Dota 2 illusion troll 2

Illusions

(also commonly called illus) are imperfect, weaker copies of heroes, created by spells or items. They look like and are mostly treated like a hero, but are impaired, as they usually have incoming and outgoing damage penalties, dealing less damage and taking more damage than heroes. They are mostly incapable of casting spells or using active item abilities and also have some passive abilities disabled. They also may not drop or pick up items or runes. Illusions yield a little gold and experience based on the hero’s level. They do not soak up any AoE experience and gold (they cannot level up, and the gold from last hits they make goes to their owners) and do not interfere with kill streaks or counters.

Illusions can be created from an allied, enemy, or the own hero, copying its appearance, level, attributes, attack values, defensive values like base armor and base magic resistance and their abilities on their current level. All items owned by the hero are copied as well, including all their stats (although some effects of abilities and items are disabled for illusions).

All illusions deal 60% less damage against buildings, making them weaker in pushing. This reduction stacks multiplicatively with the outgoing damage reduction which most illusions have, and also multiplicatively with the damage reduction hero damage does against structure armor type. However, due to the fact that illusions are based on heroes, their damage scales together with the heroes, making them still a significant pushing tool, especially in later phases of a match.

All illusions are invulnerable for one server tick (0.03 seconds) as they spawn. It does not matter which ability spawns them, this goes for all of them. Illusions also always play the same birth sound (which is only audible to allies) upon spawning, and the same death sound upon dying in any way, including upon expiring.

Contents

Visual appearance [ edit ]

All illusions have an extra texture layer, which makes them distinguishable from the original hero. There are 5 different types of textures which can be seen below.

To allies, illusions always appear with the texture layer, making them always look different than the original hero. For enemies, illusions which use the blue or the yellow textures appear like the original hero, making it difficult to tell them apart from the real hero. Illusions with the second or third texture appear like illusions to the enemy, meaning enemies do see their illusion textures. However, despite this, the portrait of illusions always appears like the original hero to the enemy.

Illusions do not show damage numbers.

Appearance
Portrait
Abilities	Default	Phantasm, Mirror Image, Manta Style, Illusion Rune, Disruption, Haunt, Shadow Step, Blink	Wall of Replica, Vengeance Aura	Conjure Image, Reflection	Doppelganger	Spirit Lance, Doppelganger, Juxtapose	Dark Portrait
Camouflaged	–	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes	No

Besides their skin and portrait, their health bar also differs based on whether the illusion is allied or not. Allied illusions have the same health bar as creeps. This also means their mana bar is not visible, as it is only visible when having a hero or creep-hero health bar. Besides this, illusions also have a circle on the left side of the health bar, which indicates their duration.

Enemy illusions use a hero health bar to not make it obvious that they are illusions. They also display the player’s or hero’s name above them like regular enemy heroes (if the player has the name display toggled on player name or hero name). The player name is based on the owner of the illusion, not of the hero the illusion is based on. This means when an enemy Shadow Demon creates illusions of allies, the illusions carry Shadow Demon’s player name. When hero names are chosen, instead of player names, it shows the name of the hero the illusion is based on, and not the owner’s hero.

Illusion creating abilities [ edit ]

These are all abilities which create illusions of heroes: