A bug has been discovered in Dota 2 that allows Anti‑Mage equipped with the Magebane's Mirror aspect to kill Spectre with a single Counterspell activation if Anti‑Mage happens to be positioned in the flight path of Spectral Dagger. The issue was noticed by a player during a match, reproduced by users on Reddit, and subsequently reported to Valve for investigation.
Magebane's Mirror increases the damage Anti‑Mage deals when Counterspell reflects enemy spells. The ability's description states that this bonus damage should not exceed 400 points, but interactions with Spectre’s Spectral Dagger behave differently and bypass this cap in practice.
The problem stems from a long‑standing quirk in Spectral Dagger's interaction with spell reflection mechanics. Normally the main target of Spectral Dagger cannot have the spell reflected, and the dagger cannot be reflected when Spectre casts it onto a point. However, when a unit standing in the dagger's path — intended for another target — attempts to reflect Spectral Dagger, the debuff that the dagger applies to Spectre can be stacked repeatedly. In reported reproductions the effect applied the debuff about 10–11 times.
For the majority of heroes this stacking does not create a critical issue, but with Anti‑Mage and his first aspect the repeated reflection multiplies the Counterspell damage to several thousand points, enabling an instant kill on Spectre. Community members were able to consistently reproduce the scenario and alerted Valve so the developers can address the exploit.
This report follows other recent fixes by Valve for serious hero interaction bugs; for example, a critical issue involving Clinkz that allowed excessive armor reduction was corrected earlier. Players expect a patch or clarification from Valve to resolve the Spectral Dagger reflection stacking and restore the intended damage limits.