Disable

Disables (also called crowd control, or CC) refer to any abilities or status effects that prevent, impede, or otherwise inhibit a Hero from acting. Disables come in many different varieties, and most Heroes have access to some form of disable. Sometimes "disabled" or "fully disabled" refer to stun.

Interactions

Disable	Target's Interaction with the Disable
	Movement	Attack	Ability Usage	Item Usage	Vulnerable
Stun, Shackle	prevented	prevented	prevented	prevented	yes
Sleep, Cyclone	prevented	prevented	prevented	prevented	no
Movement Slow	slowed	normal	normal	normal	yes
Attack Slow	normal	slowed	normal	normal	yes
Silence	normal	normal	prevented	normal	yes
Break	normal	normal	disables passives	normal	yes
Mute	normal	normal	normal	prevented	yes
Forced Movement	forced	depends	depends	depends	yes
Root	prevented1	normal	normal2	normal	yes
Hex	reduced	prevented	prevented	prevented	yes
Trap	confined	normal	normal	normal	yes
Taunt	forced	forced	prevented	prevented	yes
Hide	prevented	prevented	prevented	prevented	no
Ethereal	depends	prevented	normal	normal	only to spells
Disarm	normal	prevented	normal	normal	yes
Blind	normal	misses	normal	normal	yes

¹ Does not prevent turning.

² Prevents using of certain abilities.

Stun

Main Article: Stun

Stuns are the most common and most dependable kind of disable. A Hero under the effect of a stun is unable to move, attack, use items, or use abilities until it wears off. Stuns will also interrupt any channeling abilities, such as using a Town Portal Scroll. Mini-stuns are a shorter version of a regular stun, usually lasting a fraction of a second, that are most useful in interrupting enemy spells or preventing enemies from moving effectively. General stuns have distinctive animation on the head of stunned heroes.

• Examples of stuns include Wraithfire Blast, Split Earth, and Slithereen Crush.
• Examples of mini-stuns include Battery Assault and Lightning Bolt.

Shackle

Shackle abilities, much like regular stuns, fully disable the target, rendering them unable to move, attack, use abilities or items and interrupt channeling spells. The difference to regular stuns is that the caster has to channel the effect, or apply other negative effects to it (e.g. slowing the caster)

• Sources of shackles are Black Hole, Dismember, Fiend's Grip, Shackles, Flaming Lasso (disarms the caster) and Electric Vortex (slows the caster).

Sleep

Main Article: Sleep

A sleep works just like a stun, with the only difference being that the effect gets dispelled once the affected units is damaged or attacked. Sleeps also may turn the affected unit invulnerable for a while.

• Sources of sleep are Nightmare (1 second of invulnerability), Echo Stomp (no invulnerability, but affected units don't wake up from damage within the first 0.8 seconds) and Song of the Siren (invulnerability for the full duration).

Cyclone

Main Article: Cyclone

A cyclone also works just like a stun, but on top of fully disabling the target, it also whirls it up into the air, so that other units can path below it, and turns it invulnerable for the duration.

• Sources of cyclones are Tornado, Cyclone and Eul's Scepter of Divinity.

Slow

Main Article: slow

A slow reduces the affected unit's movement speed or attack speed (or both).

Movement speed slow

Movement speed slows reduce a unit's movement speed by a percentage of its speed. Currently, there are no sources of movement speed slow which reduce a unit's movement speed by a fixed value. A unit affected by a haste is immune to movement speed slowing effects.

• Examples of Movement Speed Slow are Thunder Clap, Gush and Poison Sting.

Attack speed slow

Attack speed Slows reduce a unit's attack speed by a fixed value. Currently, there are no sources of attack speed slow which reduce a unit's attack speed by a percentage value. There is no effect which grants a unit immunity to attack speed slows either.

• Examples of Attack Speed Slow are Untouchable, Fire Spirits, and Liquid Fire.

Silence

Main Article: Silence

A silence prevents the affected unit from casting their spells for its duration. It does not affect anything else, the affected unit is still free to move, attack and use items. Passive abilities are not disabled.

• Examples of silence are Global Silence, Gust, and Crippling Fear.

Mute

A mute works just like a regular silence, except that it disables active items instead of the unit's spells. Mutes usually come together with a regular silence.

• Examples of mute are Doom and an Aghanim's Scepter upgraded Static Storm.

