Jungle creeps by the numbers

Have you ever noticed that the various denizens of the jungle act differently? Their various abilities are common knowledge – armor aura on the big Wildwing, critical strike on the small wolves and so on. But what else can they do? Why does the Ghost camp annihilate lane creeps while kobolds sometimes fail to kill a single one? Why is the large troll camp not very threatening? There are differences between the various creeps, and I would like to present those to you.

The subject being examined today is damage type. This is a system that DOTA 2 inherits directly from the origin of Warcraft 3 engine. Regular lane interaction is fairly basic – heroes usually do regular/magical/pure damage, towers hurt and catapults do more damage to towers. However, DOTA 2 features a full system of damage type/armor type interplay and this can have noticeable effects in effectiveness of various creeps. There are five types of physical damage – Normal, Piercing, Siege, Hero and Chaos. There are also six types of armor – unarmored (lane creeps), light (unused), medium (most small creeps), heavy (large creeps, ancients, Roshan and many summons), hero and fortified (buildings). You can read about them here: Armor Type and Damage Type.

From what you will see in the lane, melee creeps deal normal damage that is effective against most targets; ranged creeps deal piercing damage that is only effective against other creeps; siege creeps deal siege damage that really hurts towers, and towers also deal siege damage that hurts most targets.

Things get more interesting once you dive into the jungle. Here is what the small creeps look like:

Before I go any further, all damage numbers will have accompanying bars. They represent the relative power of that particular creep against given type of armor amongst all creeps; This helps us spot any outstanding cases.

A few other basic concepts of note – all units have a Basic Attack Time, which is how long it takes the unit to deal damage once. Because the speed varies, all damage is averaged and then calculated over a period of 10 seconds.

In the small camp seen above, the only individually noteworthy creep is the Ghost; Ghost is a ranged unit that will absolutely devastate lane creeps. In the first 7 minutes, it will only take 12 seconds for the Ghost to kill a melee creep (6 for ranged). As a matter of fact, the Ghost possesses the second highest lane creep damage of all jungle options.

At the same time, the most damaging pull camp is the Vhoul Assassin camp – they are ranged units that deal a total of 927 damage to lane creeps every 10 seconds plus their mild poison. If you need to lose a creep wave, this is by far your best option.

Last noteworthy point from the Small Camp is that if you take over the Kobold Foreman, it is truly a pitiful unit that does less damage than an individual melee creep. Keep them out of combat so that you can get the most out of their aura.

Next up, we have the Medium Camp:

First and foremost, you can see that the Centaurs are truly an outstanding medium camp as the Centaur Conqueror does significantly more damage than anything else. At the same time, the Centaur does very little damage to towers.

Also, with their incredible 30% aura, the Alpha Wolf actually does the most damage to towers (with one notable exception you’ll see in the Large camp data). This is important as jungle creeps normally do relatively little damage to structures, and an enterprising Chen/Enchantress or anyone with a helm of the dominator can use the superior damage plus the aura to significantly speed up a tower push. Just on its own, the Alpha Wolf will deal 8% of T1 tower’s health every 10 seconds.

Next up, we have the large camp:

The most significant addition here are the Skeleton Warriors. They are small units that the Dark Troll Summoner is able to conjure up out of corpses. I feel they are mostly ignored by players, as they have tiny health pools and don’t seem to do that much. However, the skeletons have an absolutely fantastic BAT of 1 and come in pairs; two skeletons do significantly more damage than virtually everything else. In an ideal situation, just a pair skeletons can deal 47% of a T1 tower’s health over their short 40 second lifespan; four skeletons will do 24% of T1 damage over just 10 seconds.

The other outlier is the Dark Troll Summoner – while he does pitiful damage to heroes and towers, this guy absolutely annihilates lane creeps. If you need just one unit to push a lane with, he is your guy.

Other than that, the data here is predictable – the large creeps do more damage than any other options. To anything that’s not a tower, that is. However with the exception of the skeletons and the alpha wolf, they still do more damage to buildings than all other options. Of all the options, the Wildwing Ripper does marginally more damage to all targets.

To sum everything up, here is a chart consisting of only the notable creeps:

Notable in this case includes anything with decent damage, as well as anything with an ability that might be taken over by the player. Another factor of note are the various auras that could affect the creeps in question. Auras come in two flavours – attack speed increase, and damage increase. For our calculations, they are equivalent – both increase damage linearly, and relevant auras are already included in the numbers for the Alpha Wolf and Centaur Conqueror. For example, here is how the chart changes if you are a Chen or an Enchantress and have both a Centaur Conqueror and an Alpha Wolf under your control, as well as a Vladmir’s Offering:

As you can see, this has a major influence on the damage – in total, you see a 66% increase. (AS and AD stack multiplicatively; individually they stack additively; here, we have 1.15AS*1.45AD = 1.6675total bonus) Using this example, a Chen with an Alpha Wolf, a Centaur Conqueror, a Dark Troll Summoner and two skeletons would destroy a T3 tower in just 31 seconds without any damage from the hero himself or any other assistance. (Assuming none of the units die to the tower damage)

To draw a few conclusions, when jungling you need to watch out for the Hellbear Smashers, the Satyr Tormenters and Wildwing Rippers as those guys do by far the most damage. When pulling, Vhoul Assassins are able to almost completely destroy early creep waves with some help while all forms of Kobolds will do nothing. If using creeps yourself, the melee Large Creeps remain the best option for jungling overall. When pushing though, the Dark Troll Summoner is completely unrivaled due to his killing power versus lane creeps, and his summoned skeletons’ damage versus towers. Overall, if in doubt bring a Wildwing Ripper as they have a nice aura, nice HP and the best overall damage – plus their tornado ability can help you win a teamfight.

And that’s it for jungle creep damage. I plan to do a series of similar stats, covering jungle creep survivability as well as summoned creeps. Things like what the various Lone Druid skills do for the bear’s damage, how effective the various creeps are at tanking towers, and what does the absolute most damage when it absolutely, positively has to die. Thank you for reading, and don’t forget to ward!