Spell Damage

Spell damage is all damage which is not dealt by physical attacks. This includes all spells which deal magical, physical or pure damage. Even the damage dealt by attack modifiers counts as spell damage, as long as the effect deals its damage in a separate instance from the attack damage.

Magic spell damage is influenced by magic resistance, physical spell damage is influenced by armor and pure damage is not affected by either. All three underlie damage manipulation.

Spell amplification
Spell damage can be directly amplified. Each point of increases the hero's spell damage by 0.0625%, which equals to 1% spell damage for every 16 points of intelligence. Spell damage amplification of multiple sources stacks additively. The amplification does not only affect spell damage dealt against enemies, it also causes damage afflicted to allies or the own unit to get amplified.

Currently there is no unit ability that directly amplifies spell damage, but a couple of heroes have perks in the talents tree.

These items passively increase the owner's spell damage amplification by merely having them equipped. They either grant a flat bonus, or bonus through intelligence.

Unaffected by amplification
There are certain cases of abilities that ignore spell amplification. It's important to note that those spells cannot spell lifesteal, too.

Instantly killing effects are not amplified, neither is the health cost of spells. Several spells use instant attacks to deal damage, and since they count as regular attacks (and thus attack damage), they are not affected either. Besides them a few health manipulation related abilities and attack related abilities don't benefit from spell amplification as well.

1 The rum wear-off damage is not amplified.

2 The AoE health drain is not amplified.