Damage Types and Damage Mitigation, part 1: Overview

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Hey everyone! I'd like to start a short series educating people about damage types and damage mitigation, a topic that is essential to dota gameplay but is not very well known.

Please leave feedback and don't forget to enjoy!

There are 3 types of damage in dota 2: Physical, Magical, and Pure.

There are many types of damage mitigation in dota 2:

Armor
Magic Resistance
Damage Block
Evasion
Spell Immunity
Ethereal
Blind
Damage Amplification
Damage Reduction
Damage Negation
Magic Damage Barrier
Invulnerability

Over the next three posts I will cover the different damage types, the different mitigation types, and their interactions. Today, we will be covering Physical damage and its corresponding mitigations.

Physical Damage

Physical Damage is damage that comes from basic attacks and some abilities. This damage is modified by both Armor and Damage Block.

Physical Damage via Basic Attacks

Physical damage done by basic attacks is called "Attack Damage". Here is the formula for your attack damage:

A few things to note:

Damage block applies before armor
Crit applies after armor and damage block

There are 4 types of attack damage: Hero,Basic, Piercing, and Siege.

Heroes, Ancients, Big Neutral Creeps (usually in a camp there's the big one and the small one), and a few others do Hero damage.

Melee Lane Creeps, Small Neutral Creeps and most summons do Basic damage.

Ranged Lane Creeps, Small Neutral Creeps, and basically everything else does Piercing damage.

Towers, Fountains, and Catapults do Siege damage.

For a more in-depth and accurate list of damage types, visit the dota 2 wiki page on attack damage

Armor Types

There are 3 armor types: Hero, Basic, and Siege.

Heroes, summons, golems, , and Roshan have Heroic armor.

Buildings and Siege Creeps have Siege armor.

Everything else that has armor has Basic armor.

For a full list of which units have which armor, visit the dota 2 wiki page on armor types.

Interactions

Now for the juicy part. Let's talk about Hero damage first.

Hero damage does the following against the armor types:

Full damage against Heroic Armor
Full damage against Basic Armor
50% reduced damage against Siege Armor

Basically, heroes do normal damage to creeps and other heroes, but do 1/2 their damage to Buildings and Siege creeps.

Basic damage does the following against the armor types:

25% reduced damage to Heroic Armor
Full damage against Basic Armor
30% reduced damage to Siege Armor

Basically, melee minions, most summons, and neutral creeps do less damage to heroes, roshan, and towers.

Piercing damage does the following against the armor types:

50% reduced damage to Heroic Armor
50% increased damage to Basic Armor
65% reduced damage to Siege Armor

There is actually NO instance where ranged creeps do the damage that they say they do. Curious, isn't it?

Seige damage does the following against the armor types:

15% reduced damage to Heroic Armor
Full damage to Basic Armor
50% damage to Siege Armor

Siege creeps will win a fight against heroes if they do the same damage and have the same amount of armor o_o. GO CARTY GO!

But why does this all matter?

That's my question to you today. When will this information actually be useful?

Example answer:

Let's say you're playing and you just bought a and you don't know where to put it, either on the bear or yourself. You know that does Hero damage while the Bear does Piercing damage. You also know that Hero damage is more effective against heroes than Piercing, but Piercing damage is better against towers than Hero.

Therefore, you put the on the hero when killing people and stick it on the Bear when killing towers.

Thanks y'all (and sorry for the badly formatted post),
Sofa