Stats
There are 3 basic stat types in Dota 2, Strength (Str), Agility (Agi), and Intelligence (Int). Every hero has a primary stat type.
Your hero gains more of these stats by leveling up, or by purchasing items that give them stats.
1 point of Strength gives you:
- +19 health points
- +Increase your health regen by 0.03/sec
- +1 Damage if you are a Strength Hero
1 point of Agility gives you:
- +1 Attack Speed
- +1/7th's armor
- +1 Damage if you are an Agility Hero
1 point of Intelligence gives you:
- +13 Mana
- +0.04 Mana/sec
- +1 Damage if you are an Intelligence Hero
A couple things about stats to note:
- Most heroes gain their primary stat faster than their other stats, but not always.
- Strength heroes are often the hardest to kill due to gaining more Strength on average, but keep an eye on armor levels, since some heroes have more base armor and agility gain than others.
- Agility heroes often do the most DPS (damage per second) with their right clicks. This is because 1 point of agility gives them 1 damage while ALSO increasing their attack speed. Attacking faster while hitting harder makes their points more valuable for damage, and means that Agility heroes are often able to be Carries. There are carries in all stat types due to their skills, but many carries are Agility Heroes.
- Intelligence heroes are often the easiest to kill because of low hp and armor, but have high damage through spells since their mana pool is larger. Most Intelligence heroes are supports, but not all.
Damage Types
There are 3 damage types in Dota 2.
Physical
Physical Damage is the most common type of damage because every hero has a right click attack that does physical damage, in addition to a few spells that do physical damage.
Physical damage can be reduced a few different ways in Dota 2, and the most common way is armor. Assuming your hero takes only physical damage from full life until death, 1 extra point of armor will provide you ~6% more health points. This extrapolates out at about the same rate, with 10 armor, or a Platemail, providing you ~60% more health against physical damage. Remember that you can also increase armor by purchasing an Agility item, but the main purpose of Agility, when purchased, is to increase damage and attack speed on an Agility Hero, since it takes 7 Agility to give 1 armor.
The second way to reduce damage is damage block. Damage block can be obtained a few different ways such as a Stout Shield,Vanguard, or Crimson Guard, and the way that it works is it shaves the amount of damage your opponents do from the top before armor reduction.
That means that if your opponent tries to do 50 damage to you and your stout shield blocks 20 damage, then the 30 damage is then applied and further reduced by your armor. If we take this principle into the late game, such as reducing 100 by 20, it means that damage block blocks a larger percentage of damage in the early game compared to the late game.
If you want to increase the physical damage that you're doing, your options are:
- Purchase a +damage item such as a broadsword or a stat items for the hero type that you are (like Gauntlet for a strength hero).
- Increase your AS (attack speed) with an item like Gloves of Haste, or an Agility Item to increase your attack speed.
- Reduce your opponents armor with an item like Medallion.
- Do a hybrid of these things like Purchasing a Desolator to give you increased damage AND lower their armor, or purchase anAssault Cuirass to lower their armor AND increase your attack speed
- Use an allied skill like Amplify Damage to reduce your opponents armor.
Magic
The second damage type in Dota 2 is Magic damage. Magic damage is also extremely common because most spells in the game do magic damage.
To reduce magic damage, you need Magic Resistance.
Almost all heroes have a built in Magic Resistance of 25%, which means that a 100 damage magic nuke will do 75 damage to an enemy. Creeps have a magic resistance of 0% (with catapults being unaffected by most magic damage).
To use this to our advantage, if your Finger of Death does 600 damage at level 1, and your target has 25% magic resistance, that means it does 450 damage after reduction, so make sure your opponent is below 450 hp when you use Finger of Death!
To reduce magic damage done to you, you can purchase items that increase your magic resistance, such as a Cloak, or a Hood of Defiance.
To block magic damage done to you, you can build your Hood of Defiance into a Pipe of Insight, which allows you to shield your team from up to 400 magic damage for a brief time.
The most common way to reduce magic damage done to you is by purchasing a Black King Bar (BkB) which grants you Spell Immunity. Spell Immunity protects you from almost all spells in the game from affecting you either in disable or damage. Some heroes have ultimates that are so powerful that some of their effects go through Spell Immunity like Black King Bar, but they are quite rare.
Increasing the magic damage that you do is a bit trickier than it is for Physical damage because there are very few ways to increase the initial damage number once the skill has maximum points in it. There are some hero abilities and a few items that can increase your magic damage, but for the most part skills that do magic damage do NOT scale into the late game once you have maximum skill points in them.
For this reason, most heroes that rely on casting spells for damage do not turn into carries in the late game.
The ways to increase the magic damage you do is:
- When possible purchase an Aghanims Scepter (Aghs) that increases your damage(not all heroes can purchase Aghs, and many times it just affects utility of your ult, not the damage). To know if your hero has an ultimate that is affected by Aghs, or what the upgrade does, hover the mouse over the ultimate to check.
- Purchase a Veil of Discord or Ethereal Blade to reduce your opponent's magic resistance.
- Use a hero ability that lowers your opponent's magic resistance, such as Skywrath's Ancient Seal.
- Purchase a Refresher Orb to refresh the cooldown of your skills so that you can use a strong spell 2 times in 1 teamfight.
- Purchase an item that does magic damage when used like Dagon.
Pure
The last damage type is Pure damage. Pure damage is neither reduced by Armor or Magic resistance, so it's difficult to decrease or increase. It's the rarest of the damage types, but it's the best against heroes that have very high armor or magic resistance, since it cuts right through those defenses.
The best way to block pure damage is usually by using a Black King Bar, since most spells and attacks that have pure damage components require that your opponents aren't magic immune. There are a few pure damage spells that do damage through magic immunity and they are Doom, Sonic Wave, Rupture, Midnight Pulse and Laguna Blade (only with Aghs).
