History VideoGame / DotA2

* CastFromHitPoints: Items such as Blood Grenade, Soul Ring and Armlet of Mordiggian grant boons to the hero at the cost of HP. Blood Grenade costs health to throw, Soul Ring converts health to mana (which can go over their normal mana pool, but goes away after a short duration), while Armlet can be toggled to give extra damage, strength, and armor while constantly draining HP. As of version 7.33, abilities that cost HP to cast have the health cost denoted in red numbers.

* EmergencyEnergyTank: Eating Cheese restores 2500 health and 1500 mana, which constitutes a significant percentage of the average core hero's health and mana even in the late game. For this reason, it is often compared to a second Aegis of the Immortal, and is especially prized by heroes dependent on a SuperMode that does not persist beyond death like Dragon Knight. Healing Lotuses from the Lotus Pools also instantly restore health and mana at much lower values, but still enough to be noticeable, and are more readily available.

* ExperienceBooster: Creeps transmuted by Hand of Midas grant increased experience in addition to gold. Additionally, Wisdom Runes give a direct experience bonus to a hero upon being picked up.

* CastFromHitPoints: Items such as Blood Grenade, Soul Ring and Armlet of Mordiggian grant boons to the hero at the cost of HP. Blood Grenade costs health to throw, Soul Ring converts health to mana (which can go over their normal mana pool, but goes away after a short duration), while Armlet can be toggled to give extra damage, strength, and armor while constantly draining HP.

** Every craftable item in the game has a recipe item attached to it in the game files, even if it doesn't require a recipe to make, so that they can be easily added to the item's crafting formula in future patches.

* EmergencyEnergyTank: Eating Cheese restores 2500 health and 1500 mana, which constitutes a significant percentage of the average core hero's health and mana even in the late game. For this reason, it is often compared to a second Aegis of the Immortal, and is especially prized by heroes dependent on a SuperMode that does not persist beyond death like Dragon Knight.

* ExperienceBooster: Creeps transmuted by Hand of Midas grant increased experience in addition to gold.

* MercyKill: "Denying" low health allied creeps, buildings, even heroes in some situations (with denying being manually assigning an attack that kills the allied target) can be thought as this, especially considering the alternative being death by the enemy's hands, granting them gold and XP (even those of measley creeps matter, especially in early game.)

* ThrowDownTheBomblet: Blood Grenade is a consumable item that can be thrown to deal damage and slow enemies in an area.

** Valve had every voice actor do a line for purchasing an Aghanim's Scepter, even heroes without an upgrade. Loads of heroes have had ultimate upgrades added since the lines were recorded, and by 7.20, all heroes have received an upgrade.

* FriendlyFireproof: The standard in the game is that [=AoE=] abilities which are exclusively beneficial only affect friendly units, and [=AoE=] abilities which are exclusively harmful only affect enemy units ([=AoE=] abilities that are neither might affect either only friendly units like Ancient Apparition's old ''Chilling Touch'', only enemy units like Winter Wyvern's ''Winter's Curse'', or both like Brewmaster Storm's ''Dispel Magic''). Faceless Void's ultimate ''Chronosphere'' is notable for averting this trope, stunning both friendly and enemy units caught in it (except Void himself and units under his control) - a necessity to avoid the spell being much too overwhelming, though spells and ranged attacks from outside the sphere still work.

* ImmunityDisability: It's usually a good thing to pop BKB in the middle of battle to prevent the enemy from stunning you - but this also prevents your allies from casting certain healing spells on you. This can also come into play with ''Song of the Siren''; it does not disable (and give invulnerability to) spell immune enemies, which can result in a lone enemy having to fight Naga Siren's team 1v5 while his teammates are sleeping.

** The Monkey King Bar also refers to the weapon of Sun Wukong from ''Literature/JourneyToTheWest'', both in its name, and its inability to miss. The Monkey King himself is also set to appear as a playable hero.
** The Heart of Tarrasque item's name and concept was clearly inspired by a famous TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons monster named Tarrasque that, until 4th edition changed it, could literally regenerate from any short of death short of using a reality-warping spell to keep it down.

