Attack modifiers are modifiers which apply an effect to a unit's basic attacks. These effects can widely vary, from healing, to damaging or even disabling effects. Most of these modifiers have their own rules. For example, some modifiers may not stack with others, some may fully stack, some may be for melee units only and others for ranged or both for some abilities. Attack modifiers can be active, in which case they require to be used manually, though most have an Autocast option, but they also can be passive, proccing, or having a chance to proc on each attack.
Mechanics[]
There is no set rule of how attack modifiers stack, most different types of attack modifiers stack with each other, whereas for the same type, it depends on the mechanics of the modifier itself. Note that most attack modifiers' description are only a general outline and different abilities may have specific additional rules or exceptions hard-coded.
Besides the common attack modifiers listed below, many heroes, units and items have attack modifiers which are unique to them, meaning they can be only found on those units or items. To correctly understand and predict interactions between these various mechanics, on-hit effects have a different definition from attack modifiers.
Definitions[]
Attack Modifiers[]
Attack modifiers are applied to an attack at its inception. In some cases this is visually apparent on the attack projectile for ranged heroes (e.g. Corruption or Cold Attack projectile), but not all attack modifiers have visual effects. As these modifications are calculated at the start of the attack, changes during the airborne time of an attack projectile (i.e. while picking up an item) will generally not affect these attacks that were launched earlier.
Therefore, attack modifiers are not applied if the attack is missed. Since the attack modifier is carried on the attack, if the attack fails, the modifier fails as well.
Multishot abilities that apply modifiers (e.g. Marksmanship and Split Shot) will generally apply all attack modifiers, but generally not on-hit effects. This is because most on-hit effects are specified to happen only on the "first" or "next" attack, and only the attack landing on the primary target will meet this condition. The other attacks will check for on-hit effects, but as separate instances.
On-hit Effects[]
On-hit effects are only applied at the time the attack arrives at its target. Since the projectile is airborne and the effect has not been applied and only applies on-hit, these on-hit effects does not have a visual effect. Conversely, value changes during the projectile airborne time can influence on-hit effects — In fact, the on-hit effect is not even tied to any particular attack, rather it is tied to an ability or item. The effect have an opportunity to perform actions before evasion, but it may still be coded to take evasion into account.
For example, the attack breaking out of Shadow Walk invisibility that disables passive abilities cannot miss; while Overload explicitly does nothing when the attack is evaded.
Common Attack Modifiers[]
Common attack modifiers are attack modifiers which are not unique abilities, but are seen commonly on many heroes and items. The only differences between them are their values and how they are activated or acquired, some being applied on each attack, others being chance-based.
Abilities which simply grant or reduce attack speed (e.g. Focus Fire or Overpower) or attack damage (e.g. Alacrity) are not attack modifiers, as they directly enhance the attack, instead of granting a modification.
Corruption[]
Armor Corruption is an attack modifier with an on-hit effect. It reduces the armor of the affected target. Successive attacks do not stack the debuff, but refresh the duration instead. The attacks first apply the armor reduction debuff, then their own damage. Works against wards, buildings, and allied units. Fully stacks with any other items or other sources of Armor Corruption.
Critical Strike[]
If an attack procs more than one source of critical strike, only the highest multiplier is applied.
Cleave and Splash[]
Lifesteal[]
Percentage-based lifesteal sources from items, abilities, and talents stack independently and additively of each other after the sources' respectively creep lifesteal multiplier. All lifesteal sources are summed up, then lifesteal amplification is applied to the unit's lifesteal value as a multiplier. All lifesteal manipulation sources stack multiplicatively of each other.
The heal value from lifesteal is based on a percentage of the total physical attack damage dealt to the attacked unit from the attacking unit. Therefore, if an attack damage instance exceeds the target's current health and kills it, the heal value is based on the attack damage value the dying target would have received if it had not died. Lifesteal heals more on critical strike procs and works conditionally on certain attack modifiers.
Neither heals from magical attack damage sources (e.g. Monkey King Bar procs) nor spell damage sources of all damage types. Lifesteal only heals from physical and pure attack damage.
Instant attacks hitting secondary targets can heal from lifesteal as long as attack modifiers work with the instant attack source.
However, the heal value from lifesteal is not affected by most damage manipulation effects on the attacked target (e.g. Flesh Golem or Aeon Disk). For example, for illusions, their heal value from lifesteal is based on their outgoing damage manipulation values (i.e. total attack damage of the illusion), but the heal value from attacking illusions is not affected by the incoming damage manipulation values (i.e. attacking illusions).
There are currently no limits to how much a unit can heal from lifesteal.
Bash[]
Bash is a passive ability that gives a unit a chance to stun its target on attack. Most bashes also include some extra damage upon proc. This damage is usually directly added to the attacking unit's attack damage. If it is directly added to the attack damage, the unit can lifesteal off of it and it is affected by attack damage reduction. However, it cannot crit or cleave and is not affected by attack damage increasing effects, damage block or magical damage barriers. Multiple sources of bashes do not stack at all.
