Forced Movement



Forced Movement is a status effect that changes a unit's position. This movement is completely unrelated to the unit's movement speed and works on them while disabled. Most spells with forced movement prevent the affected unit from acting during, but some allow the unit to still attack, turn and cast spells and items.

In general, almost all forced movement effects override each other. The later applied one nullifies the previous ones. Although there are a few exceptions.

Forced movements are also bound to the buff or debuff the spells place, so if the buff or debuff is dispellable, doing so also stops the forced movement.

Mechanics
There are 2 types of forced movement, the fully disabling type and the non-disabling type. The disabling type behaves like a stun, preventing the unit from performing any action, but continuing with them once the effect expires. The non-disabling type allows the unit to still perform any action, except for moving. The unit can still turn, cast spells, use items and even attack. Movement orders can be given, but the effect of the forced movement completely negates any moving attempt of the unit. However, the move orders do not get canceled, so that the unit will move where ordered once the effect expires.

Forced movement generally ignores terrain and any other obstacle, moving the unit straight through everything, similar to unobstructed movement (although some spells may have custom restrictions, like bouncing off of cliffs).

The effects of forced movement on the same planes do not stack. This means when a unit is already being moved on a horizontal plane by a spell, applying a new instant of horizontal forced movement cancels the previous one completely. Units may be affected by two sources of forced movement only when one source applies vertical movement and the other horizontal movement, resulting in a parabolic motion.

Besides interrupting each other, forced movement can also be interrupted by some other spells, which do not apply forced movement themselves. These spells are

1 Soulbind and Pounce cancel forced movement upon expiring, not upon getting applied.

Fully disabling forced movement
These spells fully disable units while moving them.

Non-disabling forced movement
These spells do not fully disable units while moving them. Some do not disable at all, while some disable only partially.

Upward Movement
Several spells move a unit upwards, changing their Z position. Changes to a unit's Z position affect several things such as the travel time of projectiles, as they always fly towards the center of the unit and the unit's ability to block pathing of other units, as a unit can only block another unit when they are on roughly the same Z position.

However, it does not affect any abilities which affect or search units inside an area. A unit thrown in the air by a is still fully affected by other area spells like. Attacks of any unit also do not consider the height of the attack target. Although the attack projectiles have to travel for longer in order to reach the target, a unit with 600 range can still start attack on an airborn unit from 600 range away, ignoring its height.

Sources of upward movement
This section only lists sources of spells which move units upwards. Details can be found in the lists above.