* ItemAmplifier: The cooldown of item active abilities can be reduced by many sources of cooldown reduction (the Arcane rune, Quickening Charm, Spell Prism, Octarine Core, Dazzle's ''Good Juju'' and the Ancient Frostbitten Golem's ''Time Warp Aura'') or reset by ''Rearm''[[note]]except a few select items[[/note]], Refresher Orb, Refresher Shard and Ex Machina (in particular, while Refresher Orb and Shard have very long cooldowns by themselves, Ex Machina effectively allows your carry to pop Black King Bar once every 25 seconds).

* PublicDomainArtifact: [[Myth/NorseMythology Mjölnir]] (or rather Mjollnir, as it's spelt in the game) shows up as an item that you can build. [[Literature/JourneyToTheWest Sun Wukong's Ruyi Jingu Bang]] also showed up as a purchasable item ''long'' before the Monkey King himself was added as a hero. A later patch added in Gleipnir (the chain that binds Fenrir in Norse mythology), fittingly enough upgraded from the same item used to build Mjollnir. The same Gleipnir is later revealed to have bound the Fenrir counterpart, Primal Beast, and with it not being in place (instead being on sale repeatedly), it harkens the entrance of the Primal Beast to wreak havoc in the battlefield.

** The Blink Dagger lets any hero instantly teleport a short distance. Taking damage from enemies briefly disables it, making it much more useful for jumping onto enemies than to escape from them.

* TemporaryOnlineContent: Collector's Cache and Prestige items are only obtainable when a Battle Pass is active (the former by unboxing a chest that is only sold during this time, the latter by levelling the Battle Pass to a certain level, which almost always requires spending extravagant amounts of money). They cannot be traded between players, making it absolutely impossible to obtain them once the Battle Pass has expired (with the exception of the Acolyte of the Lost Arts persona for Invoker, which is also included in the Heir of Menace bundle).

* AntiStructure: Since buildings are immune to the vast majority of abilities and have to be relatively slowly worn down with right-click attacks, in general abilities that can either damage buildings directly (like Dragon Scale and Meteor Hammer), summon minions (like Book of the Dead), turn jungle creeps and siege creeps into your minions (like Helm of the Dominator) or reduce armor (like Desolator and Assault Cuirass) count as this, allowing enemy structures to be brought down much faster.

** Sometimes the Aghanim's Scepter upgrade sounds so awesome that it makes people forget that it is an item that costs 4200 gold and gives subpar stats for its price. The truth is that, 'awesomeness' aside, there are only a handful of heroes on which Scepter is a must-buy item, and like any other item its usefulness runs the gamut all the way from absolute core to late-game luxury (which should be gotten at some point but there are more important items)[[note]]Shadow Shaman, Earthshaker, Timbersaw,...[[/note]] to situational or straight-up impractical (most right-click carries can't dedicate a whole slot for an item with weak stats unless if the upgrade itself improves right-click power, while in some cases the upgrade only sounds awesome on paper but is weak in practice) to almost useless and, on occasion, even [[PowerUpLetdown detrimental]] (although [=IceFrog=] tries to rework the useless upgrades to make them better, this usually takes time and useless upgrades undeniably continue to persist). Alchemist can defy this trope due to his ability to quickly farm Scepters and give them to his teammates without consuming a slot, which especially helps slot-starved carries like Sven, Luna or Storm Spirit, and poor supports who can't afford Scepter like Lich or Lion. You can consume the Scepter, granting its upgrade without taking up an item slot, but doing so requires you to purchase a 1800 gold recipe on top of the 4200 you already sank into the Scepter, and the upgrade may or may not be worth the gold you could've spent on better items (even worse, you actually lose the stats from the item, and only keep the upgrade effect - admittedly, an empty slot at this stage of the game can be pretty valuable in and of itself, but still...). Roshan also has a chance to drop a consumable Scepter, but you'll have to kill him at least three times to get one, and even then it's a 50% chance unless you go for round 4, at which point most games are pretty much over.

