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Denying

From Liquipedia Dota 2 Wiki
▶️ Mm-mm denied!
Luna

Denying is the act of last hitting a friendly unit. Enemies gain no gold and reduced experience from any denied unit. Enemies gain 50% experience for denied lane creeps and 0% experience for denied player-controlled units. 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, issue an attack command on the unit. If the "Right-Click Allies" option is set to anything other than "To Follow", the unit can also be denied with Right Click.

Denying units

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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 50% of its experience bounty to enemies within the 1500 experience range, instead of 100%. Denying a player-controlled unit grants 0% experience to the enemy, and also none to the denying team.

Denying allied lane creeps in the laning phase 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. In the laning phase, creeps should be denied whenever possible, although getting last hits should be prioritized. Denying creeps is also important to shift the creep equilibrium towards one's own tower and further from the enemy's tower.

As the laning phase transitions to the mid-game, it becomes less important to deny creeps, because creeps provide map vision and pressure, regardless of HP, and these are more important the longer the game goes. Additionally, as heroes gain items and levels, they become more efficient at farming, and time is better-spent farming elsewhere.

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.

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 rather than killing them by manually attacking. For many small summons this does not make much of a difference, but it should still be done when possible, especially when having multiple units as they can be used to deny each other. Heroes should always attempt to deny bigger summons, such as Warlock Golem and Spirit Bear, since they usually have significant gold and experience bounties. Denying such units is an excellent way to prevent giving the enemy free gold and experience when the unit is unlikely to survive.

Unlike creeps, no experience is given if a neutral creep deals the finishing blow to a player-controlled unit.

Denying towers

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Towers may be denied once they drop to 10% health and below, yielding half its gold bounty to the enemy team and half to the denying team. Denying a tower also prevents an enemy player from receiving the 110-130 bonus gold for the last-hit.

Towers can only be attacked with an attack command, regardless of the Game Settings.

Denying heroes

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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. Additionally, self-denied heroes don't get the free Town Portal Scroll for dying.

Although not counting as a deny, a hero dying to neutral creeps does not grant the enemy team any experience or gold, akin to getting denied. However, in this case the hero respawn time has a minimum duration and once again, no Town Portal Scroll is gained.

Specially Deniable

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The following abilities' debuffs make a hero deniable once their health is below 25%.
Hero Denies grant experience only to the hero who created the deniable debuff. [?] This hero receives the experience even when dead at the time of the deny (in contrast to regular Hero kills, which grant experience only to living Heroes).

Lethal Self-Damage

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The following abilities deal damage to the caster and can result in a self-deny.

  • Since the aura has a linger duration, Abaddon self-damage normally upon the duration ends. The damage is lethal and can be used to deny onnself.
  • Can deny Alchemist upon blowing up on himself when not thrown.
  • Can deny Pugna when cast on an ally.

Other Special Cases

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  • Aghanim's Scepter Upgrade
    If casted on Neutral Creep.
  • The sun can be denied once it is below 50% health, denying Phoenix (Upgradable by Aghanim's Scepter. and the ally) inside.
Return and self-attack
  • Retaliate fully works against allied attacks, damaging, and possibly denying them.
  • Reciprocity fully works against allied attacks, counter-attacking, and possibly denying them.
  • If casted on own dominated creep and attack on him.
  • Fire Shield fully works against allied attacks, launching the fireballs on, and possibly denying them.
  • If the creep that IO has connected to is tamed by an enemy, then with the 25 talent IO will attack the same target as the creep.
  • Storm Spirit - [[Storm Spirit#|]]
    [[File:|64px|text-top|link=Storm Spirit#]]
Range Attack
  • Persuading a ranged creep while it already launched an attack projectile towards an ally can result in a deny if that projectile dealt the finishing blow on the ally.
  • Enchanting a ranged creep while it already launched an attack projectile towards an ally can result in a deny if that projectile dealt the finishing blow on the ally.
  • Dominating a ranged creep while it already launched an attack projectile towards an ally can result in a deny if that projectile dealt the finishing blow on the ally.
  • Dominating a ranged creep while it already launched an attack projectile towards an ally can result in a deny if that projectile dealt the finishing blow on the ally.
  • If an enemy's projectile to his teammate was fired during the ability's duration but hits after the ability ends, the enemy may deny their ally.

