This article documents changes that have been noticed from the original DotA.

It may contain inaccurate information or changes that have been fixed.

DotA, or Defense of the Ancients, is a custom map created for the Blizzard game, Warcraft 3 and Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne. Many elements were borrowed from the game and it is based on its engine. Dota 2 is a complete game created by Valve on the Source Engine, however, and many differences exist due to copyright concerns, engine disparities as well as various bugs or intended changes to Dota 2.

Hero gameplay changes [ edit ]

Fog of War changes [ edit ]

Losing sight of the enemy in the fog no longer "stops" your unit. Instead it will keep following them to the last seen location, it will keep using basic attacks without any additional input if you regain vision of it. If the unit is ranged, any projectiles in the air will follow them through the fog, allowing you to track the location (although the models of these projectiles sometimes stop rendering after entering the fog). To DotA players, this means you are often better off leaving your hero on auto-attack rather than clicking ahead. After you cast a spell, reclick to keep your hero "locked" on. This also means juking is harder to perform.



Item changes [ edit ]

Misc. changes [ edit ]

Items name changes [ edit ]

Due to copyright concerns (or for other reasons), some items and heroes in Dota 2 have different names from their DotA equivalent.

Hero name changes [ edit ]

While not as noticeable of a change as the rest, Dragon Knight's name in DotA changes from "Knight Davion" to "Arc Honist" during his Elder Dragon Form. This has been scrapped in Dota 2.

Buff placers [ edit ]

Buff Placers refer to a group of Items in DotA that applied a buff to a hero's attacks. Typically, they were also Orb Effects. Unlike Orb Effects, which do not stack for balance reasons, the Warcraft 3 engine was limited in that it only allowed one buff to be applied per attack. This meant that Buff Placers did not stack. In Dota 2, however, Buff Placers will now stack with each other. For example, Venomancer's Poison Sting will now stack with Desolator, even though both of them were Buff Placers in DotA.