** Bloodstone can give by far the most mana regeneration of any item in the game if you build enough charges on it, enough for even the most mana-hungry heroes to never run dry. However, charges are only built by killing enemy heroes and partially lost upon dying, so unless you're stomping the enemy to begin with, it's not likely to actually give you infinite mana. Additionally, Bloodstone offers no real bonuses aside from the mana supply, so most heroes starving for mana will usually go for Eul's Scepter of Divinity and/or Scythe of Vyse, which offer less potential mana regeneration but make up for it with useful abilities.

** Any ability that gives sight of a unit, such as Slardar's Corrosive Haze or Disruptor's Thunder Strike. Though the better ones give True Sight, even the ones that don't are incredibly useful, as among other things, it prevents juking (dodging through trees to break line-of-sight, so that other players have to constantly re-attack the target). Simply being able to ''see'' your enemy as they try to run away can be the difference between them just barely escaping, and being finished off.

* CastFromHitPoints: Items such as Soul Ring and Armlet of Mordiggian grant boons to the hero at the cost of HP. Soul Ring converts health to mana (which can go over their normal mana pool, but goes away after a short duration), while Armlet can be toggled to give extra damage, strength, and armor while constantly draining HP.

* DifficultButAwesome: Radiance has the single most grueling build-up of any item in the game even though it's nowhere near the most expensive, forcing you to save for a 3800-gold Sacred Relic and a recipe that does nothing on its own while most other items can be built in bite-sized pieces that at least give you stats. Furthermore, the item's nature means you need to get it as soon as possible for the item to be worth its cost, forcing you to hoard for the entire early game and basically avoid fights and ganks as much as possible. However, if you manage to save up quickly, you get an extremely powerful MoneyMultiplier that lets you push like there's no tomorrow while also letting you seriously mess up enemy teams in early teamfights.

* EmergencyEnergyTank: Eating Cheese restores 2500 health and 1500 mana; even though it can only be obtained fairly late in the game (after Roshan's third death), this still constitutes a significant percentage of the average core hero's health and mana. For this reason, it is often compared to a second Aegis of the Immortal, and is especially prized by heroes dependent on a SuperMode that does not persist beyond death like Dragon Knight.

* HealingSpring: The fountains, located beyond each Ancient, automatically and rapidly replenishes the HP and mana of nearby heroes.

* AbsurdlyHighLevelCap: Level 30 is the highest possible level a hero can reach in a game. Due to the very steep XP requirements for levels over 25 (it takes almost as much XP to level from 25 to 30 compared to from 1 to 25), even a mid hero who is doing well and diligently stealing Tomes of Knowledge from his supports would have a hard time reaching level 30 before the 50 minute mark, before which most games would have already ended. If you do manage to reach this point, however, you get ''all'' your talents, not just the ones you chose on the way up.

** The cheap Cloak provides a 15% magic resistance bonus to the wearer. It can be upgraded either into a Glimmer Cape (which can be used to turn an ally invisible and grant them a significant 45% magic resistance bonus) or a Hood of Defiance, which can further be upgraded into a Pipe of Insight (which can create a temporary barrier that blocks magical damage taken by friendly units and buildings) or an Eternal Shroud (which can absorb magical damage and convert it to mana).
** Spell immunity (most commonly provided by Black King Bar) prevents most spells from affecting the affected unit.

* AntiRageQuitting: If you abandon a match outside of a practice lobby (either by deliberately doing so or by being disconnected/AFK for too long), your account will be assessed with an abandon. One single abandon does nothing by itself, but if you abandon 2 matches within a span of 20 matches, enjoy your stay in Low Priority queue. To make things even worse, in order to get out of the Low Priority queue, you are required to ''win'' the game.

** The Tier 5 neutral items are some of the most powerful items in the game with several of them being fully capable of turning the game around depending on which items are dropped. However, since they're dropped really late in the game (at least ''60'' minutes where very few matches last past 55 minutes), it isn't feasible at all to build a strategy around them.

