Dota 2 has been patched once more, bringing an awful lot of changes and tweaks as it levels up to 7.02.
One of the changes that I’m surprised took this long is that Sentry Wards can now be bought individually for 100 gold, instead of in packs of two for 200. Considering Observer Wards got this change awhile back, I’m not quite sure why this has only just happened. A couple of other “big” changes are the addition of Lycan to Captain’s Mode, Shrines are now invulnerable until a T3 falls instead of once all T2s falls, and – excellently – placing an Observer Ward now has a “fog of war simulator”, showing the areas that will be revealed when taking into account trees and terrain height. No more putting a ward down and then discovering there’s a tree making that ward less useful than you thought.
As this is a Dota 2 patch there’ve also been a load of hero rebalances, almost all of which are aimed at the talents. Lone Druid has taken a bit of a hit in the talents (+200 attack range to +175, +65 damage to +55 damage, and -50s respawn time to -40s respawn time… but a boost to the Spirit Bear armour talent, from +7 to +12) although whether it’ll be enough of a nerf to the ever-popular Solo Druid build remains to be seen. Monkey King has taken a bit of a punch to the stats and the talents, and some of the lesser-seen heroes have received buffs (Beastmaster, Windranger, Broodmother, and Enchantress, amongst others). Which hopefully won’t encourage people to pick Broodmother, because Broodmother can sod off.
There’s plenty more to the patch, obviously; it’s reasonably extensive in terms of changes. More trees on the Dire side, for instance. But rather than make this a ludicrously long post, I’ll simply note that you can have a look at the full list of Dota 2 7.02 changes over here.