Break

Main Article: Break

A Break disables the affected hero's passive abililties. Most passives are disabled, but not all. Generally, on-death passives (Reincarnation, Requiem of Souls passive activation) are not disabled. It also tends to not disable passive abilities which have a direct synergy with the hero's other abilities, like Grow which affects Toss' damage. Break does not disable any passive item abilities either.

• Sources of Break are Silver Edge, Aghanim's Scepter upgraded Doom and Aghanim's Scepter upgraded Demonic Purge

Forced Movement

Main Article: Forced Movement

Some spells forcefully move the affected units, preventing it from freely moving. Some of these also fully disable it for the duration, but some allow the unit to still turn, attack or cast spells and items.

• Examples of fully disabling forced movements are Meat Hook (when hooking enemies), Vacuum and Skewer
• Examples of non-disabling forced movements are Meat Hook (when hooking allies), Gust and Force Staff

Root

Main Article: Root

A root (formerly known as Ensnare) is a form of disable which prevents a unit from moving and disables certain abilities (e.g. Teleportation and blink from Blink Dagger, Anti-Mage and Queen of Pain), however, it does not prevent the affected units from turning, casting other spells or using items. Some roots also disarm the affected units (disarming roots were formerly known as Entangle).

• Examples of roots are Earthbind, Entangling Claws and Rod of Atos.
• Sources of roots which also disarm are Frostbite and Overgrowth.

Hex

Main Article: Hex

Hex turns the target Hero or unit into a critter, a weak unit that is incapable of attacking or using abilities and items. Hex silences, mutes, disarms and sets the target's base movement speed to a certain value, usually low value. It does not affect any other aspect of the unit (like turn rate, vision, collision size, etc), nor does it prevent it from gaining experience and gold.

• Sources of hex are Hex, Hex, and Scythe of Vyse.

Trap

Main Article: Trap

A trap is technically not a disable, since it doesn't really prevent a unit from anything. A trap hinders a unit from moving, similar to how cliffs hinder a unit from moving. Trapping spells either create an unpathable obstacle, or create a barrier or a leash which prevent units from pathing by heavily slowing the unit if it tries to path through.

• Sources of traps in form of obstacles are Sprout (creates regular trees at a target point), Power Cogs (creates destructible units around the caster), Fissure (creates an indestructable ridge in a straight line in front of the caster) and Ice Shards (creates indestructable shards in an arc at the target location).
• Source of other forms of traps are Kinetic Field (creates a thin barrier at the target location which heavily slows units when walking against it) and Pounce (leashes a hero, heavily slowing it when it tries to move away from the leash point).

Taunt

Main Article: Taunt

A taunt forces the target to attack another unit. The target is unable to issue any other commands until the taunt wears off. The forced attacks caused by taunts will interrupt any ongoing order the affected unit has, including channeling spells. If the taunting unit cannot be attacked or the taunted unit cannot attack, the taunted unit will follow the taunting unit until attacks are possible again or the taunt wears off.

• Sources of taunts are Berserker's Call, Duel and Winter's Curse.

Hide

Main Article: Hide

Hiding (also referred as banishing) a unit causes it to temporarily disappear. While hidden, a unit cannot be affected by any spell (with a very few exceptions) and is fully disabled. It is unable to move, attack, cast spells or items. Usually hiding spells also turn the affected unit invulnerable.

• Examples of hiding spells are , Phase Shift and Snowball.

Ethereal

Main Article: Ethereal

Ethereal is a status effect which prevents a unit from attacking, but also prevents it from getting attacked. It turns the unit immune to physical damage, but usually reduces magic resistance, making it take more magical damage. Ethereal effects apply a slow when targeted to enemies.

• Sources of ethereal are Decrepify, Ghost Scepter and Ethereal Blade.

Disarm

Main Article: Disarm

A disarm prevents the affected unit from attacking. It still can be attacked by other units.

• Examples of disarm are Deafening Blast, Frostbite and Heaven's Halberd.

Blind

Main Article: Blind

A blind causes a unit to gain a chance to miss on attacks. Blinds work fully independently from evasion.

• Examples of blinds are Blinding Light, Drunken Haze, and Laser.

Disabling orders

The error messages from silence, mute, root and general order disable.

Stuns (including Shackle, Sleep and Cyclone), Forced Movements, Taunts and Hiding effects do not prevent the player from giving orders to their units. The given order is executed by the unit as soon as the disable expires. There are only very few spells which can be cast normally while affected by these disables:

• Abaddon – Borrowed Time
• Bane – Nightmare End
• Monkey King – Spring Early
• Morphling – Morph
• Lua error: Found no Cargo data for "Ursa - Enrage".

