Hero (unit type)

From Liquipedia Dota 2 Wiki
< Heroes

Heroes are the essential main characters of Dota 2, controlled by the players. Heroes possess the three attributes, strength, agility and intelligence, from which one may be their primary attribute. Those without a primary attribute are regarded as Universal and benefit from all three attributes. Heroes are capable of leveling up through the means of experience, up to level 30, gaining additional attribute points, and ability points which can be spent to level up abilities or gain even more attributes. Heroes are also able to spend gold to purchase items.

Complexity[edit]

Hero complexity is a difficulty rating for heroes as set by Valve using unknown criteria. Generally, heroes with high complexity are less reliable to be useful, especially when played unproperly, compared to those with low complexity.

Heroes with the maximum complexity have unique mechanisms, "hard-to-understand" abilities, or include multi-unit control.

Complexity Heroes
Hero ComplexityHero Complexity
Hero ComplexityHero ComplexityHero ComplexityHero Complexity
Hero ComplexityHero ComplexityHero ComplexityHero ComplexityHero ComplexityHero Complexity

Spawning[edit]

All heroes spawn once at the beginning of the match after the picking phase, but only if the player locked in their pick. They are always spawned facing 45° toward the northeast (Faction Radiant) or southwest (Faction Dire) based on their respective factions.

Clones[edit]

Like heroes, these clones do not disappear when dying (or expiring). Meepo Clones respawn like regular heroes, while Arc Warden's and Monkey King's clones respawn whenever Tempest Double or Wukong's Command is cast again. These hero clones are almost fully treated like regular heroes, with a few special interactions with some spells for fairness. However, since Meepo's clones and Arc Warden's clone work fundamentally differently (Meepo clones being permanent like heroes, and death to one means death to all, while Arc Warden's clone is rather similar to a summon or an illusion), each have different unique interactions. Monkey King's clones rather act like a spell effect and cannot be interacted with in any way. They stand at set locations and attack nearby enemy heroes automatically until the spell expires.

The only heroes which spawn later on are hero clones, which can only be created by 4 heroes at the moment as follows:

Clone Creating Abilities
  • Arc Warden - Tempest Double
    Create a temporary self that can use abilities and items. It can act independently from the caster, but gets weaker the further away it is from the caster, and expires like a regular summon.
  • Dazzle - Nothl Projection
    Creates a temporary invulnerable clone of himself that can use abilities and items. Dazzle is fully disabled and vulnerable while the clone is up. The clone cannot move too far from Dazzle, and dies when Dazzle is killed.
  • Meepo - Divided We Stand
    Creates permanent clones of himself, that can use abilities and items they copy, though they only copy boots. The main hero and the clones always die and respawn together, regardless of who of them got killed.
  • Monkey King - Wukong's Command
    Create a temporary army of stationary, uncontrollable, and invulnerable clones that only attack heroes that come within their attack range.
  • Monkey King - Wukong's Command
    Aghanim's Scepter Upgrade
    Passively spawns a Wukong's Command Soldier that can utilize Jingu Mastery based on a charge replenish timer.

Illusions[edit]

Main Article: Illusions

Illusions are also hero-type units, but unlike heroes, they do not respawn, but despawn completely after dying, like other units and summons. Each spell which creates illusions spawns completely new illusions on recast. Illusions are basically hero-based summons, copying the hero, but acting like a summon.

Killing and Dying[edit]

See also: Gold and Experience
The kill banners as seen in-game.

Killing a hero grants players much bigger bonuses than killing almost any other unit. Heroes grant scaling Gold Gold based on their level and their current killing streak, and scaling Experience ExperienceExperience based on their level. Heroes also gain killing streaks upon killing heroes. A killing streak increases the hero's bounty, increasing its value for the enemy. A killing streak starts with 3 hero kills without any deaths in-between, and is capped at 10 kills. A streak longer than 10 has the same worth as a 10 killing streak. A hero's current streak is globally announced whenever it makes a kill.

The very first hero kill of the match, called the ▶️ First Blood!, also grants an additional 135 Gold to the killing hero.

A hero is only granted this gold if it actually killed the enemy (i.e. did killing blow). Otherwise, the hero either only gets assist gold and experience, or no gold and experience at all, based on how much time passed since the last time it damaged the target, and how far away the hero is if too much time passed.

Killing a hero also grants experience based on the hero's level. The higher the hero level, the higher the possible currentXP bounty is given. Although a hero can level up to 30, the experience bounty is out at level 25.

A table showing how much gold a hero grants and loses on death can be found here. A table showing how much experience a hero grants on death can be found here.

