Breath attack

Breath attack is a special ability typical for living dragons, but also for   Firebirds and Phoenixs . It enables them to attack two consecutive hexes at once, making individual damage to both hexes. However, creatures that are two hexes wide do not suffer double damage from the breath attack. Although creatures with breath attack specialty cannot directly attack allied creatures, they can - similar to   Liches and Power Liches' Death Cloud and  Magogs' Fireball Attack - cause damage to allied creatures located on the second hex. In other words, breath attack will also damage the hero's own troops if they are standing directly behind the attacked hex.

Damage for each attacked stack is calculated separately.  Black Dragons' hate against  Titans works even if the latter were not attacked directly and suffered from breath attack. If your Black Dragons by mistake attacked Titans who are part of your army, they will still deal 150% damage.

 Bone Dragons,  Ghost Dragons,  Crystal Dragons  and  Faerie Dragons  don't have breath attack.

Creatures with breath attack:

•   Green and Gold Dragons
•   Red and Black Dragons
•   Firebirds and Phoenixes 
•  Rust Dragons 
•  Azure Dragons 
•   Mechanics and Engineers 

Bugs

Two bugs related to the Breath attack remain unresolved.

Dragon Breath Exploit

As a result of the AI being made to always attempt to burn with a Breath attack when possible, and avoid retaliation if possible, if a stack of units is located behind the dragon (particularly such that at least one creature can withstand a Dragon's attack), and there's another, weaker stack directly above or below them, next to the dragon, the Dragon will fly 2 hexes (above or below, depending on where the weaker stack stands) and attack the weaker stack; the breath attack, however, will not activate, and the stronger stack behind the Dragon will remain untouched.

Mechanic and Engineer's breath attack direction

Mechanic's and Engineer's Breath attack, when attacking a 2-hex creature from the middle hex directly above or below them, does not follow the direction of the sword-arrow, but rather the direction of Mechanic's or Engineer's movement. The following image shows the problem in detail:

If the Engineer approaches the 2-hex enemy standing on the red hexes from the left side (yellow path), she will burn whomever is occupying the yellow hex. If she approaches said 2-hex enemy from the right (teal path), she will burn whomever is standing on the teal hex. If she starts her movement from a hex on the exact same file as the green hex, the direction of the sword-arrow will determine whether she burns the yellow or the teal hex.

In the setup above, the engineer cannot burn enemies located on the black hex.

User commentary

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HotA is most likely aware of the Dragon breath exploit, but decided not to fix it as a result of it being rather niche and mostly used for tactical advantage. The AI can play rather well around breath attack, so do not expect to bait enemy dragons into retaliation onto their own stack.