Cleave

Cleave causes a melee hero's attacks to deal a portion of their damage in a radius in front of them. Ranged units cannot cleave.

Mechanics
If a unit has cleave, its attacks deal damage in a cone-like area in front of the target upon attack. Ranged heroes cannot cleave, because either the cleave-granting ability have their cleave part disabled for them, or the ability is unobtainable by them in the default game modes. An attack is classified as melee when the attack does not rely on projectiles. The primary attack target is not hit by the cleave damage. An attack has to actually hit the target in order to cleave. A missed attack, be it caused by evasion or a blind effect, does not cleave. Cleave hits invisible, but not hidden or invulnerable units, and does not work against wards and buildings either.

If a game mode allows ranged heroes to obtain the normally unobtainable cleave abilities (e.g. Ability Draft), the cleave of and  fully work for them. The cleave area, just like for melee heroes, is centered on the attacking unit and happens on attack hit. This means the cleave damage is always applied in front of the attacking hero, even when the target was much further away.

Damage The damage is entirely based on the attacking unit's attack damage. It does not matter how much damage the attacked unit actually took as cleave only checks the damage value of the attacking unit. The damage is not reduced by the armor value, only the armor type and Damage Block reduce it. Cleave damage is always physical, so it never affects units in ethereal state, and always pierces spell immunity. It is also increased/decreased by damage manipulation.

Radius A cleave's effect radius is shaped like a cone in the direction of your attack.

Stacking Cleave is an attack modifier which fully stacks with any other modifier. It does not interfere with any attack modifier. This means that for example the armor reducing effect of is still only applied to the primary attack target. However, if an attack modifier increases or reduces damage, it affects the cleave damage, even when the modification is not visible in the damage value in the HUD.

Attack damage modifying effects which are not shown in the HUD include all critical strikes and. These do affect the damage of cleaves.

The damage from and  are the only added attack damage which can be cleaved. All other sources of added attack damage (like with all bashes) are not cleaved.

Cleave Stacking Cleave also fully stacks with other sources of cleave. Each source of cleave works fully independently. Their damage is not summed up, each of them deal their own instance of damage.

As an example, with level 4, buffed with a level 4  and 2  Battle Furies would deal 4 instances of damage on each attack to units within 240 range in front of him, 3 damage instances to units within 240-280 range and 1 instance to units within 280-300 range. This is because in this scenario, one source has a radius of 240, 2 of them have 280 radius and one has 300 radius, so all 4 hit units within 240 range, but only one of them hits units up to 300 range away. Consequently, units within 240 radius would take 186% cleave damage, units between 240-280 range 136% damage and units between 280-300 would take only 66% damage.

Splash
Splash is in some ways the ranged version of cleave, but it can be used by melee heroes (e.g. obtaining  via ). It works in a similar way as cleave does, with the difference being that the damage is dealt in a radius around the attacked unit, not in a cone in front of the attacking unit. When attacking with splash, the primary target of an attack does not receive the splash effect. If an attack misses, no splash damage is applied in the area (except for, in which case 50% of the damage is applied in the area). Splash works with attack modifiers the same way as cleave does.

Unlike cleave, splash damage can deal physical or magical damage. As such, splash effects are reduced by the armor value, the armor type, Damage Block and ethereal state if physical, and by magic resistance as well as spell immunity if magical. They are also affected by damage manipulation.

Some splash effects have multiple areas of effect, each dealing a different percentage of the attacking unit's attack damage, meaning that units closer to the primary target take more damage than units further away.