Emphasises rich and engaging hero combat. The game has many unusual skill-shots, and there no stuns or randomness. Combat instead focuses more on displacement and environmental or situational damage.

The jungle is a persistent team objective rather than an economic space for a single hero to occupy, and a variety of different creep camps and reward structures have appeared in the game over the years.

The game had an unusually refined item system, with a fullscreen shop interface, typed shortcuts, recommended items, recipe autocompletion, all items stacking with each-other (at reduced efficiency), and custom item stats like bonus ability radius or duration.