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Illusions (also commonly called illus) are imperfect, weaker copies of heroes, created by spells or items. They look like and are mostly treated like a hero, but are impaired, as they usually have incoming and outgoing damage penalties, dealing less damage and taking more damage than heroes. They are mostly incapable of casting spells or using active item abilities and also have some passive abilities disabled. They also may not drop or pick up items or runes. On the other side, illusions do not yield any gold or experience to the enemy when killed, and also do not soak up any AoE experience and gold (they cannot level up, and the gold from last hits they make goes to their owners) and do not interfere with kill streaks or counters.

Illusions can be created off of allied, enemy and the own hero, copying its appearance, level, attributes, attack values, defensive values like armor and magic resistance and their abilities on their current level. All items owned by the hero are copied as well, including all their stats (although some effects of abilities and items are disabled for illusions).

All illusions deal 25% less damage against buildings, making them weaker in pushing. This reduction stacks multiplicatively with the outgoing damage reduction which most illusions have, and also multiplicatively with the damage reduction hero damage does against structure armor type. However, due to the fact that illusions are based on heroes, their damage scales together with the heroes, making them still a significant pushing tool, especially in later phases of a match.

Visual appearance
All illusions have an extra texture layer, which makes them distinguishable from the original hero. There are 5 different type of textures which can be seen below.

To allies, illusions always appear with the texture layer, making them always look different than the original hero. For enemies, illusions which use the blue or the yellow textures appear like the original hero, making it difficult to tell them apart from the real hero. Illusions with the second or third texture appear like illusions to the enemy, means enemies do see their illusion textures. However, despite this, the portrait of illusions always appears like the original hero to the enemy.

Besides their skin and portrait, their health bar also differs based on whether the illusion is allied or not. Allied illusions have the same health bar as creeps. This also means their mana bar is not visible, as it is only visible when having a hero or creep-hero health bar. Besides this, on illusions also have a circle on the left side of the health bar, which indicates their duration.

Enemy illusions use a hero health bar, to make it not obvious that they are illusions. They also display the player's name above them like regular enemy heroes (if the player has the name display turned on). The player name is based on the owner of the illusion, not of the hero the illusion is based on. This means when an enemy Shadow Demon creates illusion of allies, the illusions carry Shadow Demon's player name. The only exception to this is Morphling's Replicate, which displays the targeted allied hero's name, unless he targets an enemy, in which case it displays Morphling's player name.

Mechanics
All 3 attributes of illusions (strength, agility and intelligence) are based on the original hero. They copy their base attributes, the attributes gained from levels, and all item bonuses. They fully benefit from every trait of attributes, health, health regen, mana, mana regen, armor, attack speed and attack damage. They also copy the hero's movement speed, base attack damage, attack animation (and projectile speed), base attack time, attack range, magic resistance, base armor, base health and mana regen, vision, collision size and turn rate.

However, most direct bonuses to the stats do not affect illusions. This includes direct health regeneration and mana regeneration, armor, attack speed, attack damage and item-based magic resistance bonuses. There are some exceptions to these though. Although illusions cannot make use of these bonuses, the HUD still displays direct armor, attack speed and attack damage bonuses to make it less obvious to the enemy that they are illusions, if they select it.

Other direct bonuses fully work for illusions. They are fully affected by direct health, mana, movement speed, attack range, projectile speed, vision range and ability-based magic resistance bonuses, and base attack time changes. Here as well are some exceptions.

An illusion's stats, level, ability levels and items are all set upon spawn and do not adapt to the original hero. Illusions also copy transformation spell effects, meaning if a hero is currently in a morphed form, the illusion also assumes the morphed form and usually also benefits from all the traits of the morphed form.

Most illusions cannot use active abilities and items. The only exceptions are Hybrid illusions, which are allowed to cast basic abilities, but not ultimates or Aghanim's Scepter-granted abilities and Vengeance illusions, which are allowed to cast regular and ultimate abilities, but not Scepter-granted abilities. Passive abilities work for all illusions, although many of them are disabled for them, and some have altered effects.

With a very few exceptions, already existing status buffs and debuffs are not copied by illusions. Transformation spells are copied, while most attributes altering effects are not.

Illusion creating abilities
These are all abilities which create illusions of heroes.

Balance Changelog
{{MechanicsNav} [[Category:Gameplay]