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Damage is any means by which unit's current health can be reduced. The 3 main damage classifications are Physical, Magical and Pure.

Damage Sources[]

Main Articles: Attack Damage and Spell Damage

Damage can come from attacks, abilities and items. Attack damage is the damage dealt per attack, and is displayed on the Attack Damage sword icon in the HUD. Generally, damage sources are split into two big categories — Attack Damage and Spell Damage.

Attack damage ( ) is the amount of damage a unit is shown to deal with a regular attack. A unit's total attack damage is the sum of its main attack damage (white) and bonus attack damage (green). Most attack damage are physical damage, however, there are some exceptions to this.

Spell damage ( ) is usually damage dealt in a separate instance from attack damage, with some exceptions. This includes all abilities (including item abilities and attack modifiers) which deal the 3 damage typesmagical, physical or pure damage.

Damage Classification[]

All forms of damage in Dota 2 are classified by damage types. There are 3 primary damage types: Physical, Magical, and Pure.

Physical Damage is reduced by Armor or Damage Block, Magical Damage is reduced by Magic Resistance and Magical Damage Barrier, while Pure Damage is not generally reduced by anything (except for damage reduction, e.g. Enrage icon Enrage and Defense Matrix icon Defense Matrix, which affects all damage types).

All 3 damage types have some interaction with other damage-related game mechanics as noted in the table below. Some damage sources may also have the HP Removal flag, causing the damage to ignore some mechanics which would manipulate it otherwise.

Mechanic Damage Type Interaction
Physical Attacks Physical Abilities Magical Attacks Magical Abilities Pure Attacks Pure Abilities
Armor Reduced Reduced - - - -
Damage Block Reduced Normal1 - - - -
Magic Resistance - - Reduced Reduced - -
Magical Damage Barrier - - No No - -
Ethereal No No Amplified Amplified - -
Evasion May Miss - May Miss - May Miss -
Invulnerability No No effect on all damage types.
Damage Manipulation2 Amplifies, Reduces and Negates all damage types.
Damage Negation2
1 Except Moon Glaives icon Moon Glaives, although considered as spell damage, its damage is blocked.
2 These categories only count ability effects which directly manipulate damage, reducing (e.g. Bristleback ability icon Bristleback), amplifying (e.g. Bloodrage icon Bloodrage) or completely negating them (e.g. Refraction icon Refraction). Abilities that amplify or reduce damage by increasing/reducing magic resistance/armor of units are not included.

Debuff Immunity[]

Debuff Immunity icon

Default buff icon

Main Article: Debuff Immunity

Debuff immunity is a modifier which stops most effects of debuffs' effects on a unit without dispelling the debuffs and without preventing debuffs from being placed on the unit. It also grants resistance against magical damage and immunity against pure and reflected damage, as well as protecting against mana loss.

Debuff immunity inherently grants the unit increased magic resistance, with the amount depending on the source ability. On top of this, it also grants 100% resistance against pure damage and reflected damage, meaning they deal 0 damage. Note that a 0 damage instance is still registered and still may proc on-damage effect, unless it is flagged as HP Removal.

However, these resistances are only granted against abilities that do not pierce debuff immunity. This means if an ability pierces debuff immunity and deals magical, pure, or reflected damage, it completely ignores the resistances granted by the debuff immunity. In case of magic damage, it deals damage as if the magic resistance bonus of the debuff immunity is not present.

Physical damage does not interact with debuff immunity at all, regardless of whether the ability pierces debuff immunity or not.

Physical[]

Most attack damage from all units (including buildings) and certain abilities deal physical damage, unless stated otherwise. The total physical damage dealt to a unit is affected by armor (percentage reductions) and damage block (flat reductions). Units under ethereal are not affected by physical damage.

Some abilities (e.g. Guardian Angel icon Guardian Angel and Cold Embrace icon Cold Embrace) provides physical damage immunity, although they can still be targeted by attacks and abilities.

Physical damage from abilities (and theoretically items) is usually unaffected by defense class. Unless it directly manipulates the attack damage (i.e. attack damage increasing abilities or Exorcism icon Exorcism). Physical damage (except for Moon Glaives icon Moon Glaives) from these attack damage increasing abilities are affected by armor, but are not affected by evasion and damage block.

