Arak can generally benefit from this as soon as they go in, Rexxar really needs it for when you can see the enemy team really shift focus to him and him alone. If you pop it to help mitigate collateral from a flame strike then you won't have it when they decide to try and spike you down to get rid of the bear. So you want to save this for that moment.


Frenzy of Kalimdor
This talent is also extremely good, mostly because of the slow that it adds to Misha's basic attacks. This again makes Bestial Wrath better and it also helps Misha peel for your team. Not only can she stun people with her charge but if she sticks to them then they will have trouble sticking to your team if they are trying to execute someone. The damage boost isn't bad either.


Kill Command
Essentially it changes the first 1.5 seconds of the slow to a root and it adds a marginal amount of damage to your unleash the boars. Seriously, if you need to be tankier grab Hardened Skin and if you need to deal more damage or lock down enemies better, go Frenzy of Kalimdor. Unleash the Boars deals low damage both before and after this talent.

This is easily the hardest mechanic to master about Rexxar, is when to put Misha on passive and when to put her on aggressive.

If you are almost dead and start fleeing then what you want Misha on depends heavily on where she is currently located. If Misha is right next to Rexxar or otherwise not currently in combat, you want to put Misha on passive. If Misha is not IN COMBAT when you start to flee, then she will run on ahead of you to reach the point you are trying to flee to.

Meaning that that good stun in your kit just left you in the dust. If you put her on passive then she may be slightly ahead of you or slightly behind you but either way she will be in fairly close range to Rexxar in order to stun for him and help him escape.

If Misha is in combat however, then you want to leave her fighting, especially after level 7. Eventually she will run to catch up when you get far enough, but leaving her in combat means she will dish out more hurt to the enemy and get charge off cooldown even quicker and then give her more opportunities to peel for you.

If a huge fight breaks out its advisable to leave her aggressive so she can keep life-stealing off her targets unless she is really getting focused or tanking a turret you don't want her to be, at which point you want to recall her.

Also you want to keep track of Misha and use toggling her onto passive to help her avoid heavy damage and cc. If the boss goes to pound the ground, toggle Misha to passive so she runs out of the telegraph then either charge her back in or toggle her aggressive so she can continue tanking it.

Mounted Travel

In pretty much any case you want to put Misha on passive before traveling on your mount. The reason for this is because while Misha is on passive she will stay relatively closer to Rexxar. While Misha is set to attack, she will race to the point you want to go to, taking the shortest path to get there. However she does not START that journey from the same point as Rexxar and if you leave them to their devices this may mean that Rexxar and Misha take very different paths.

This path is always the shortest path mind you, Misha does not care if their is an enemy fort between her and that destination. This can lead to some pretty untimely deaths. Really the only time you MIGHT want to leave her on aggressive is if you know for certain that it will result in Misha arriving at an important conflict safely and ahead of Rexxar so she can start contributing and peeling for teammates ahead of Rexxar. This is really hard to call so that is why passive is the recommended way to leave her during mounted travel.

Targeting

Want Misha to attack a target without getting yourself out of position to land the auto-attack? Double right-clicking will cause Misha to go for the target even if Rexxar breaks off to move somewhere else, you just need to stay within leash distance of Misha so she doesn't break off the target. This can be key to maximizing your spirit bond ( Healing from Misha's basic attacks ) by sticking her to a target without you face tanking them and losing more than you gain.

Rexxar can be a brutal 1v1er. Like most warriors you want to start out solo and preferably in the mid lane so you can rotate to the team fights with ease. Essentially you want to body the enemy hero as far back as you can to try and deny them xp.

This is actually pretty simple to accomplish. You just basic attack the minion wave or possibly throw a spirit hawk until your opponent comes into the wave. Then you want to immediately charge Misha through your target and switch to the target yourself.

You'll quickly drain your target's health pool and force them out. You have to make sure to recall Misha before she takes a hit or two from the enemies' turrets, preferably before the first hit. Honestly this just takes practice but its roughly about the 3/4 mark down the lane that you want to toggle Misha onto passive, maximizing damage done and minimizing damage taken.

