Respawn Timer
The delay before a dead hero returns to the map, which grows as the game goes on.
The respawn timer is how long a hero stays dead before reappearing at base, and it scales upward with game time and hero level — a death at minute 2 might cost five seconds, while a death at minute 20 can cost close to a full minute. This scaling is what makes late-game deaths so much more costly than early ones: a single bad teamfight death near minute 15 can leave a hero unable to defend a turret or contest Lord for the rest of the fight. Objective and turret trades are frequently timed around an enemy's respawn timer.