Ten changes you need to know as you boot Dota 7.00

The Dota 7.00 patch makes Dota 2 a new game at fundamental levels. Here are ten important changes you need to know before you boot Dota 7.00.

Preface: I started doing professional patch analysis, first at JoinDOTA, then at DotaBlast and other outlets, about three years ago. I’ve been the first to break apart over a dozen patches for the most necessary information, with my goal always simple: to make playing Dota easy for fans who don’t want the game to feel like homework.

Dota 7.00 is the biggest patch I’ve ever seen in my years as a Dota professional and decade as a fan, including Reborn and including the transition from Dota 1 to Dota 2. This is a new game at fundamental levels.

Here are, I think, the ten broad concepts you need to keep in mind in order to go pub, but my recommendation would definitely be to skim the notes directly. We will be figuring out impacts of Dota 7.00 for the next decade. This is just the surface!

The most extensive map change in Dota history will hit the client with Dota 7.00. In addition to changing the location of some camps and creating more parity between the jungles, the most notable changes include a new type of building (the Shrine), extra ancient camps, and changes to high-ground/ low-ground flow which before heavily favored the Dire jungle. Some of the biggest changes in Dota 7.00 come from additions to the map.

Dota 7.00 minimap courtesy of DenisDesign, as posted on Reddit

1. Creeping Change in Dota 7.00

The jungle now has two ancient camps on each side, a moved hard camp that appears to benefit Radiant much more than Dire, and an expanded offlane camp that appears to benefit Dire much more than Radiant.

The Dire offlane camp can be used to pull the mid lane with proper timing from a Tiny toss or Earth Spirit push, possibly even a Pudge hook or Clockwork cogs with help from a teammate. The two camps on each side drag to each other to juggle lane creeps that are pulled. The Dire offlane is very difficult, if not impossible, to pull abuse because the Tier 2 tower kills neutrals used to drag creeps, but the Radiant side offlane can more easily.

None of the camps can pull a mid lane or offlane (before its Tier 1 tower) without the aid of a positioning spell.

As for the safelane, Radiant’s new medium camp, just over the tier 2, can be both pulled into the tower for farming purposes and pulled into the wave (but to do so one tree must be cut out of the south end of the camp). It appears to be very high-efficiency, especially since you can pull this camp without dragging it into tower range with very minimal practice.

The Dire side cannot do this.

In addition, pulling from the Radiant easy camp to its hard camp is effortless, but the same process on the Dire side takes some finesse.

Although there are more camps on the map, creeps will spawn half as often (after the 0:30 spawn, creeps will only spawn once every odd minute). This reduces access to stacking, pulling, and jungle farming less potent, and makes contesting ancient stacks much more important.

Dire’s new jungle has three camps downhill from nearby pathways, as does Radiant. The Ancients in both safe jungle are on high ground next to a Shrine, which should allow for some glass cannon heroes to take Ancients earlier (with the use of the heal). Ancients also no longer have magic immunity, but do have 70% magic damage resistance.

There is also a new type of Ancient camp: Prowlers. The larger unit has a stacking lifesteal and HP regen aura. The smaller units passively root on attack (with a fifteen-second cooldown) and can do a 200 damage nuke that comes with a temporary 50% armor reduction.

2. Roshan’s Home and EHP changed in Dota 7.00

The last neutral change worth noting is the Roshan pit, which was moved to the top of the map in the middle of the river. The pit itself is smaller (only about 275 units in radius). That makes it much more difficult to hold – for example, a single Avalanche is able to stun every unit hidden instead.

The pit also does a good job blocking vision from one side of the river to the other, creating a major warding difference between aggressive and defensive wards. No longer will supports be able to have it all when warding on the upper end of the map.

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In addition, Roshan had some HP/armor changes which give him nearly the same EHP but make him much more vulnerable to negative armor (also, Medallion of Courage and Solar Crest no longer have half-impact on Roshan). At 20 minutes, Roshan’s EHP is 200 higher than it was. At 30 minutes it is 644 higher. At 45 minutes, it’s 1589 higher. This in theory slows down later Rosh attempted to make fights near the pit more competitive, but what it really does is force teams to buy negative armor by the 25-minute mark. Teams with -10 or more armor for Rosh will actually clear him out faster than they did before at most stages of the game, except in the ultra-late.

3. Shrines and Runes in Dota 7.00

The Shrines provide an activatable boost to regeneration, like mini fountains, and have a five-minute cooldown.

