Multi-targeted Physical Attacks Part I

I. Change Log
11/7-2008-31/7-2008: Guide written and posted.
24/8-2008: Completed and some small updates.
8/10-2008: Updated for 6.56.

II. Foreword
The lack of any guide/list that you could direct to when discussing Cleave/Splash finally got to me and I decided to make a guide containing these two things as well as a few other attack types and skills which are included in the same category. It will bring up the most basic questions, such as what Cleave is and if you can you Lifesteal from every Moon Glaive bounce, but will as well dvelve some into less asked things.

One thing which is important and mentioned several times in this guide is armor types and armor values, in case you don't know the difference between these two I recommend you to read the Armour and EHP guide so that you may get the most out of this guide.

In case there is anything I have missed or something youThe lack of any guide/list that you could direct to when discussing Cleave/Splash finally got to me and I decided to make a guide containing these two things as well as a few other attack types and skills which are included in the same category. It will bring up the most basic questions, such as what Cleave is and if you can you Lifesteal from every Moon Glaive bounce, but will as well dvelve some into less asked things.

One thing which is important and mentioned several times in this guide is armor types and armor values, in case you don't know the difference between these two I recommend you to read the Armour and EHP guide so that you may get the most out of this guide.

In case there is anything I have missed or something you would like to see added in the future then state so in a post here or send me a PM. would like to see added in the future then state so in a post here or send me a PM.

III. What are Multi-targeted Physical Attacks?
A much easier way to say it would be physical attacks which allows you to deal damage several targets at once.

There are currently 5 skills which allows you to pemanently deal AoE damage with physical attacks in an area, in some cases to specific targets and sometimes within a specific area; These skills are the following five:

Cleaving Attack

Splash

Psi Blades

Moon Glaive

Split Shot


There is also one chance based skill which allows you to deal damage within a specific area, that is:

Pulverize


All of these deal damage in their own way and most of them are hardcoded and will therefore work in strange ways together with attack modifiers and have several issues in DotA which were not thought of when Blizzard coded these skills (mainly due to the fact that these issues never existed in Campaign or Skirmish, that being the case they were never realised and thus never fixed).

When discussing these skills areas of effect, as always when talking about AoE values in DotA, we are referring to the Radius of a circle, the exception in this guide is Psi Blades which doesn't use a circle but a rectangle as its AoE.

Cleaving Attack

What is Cleaving Attack?
Cleaving Attack, further referred to as Cleave, is a way for all melee heroes to deal AoE damage with physical attacks. There are currently three heroes with this skill and one item providing this effect, all with different amounts and with their own AoE.

Sven

Magnus

Kunkka

Battle Fury


Typical for Cleave is that it does not work on ranged heroes.

Some heroes have a secondary attack animation which is used when any of their attack modifiers triggers, these secondary attack animations will always be used when carrying a Battle Fury. The heroes which have secondary attack animations are Tidehunter, Earthshaker, Juggernaut, Zeus, Phantom Lancer, Axe, Pit Lord, Lycanthrope in Shapeshift and Doom Bringer. Note that even though it looks like Leviathan is using Anchor Smash all the times while wielding a Battle Fury he is in fact not, these are only animations and does not affect the heroes' attacks in any way.

Illusions do not in any way benefit from Cleave.

Cleave does not work when striking an allied unit.

Area of Effect:
The AoE of Cleave consists of a full circle where the attacking unit is on the perimeter of the circle, the center is located in the middle of the circle with the radius (AoE value) between the center and the attacking hero. The center is located in the same direction as the attacked unit.

The circle itself always starts in the center of the attacking unit. The circle always starts at this location, regardless of the attackers range, an example would be Lucifer with 150 in range who will have his Cleave circle located at the same place as any other hero regardless of the fact that the unit he is hitting usually is farther away than for other heroes.

As long as some part of the enemy's collision size is within the area of effect it will take damage.

Since the description might be hard to understand there are a few pictures below showing the different AoE's, it should also make it much easier to understand how it works. As all of the different Cleave sources got different AoE's and Cleave values there will be a separate description for each of them, the numbers are the following:

Battle Fury - Cleave

Constant AoE - 225.
Constant Cleave damage - 35%


Magnus - Mighty Swing

Constant AoE - 250.

Level 1 - 12% damage is splashed.
Level 2 - 25% damage is splashed.
Level 3 - 37% damage is splashed.
Level 4 - 50% damage is splashed.


Sven - Great Cleave

Constant AoE - 175.

Level 1 - 20% damage is splashed.
Level 2 - 30% damage is splashed.
Level 3 - 40% damage is splashed.
Level 4 - 50% damage is splashed.