Killing multiple heroes in quick succession also results in a multi-kill. However, unlike a killing streak, a multi-kill has no gameplay influence and merely serves for aesthetics. Multi-kills do not require the hero to stay alive in-between the kills, if the hero dies, the multi-kill can still continue. A multi-kill occurs when killing a second hero within 18 seconds of the first kill. The multi-kill can be extended by killing even more heroes, all within 18 seconds of the previous kill. Like a killing streak, a multi-kill has no limit, but is "soft-capped" at 5, repeating the same line for 5 and more kills. The multi-kill stages are:

Kills Announcement Announcement with killing streak
1 N/A N/A N/A
2 ▶️ Player got a double kill! ... with a double kill!
3 ▶️ Player has a TRIPLE kill! ... with a TRIPLE kill!
4 ▶️ Player earned an ULTRA KILL! ... with an ULTRA KILL!
5+ ▶️ RAMPAGE!!! ...RAMPAGE!!!
Announcer responses are customizable

A hero's death has a much bigger impact than the death of almost any other unit. When a hero dies, it stays dead for an amount of time based on its level and the player loses gold based on the player's <math>\tfrac{\text{NetWorth}}{40}</math>. There is no way to directly reduce or avoid this gold loss. However, only unreliable gold is lost, reliable gold is not lost on death, meaning if a hero has almost no unreliable gold but a lot of reliable gold, dying does not cost as much as it would with much unreliable gold and little reliable gold. Dying also results in the loss of any ongoing killing streak the hero has. Heroes do not lose experience on death. As mentioned before, a death also grants gold and experience to nearby enemies and the killer. However, gold and experience are only granted to the enemy, and streaks are only lost when dying to an enemy.

Dying to neutral creeps, or getting denied by an ally or oneself neither grants the enemy any bounty nor ends the current killing streak.

Hero kills sounds for Ultra Kill and Rampage were added in 6.60.

Respawning[edit]

Main Article: Death
An invulnerable Primal Beast upon respawning.

After the first spawn, a hero is not created again. However, it respawns. After a hero dies, it comes back to life after an amount of time, based on its level. The maximum respawn time is reached on level 25. Only the following units can respawn: Heroes, Couriers and Roshan.

Upon respawning, the hero gets instantly moved to the fountain area, facing 45° toward the northeast or the southwest, if they belong to the Faction Radiant or Faction Dire faction respectively. The hero's health and mana are replenished. Cooldowns are unaffected and buffs and debuffs are not cleared upon respawning.

The hero also turns invulnerable and untargetable, which lasts until the respawning hero is issued a command, preventing spawn-camping. The invulnerability is provided by Rejuvenation Aura. Commands include any regular unit orders like moving, attacking, and casting abilities, as well as shop interactions like buying and selling items.

Respawn Time[edit]

  • Total respawn time can be defined as
    • Base Respawn Time [?]
      • Set Respawn Time [?]
    • + Buyback Respawn Time Increase
    • ± Other Flat Bonus Respawn Time


The hero respawn times can be seen in the following table, starting from 12s and increasing up until level 25, which will be at 100s.

LVL 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25+
Default
Respawn
Time 		12s 15s 18s 21s 24s 26s 28s 30s 32s 34s 36s 44s 46s 48s 50s 52s 54s 65s 70s 75s 80s 85s 90s 95s 100s
Respawn Time Changing Abilities
  • Gold - Buyback
    Next Respawn Time Increase: 25
    Neutral Set Respawn Time: 26
    The buyback penalty is applied on top of the respawn time, unless affected by the aforementioned Reincarnation sources. Furthermore, dying to neutral creeps sets respawn time to a minimum of 26s.
  • Courier - Passive Bonus
    Base Respawn Time: 60
    Respawn Time Increase per Level: 6
    Couriers level up with their owners and respawn at its faction's fountain after its respawn time.
  • Undying - Ceaseless Dirge
    Cooldown: 480
    When Undying dies he will automatically respawn in the fountain. Begins the game on cooldown.
  • Vengeful Spirit - Vengeance Illusion
    Aghanim's Scepter Upgrade
    Duration: Respawn Time
    Upon death, Vengeful Spirit creates a strong illusion that deals and takes full damage and can cast all of her abilities. If the illusion is alive when Vengeful Spirit respawn, she will take its place. The illusion disappears once Vengeful Spirit respawns, or when it reaches the normal death duration. The buyback time increase penalty does not increase the illusion's duration.