Mana Break[]
Attack Modifier Sources[]
Active Abilities[]
- Applies one stack of Curse of Avernus based on its current level to affected enemy units.
- Channels and shoots multiple arrows in the target direction that hit all enemy units dealing a percentage of Clinkz' attack damage and applying attack modifiers.
- Active ability. Uses the instant attack mechanic to attack every enemy within radius, other attack modifiers are applied to the primary target only.
- Active ability with toggle. Uses the instant attack mechanic to attack every enemy within attack range, other attack modifiers are applied to the primary target only.
Requires a talent to remove this restriction. - Active ability, deals extra damage to affected targets within radius based on the current level of Cloak and Dagger.
- Active ability, slows movement speed and deals damage over time based on the target's current health. Can only debuff each enemy once per cast.
Requires Aghanim's Scepter to remove this restriction. - Death Ward's attacks bounce between enemies.
Passive Abilities[]
- Slows movement speed. Applies a stack that will curse enemies. After reaching certain stacks, it applies a silence and slow. The curse debuff gives attack speed to units targeting them.
- The splinter shot deal less damage and can proc other attack modifiers.
- Causes attacks to bounce between targets. Other attack modifiers are applied to primary target only.
- Heavily but briefly slows movement and attack speed of attack targets and deals extra damage.
Active Attack Modifiers[]
Active Attack Modifiers abilities are attack modifiers that must be actively used on each attack to apply their effects. They also can be set to Autocast, causing each attack to apply the effect if the hero can support their costs. Typically they use different attack range values if the cast range is different than the hero's attack range.
If the ability is cast manually, using the designated Hotkey, the ability uses the cast range. When using Autocast, it uses the hero's attack range. The cast range of these abilities can be further increased by other attack range bonuses based on the hero's range type. However, it is not affected by cast range bonuses.
When set to Autocast, these abilities count as a regular attack; when used manually, they partly count as an ability cast. Therefore, unlike regular attacks, casting these attack modifiers manually, also known as Orb Walking, neither draws aggro from lane creeps nor towers. However, they do not count as abilities in any other scenario, meaning they cannot be used when attacking is restricted (i.e. disarms) and do not proc nor trigger any on-cast effects. These active attack modifiers still use the hero's attack speed and the ability's projectile speed unless stated otherwise.
Active attack modifiers cannot be acquired by Spell Steal.
- Ancient Apparition – Chilling Touch
- Bounty Hunter – Jinada
- Doom – Infernal Blade
- Drow Ranger – Frost Arrows
- Enchantress – Impetus
- Huskar – Burning Spear
- Jakiro – Liquid Fire
- Jakiro – Liquid Frost
- Kunkka – Tidebringer
- Outworld Destroyer – Arcane Orb
- Shadow Fiend – Necromastery2b
- Silencer – Glaives of Wisdom
- Tusk – Walrus PUNCH!
- Viper – Poison Attack
- Weaver – Geminate Attack
- Tusk – Walrus PUNCH!
- 1 Requires a talent.
- 2a Requires Aghanim's Scepter.
- 2b Requires Aghanim's Shard.
- 3 Requires Aghanim's Shard.
- 4 Can be further increased by both attack range bonuses and cast range bonuses.
Units Abilities[]
Most attack modifiers on units are passive abilities with some exceptions.
- 1 Requires a talent.
- 2 Requires Aghanim's Scepter.
- 3 Requires Aghanim's Shard.
On-hit Effects Sources[]
- Has a chance to create an illusion of Phantom Lancer on each attack.
- Applies Caustic Finale based on the current level to affected units.
- Applies a debuff that slows movement speed and causes affected unit to explode upon death, dealing damage in an area based on its max health plus a flat bonus.
- Steals intelligence from attacked targets for an amount of time.
- Steals one of all attributes from attacked targets and converts them to 3 agility for self.
- Deals extra pure damage against enemies without any allies nearby.
- Slows and deals magical damage in an area around the attack target.
The buff is granted whenever Storm Spirit casts an ability. - Deals damage in a line behind the attack target, with its distance based on Templar Assassin's attack range and its damage based on her attack damage.
- Increases attack speed with each continuous attack against the same target. Bonus is lost upon switching targets.
- Places a debuff on the target which gains a stack with each continuous attack. Deals extra physical damage based on the number of stacks.
- Slows movement speed and deals damage over time to attack targets.
Plague Ward has this ability as well. - Causes attacks to deal extra damage against non-hero units.
Fully stacks with everything, except with itself. - An attack modifier with on-hit effect. Causes attacks to reduce armor.
Does not stack with Orb of Corrosion. - An attack modifier with on-hit effect. Causes attacks to reduce armor.