Kunkka - Tidebringer

Constant Cleave damage - 100%

Level 1 - 380 AoE.
Level 2 - 420 AoE.
Level 3 - 460 AoE.
Level 4 - 500 AoE.


Since it can to be hard to just get a feel for the AoE difference the following picture includes all the different Cleave AoE's as to make it easy to spot the difference in AoE, this is important is because one must understand the difference in AoE when discussing Cleave Stacking, which happens to be the next subject at hand. (Due to its non-static size the Tidebringer Cleave is omitted)

Cleave Stacking:
A well-known fact is that you can stack several sources of Cleave by carrying Battle Fury's, this due to the mechanics behind Cleave which allows you to have an item providing Cleave, what's important to know about this are the following things:

Each separate source keep it's own AoE.
This means that with Magnus' Great Cleave and one Battle Fury you will not Cleave for 85% within Magnus' 250 AoE, the Battle Fury will still only be able to distribute it's Cleave damage within it's regular 225 AoE. This means that there's an edge on the outside of the Battle Fury Cleave AoE where only Mighty Swing deals damage, here's an example:

Magnus with 100 damage, level 4 Mighty Swing and one Battle Fury strikes a creep.
Within an AoE of 225 100*0.85 = 85 damage is dealt. (In the picture below this area is the white area within the orange circle)
Within the remaining AoE, 225< and 250, 100*0.5 = 50 damage is dealt. (In the picture below this area is coloured red) This principle is the same for all different sources of Cleave, however this issue is only existing on Sven, Kunkka and Magnus since their Cleave values diverge from the one of Battle Fury, stacking several Battle Fury's will in other words not need calculations of this kind. Each separate source acts as its own damage source. Each source of Cleave is applied separately, meaning that two Battle Fury's will apply 35% each, this then adds up to 70% in the final calculation. What this means is simply that if a hero with 4 Battle Fury's Cleave on a Faceless Void with Backtrack it is possible for Backtrack to trigger on each one of those cleaves, so if one of the sources is blocked three will remain, reducing the amount of damage Void takes from cleave from 140% to 105%. Different sources stacks fully and overlapping. These two things are what makes it common to say that Cleave stacks fully, as we can see that is correct, Cleave stacks fully within the same AoE but in some cases overlapping where one source covers a greater area than the other, the two cases being the aforementioned with Sven's Great Cleave and Magnus' Mighty Swing. In these cases the Cleave damage always stacks fully within the smaller AoE while the greater one keeps its original value where there is no overlapping. The reason behind why Cleave works like this is because each source of Cleave acts as its own source of damage. Damage Information:
The damage type of Cleave follows the attack type of the unit wielding it, it is not reduced by armor values but by armor type. A hero's Cleave deals hero damage, which means that it is not reduced by any armor type except for Fortified armor, the only units with that armor type which can be hit by Cleave are the siege units. It is not reduced by spell resistance either and cannot be blocked with magic immunity.

You will only Cleave damage which is included in your regular attack damage (Base damage, damage added from stats and damage from pure bonuses coming from items), this means that skills such as Feast and Desolate, will not add to your Cleave damage.

The main target you are hitting is not affected by Cleave, nor does the main target's armor value or armor type affect the amount of Cleave damage dealt. However, if the attacking unit misses main target then no Cleave damage will be dealt, the Cleave damage itself can however not be evaded.

This basically means that if you have 100 damage and 100% Cleave and are hitting a target with 50% armor reduction the main target will only take 50 damage while all other units, which don't have the fortified armor type, will take 100 damage regardless of their armor. If for an example Omniknight would use Guardian Angel the targets of Cleave would still take 100 damage even though they have +1000 armor.

Interaction with attack modifiers:
There is only one attack modifier which works with Cleave, that is Critical Strike.

This does not mean that you cannot have any other attack modifiers on the attack which you cleave on, it simply means that none of the effects will be cleaved unto the additional targets, for an example, you can slow your main target with a Skadi while cleaving but the frost debuff cannot be cleaved unto any additional targets due to them being affected by Cleave, the same goes for all other orb effects as well (the effect will only be applied to the main target).

Do note that Bash is not cleaved either, even though it holds much resemblance to Critical Strike in other cases, neither the damage nor stun will be cleaved.

Valid and Invalid Targets:
Here is a short summary of which unit properties that allows a unit to be affected or not be affected by Cleave.

Valid Targets

All ground units
Magic immune units
Invisible units
Ancients


Invalid Targets

Buildings
Air units (except Revenants which are hit by Cleave)
Decrepified units
Invulnerable units


Note that if you are striking an invalid target no cleave damage will be dealt to additional units.