Denying

Denying is the act of preventing enemy heroes from getting the last hit on a friendly unit by last hitting the unit oneself. Enemies earn reduced experience if the denied unit is not controlled by a player, and no experience if it is a player controlled unit. Enemies gain no gold from any denied unit. All allied units can be denied once they fall below a certain percentage of health: creeps, and non-hero units at 50%, heroes at 25%, and towers at 10%. However, heroes can only be denied under special circumstances. Illusions and couriers cannot be denied.

To deny a unit, an attack command has to be ordered on the unit. If the "Right-Click Allies" option is set to anything other than "To Follow", the unit can also be denied with mouseright.

Denying units
Besides couriers, every non-hero unit can be denied, including creep-heroes. They can be denied once their health falls below 50%. Denying an allied, non-player-controlled unit (lane creeps which are not taken over by players) grants 50% of its experience bounty to enemies within the 1500 experience range, instead of 100%. Denying a player-controlled unit grants 0% experience to the enemy, and also none to the denying team.

Especially in the laning phase, denying allied lane creeps is important to create a gold and experience advantage. It can lead to having a level advantage over the enemy, opening up a chance to get a kill on them. Gold-wise, it cripples the enemy's farming, slowing them down significantly, if they depend on farming gold. Creeps should be denied whenever possible, although getting last hits should be prioritized. Denying creeps is also important to shift the creep equilibrium towards one's own tower and further from the enemy's tower.

A creep is not considered denied if a neutral creep (e.g. Roshan) deals the finishing blow and thus will give full experience to the enemy heroes.

Player-controlled units can be denied as well, but unlike lane creeps, most summons expire after a while, so that their bounties can be "denied" in other ways rather than killing them by manually attacking. For many small summons this does not make much of a difference, but it should still be done when possible, especially when having multiple units as they can be used to deny each other. Heroes should always attempt to deny bigger summons, such as and, since they usually have significant gold and experience bounties. Denying such units is an excellent way to prevent giving the enemy free gold and experience when the unit is unlikely to survive.

Unlike creeps, no experience is given if a neutral creep deals the finishing blow to a player-controlled unit.

Denying towers
Towers may only be denied once they drop to 10% health and below, yielding half its gold bounty to the enemy team and half to the denying team. Denying a tower also prevents an enemy player from receiving the - bonus gold for the last-hit.

Towers can only be attacked with an attack command, regardless of the Game Settings.

Denying heroes
Heroes can also be denied under specific circumstances. A denied hero prevents the enemy from gaining any experience or gold from the kill, but still loses gold upon death.

A hero under 25% health and under the effects of certain spells can be denied by an allied hero. The spells that allow denying allied heroes are:
 * 's
 * 's
 * 's

During, may be denied in a similar fashion if the sun is below 50% health.

It is possible to deny oneself (commit suicide) in a variety of ways:
 * 's
 * 's cast on an ally

It is also possible to deny allied heroes with some abilities:
 * 's and 's  fully work against allied attacks, resulting in a deny when the damage kills an ally.
 * 's, ' , and 's Dominate can be used on an enemy ranged unit that has a projectile attack in flight, and results in the denial of an allied hero if the attack deals the finishing blow.
 * 's, if cast on an ally under the effect of an enemy 's that takes enough damage to die from allied heroes will be denied, rather than having the kill granted to Wyvern.

A hero can also be denied if a neutral creep deals the finishing blow to them.

Special cases and exceptions

 * Though usually making the last hit on an allied unit counts as a deny, it does not count as one when that ally is under the effect of or . In this case, the kill is credited to the caster of said ability.
 * When an ally is affected by, bringing the ally's health below the shatter threshold results in a deny. The shatter credits the kill to whoever brought the hero below the threshold, even when it was an ally. The exception to this is self-inflicted damage. If the affected hero brought their life below the threshold by themself, then the shatter credits Ancient Apparition the kill.