- An attack modifier with on-hit effect. Causes attacks to reduce armor.
- Causes attacks to slow and deal damage over time.
Does not stack with Orb of Corrosion. - Causes attacks to reduce armor, slow, and deal damage over time.
Does not stack with Orb of Venom or Blight Stone. - Causes the proccing attack and the following attack to slow movement and attack speed. Drastically increases the attack speed for the next attack.
- Causes the triggering attack to deal extra magical damage and to have True Strike. If the user is a ranged unit, also grants attack range for that attack.
Fully stacks with everything. - Cause attacks to slow the affected target.
- Causes attacks to reduce magic resistance.
- Causes attacks to deal extra magical damage when proccing. Fully stacks with everything, including multiple instances of itself.
- Causes attacks to launch a Chain Lightning when proccing.
Does not stack with other Maelstrom-based items. - Causes attacks to launch a Chain Lightning when proccing.
Does not stack with other Maelstrom-based items. - Causes attacks to launch a Chain Lightning when proccing.
Does not stack with other Maelstrom-based items. - Bloodthorn - [[Bloodthorn#|]]
- Causes attacks to deal extra magical damage when proccing. Fully stacks with everything, except multiple instances of itself.
- Causes attacks to deal extra damage against non-hero units.
Fully stacks with everything, except with itself. - An on-hit effect that grants bonus damage on first attack out of invisibility.
- An on-hit effect that grants bonus damage, break and True Strike on first attack out of invisibility.
Trivia[]
Unique Attack Modifiers (UAM, or formerly known as Orb Effects) were attack modifiers that could not be used simultaneously with each other — one attack modifier always took priority, and multiple of them do not stack.
Unique attack modifiers did work simultaneously with other non-unique attack modifiers, with the following stacking priority:
- 1st - Active attack modifiers that were manually cast.
- 2nd - Active attack modifiers set to Autocast.
- 3rd - Item-based unique attack modifiers.
In Ability Draft, the first drafted unique attack modifier ability always override later acquired ones. When obtaining multiple items with unique attack modifiers, only the one that has been continuously the longest in the inventory will proc or trigger the attack modifier. For illusions, it is prioritized by inventory slot in reading order.
When attacking units that were invalid targets for certain unique attack modifiers (such as spell immune units, buildings etc.) with an attack modifier set to Autocast, other unique attack modifiers that the target was vulnerable to would be used, even if they were lower in priority.
For example, spell immune heroes are immune to Arcane Orb, but if the hero was carrying a Morbid Mask, it would proc instead. This did not apply to other non-autocastable unique attack modifiers (e.g. Mana Break) — they still followed the above priority order regardless of a target's spell immunity.
Orb Walking[]
In Warcraft III, unique attack modifiers are called orb effects. This is due to the items which grant the attack modifiers commonly being orbs (e.g. Orb of Venom, Orb of Corruption etc.) and these orb effects do not stack with each other.
The items being portrayed as orbs serves as a metaphor, as stacking real sphere-shaped objects is very difficult to do. Since DotA is a custom map on Warcraft III, it made use of the abilities of these orb items, and the term "orb" was used to describe that attack modifiers based on those items do not stack. Therefore, unique attack modifiers are referred to as Orb Effects in DotA, just like how they are in Warcraft III.
The term was later changed to Unique Attack Modifiers in Dota2 while Orb Effects was dropped. However, many players which came from DotA still refer to these modifiers as orb effects. The term Orb Walking originates therefore from Warcraft III, describing the same technique as described in the active attack modifier section above.
Stutter Stepping[]
This technique which originated from Starcraft and carried over to various MOBAs, was commonly used together with the active attack modifier orb walking technique.
Because of how manually casting active attack modifiers behaves, as compared to regular attacks. During the cast time of a manually cast active attack modifier, the player can spam the move command, which does not cancel the ongoing cast, but the first move command after the cast point is reached cancels the backswing, so the hero moves almost immediately after the attack launched.
However, doing that during a regular attack does cancel the regular attack, causing the unit to move immediately, so the player must time the move command after the attack launched. This means stutter stepping was much easier to do with casting active attack modifiers, as timing for the move command was not required, allowing for much more effective stutter stepping.
Due to this, orb walking and stutter stepping were very commonly used together, so commonly that it is just referred to as orb walking, even though it was orb walking and stutter stepping together. Even though stutter stepping can be done with regular attacks as well. The term stutter stepping became less known as a result. However, outside of Dota, the technique is still called as stutter stepping.
Recent Changes[]
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- The following abilities are no longer unique attack modifiers:
- Mana Break [?]
- Arcane Orb
- The following lifesteal sources are no longer unique attack modifiers:
- The following abilities are no longer unique attack modifiers:
- The following abilities are no longer unique attack modifiers:
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