Buyback[edit]

Main Article: Buyback
N/A
Buyback
Affects
Self
While dead, the player has the option to buy their hero back into the match, spending money in order to instantly respawn at the fountain.
Base Gold Cost: 200
Networth Gold Divisor: 13
Next Respawn Time Increase: 25
Neutral Set Respawn Time: 26
480
Details
  • The buyback button appears on the hero portrait while the hero is dead.
  • Buyback only takes from reliable gold first, and then from unreliable gold.
  • Buyback has a base cost of 200 Gold, plus a fraction of the hero's networth, rounded down, using the following formula:
    EXPR
    200 + NetWorth / 13
  • The respawn time increase affects the next respawn time. Does not count deaths with Reincarnation.


Displays[edit]

Buyback status is displayed in 3 different locations, on the HP bar while dead, in the gold tooltip at any time, and below the hero icon while dead

The BUYBACK button is only accessible while dead. It is located on the right side of the death bar. The death bar replaces the HP bar while the hero is dead and shows the respawn time. On its right, the Buyback button is located.

The button has 3 different statuses:

  • When ready, the button is grey and heightened. On the button, it reads  BUYBACK  in white, and it also displays the current buyback Gold Gold cost.
  • When having not enough gold, the button is red and pushed back. The BUYBACK text turns red, and it still displays the current Gold Gold cost.
  • When on cooldown, it looks like when having not enough gold, but the gold cost is replaced by a cooldown timer, showing the remaining cooldown.

Alt+ Right Click a hero's portrait above prints the respawn time if the hero is dead.

The buyback status can also be seen by allies, below the hero icon at the top bar. If the flag has a golden border, that hero has buyback ready and can use it. If there is no golden border, the player has either does not enough gold or is on cooldown. Like the death bar, this is only visible while dead.

Lastly, the buyback status is also displayed in the gold tooltip, which can be accessed by hovering the mouse over the gold. It displays the currently required amount of gold for the buyback, its cooldown status, how much gold the player still needs for the buyback, or how much surplus gold they have.

When a hero buys back, a string sound plays which is audible to everyone, and a gold stack icon appears below the hero's top bar icon, which stays there for several seconds, visible to everyone. The hero also responds to the buyback. Unlike their responses on a regular respawn, which are only audible to the player, a buyback response is audible to everyone. This means no matter what setting a player uses, there is always a cue revealing that a hero bought back.

Leveling[edit]

Several heroes leveling up, indicated by the light beam and a ▶️ sound effect.
Main Articles: Experience and Abilities

Every hero starts off at level 1 and can level up 29 times, up to level 30. Each new level grants the hero some / / attribute points (different values for each hero). Ability points are gained up to level 25 which they can use to level up abilities or a TalentsTalents talent. Some abilities require the hero to be on certain levels to be learned or leveled up further. Most basic abilities have 4 ability levels and can be leveled on level 1, 3, 5 and 7. TalentsTalents Talents can be upgraded at levels 10, 15, 20, and 25. Ultimates usually have 3 levels and can usually be leveled up at level 6, 12 and 18. The exceptions are Meepo, who requires different levels for his ultimate, and Invoker, who has unique different ability scheme.

Heroes level up through the means of experience, which is gained by killing enemy units, or by being within proximity of an enemy unit while an ally kills that enemy unit. The required distance to gain experience is 1500 if the kill is not done by the hero, or if the killed unit was not a hero. Killing other heroes always grants experience, regardless of distance. When multiple heroes are within range of an enemy unit which gets killed, the experience gets evenly split among the heroes. This includes every single clone of Meepo, but excludes Arc Warden's Tempest Double and Monkey King's Wukong's Command clones. If a hero is already on max level, it still gets its share of experience when within range, even though it has no use for it anymore, causing it to get wasted. A hero cannot gain and does not get its share of experience while dead. An exception to this is Vengeful Spirit after acquiring Aghanim's Scepter.

A ▶️ level up is indicated by a visual effect, an angled yellow light beam from the sky shining on the hero. This light beam is visible to everyone. A sound effect is also played, which is only audible to the player.

Ability Interactions[edit]

Just like any other unit type, the hero unit type causes several different interactions with abilities. Some abilities cannot affect heroes at all, while others have altered effects or different values when used on heroes.

The following abilities cannot be cast on, or cannot affect heroes:

On the other side, these abilities can only target or affect heroes:

The following abilities interact differently with heroes:


"Template:Navbox" and "Template:Navbox/old" are deprecated! Please use Template:NavBox instead.
Retrieved from "https://liquipedia.net/dota2/index.php?title=Heroes/Mechanics&oldid=2245536"