Abilities

Abilities (also known as spells) are unique skills that units, heroes, and buildings have access to. The abilities can be innate or researchable, and can be controlled by the player (active), or automatic (passive).

Abilities can have effects on their targets.

Abilities that affect (enemy) units, heroes or creeps in a negative way, by preventing or diminishing certain actions, are called Crowd Control abilities. Crowd Control abilities are debuffs.

Damage dealt by abilities is reduced by armor.

Cast Types

Active

Active abilities must be used in order to apply their effects. Active abilities can consume energy, cooldowns and other resources and usually have some method of targeting related to them. Most abilities are active abilities. They can be activated by pressing their associated hotkey.

Autocast

Autocast abilities are active abilities that can be toggled on to automatically cast, or turned off to manually cast. When toggled on the ability will apply when it can.

Channel

Channeled abilities are active abilities require the unit to stay still while the ability is active. The ability ends if the channeling during is reached, the channeling is interrupted with another action by the user or canceled by an enemy disable.

Passive

Passive abilities (also known as traits) will apply their effects as long as they are available. Passive abilities do not consume resources but sometimes have cooldowns betweeen their applications.

Aura

Aura abilities are similar to passive abilities, in that they don’t have cooldown or costs, but they will affect multiple targets in the area around the unit with the aura ability.

Time and Cost

Most (active) abilities have a cast time and/or cost, along with a cooldown.

Cast Time

Abilities use its own unique cast time. The animation can be cancelled early to stop the ability from being used.

Instant Cast Time

Ignores cast time and activates instantly.

Cooldown

The wait period after casting. The ability may not be allowed to be cast again until the cooldown time is over.

Cost

Requires energy, health or other resources to be spent. It cannot be cast without the required amount of resources needed.

Targeting Types

Some abilities require a target to be cast, while other spells are released instantly.

No Target

Abilities of this type do not require a target to be cast, and will activate when pressed. Abilities of this type will start their effects as soon as their cast time or channel time has completed.

Unit Target

Abilities of this type require a target to be selected to provide their effects. The cursor will change to allow target selection. The caster will move towards the target until it comes in cast range or the target can no longer be targeted.

Point Target

Abilities of this type require a point to be selected. Most Point Target abilities cannot be cast on cliffs.

Area Target

Similar to Point Target a point needs to be selected, however a visual indicator appears to indicate the area that will be affected.