Multi-targeted Physical Attacks

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 you would like to see added in the future then state so in a forum post or send me a PM.

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.

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 does 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.