The following abilities deal physical damage (summoning abilities and attack damage buffs are not listed):

Abilities Dealing Physical Damage
1 Damage is directly added to the total attack damage.
2 Damage from these abilities is affected by defense class as well.
3 Half of damage dealt is physical, the other half magical.
4 Damage dealt is blocked by damage block.

Magical[]

Main Articles: Magic Resistance and Ethereal

Magical Damage sources primarily come from abilities. The majority of abilities in game deal magical damage, unless stated otherwise. Magical damage is reduced by magic resistance, and its damage is amplified against ethereal units. The majority of abilities in Dota 2 deal magical damage.

Abilities Dealing Magical Damage

Pure[]

Pure Damage is a damage type that is not reduced by Armor or Magic Resistance. It is also not amplified by magical damage amplification abilities, fully ignores Armor and Damage Block. It does not affect invulnerable units.

There are a few sources that can manipulate Pure Damage, with Dispersion icon Dispersion being one of them. This mechanic is called damage reduction. Pure damage affects units with Spell Immunity (because spell immunity does not block damage), but that does not mean that an ability that deals pure damage is able to target spell immune units.

For example, Laser icon Laser deals pure damage, but cannot be cast on units with spell immunity.

1 Mist Coil icon Mist Coil deals pure damage to the caster, but magical damage to the target.
2 Requires a Talent talent.
3 Requires Aghanim's Scepter icon Aghanim's Scepter.
4 Requires Aghanim's Shard icon Aghanim's Shard.

Flags[]

Several abilities have certain flags that cause them to behave differently in certain situations, all abilities can be flagged, regardless of damage types. Examples of flags include the HP Removal, the No-reflection, the No-Spell-Lifesteal and the No-Spell-Amplification flag.

HP Removal[]

Abilities with the HP Removal flag ignore and do not trigger any on-damage effects, making them unable to interrupt Blink Dagger icon Blink Dagger or cancel consumables (e.g. Clarity icon Clarity). Their damage also cannot be amplified or negated by most forms of generic damage manipulation and damage negation. In some cases, their damage ignores invulnerability as well. Damage ignored this way is still registered as such and may be counted for statistic purposes.

The ability's damage values are still affected by damage classification as usual (i.e. Magical damage with HP Removal can still be affected by magic resistance and magical damage barriers).

1 Maximum health as cost per second is considered HP Removal to the caster.
2 This ability delays damage. The delayed damage is Pure and has the HP Removal flag.

Setting Health[]

Main Article: Setting Health

Besides healing and damaging, a unit's health may also be directly altered by setting it to certain values. Health altered this way is neither registered as a heal, nor as damage, and therefore is ignored by anything that reacts to healing and damage. It can also never be lethal, and can never set the health beyond the unit's max health. When casting the following abilities with lesser health than the health cost, the caster's goes down to 1HP.

HP Removal is not the same as Setting Health. HP Removal is still damage, but flagged to bypasses several but not all on-damage effects, and can still be lethal.

On-Damage Effects[]

Besides all sources of damage manipulation and spell lifesteal, the following abilities do not react on damage which has the HP Removal flag:

No-reflection[]

On-damage events of certain abilities do not to interact with the damage of abilities which have the no-reflection flag. This is to prevent infinite damage loops in case of 2 opposing heroes with Blade Mail icon Blade Mails.

1 Triggers on damage effects of all abilities, except from the following list.
2 Does not trigger on damage effects.
3 Flagged as HP Removal.

The following abilities do not react to abilities with the No-reflection flag:

No-Spell-Lifesteal[]

Abilities with the no-spell-lifesteal flag cannot spell lifesteal, even though their damage is categorised as spell damage.

Abilities not affected by Spell Lifesteal
1 Upgradable by Aghanim's Shard. The damage of the bouncing attacks is unable to spell lifesteal. The Intelligence attribute symbol-based damage is able to spell lifesteal, including that of the bounces.
2 Talent The damage of the bouncing attacks is unable to spell lifesteal. However, Overload icon Overload's area damage is able to spell lifesteal, including that of the bounces.
3 Upgradable by Aghanim's Scepter. The damage of the bouncing attacks count as spell damage, but is unable to spell lifesteal.