** Black King Bar gives awful stats for an item that costs 3975 gold (10 Strength and 24 attack damage can be purchased ''much'' more cheaply), and all its active ability does is turn you spell immune for a few seconds. Sure, 1k+ damage crits, stat items, and effects like bash and attack modifiers are so appealing because they look flashy, scale well with carry abilities and make your hero so much better, but without the Boring King Bar the enemy team can and will make you useless by chain-disabling/kiting/silencing/disarming/whatever-ing you to oblivion. If you're a carry player, you need to get used to building BKB as a first or second item in 90% of your games. At least it has a [[GoldenSuperMode cool visual effect]].

* CastFromHitPoints: Items such as Soul Ring, Dagger of Ristul and Armlet of Mordiggian grant boons to the hero at the cost of HP. Soul Ring converts health to mana (which can go over their normal mana pool, but goes away after a short duration), Dagger of Ristul reduces HP to temporarily grant bonus damage, while Armlet can be toggled to give extra damage, strength, and armor while constantly draining HP.

* GoldenSuperMode: Black King Bar's active ability gives the user a glowing golden BattleAura while active. All it actually does is make the user immune to magic, but that's enough to turn a carry into a nigh-unstoppable OneManArmy.

* ManaBurn: Diffusal Blade causes the wielder's attacks to burn mana from the target and deal damage based on the burnt mana, and several heroes have abilities (like Anti-Mage's ''Mana Break'', Invoker's ''EMP'', Nyx Assassin's ''Mana Burn'' and so on) which can remove an enemy's mana.

** Philosopher's Stone provides the wielder with a flat 80 bonus to their passive GPM, at the cost of some attack power. It's usually carried by supports who don't need the physical damage, but can really use the extra income.

* NoSell: Spell immunity (provided by things like ''Enrage'' and Black King Bar) prevents most abilities from affecting the target unit, making BKB a very commonly purchased item.
* NotSoSafeHarbor: Your own Fountain is invulnerable, has TrueSight, and deals tremendous damage to any enemy hero that comes in range, making it a safe haven for you and your team to hide if things go south. But heroes with [[YouWillNotEvadeMe yanking skills]] can and will make you feel unsafe in your own Fountain. And if things go ''really'' south, an extremely-farmed enemy hero can waltz in and kill you, despite the Fountain's protection. Needless to say, Fountain-camping and killing is a very humiliating way to die, beyond a mere CurbStompBattle.

* QuadDamage: Picking up a Power Rune grants the hero a powerful effect for a short time. The ones that fit best are Haste ([[NitroBoost maximum movement speed]]), Arcane (reduced mana costs and cooldowns on spells), and Double Damage ([[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin guess]]).

** Neutral items drop at set times, in set tiers. Each tier has a pool of 10, and only 5 of those will drop. Which ones drop can make a significant difference (for example, if the Philosopher's Stone drops, it's extra income is really big for your support, who doesn't get a lot of creep kills, but won't really be affected by the damage decrease).

* RareCandy: Consuming a Tome of Knowledge instantly grants an experience boost to the user, usually enough to gain a level.

** Zeus can dominate the mid lane and snowball with gank gold due to his massive magical damage output, but also gets shut down very hard by the BoringButPractical items Infused Raindrops, Black King Bar, Hood of Defiance, and Pipe of Insight. Needless to say, pubbers tend to skip these items because of the "boring" part of the equation. And good luck trying to convince your teammates to gank the mid lane - you'll be ignored at best and flamed at worst.

* MsFanservice: While some humanoid heroines ARE attractive, they're not overly sexualized and don't provide much fanservice other than being attractive in general. With the exception of someone like Queen of Pain, but that [[JustifiedTrope can be excused considering she is]] [[SuccubusAndIncubus a succubus.]]

* AscendedFanfic: It's a stand-alone remake to a ''VideoGame/WarcraftIII'' mod. Many of the characters are ''Warcraft III'' characters or units with the SerialNumbersFiledOff.

** Wards have a 1-second cooldown to prevent accidentally planting another ward in the same spot. Furthermore, you cannot plant it close to the fountain to prevent them from accidentally planting them at the start of the game when they want to give the ward to another player.