Non-Lethal Self-Damage

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Damage from these abilities cannot kill the player or their allies.

1 Requires selecting the corresponding facet.

Deny Override

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Some abilities ignore deny mechanics and cause specific heroes to gain kill credits.

Trivia

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  • Denying is a core feature of Warcraft 3, and is such present in every custom map as well, including DotA.
    • However, in early versions of DotA, to discourage players from attacking their allies, attempting to do so caused the attacking unit to get hexed for one second, as the act of attacking allies was seen as unfit for a mod like DotA.
    • The hex was removed in later versions, and replaced with a simple stop command.
    • Based on player feedback, denying was eventually made possible in DotA, using Warcraft III as an example of why denying can be strategic element, beyond just griefing allies.
    • A compromise was made, allowing players to only deny non-hero units that dropped below 50% health (note that Warcraft III itself has no conditions for attacking allies or own units, and allows them to be attacked at any time).
    • How and when hero-denying was added is unknown.

Version History

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Description
7.36
(2024-05-22)
  • Hero Denies now grant experience to the hero who created the deniable debuff.
7.29b
(2021-04-16)
  • Heroes no longer gain a free Town Portal Scroll if they denied themselves, or if the kill is credited to a neutral creep.
7.26b
(2020-04-28)
  • The denying player no longer gains 20% of the denied creep's gold bounty.
  • Increased lane creep deny experience for the denied team from 40% to 50%.
7.23
(2019-11-26)
  • Denying a tower now grants half the team gold bounty to each team, instead of no bounty for anyone.
7.22
(2019-05-24)
  • Increased lane creep deny experience for the denied team from 35% to 40%.
7.21c
(2019-03-02)
  • Increased lane creep deny experience for the denied team from 30% to 35%.
7.21b
(2019-02-16)
  • Increased lane creep deny experience for the denied team from 25% to 30%.
7.20
(2018-11-19)
  • The denying team no longer gains 25% of the creep's experience.
  • The denying player now gains 20% of the denied creep's gold bounty.
7.07
(2017-10-31)
  • Reduced lane creep deny experience for the denied team from 70% to 25%.
  • Denied XP gained by the denier reduced from 30% to 25%.
  • Neutrals killing lane creeps is now considered the same as the enemy creeps killing them—it's not a deny, and gives full XP. You must deny the creep yourself to deny its XP.
7.06
(2017-05-15)
  • Lane creeps now give 70% experience when killed by neutral creeps or when denied by allies, instead of 50%.
  • Denying lane creeps now grants the denying team 30% of the experience bounty.
7.00
(2016-12-12)
6.88c
(2016-08-19)
6.88b
(2016-07-12)
6.82
(2014-09-25)
  • Denied creeps now give less experience (50% experience, instead of a constant 36 XP per unit).
  • Tower bounty gold for destroying Tier 1/2/3/4 reduced from 264/312/358/405 to 160/200/240/280 (denied is 50%).
6.79
(2013-10-21)
  • Ranged heroes now get the same denied experience as melee heroes (instead of less).
6.78
(2013-06-04)
  • Deny XP and Bonus XP/gold AoE is now the same as regular XP AoE (1000->1200).
6.44
(2026-06-03)
  • You have to be below 25% health for an ally to be able to start denying you (assuming you can be denied of course).
6.38
(2026-06-03)
  • Melee heroes get denied less XP than range heroes do.
6.36b
(2026-06-03)
  • Lowered the recent XP deny change a little.
6.36
(2026-06-03)
  • Denied units now give off minor experience instead of none (planned for improved league play from a while back, unrelated to the recent forum postings for those wondering).

Patch History

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Description
  • Reduced ranged deny sound volume from 0.6 to 0.5.
  • Melee deny sound
    • Added a pitch randomizer, 0/0.1
    • Reduced sound delay from 0.15 to 0.1.
  • Updated the deny sound event:
    • Removed pitch_rand_min (was -0.05)
    • Removed pitch_rand_max (was 0.05)
    • Added mixgroup "UI"
    • Split up the sound event into melee deny and ranged deny.
      Melee deny: Increased volume from 80% to 100% (+25% volume), added 0.15 seconds delay. [?]
      Ranged deny: Reduced volume from 80% to 60% (-25% volume).
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See also

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