However, some disables prevent giving orders to units. They also prevent casting the above named spells. When an order is prevented, the player cannot even select a target in case of targeted orders like a unit-targeted spell. In such case, the order remains selected (i.e. a unit-targeted spell stays selected when attempting to cast it while silenced, and the player has to manually deselect it). When giving orders is disabled, a red on-screen error message appears, telling the player why the order cannot be given. The text is usually accompanied by an error sound. The message and sound varies based on the disable.

Silence, Mute and Ethereal do disable giving orders. Silence fully prevents any spell cast orders, Mute fully prevents item cast orders and the Ethereal state fully prevents ordering attacks on the ethereal unit. Roots also prevent ordering certain spells. While affected by roots, the player cannot order their unit to cast certain abilities.

Besides the named disables, the prevention of giving orders is also partly a disable on its own. Several spells completely prevent the player from giving the affected units any order, while the disable the ability uses does not. The following spells fully prevent giving orders:

• Brewmaster – Primal Split¹
• Lifestealer – Infest^{1 2}
• Lua error: Found no Cargo data for "Lifestealer - Assimilate".
• Lone Druid (& Spirit Bear) – Savage Roar⁴
• Phoenix – Supernova¹

¹ Hides the caster and prevents it from receiving any orders (also applies to allies inside Scepter upgraded Supernova).

² Lifestealer may only use Consume during Infest. All other orders are prevented.

³ The assimilated allied hero may not be given any orders for 1 second.

⁴ Applies a taunt-like effect to hit enemies, but also prevents receiving any orders while affected.

Deprecated disables

Pause

Main Article: Pause

Pause was an effect that completely rendered the target unable to move, attack, cast spells or items, disabled most passive abilities and caused buffs and debuffs to not tick down for the duration. It also prevented it from gaining experience.

• Examples of pause were Chronosphere, , and Disruption.

Mechanics Main Heroes Unit Type (Heroes / Clones / Illusions) Complexity Attributes Table Buyback Level Roles Gold Experience Animations Stats Armor Attributes ( Strength / Agility / Intelligence) / Universal) Health & Mana (HP Regen & MP Regen) Magic Resistance Movement Speed / Slow Resistance Status Resistance Turn Rate Misc Creep Controling Death / Denying Vision Unit Size (Collision Size / Bound Radius / Selection Box / Model Size) Gib Type / Shades Adjectives Buildings Towers / Barracks / Ancient / Fountain Effigy Neutral Buildings (Outposts / Watchers / Twin Gates / Lotus Pools) Abilities Type Active / Passive / Autocast Aura Accuracy / Evasion Channeling Damage Barrier Damage Block Damage Manipulation Damage Over Time Talents Teleport Targeting Area No Target Point Unit Vector Combinations Casting Cast Range / Motion Buffer Cast Animation (Cast Point + Backswing) Cooldown Reduction (Flat / Current Flat / Percentage) Reset Charge-based Runes Bounty Rune Water Rune Wisdom Rune Power Runes ( Amplify Damage Rune / Arcane Rune / Haste Rune / Illusion Rune / Invisibility Rune / Regeneration Rune / Shield Rune) Misc Random Distribution Transformation Attack Damage Attack Damage Instant Attack Heroes Attack Classes Attack Range (Acquisition Range) Attack Speed (BAT / Interval) Damage Types (Physical / Magical / Pure / Instant Kill) Flags (HP Removal / No-reflection / No-Spell-Lifesteal / No-Spell-Amplification) Projectile Speed Spell Damage (Outgoing / Incoming) Modifiers Bash Cleave / Splash Corruption Critical Strike Lifesteal / Spell Lifesteal Mana Break On-hit Effects Misc Damage Instance Animation / Orb Walking Status Effects Disables Cyclone Disabling Orders Forced Movement (Knockback) / Upward Movement Fear (Hypnosis) Hide Hex Root Leash Stun Sleep Taunt Movement Move Speed Slow Flying Movement Phased / Tree Walk / Unobstructed Movement Other Attack Immune / Non-targetable Attack Speed Slow Debuff Immunity Spell Immunity Invulnerability Invisibility Blind Break Disarm Ethereal Silence Mute Trap Dispels Basic Strong Death Items Mechanics Courier Sharing / Selling Disassemble Recipes Neutral Item Drop