** Quickening Charm, Spell Prism and Octarine Core reduce the cooldown of all your spells and items by 13%, 18% and 25% (respectively), certain heroes have similar X% Cooldown Reduction talents, and the Arcane rune gives you 30% cooldown reduction on top of that. All of these bonuses stack additively with each other (except Octarine Core, which stacks multiplicatively with everything else), and only apply to spells that are cast ''while they are active''.

* GloriousDeath: Huskar wishes to die in a HeroicSacrifice so he can find his place among the gods. Unfortunately for him, Dazzle saved his life in a way that also rendered him immortal, making him unable to accomplish this goal.

* IShallTauntYou: Certain characters have specific, mocking lines when killing other heroes. Some even have dedicated taunt animations that can be executed on command if you own the item in your backpack. Axe even has an in-game ability for this too - he magically taunts his enemies and forces them attack him so they cannot attack his (usually easier to kill) allies, and placing the enemies in position to be hit with his other ability, ''Counter Helix''.

** Refresher Orb completely refreshes the cooldowns of all your spells and items (except that of other Refresher Orbs), but is a very expensive item, costs a lot of mana and has a long cooldown itself. Refresher Shard, an item dropped by Roshan from his third death onwards, works similarly but can only be used once and can't stack with other Refresher Shards in the same inventory slot. Ex Machina, a tier 5 neutral item, has a shorter cooldown but only works on item active abilities except Refresher Orb. Tinker's ''Rearm'' can refresh its own cooldown (which is very short at the first place), but requires channelling (unlike the aforementioned items, which work instantly) and cannot reset the cooldowns of a few select items, while Phoenix's ''Supernova'', if pulled off successfully, will reset the cooldown of all of Phoenix's non-ultimate abilities.

** The three spirits (before Void Spirit was added, much later): Storm Spirit is can zip around the map at high speeds to deal hit-and-run attacks or ambushes (thief), Ember Spirit is a melee combatant who can increases his defense with ''Flame Guard'' (fighter), and Earth Spirit relies on his abilities to disable his enemies and control their positioning (mage). Interestingly, their attributes don't match the roles you'd expect, with Storm being an Intelligence hero, Ember being Agility, and Earth being Strength.

** Heroes can range wildly from mere {{Badass Normal}}s with little supernatural abilities ([[AnAxeToGrind Axe]] and [[SpikeBallsOfDoom Bristleback]]) to [[ReallySevenHundredYearsOld ancient]] and powerful sorcerers ([[TheArchmage Invoker]], [[SorcerousOverlord Lich]], [[PowerCopying Rubick]],...) and massive [[AttackOfTheFiftyFootWhatever towering]] colossi ([[RhinoRampage Magnus]], [[WhenTreesAttack Treant Protector]], [[OurGiantsAreBigger Tiny]]...) to even {{Physical God}}s (Elder Titan, Ancient Apparition, the four Fundamentals,...). However, in-game their power levels are all roughly the same.

* MsFanservice: While some humanoid heroines ARE attractive, they're not overly sexualized and don't provide much fanservice other than being attractive in general. With the exception of someone like Queen of Pain, but that [[JustifiedTrope can be excused considering she is]] [[HornyDevils a succubus.]]

* SummonMagic: Certain heroes have the ability to summon minions that range from expendable (Broodmother's spiderlings) to very valuable (Visage's familiars). The Necronomicon allows all heroes to do this with its active ability ''Demonic Summoning''.

* AffablyEvil: The tone of the game means that most of the heroes that can reasonably be described as "evil" often end up as this.
** Grimstroke may actually be the first hero to subvert it, as he is just pure evil, lacking any comedic or whimsical traits whatsoever.

*** An upgrade to Boots of Speed is Boots of Travel, which are initially the [[AwesomeButImpractical inverse]] of this trope due to their cost and limited benefits (unlimited TP's, when scrolls are cheaper and often just as good). One element of them, however, definitely counts - they give the fastest permanent movespeed in the game [[note]]other boots give 45 move speed, one is 70 if you're not being attacked, but the Travel boots give ''110'', 130 with a second upgrade[[/note]]. Simply being able to run really quickly can be incredibly useful, from arriving a few seconds earlier to a fight and making a bigger difference, to chasing down an enemy, or escaping from one. They also are a legitimate replacement for scrolls late in the game, when most towers are down, giving you much fewer targets for TP'ing to with a scroll[[note]]if you don't have the enemy jungle spot captured, and all your regular towers are down, many attempts to TP out of your base will only end with you just outside your own gates. At this point, scrolls are only useful for returning to base, not getting back into the fight[[/note]]. The [=BoT=] allows you to target friendly creeps, giving you a much larger potential range of targets (the second upgrade to them allows you to target friendly heroes as well).

