Experience



Experience allows heroes to level up, which makes them stronger and allows them to learn new abilities. Experience is earned by being within a 1300 range radius of a dying enemy unit. It takes increasingly more experience to level up as a hero's level progresses. Units can be denied by other allied units to reduce the experience given from dying.

Acquiring experience
When an enemy unit dies, experience is granted and divided among all allied heroes in a 1300 range.


 * Experience is granted by almost all units: heroes, creeps, summons and wards. Buildings do not grant experience.
 * Denying a hero (for instance, by commiting suicide) grants no experience (nor gold) to the enemy. This also applies when killed by neutrals.
 * More generally, denying a player-controlled unit grants no experience to the enemy.
 * Any non-hero unit (lane creeps, neutrals) which gets denied by an ally grants 50% of their usual experience.
 * Non-hero units killed by neutrals, grant 50% of their experience if it was a lane creep, or no experience if it was another creep (like a summon or a dominated unit).
 * Neutrals' deaths grant experience to any nearby hero, no matter the team that gets the last-hit.
 * A hero cannot earn experience while dead.
 * Hero kills award experience to the killer at any range (no matter how far away they are).
 * Any kills made by summoned units like Treants or Spirit Bear reward experience to their owner at any range.
 * Heroes take their share of experience even after level 25, even though they cannot use it.
 * Each clone counts as a hero for the purposes of gaining and dividing experience.
 * Experience (and gold) are awarded independently of the assist counter on the scoreboard, which only counts if a hero dealt damage, and ignores proximity to the dying hero. This means a hero only gets assist gold and experience when within range of a dying enemy hero, even when it did not contribute to the kill in any way.

Abilities
Some items award a hero with experience, namely:

Hero kills
When an enemy hero is killed, allied heroes within range receive an experience reward, split up into two parts: killing experience and assist experience. Killing experience is based on the level of the killed hero, and assist experience is based on the experience difference between the teams.

Kill experience
When an enemy hero dies, an experience reward is divided equally among allied heroes in range. The killer receives the reward even if he is not in range. The formula awards total experience as follows:

If 'x' is the level of the killed hero, the amount of experience gained (f(x)) is:
 * For levels 1–5: f(x) = 20(x + 4); f(1) = 100
 * For levels 6 and further: f(x) = f(x - 1) + 100; f(5) = 180

Or it can combine them into one formula: f(x) = (20x + 80) H(5.5 - x) + (100x - 320) H(x - 5.5)

Assist experience
When an enemy hero dies, allied heroes within 1300 range receive an experience reward. The formula (for each hero) is as follows:

XP Difference is defined as (EnemyTeamXP - AlliedTeamXP) / (EnemyTeamXP + AlliedTeamXP) and has a minimum of zero.

Denying
Denying occurs when a hero lands a killing blow on an allied unit. Heroes can only target allied creeps if they are under 50% health, and can only target allied heroes if they are afflicted with certain debuffs. If the denied unit is not a player controlled unit, enemy heroes in 1300 range split half the usual experience bounty. If it is a player controlled unit, enemies gain no experience from it. Denying an allied unit prevents the opponents from earning gold.

Leveling
Each hero starts the match at level 1, with one ability point to spend. A hero levels by acquiring a certain amount of experience. When a hero levels, its attributes get increased according to that hero's individual attribute bonuses, and it gains ability point. The ability point can be spent on an ability which has not been maxed out, or on a Talent. Ability points do not need to be spent immediately, a hero can level up multiple times while saving the ability points.

The amount of experience required to level up is generally equal to the upcoming hero level * 100. For example, to increase a hero's level from 1 to 2 a hero requires 200 experience points, while leveling up from 24 to 25 requires 2500 experience points. There are a few exceptions for some levels in the 6–12 range to allow mid-game heroes to peak slightly earlier.