Damage types

Damage is any means by which a unit's current health can be reduced. Damage can be inflicted by physical attacks from: the enemy fountain, enemy towers, enemy heroes (or their summons), enemy and neutral creeps, and in some circumstances even allied heroes. Heroes and neutral creeps can inflict spell damage by casting abilities. Heroes can also inflict damage by using the active abilities of certain inventory items.

Damage Types
All forms of damage in Dota 2 are classified with a damage type. Dota 2 classifies most (but not all) sources of damage into 3 primary damage types: Physical, Magical, and Pure. Physical Damage can be reduced by Physical Armor or Damage Block, Magical Damage can be reduced by Magical Damage Resistance, while Pure Damage cannot be reduced by either armor or magical damage resistance. All 3 primary damage types have some interaction with other damage-related game mechanics as noted in the table below. There are two additional damage types that can reduce a unit's current health: HP Removal and Negative Regeneration; however, these two types are unaffected by almost all other damage-related game mechanics.


 * The source of amplification or reduction must affect the correct damage type. For example, only amplifies magical damage; it has no affect on physical or pure damage. Pure damage can be amplified or reduced by items or abilities that affect all damage types, such as, or  (with upgraded aura from ).


 * By itself, Spell Immunity does not interact with any damage type. All spells are rated as to whether or not they can pierce spell immunity independent of their damage type. Thus, spell immunity only governs if a spell will have any affect, not how much damage it will inflict. To receive no affects from a spell, the spell must not pierce Spell Immunity and the target would require both Spell Immunity and 100% damage reduction of the damage type the spell inflicts.

Physical Damage
Physical Damage can be inflicted by regular attacks from all units (including structures), and by certain spell abilities. Physical damage is modified by both armor and damage block, is unaffected by magic resistance, and cannot affect ethereal units.

Physical damage is further divided into attack type categories that modify damage based on the target's armor type. All physical damage is affected by both armor and armor type. For example, piercing damage deals 150% damage to unarmored units (such as lane creeps) but only 50% damage to heroes. Such resistances are applied in addition to resistance from armor value. A full list of the attack types of creeps and summoned units can be found here. (Table of attack and armor types)

The only exception to this is damage from cleave, which is reduced by armor type and damage block but not by armor value. Practically speaking this means armor is worthless against cleave damage. Splash (from ranged attacks) is reduced as normal.

The abilities and Cold Embrace make their targets completely immune to physical damage, although they can still be targeted by attacks and abilities.

Physical Attack Damage For Heroes
In Dota 2 every hero starts off each game at level 1 with a fixed amount of physical attack damage, which varies by hero, that is the base damage for that hero. To this base damage, 1 additional point of damage is added for each point in that hero's primary attribute (strength, agility, or intelligence). When a hero levels up, the base hero damage does not increase, but the damage relative to the hero's primary attribute increases relative to that hero's attribute gain. Similarly, any item that increases a hero's primary attribute, indirectly increases that hero's physical attack damage by the same amount. A hero's physical attack damage can also be increased directly by items, abilities, or a double damage rune.

Physical Damage Abilities
Certain spells deal physical damage instead of magical. Physical damage from abilities are treated as Hero damage, and deals full damage to all units except for structures and siege creeps. Damage from abilities can be reduced by armor value and damage block, but will not trigger abilities that check for attacks such as. Such abilities cannot be evaded, except with Pseudo-Evasion. The following abilities deal physical damage:
 * Damage cannot be reduced by damage block.


 * Half of damage dealt is physical.

Magical Damage
Magical Damage is caused primarily by spells, although not all do magic damage. Magic damage is reduced by magic resistance, and deals higher damage against ethereal units. The majority of abilities in Dota 2 deal magical damage.

All abilities not explicitly listed under another damage type section inflict magical damage.

Pure Damage
Pure Damage is a damage type that is not reduced by magic resistance or amplified by magical damage amplification like or. It also fully ignores armor and damage block. However, it can be reduced or amplified by skills which reduce/amplify every damage type, like or. Pure damage affects spell immune units (since spell immunity doesn't block damage by itself), but that does not mean that a spell with pure damage can target spell immune units (eg deals pure damage, but cannot be cast on spell immune units). It does not affect invulnerable units. The following abilities deal pure damage: {| class="wikitable" style ="width:98%;"






























 * Mist Coil deals pure damage to the caster, but magical damage to the target.
 * Laguna Blade deals pure only when upgraded by, else it deals magical damage.
 * When the Spirit Bear dies, Lone Druid takes 10% of his max hp as pure damage.
 * Mystic Snake deals pure damage to units turned into stone by, and magical damage to all others.
 * Whirling Death deals pure damage if it cuts trees within its 300 radius on the same cast, else it deals magical damage.

HP Removal
HP Removal works by directly subtracting health from an affected unit. It ignores all damage reductions and amplifications. Unlike all other damage types, HP removal is not seen as damage by the game, so it does not interrupt things such as or. Likewise, HP removal does not trigger on-damage effects such as. HP Removal is used primarily as a cost for casting spell abilities like or  and is always non-lethal. The following abilities count as HP Removal:
 * Soul Rip does HP removal to all units counted towards its damage/heal value.

The following abilities cause HP Removal to the caster:

Negative Regeneration
Negative Regeneration affects a unit's health regeneration. All sources of a unit's health regeneration are added together, including any bonuses from abilities and health regeneration items. This total regeneration rate is the number displayed in the unit's health bar, expressed as HP regenerated-per-second. Negative Regeneration works against a unit's total regeneration rate, from which it is subtracted to arrive at the afflicted unit's effective regeneration rate (which is not shown). The resulting effective regeneration rate will always be less than the rate shown in the afflicted unit's health bar and can even become a negative value (essentially a degeneration rate). This means an afflicted unit will show a positive regeneration rate even while it is actually losing health. Unlike HP Removal, negative regeneration can kill a unit, which will give kill credit (experience and gold) to the unit who afflicted the target with the negative regeneration. Currently, there is only one ability that uses this damage type.

Deprecated Damage Types
The following damage types were removed in patch 6.82 to simplify the game mechanics.

Composite Damage
Composite damage (also known as mixed damage) was a physical damage type that was reduced by both armor and magic resistance. It went through magic immunity and did not affect ethereal units.

This damage type was used by, , , (the backlash damage),  and. All of them now deal physical damage, except for the backlash damage from the Spirit Bear, which is now pure damage.

Universal Damage
Universal damage was a magical damage type that went through magic immunity, was reduced by magic resistance, and dealt higher damage to ethereal units. This damage type was previously used by:, , (initial damage only), ,  (when upgraded by ), , and.

All of these abilities were reworked. These abilities:, , and (when upgraded by ) all now inflict pure damage that pierces Spell Immunity. And these abilities:, (initial damage), , and  all now inflict Magical Damage that does not pierce Spell Immunity.