Cleave

Cleave causes a melee unit's attacks to deal a portion of its damage in an area in front of it.

Mechanics
If a unit has cleave, its attacks deal damage in an area shaped like a trapezoid in front of the attacking unit upon successfully hitting the target. Ranged heroes cannot cleave, because either the cleave-granting ability has its 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.

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 based on the attacking unit's position 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 primary attack target actually took from the attack, as cleave only checks the attack damage value of the attacking unit. The damage is not reduced by the armor value of hit units, but is reduced by the armor type and Damage Block. Cleave damage is always physical, so it never affects units in ethereal state. All cleave abilities pierce spell immunity. It is also affected by damage manipulation, however, it is not affected by spell damage amplification. Spell lifesteal does not heal from cleave damage either.

Area of effect A cleave's effect area is shaped like an isosceles trapezoid. This trapezoid is in front of the attacking unit, so that the attacking unit is always at the center of the shorter side of the trapezoid. Double the starting radius equates to the length of the shorter side of the trapezoid, the cleave distance equates to its height, and double the ending radius equates to the long side parallel to the short side of the trapezoid.

Attack modifier interactions Cleave is an attack modifier which fully stacks with any other modifier. However, 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 attack damage, it affects the cleave damage. Abilities which grant conditional attack damage bonuses may or may not be included in the cleave damage. Critical strikes affect the cleave damage as well.

Conditional attack damage bonuses which are counted by cleave are:

Conditional attack damage bonuses which are not counted by cleave are:

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 deals its 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  range in front of him, 3 damage instances to units within – range and 2 instances to units within – range. This is because in this scenario, one source has a distance of, the other one has distance and 2 of them have  distance, so all 4 hit units within  range, but only two of them hit units up to  range away. Consequently, units within range would take % cleave damage, units between – range % damage and units between – would take only % damage.

Splash
Splash is in some ways the ranged version of cleave. It works in a similar way as cleave does, with the difference being that the damage is dealt in a circle around the attacked unit, not in a trapezoid 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 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.

Just like cleave, splash also works for melee heroes. is able to acquire the of the Ancient Black Dragons with his. Besides this, no other melee hero can acquire a splash effect.