D’aww. So pretty.
Are you bored of the current Dota 2 meta? Well, the newest patch will change damn near everything.
That’s not an exaggeration. Dota 2‘s patch 6.82 – also known as the Rekindling Soul update – has just been detailed, and the change list is bigger than Mars. The patch itself doesn’t appear to be out yet (although I’m told it has hit the test client), but… I don’t know. Out later this week, I guess? Tomorrow maybe? It’s so hard to say. I’m sorry, I read these patch notes and my head exploded.
Okay. Right. Let’s calm down and look at the changes, one by one. First, though, a bit of bad news: no Diretide this year, because they’re working on other stuff. I was sorta hoping we’d be seeing Abyssal Underlord by Halloween, but this maybe makes that a bit unlikely. Then again, we did only just get Techies, and now we’re getting a huge number of massive game-changers as well as two major hero reworks, so…
So, the most obvious change is that Shadow Fiend now has his new visuals, which you can see above. Isn’t that nice? He looks so pretty now! And, hey, he’s got an Arcana, and there’s a neat new thing where the Courier will transform into your selected Courier when you call it over, so even if you never buy one you can still see your pretty little donkey/bird/cat/hellbeast in-game.
New Bloodseeker and new Phantom Lancer fight over the new Bounty Rune outside the new Rosh pit location. I think this image sums up quite a lot of this patch, hones… okay, no, it doesn’t. There’s still the changes made to basically everything else.
Oh, and the Rosh pit moved, there’s a new item, there’s a new rune and rune spawning mechanics have changed, Phantom Lancer and Bloodseeker have been heavily reworked, Riki’s Permanent Invis is now a standard ability rather than an ultimate, and basically every hero has received some changes. There are also new Aghanim’s Scepter upgrades, as well as some heavy changes to existing Aghanim’s buffs, which means quite a lot for Bane, Chen, Doom, Earth Spirit, Elder Titan, Phoenix, Sven, Timbersaw, and Treant Protector.
And All Pick in Ranked Matchmaking now works totally differently. And And damage types have been simplified, with Composite damage being removed and HP Removal now only for a few very particular item/self-inflicted ability effects. And Town Portal scrolls are cheaper. And towers are harder to kill. And so is Roshan. And Glyph is automatically refreshed when you lose a T1 tower. And denied creeps give less XP. And there are more Alt-click instant-chat things. And… oh bloody hell, this patch is huge.
I strongly, strongly recommend you wander over to the official Dota 2 update page, and then read down the list and go “Holy fuck, they’re changing that?” about 230 times. There is no way I can list all of the huge changes without breaking this website by publishing an article that’s far too long.
Even Spirit Breaker suddenly looks a lot better.
Right, so. Let’s have a look at some specific changes made to Dota 2. First: Faceless Void and Tinker have been nerfed! Hooray! Although with Tinker it’s mostly just that March of the Machines no longer affects magic-immune units, which means that you can actually push into a Tinker without having eight billion health. These are clearly the most important changes, but I suppose we’d better press on with the others.
The Rosh pit has now moved, and is in roughly the same area but on a different side of that particular river section, with nearby paths rerouted around him. The new rune is a Bounty rune, which grants bonus XP and gold – and, crucially, this rune will always spawn. Two runes will now spawn every two minutes, and one of them is always the Bounty rune. This is pretty huge for mid and support players; supports can definitely use the bonus gold and experience, there’ll be a lot more fighting over runes, and there’s going to be more of a tactical element as to which rune to go for. So… yeah, that’s quite a thing.
The new item is the Crimson Guard, composed of a Vanguard, a Buckler, and a recipe, costing – in total – 3850 gold. This provides 250HP, +6 HP regen, +5 armor, +2 to all stats, and an 80% chance to block 40 damage (for melee heroes) or 20 damage (for ranged heroes). It also has an active ability which gives nearby allied heroes +2 armour and a 100% damage block shell that blocks 50 damage. This lasts for 9 seconds, and has a 70 second cooldown.
Scroll bar deliberately left in the screenshot so you can see just how massive these patch notes are. Hang on, Shuriken Toss now BOUNCES? They changed THAT?
And then there are the major hero reworks. First, Riki now has Permanent Invis as a regular ability, and it now grants HP regen – but it also has a much longer fade time. On the flipside, Blink Strike is now his ultimate. It can target magic immune units, and relies on charges that build up over time rather than having a set cooldown.
Bloodseeker no longer has Blood Bath (his “get health on killing enemies” ability); that’s been replaced with Blood Rite, an AoE spell that targets an area of ground and – after three seconds – damages and silences enemy heroes in that area. By the same token, Bloodrage has changed, now increasing both damage dealt and damage taken by the hero on which it’s cast. If a hero affected by Bloodrage kills an enemy unit, he gets 25% of their maximum HP as a heal. If the hero affected by Bloodrage is killed by an enemy, though, their killer will heal by 25% of the victim’s maximum HP. In short, it’s a big fat double-edged sword which gives you the chance to dish out more pain and get a lot of health back, but also means you’ll take a lot more damage and might wind up healing the enemy team.
Phantom Lancer is the other hero who’s had a huge rework. Spirit Lance remains the same, but that’s about it. Juxtapose is now his ultimate, and works in roughly the same way insofar as it lets him and his illusions create more illusions. Phantom Rush is a new passive, which triggers when Lancer or his illusions target an enemy that’s a little distance away, but still within a certain maximum range; this gives Lancer and his illusions a boost to speed and the ability to phase through units until they hit their target. His other ability, Doppelganger, has Phantom Lancer and all of his nearby illusions disappear for a second, before being shuffled into the target area – along with an illusion that does 20% damage but takes 600% damage, and one that does 0% damage but only takes 100% damage. No invisibility anymore, then, but a different method for confounding enemies.
i give up here is cats
One last thing, I think: damage types. Now, there’s only Physical, Magical, and Pure; Physical is affected by Physical Armor, Magical is affected by Magical Damage Resistance, and Pure is affected by neither. Magic Immunity is now Spell Immunity, and things like BKB and Lifestealer’s Rage now grant both Spell Immunity (which determines whether or not spells can actually interact with that target), and 100% Magic Resistance. This should simplify things a bit, particularly as ability tooltips will now describe whether an ability pierces Spell Immunity and what damage type it does. It’ll take some getting used to, but it’s a hell of a lot simpler than the old clusterfuck of “this spell goes through BKB but does no damage, and this one still works completely through BKB.”
I suspect this is going to massively change the landscape of Dota 2. I’m still not entirely convinced it’s not an elaborate joke, but there you go.
Anyway. Go read the Dota 2 patch notes, and go “Holy fuck, they’re changing that?” Then post whatever change made you say that in the comments below, possibly prefixed with “Holy fuck, they’re changing…”
This patch: literally everything.