* KillSteal: Many players build a Dagon for the sole purpose of stealing kills, though it's debatable whether it's worth to spend 2720 gold (or more) on an item which only makes your score look better...

** There isn't a lot of difference between a late arrival to a pigpile throwing out a quick hit to get an assist credit and accidentally end up getting the kill, and someone doing it deliberately.

** One of the changes for 7.07 is that a team can now only own 1 animal courier, and couriers are automatically upgraded after 3 minutes. Unfortunately, griefers quickly found that you can simply buy a courier, drop the item instead of deploying the courier, and then deny it, leaving their team courier-less for the entire game. This was eventually patched out by making couriers automatically deploy on purchase, and for additional fool-proofing, making the item unsellable and indestructible if purchased outside the fountain.
*** Most of this was rendered irrelevant after 7.23, when all players now start the game with a courier already active for them, and which would eventually respawn after being killed.

* RaceAgainstTheClock: If both teams go all-in on a push into the enemy base, it usually turns into this. Known as a "base race" in the community.

** Timbersaw: "[[Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus I'm not a lumberjack, and no, I'm not okay. I thank you!]]"

* MorphWeapon: A statwise version, as you can't actually see equipment on the heroes, the Power Treads, built with boots, gloves of haste, and a small stat item. The game's "item guide" has you use the Strength item to build them, but the equivalent Agility or Intelligence item will work as well. More importantly, once built, you can shift the boots at any time to have any one of the stats be the active one, so you can slightly boost your mana or hp regen, and then (if you're an agility hero) shift into agility for the damage.

** Items can be sold back to the shop at full price within 10 seconds after buying them, allowing the player to correct accidental purchases. Selling items at all other times only refunds half the item's gold cost.

* BalefulPolymorph: Heroes affected by Hex are turned into an animal (a pig by Scythe of Vyse, a frog by Lion, a chicken by Shadow Shaman, a fish by Lion when equipped with the Fin King's Charm Immortal item, a sheep by Shadow Shaman with the Lamb to the Slaughter Immortal item) that cannot do anything but moving at minimum movement speed. You can also turn yourself into a pig with Pig Pole, although in this case you'll actually gain 10% movement speed to compensate for not being able to do anything else.

** Both the 2012, 2013 and 2020 Diretide events are CaptureTheFlag competitions that segues into a 10-on-1 fight against a buffed Roshan.

* NightVisionGoggles: Moon Shards provide a hero with additional night vision; Seer Stone does this to both day and night vision.

** One of the changelogs for 7.07 is that a team can now only own 1 animal courier, and couriers are automatically upgraded after 3 minutes. Unfortunately, griefers quickly found that you can simply buy a courier, drop the item instead of deploying the courier, and then deny it, leaving their team courier-less for the entire game. This was eventually patched out by making couriers automatically deploy on purchase, and for additional fool-proofing, making the item unsellable and indestructible if purchased outside the fountain.

* RandomizedDamageAttack: Chaos Knight has ''Chaos Bolt'', which inflicts a random but inversely-related amount of damage and stun. Upgrading the spell increases both the maximum and minimum values of both the damage and stun, but there's still a big difference between a 275 damage skill that stuns for 2 seconds, and one that does 100 and stuns for 4. Chen's ''Test of Faith'' is similar, but without the stun.

** Carrying a Gem of True Sight grants the constant ability to see invisible units and wards to any allied vision within 900 range of the carrier. However, the Gem is a risky investment in that it will be dropped if the carrier dies, and there is an obvious, if not blatant, identifier on any hero carrying it - expect to be the ''immediate'' target of the entire other team, who want to keep their invisibility-dependent heroes (Bounty Hunter, Riki, Techies, anyone with an invisibility item, etc.) effective.

