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Valve decided that its usual strategy of waiting at least a day after a big tournament to release the next patch wasn’t going to cut it and instead dropped Dota 2 Patch 7.24 just minutes after Team Secret secured their win at the DreamLeague Season 13 Major.
And without even looking at the buffs and nerfs to heroes, it’s clear that this one is going to be a game changer just through adding two new heroes to the competitive roster.
Neutral items are dropping earlier, there are dedicated item slots now, Shrines are just straight up gone, and Outposts are in the jungle now. That’s just a few of the big changes that have been implemented in this latest update that will make a huge impact on how the next set of tournaments are played.
Here’s a quick overview of the most important changes and how they could end up affecting the game.
Neutral Items
- Heroes now have a dedicated neutral items slot. A maximum of one neutral item can be equipped on your hero.
- There’s now a neutral item stash in the fountain. Neutral items are now stored there instead of on the fountain floor. Right clicking on an available item in the new UI will place it in your stash/courier and can be delivered to you. This UI will also show the state and location of all the other items that have dropped.
- Neutral items can now be teleported to your neutral item stash at home through a right click context menu.
- Ancients neutral drop rates are three times higher.
- Tier five items now drop at 60 minutes.
It looks like Valve is not only trying to slow the game down, but also wants to force players to think about their neutral items more since hoarding is no longer an option. This change along with others might push the average game time up from around 33 minutes closer to 40.
Shrines are gone
- Removed Shrines.
- Outposts moved to the primary jungles.
- Outposts vision reduced from 1400 flying to 700 ground vision (same for truesight).
- Outposts now start as owned by the respective teams, and can be captured at any time (rewards still happen at the 10-minute mark).
- Lane bounty runes have been moved to the secondary jungles.
Another factor that proves Valve is trying to slow the game down a bit is removing one of the options players had to get a sort of refresher during the laning phase. Having Shrines and Outposts available negated the need to focus on your resources.
Void Spirit and Snapfire are here
- Added Void Spirit and Snapfire to Captain’s Mode.
Valve feels like the time has come for competitive players to have the option of picking the two newest heroes in Dota during tournaments. This adds a whole new dynamic to drafts, but it will likely take some time to actually see them become rotation heroes just like Mars took some time last season.
GPM are removed
- Removed all GPM talents.
This is pretty important for support players mainly, but it is still impactful because it removes a few options that could make a difference in the late game.
Hero respawn time and buybacks increased
- Hero respawn time increased from 6/8/10/14/16 to 12/15/18/21/24 for levels one to five.
- Buyback cost increased from 100 + NW/13 to 200 + NW/12.
This change is pretty self explanatory considering the numbers are going to make early deaths much more impactful, especially once players get to level five and start looking for fights or try to dive towers. The buyback increase will also come into play with fights, making players think twice about making risky solo plays.
Courier gets a rework
- Courier death no longer disables your passive gold income.
- Courier bounty increased from 25+5*Level for each player to 30 + 7 * level.
- Courier respawn time changed from 50 + 7 * Level to 60 + 7 * level.
- Courier movement speed increased from 280 to 290.
- Courier can no longer plant wards at level 15.
- Courier can no longer use items at level 25.
Putting limits on what the Courier can do in mid to late situations is interesting, and it feels like this is more of a half measure where another upcoming patch will change even more. These will take some time to truly see how impactful they can be, but the potential is there.
All of the patch details can be viewed on the official Dota 2 website, including item changes and a full list of buffs and nerfs to heroes.
