Knowing your Damage Types

Why are Damage Types Important?

A big part of getting better at DOTA is expanding your knowledge of how some of the more arcane mechanics work. Damage types are a classic example of something that looks complicated, but are actually quite straightforward and useful once you get your head round them.

I'm going to look at a few ingame examples that will hopefully help you see how this understanding can help you. For a full, detailed explanation take a look at Dota 2 Wiki.

Our example hero is Bane, who uses four of the main types of damage:

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Physical Damage is reduced by Damage Block and Armor.

Like all heroes, Bane has a standard right click that inflicts Physical Damage.

Say we attacked a Bloodseeker carrying a Poor Man's Shield for 60 damage. First of all, the PMS will block 20 damage from our attack. Then his armour of 4 will reduce the remaining damage of 40 by 19.4%. This works out at a 7.76 reduction, leaving us with 32.24 damage.

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Magic Damage is reduced by Magic Resistance, and blocked by Magic Immunity.

Fiend's Grip is Bane's ultimate, and inflicts Magic Damage. This is another very common damage type, and is used by the vast majority of spells and abilities that heroes have.

All heroes have a basic 25% resistance to magic damage, so the amounts you see listed next to powers will always come out lower than you think against other heroes.

Level 1 Fiend's Grip inflicts 100 magic damage per second for 5 seconds, giving us a nice round 500 damage. Against most heroes this will be reduced by 25%, meaning we actually inflict 75 damage per second, for a total of 400 damage.

If the target had an active Black King Bar, the target would still be disabled, but would take 0 damage.

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Pure Damage is blocked by Magic Immunity.

Brain Sap inflicts Pure Damage, which is essentially a modified version of Magic Damage. It is still blocked by Magic Immunity, but is NOT reduced by Magic Resistance, or boosted by Magic Amplification.

This means that Pure Damage will almost always inflict the exact amount of damage that is listed next to the power. This makes it extremely potent against heroes relying on Armour or Magic Resistance to protect them.

Level 4 Brain Sap inflicts 300 damage, so even against heroes with a Hood of Defiance or abilities like Spell Shield it will still inflict 300 damage.

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HP Removal cannot be blocked or reduced.

Nightmare inflicts a small amount of HP Removal damage. This is quite an unusual damage type, and has various special conditions attached to it. It is NOT reduced or blocked by Magic Resistance, Magic Immunity or Armour. Neither is it boosted by Magic Amplifcation.

However, it also doesn't quite "count" as damage - for example using Nightmare on somebody while they were using a Healing Salve wouldn't cancel the salve, or reset the cooldown on their Blink Dagger.

Level 1 Nightmare inflicts 20 HP Removal per second for 4 seconds, a total of 80 damage. Almost every hero will take the same amount of damage from this.

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BANE vs HUSKAR

Ok so that gives you the outline of how all these different damage types interact. Lets look at a detailed example from a game:

You're playing against a Huskar, a hero who gains substantial Magic Resistance from Berserker's Blood once his health drops. You need to be extremely careful when you use your various abilities to get maximum impact on him.

We would start with Fiend's Grip, as in a 1v1 situation we want to inflict our magic damage as early as possible, before its effects are reduced substantially by his resistance. As Grip ends we are quickly going to be presented with an angry Huskar and will need to kill him quickly in order to survive. At this point you would need to judge his health, and how much more damage you could potentially do with your remaining abilities.

Level 4 Brain Sap and level 2 Nightmare will inflict a combined total of 400 damage, and due to their damage types, will not be reduced by his magic resistance. Maybe we get in a few auto-attacks (Physical Damage) and then follow up with Brain Sap to heal ourselves, and possibly Nightmare to finish the job. If he had a Blink Dagger we might need to avoid using Nightmare unless we were sure it would finish him - otherwise - he could Blink away the instant it ran out.

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CONCLUSION

I hope this brief guide has helped you get your head around damage types, and how they impact on your decision making ingame. It's often very important to get the right damage types when picking heroes, so that you can avoid their strengths and play to their weaknesses.

Dagon

For example, a hero like Batrider deals almost exclusively in Magic Damage, so can struggle to kill off heroes like Anti-Mage and Huskar without backup from his team mates.



Alternatively, a hero like Alchemist deals almost exclusively in Physical Damage, so maybe struggle to deal with high armour heroes and items like Ghost Scepter.

Damage types are so important when picking as very few items allow you to inflict different types, even when you have a lot of farm. Almost all standard items give you more Physical Damage, but only a few like Dagon, Maelstrom, Orchid Malevolence and Ethereal Blade give you a source of Magic Damage.

Blade Mail is the only item that provides Pure Damage. The nuke from Urn of Shadows provides a small amount of HP Removal.

Also be aware of enemy damage types when buying items yourself - don't stack armour or buy a Pipe of Insight against the Pure Damage of an Enchantress or Outworld Devourer when what you really need is a Black King Bar to block it completely.