** If a hero carrying Phoenix Ash is reduced below 1 HP, the item would immediately be consumed to heal them to half HP and refresh the cooldown of all non-ultimate skills.

** Town Portal scrolls can teleport heroes to any allied structure. However, this requires them to channel for several seconds (which becomes longer if other allies have also recently teleported to the same structure) and being stunned while channeling cancels the teleportation, using up the scroll and leaving any other one may have in their inventory on cooldown. Boots of Travel are similar, except they also allow the user to teleport to allied creeps (and heroes once upgraded), and aren't consumed when used.

* CastFromHitPoints: Items such as Soul Ring and Armlet of Mordiggian grant boons to the hero at the cost of HP. Soul Ring damages the user but grants them bonus mana (which can go over their normal mana pool, but goes away after a short duration), while Armlet can be toggled to give extra damage, strength, and armor while constantly draining HP.

** Refresher Orb completely refreshes the cooldowns of all your spells and items (except that of other Refresher Orbs), but is a very expensive item and has a long cooldown itself. Refresher Shard, an item dropped by Roshan from his third death onwards, works similarly but can only be used once and can't stack with other Refresher Shards in the same inventory slot. Ex Machina, a tier 5 neutral item, has a shorter cooldown but only works on item active abilities except Refresher Orb. Tinker's ''Rearm'' has no cooldown, but requires channelling (unlike the aforementioned items, which work instantly) and cannot reset the cooldowns of a few select items, while Phoenix's ''Supernova'', if pulled off successfully, will reset the cooldown of all of Phoenix's non-ultimate abilities.

* KickThemWhileTheyAreDown: Fountain Camping in a nutshell; essentially when the opponent is winning heavily against a losing team that has no chance of coming back, instead of destroying the Barracks and Ancients to finish them off (and subsequently put them out of their misery) the winning sides chooses to humiliate them by killing them right after they respawn in their fountain, shrugging off the damage from the Fountains built to prevent this and artificially lengthen the game up to an hour without end. Valve decided to discourage such practices by putting the fountain area on high ground, preventing enemies from gaining vision and giving their attacks a chance to miss - although that doesn't stop players from trying.

* LifeDrain: Represented by lifesteal (most commonly provided by Possessed Mask, Morbid Mask and its upgrades), which heals the hero for a percentage of their right-click attack damage, and spell lifesteal (from Voodoo Mask and its upgrades), which does the same for spell damage.

* NightVisionGoggles: Vampire Fangs and Moon Shard provide a hero with additional night vision; Seer Stone does this to both day and night vision.

* TemporaryOnlineContent: Collector's Cache and Prestige items are only obtainable when a Battle Pass is active (the former by unboxing a chest that is only sold during this time, the latter by levelling the Battle Pass to a certain level). They cannot be traded between players, making it absolutely impossible to obtain them once the Battle Pass has expired.

** Many joke patch notes are coming from community's memes. Such as Dark Seer's infamous nerf to Vacuum every patch[[note]][[https://dota2.gamepedia.com/Dark_Seer/Changelogs#6.82 "Vacuum cooldown rescaled from 28.0 seconds to 28 seconds"]][[/note]], the [[https://dota2.gamepedia.com/Iron_Branch/Changelogs#6.86 "happy little tree,"]] and Puck's Illusory Orb speed from 6.88 patch[[note]][[https://dota2.gamepedia.com/Puck/Changelogs#6.87 "Increased Illusory Orb projectile speed from 650 to 651"]][[/note]]. The [[https://dota2.gamepedia.com/Earthshaker/Changelogs#6.87 change to Earthshaker's Aghanim's Scepter upgrade]] is a case of a minor meme having a major impact on gameplay.[[note]]Earthshaker and Axe both have ultimates that look a lot like delivering slam dunks, something the community has definitely taken note of. Earthshaker's upgrade allows him to take mid-range jumps through the air, looking like he's just about to slam one in. Taken UpToEleven by his Arcana cosmetic set, which make its animation look like something out of Videogame/NBAJam.[[/note]]

** Rubick can do this, since he potentially has access to just about every single spell in the game, and it could possibly be taken UpToEleven depending both on the speed of any given person playing Rubick, and how extensively Valve has recorded/will record additional lines for his stolen spells in the future (as it is already fairly extensive).

