DotA Guide to Clickability - Here is a very helpful guide on effective clicking of DotA heroes brought to us by Infrisios.
ForewordThe battle between Sven and Gondar lasts for minutes already, always Gondar appears somewhere out of the windwalk, attacks once, twice, and disappears again!
After some time Sven decides that it is enough: using his chicken, he gets dust of appearance!
Again Gondar attacks, but now Sven is prepared: move away from the creeps, activate dust, a-click! Until Bounty Hunter actually recognised what happened, he is low enough to be finished by a single storm bolt, but too far away to be taken down by a hit. Clever Sven has, of course, saved his storm bolt...and now that happens:
In this small guide, I want to give you a deeper understanding of the mechanics behind clicking.
Where you can clickBasically, models in WC3 consist of both visible and invisible parts.
The most important (mostly) visible parts are the geosets, they are basically the forms of the model. Depending on the setting of the geosets and the skin, they can be invisible or partially invisible as well.
No need for further details, what we need to know here is: can you click the geoset?
Well, the answer is yes for most, but no for very few others.
As a rule-of-the-thumb you can click all "substantial" parts of a model while insubstantial parts, like the hero glow, can not be clicked (there are exceptions, though).
As an example model, I use the paladin: A totally common model with a common clickability and hero glow.
In the following picture, you can see the cursor being clearly on the hero glow, but technically not pointing on the hero.
It also shows the geosets that are clickable (marked with red nodes) and unclickable (hero glow, marked with green nodes - the transparence is part of the texture, the polygons count for clicking):
You can assume that you can click any model if you hit the body!
But why are some heroes easier to click than others?
That's because they have so-called "collision shapes": Spheres helping you to click a model, if you do not click the body, but click a sphere, it is a hit!
Note that collision shapes have NOTHING to do with ingame collision, though.
Here is an example on collision shapes:
You can clearly see the blue spheres around the Paladin, and even though the cursor is not on the Paladin's body, you can click him!
Heroes that are difficult to clickWith the spheres, we also have the problem with certain heroes.
The most problematic heroes are undeniably Bounty Hunter and Rooftrellen.
Let's take a look at the easier model...
RooftrellenTreason! Only a single sphere! If you click him between the arms and the body, you won't hit him! So if you want to hit him, click on the feet which have a sphere. His large Torso can't be clicked, the reason for that is the fact that his model is usually used by towers and you should, of course, be able to click units behind towers.
But Treant is a tiny problem compared to the (old) nemesis of the cursor:
The Bounty Hunter!Why is was this damned model so difficult to click? Well, take a look at his collision shapes:
LAWL INFRINUB FORGOT TO ADD SPHEER!!!11....nope. I didn't.
Gondar doesn't have any. Whether he developed some uber ninja technique to remove them or whether blizzard was just lazy, we'll never know.
You MUST hit a substantial body part if you want to click him!
As an additional problem, Gondar always runs around like a madman and people click at him like madmen because he might be invis any time, so they do not focus on precision.
The new model has two full collision spheres that equal Dark Seer's spheres by 100%.
By the way, Gondar is the ONLY draenei who had this problem. If someone tells you he can't hit Dark Seer because he uses a model like Gondar's it is a bad excuse.
However, Venomancer still got this problem.
Bane ElementalAnother model people often whine about is Bane Elemental, but the problem is different here:
Collision shapes are objects with a static position, they do not move with the animations of a model - so the model can move out of it's sphere, and even though you have an even larger area to click, the body itself is more difficult to click:
When Bane Elemental attacks, he completely leaves his sphere, leaving him difficult to click. When he channels, his arms leave his sphere - so take care to hit his body, and not, like many people, try to hit him between the arms or something.
Due to his grotesque body, parts of him area always out of the shapes.
By the way: Collision shapes do not have to be spheres, they can be boxes as well:
So let's summarize it-You can click the body of any unit, but some parts might make an exception
-If you don't hit the body, collision shapes help you in many cases
-but some heroes have problematic collision shapes!
Other HeroesOther heroes are problematic as well.
Even though people don't complain about him as much as about Bounty Hunter, Venomancer has no collision shapes as well.
Some people claim that since Bounty Hunter is hard to click, Dark Seer must be hard to click as well. That is NOT true, Dark Seer got totally fine collision shapes - seems to be some psychological thingy.
and what can('t) be done against itWell, the Gondar problem has been solved, after all.
My suggestion to solve other problems is:
take some time! It does not have to be much, for concentrating on a single action you only need a split-second. Instead of clicking a thousand times, wait a bit and hit a single, but working, click - comparable to the difference between barrage and a sniper's shot. Like with a headshot, the information from this guide may help you to know where you can click best ;-)
I "heard rumours" that external solutions exist, but I strongly disapprove the use of these since they give you an unfair advantage.
Icefrog's statement:
Maybe someone could need this.
The program just checks every 5 seconds for thread count and alert you when threads count has changed.