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. Unless the "Right-Click to Force Attack" option is enabled, right-clicking the unit does not work, since right-clicking allies gives a move order, not an attack order.

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.

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 25% of its experience bounty to enemies within the 1500 experience range, instead of 100%. The denying player also gains 20% of the creep's gold bounty when denying. 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 prioritised. Denying creeps is also important to shift the creep equilibrium towards closer to the own tower and away from the enemy tower.

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 than killing them manually with attacking. For many small summons, this does not make much of a difference, but can still be done when possible. Especially when having multiple units, they can be used to deny each other. Bigger summons, like and, should always be attempted to deny, since they usually have significant gold and experience bounties. Denying these units is an excellent way to prevent giving the enemy free gold and experience when the unit is unlikely to survive.

Denying towers
Towers may only be denied once they drop to 10% health and below, yielding no gold for the enemy team. Denying a tower also prevents an enemy player from receiving the - bonus gold for the last-hit.

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
 * 's
 * 's cast on an ally
 * 's cast on an ally

It is also possible to deny allied heroes with some abilities:
 * 's fully works against allied attacks, resulting in a deny when its damage kills an ally.
 * 's, ' , '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 's illusion can also attack and deny deniable friendly units.

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.