* HomingBoulders: It's possible for autoattacks and spells to change direction in midair and fly across the map if the targeted hero teleports away or moves away very quickly. This is especially ridiculous with some characters, like Sniper, whose ''bullets'' can spin right around in midair to chase their target, or Tiny, whose ''Toss'' throws a nearby unit to a target enemy, even if the ''Toss'' trajectory makes no sense and bends around in the air. It also gets absolutely ridiculous with skills such as Huskar's ''Life Break''[[note]]he leaps at an enemy for massive damage[[/note]], where Huskar actually [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHrsZo6A0TQ changes direction mid-air]] if his target blinks away, ''even if the target blinks behind Huskar''. Taken UpToEleven with Io, whose ultimate is a global teleport. However, it doesn't disjoint projectiles, so if a ranged hero throws an autoattack that doesn't connect before Io teleports, the attack could potentially fly all the way across the map, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfrNmoxjSeY giving the Io player a nasty surprise.]] Also taken UpToEleven with Hurricane Pike, which gives a hero four shots against one target with no maximum attack range. Cue heroes dying to cross-map ''Impetus'' shots from Enchantress.

* TalkingIsAFreeAction: Characters regularly banter with each other. Heroes will comment on loads of events, including buying a specific item, calling misses, killing certain other heroes, meeting certain allied heroes, getting a cosmetic item at the end of a game, and [[UptoEleven getting banned]] during the ban/pick process in Captain's Mode. Taken to ludicrous extremes with Storm Spirit. And while it is entirely possible for a hero to be KilledMidSentence, that just prompts their last words instead.

* VirtualPaperDoll: Not unlike [[VideoGame/TeamFortress2 another Valve game]], heroes have cosmetic "slots" from which the players can customize them; clothes, armor, weapons, etc. The lower rarity ones can merely be described as plain reskins of the defaults, the better ones produce special effects, auditory or visual, while even better ones (especially of Immortal rarity) add another cosmetic layer on the heroes' abilities and attacks themselves.
** Ultimately, there is the Arcana rarity; not only items of that tier provide all of the above, but it also ends up somewhat [[SubvertedTrope subverting]] this trope; as if the hero wearing it gets a design overhaul from top to bottom, as well as new voices and voice lines as long as they have it on. [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness Notably, earlier Arcanas are nothing more than flashier versions of the above examples, instead of being as fleshed out as they are today.]]

** Heroes with a built-in Blink will also [[WhatAnIdiot call you out]] when you [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment buy them a Blink Dagger]].

** The Town Portal Scroll, a cheap 50 gold consumable item that simply lets you teleport to an allied building after channeling for a few seconds. It's worth much more than its weight in gold by minimizing your downtime when heading back to base for healing, letting you respond more quickly to enemy dives or pushes, and getting out of a bad situation. As such, you'll almost never see a hero leaving home without one or two.

** Some ultimate abilities, such as Crystal Maiden or Luna, cause massive damage to anyone within range of them.
* InstantWinCondition: Aside from an Ancient exploding, when a team KnowWhenToFoldEm, typing "gg" or using the 'Good game' chat wheel command in a private lobby will automatically end the game within 10 seconds if no players change their mind and cancel before it happens.

* KnowWhenToFoldEm: Averted and played straight, depending on the circumstances of the game. If one of the players has left, whether through lagging out, extended AFK, or deliberately leaving the game, anyone else from either side can then leave the game with no penalty (the game text announces when this has happened). If no player has left, however, there is no vote system, surrender option, or anything else you can do to end a match early, aside from sitting in your base to let the other team fight through and kill your Ancient that much quicker. You just have to keep playing, letting the 43-7 team keep killing you at will.

** Units controlled by Helm of the Dominator or Helm of the Overlord have their gold bounty set to 150 gold.