No-Spell-Amplification[]

Abilities with the no-spell-amplification flag ignore all sources of spell damage amplification (except for Hunter's Boomerang icon Hunter's Boomerang), even though their damage is categorised as spell damage.

Abilities not affected by Spell Damage Amplifications
1 Upgradable by Aghanim's Shard. The damage of the bouncing attacks is unaffected by spell damage amplification. The Intelligence attribute symbol-based damage is fully affected, including that of the bounces.
2 Talent The damage of the bouncing attacks is unaffected by spell damage amplification. However, Overload icon Overload's area damage is fully affected, including that of the bounces.
3 Upgradable by Aghanim's Scepter. The damage of the bouncing attacks counts as spell damage, but is unaffected by spell damage amplification.

No-multiplier[]

The no-multiplier flag causes generic damage manipulation to not interact with the flagged damage.

1 Maximum health as cost per second has the no-multiplier flag.
2 This ability delays damage. The delayed damage has the no-multiplier flag.
3 Current health as cost per second has the no-multiplier flag.

Instant Kill[]

This mechanic kill units without the actual use of damage. Similar to HP Removal, the instant kill effect ignores almost all damage manipulations and can only be prevented by a few abilities.

The most prominent example that uses this mechanic is expiring summoned units and illusions, which are killed once their set duration ends. Summons and illusions that get replaced on cast are killed this way as well. Min health via damage manipulation does not prevent instant kill.

Abilities that prevent or bypass instant killing usually have special interactions hard-coded into the abilities.

Instant Kill Sources

Illusions[]

These abilities instantly destroy illusions when used on them, unless the illusions are strong illusions.

Instant Killing Illusion Abilities
1 Instantly kills the target upon landing if it is not a hero or a clone.
2 Requires a Talent talent.
3 Requires Aghanim's Scepter icon Aghanim's Scepter.
4 Requires Aghanim's Shard icon Aghanim's Shard.
5 Kills illusions on the first tick, not upon cast.

Creeps[]

1 Instantly kills the oldest captured unit if the max amount of units gets exceeded.
2 Requires a Talent talent.
3 Requires Aghanim's Scepter icon Aghanim's Scepter.
4 Requires Aghanim's Shard icon Aghanim's Shard.
5 Instantly kills the target if their current health is below the threshold.
6 Instantly kills the target upon landing if it is not a hero or a clone.

Forced Kill[]

The following abilities use the instant kill mechanic to forcefully remove or kill its unit(s) from the game when certain conditions are met.

Forced Instant Kill Effects

Damage Manipulation[]

Main Article: Damage Manipulation

Damage manipulation is a mechanic that alters damage values, either increasing or reducing it.

Trivia[]

The following damage types were removed in version 6.82.

Composite[]

Composite damage (also known as mixed damage) was a damage type that was reduced by both armor and magic resistance. It pierced spell immunity and did not affect ethereal units. This damage type was used by Acid Spray icon Acid Spray, Wild Axes icon Wild Axes, Diabolic Edict icon Diabolic Edict, Summon Spirit Bear icon Summon Spirit Bear's backlash damage, Land Mines icon Land Mines and Suicide Squad, Attack! icon Suicide Squad, Attack!.

All of them were changed to physical damage, except for the backlash damage from the Spirit Bear, which was changed to pure damage.

Universal[]

Universal damage was a damage type that pierced spell immunity and was affected by magic resistance. This damage type was previously used by Pulverize (Earth) icon Pulverize, Doom ability icon Doom, Echo Slam icon Echo Slam's initial damage, Midnight Pulse icon Midnight Pulse, Upgradable by Aghanim's Scepter. Laguna Blade icon Laguna Blade, March of the Machines icon March of the Machines and Flaming Fists (Warlock Golem) icon Flaming Fists.

Doom, Midnight Pulse, Flaming Fists and Upgradable by Aghanim's Scepter. Laguna Blade were changed to deal pure damage, allowing them to still pierce spell immunity, while Pulverize, Echo Slam's initial damage and March of the Machines were changed to deal magical damage, and thus no longer pierce spell immunity.


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