If your team can manage a decent xp lead, about half a level to a level then feel free to try and grab your siege camp if you have the opportunity.

You can do pretty well to solo a siege camp even at the earliest levels but especially once you hit level 4 you can get siege camps easy. Bruisers may be a bit difficult and you generally want to avoid trying to solo boss until level 10 or higher. And keep in mind with boss you won't be doing much damage, so it can take you a considerable amount of time to solo boss. Therefore don't attempt to solo boss unless you know for sure that you won't be caught in the act and destroyed.

Tomb of the Spider Queen

This may not seem like a necessarily amazing map for Rexxar, but it is important to note that Misha can actually pick up gems. If Misha runs over a gem then it will transfer over to Rexxar. This is important because clever uses of Misha, Charge! can allow you to pick up gems from relative safety, particularly if teammates get caught out just outside of safety and drop a handful of gems. Using this capability correctly can really help your team come out on top.

Infernal Shrines

This is the map you probably want Bird of Prey on. That talent will enable your spirit swoop to one-shot the shrine camps once you have the talent. This is incredibly potent due to the range (albeit short range) on the hawk so you can actually throw it through the wall next to the shrine and pick the camp minions off. Just generally lets you clear the Shrine from safety, good if your team gets the minion advantage and then gets forced off.

Dragon Shire

Rexxar does pretty well on Dragon Shire do to his incredible poke capabilities. If you head mid on Rexxar you will be able to pretty easily keep the enemy teammates off the Dragon Knight. Keep in mind that you can close the distance with Misha, Charge! as well as poke with Spirit Swoop. And if that isn't enough, if you land one basic on the person trying to channel the Knight, then so long as you leave Misha on aggressive and stay semi-close to the node then Misha will continually prevent them from channeling it. Plus Mid leaves Rexxar very close to the bottom siege camps for you to try to solo in the down-time without losing much experience.

Blackheart Bay

Blackheart Bay is pretty simple, but I'll go over the details. Like Tomb of the Spider Queen, Misha can pick up coins for Rexxar. Carefully planned Charge, Misha!s can save or steal coins. Rexxar is particularly good at securing chests, since you clear the chest as fast as two heroes would normally. Remember to use Charge at the end of the chest, use it fast enough and Misha will secure all three coins before they spread out. Remember, if Misha dies to grab coins, Rexxar still gets them so it can be worth losing her for a handful of coins if you use Misha right.

Cursed Hollow

Cursed Hollow can be a bit of a rough map for Rexxar. This is a map you may want to invest in a level 1 Flare which allows you to check bosses and key bushes on the way to tributes without face tanking them and potentially dying. The bright side is Rexxar is very strong in the late game and Cursed Hollow tends to be a map where you are likely to get there. It can be rough to try and secure the early tributes do to Rexxar's longer cooldowns and lower health at that point, but he can make up for this with early map pressure. After the first tribute you want to head back to your mid lane, clear the wave for the experience and then start up the Siege Camp on your side of the map. You should be able to clear the camp quick enough to make it to the next tribute on time or you can have a teammate assist you with it to guarantee more farm after the camp clear. These early siegers should get a fair bit of work done since the enemy team will be focused on contesting the tribute. This early pressure is Rexxar's best capability on this map, and trying to maintain this pressure with early camp secures can really keep the enemy team from pushing any advantages early, letting you get your Rexxar late enough to really bully the enemy team.

I hope this build works out for you and you find Rexxar as fun and challenging (in a good way) as I do. He is a powerful hero pick for his ability to safely take camps early but unlike Chen offers a substantial amount of damage. With correct handling of Misha and Rexxar positioning you will find that Rexxar makes a quite capable main tank for your team.

My IGN is Raptorspank#1847. Feel free to comment and ask questions, I'd love to hear your input. If you think I undervalued a certain talent I'd love to know why. I've experimented with all of them but I certainly might have missed just how effective certain talents can be in certain situations.

If you liked my build guide then feel free to check out my other guides on tanking:

Thanks to BlaBlub for his corrections.

Thanks to Rengi for his awesome guide on Misha's AI, even teaching me a few things.