Shrines do not share cooldown and do not give vision. They are located through jungles, changing lane dynamics for the offlane (no more suiciding to go back to fountain, instead a Shrine will heal you up). They can be teleported to, have about as much durability as a tier one tower, and are vulnerable only after every tier two tower is destroyed.

Shrines heal up to 600 HP/200 MP + 10HP/5 MP per minute on the game clock.

Bounty Runes now spawn in four locations every two minutes, but only provide two bottle charges. This should help offlaners, who have a fairly reliable source of gold and xp, and roaming supports.

A roaming support should now be relatively guaranteed 60 experience and 312 gold in the first six minutes simply by picking up one of these runes on each rotation. This should encourage additional rotations, especially since there are fewer opportunities to stack neutrals.

As for so-called Action Runes (Invisibility, Haste, Double Damage, Illusion), we will return to only one spawning at random either in the top or bottom rune spot every even minute, including at the start of the game.

Along with changes to pre-game planning, this basically means that invading opponents’ space to deny bounty runes and ward will likely become far more prevalent, as it was prior to the introduction of Bounty Runes.

It will also mean bottle-running mids may be more dependent on RNG or support rotations to win their lanes.

4. Backpacking in Dota 7.00

No more dropping items on the ground or holding smoke in your stash. Every hero now has a backpack, found beneath his or her inventory, which can hold items. Those items will cool down at half their normal rate and will have a six-second delay after swapping into your inventory (unless you are at a shop).

This could have major impacts on supports, who may use the backpack to store wards or smokes, and late-game carries such as Alchemist or Naga Siren that utilize illusions for auras (a Naga Siren could have a Refresher Orb, Assault Cuirass, and Desolator waiting in her backpack, swap them into activity, call illusions with the extra damage, then swap back to her Boots of Travel, Octarine, Black King Bar, without needing a spare courier to do so).

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It also allows junglers to take damage without setting Tranquil Boots on the ground. Although the six-second swapping mute will slightly slow down the heal, attacking or being attacked with Tranquils in your backpack does not put them on full cooldown.

5. Wukong, The Monkey King

This is the first hero to be introduced to Dota 2 without prior play in the original source, and it shows with a variety of skills probably not possible in the Warcraft III engine.

The Monkey King has six skills, but he has Mischief for free at level one and it does not improve during the game.

Boundless Strike: A 1200 distance attack that stuns .5 seconds per level and does a 200% damage critical strike with true strike (always hits through evasion). It looks and feels like a mini fissure that doesn’t create impassible terrain.

Tree Dance: Monkey King is able to jump into a tree and cannot be seen by enemies without flying vision (even next to towers or units on high-ground). He is able to jump into trees made by Iron Branches and he cannot be seen by units on high ground or towers. It has a 1.4 second cooldown, which prevents him from jumping into trees while taking damage under the same rules as Blink Dagger.

If the tree he is in is destroyed, he is stunned for four seconds.

Primal Spring: Monkey King jumps out of a tree after channeling, doing damage and slowing enemies. He can jump up to 1000 units away and can channel for up to two seconds, slowing for twice as long as channeled.

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Jingu Mastery: If Monkey King hits the same hero four times, his next five attacks are imbued with extra lifesteal and damage (quite a bit). If he attacks multiple heroes, each of them take counters, but the count restarts if a hero isn’t attacked within fifteen seconds.

This is an impressive lane-control ability, and is usually going to be your level one skill.

Boundless Strike will add counters to heroes and could activate Jingu Mastery, but it will not benefit from lifesteal if already charged Jingu Mastery. If Boundless Strike is used while Jingu Mastery is charged, it will only remove one charge no matter how many units are hit.

Hitting a unit while Jingu Mastery is charged will not add a counter or reset the counter timer on that unit.

Mischief: Monkey King takes a disguise appropriate for his surroundings. Near trees, he’ll turn into a tree. In lane, he’ll turn into a dropped item or a courier. At a rune spot, he’ll turn into a rune.

Enemy non-hero units will not begin new attacks once a non-courier disguise is taken, even if he’s a tree moving around inside his opponents’ tower. As a courier, he has a movement speed of 350, so he is actually much faster at early levels as a courier (this may be useful for getting to lane to plant wards). As other units, his movement speed falls to 200.

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To become a courier, it seems he must be in a walkway apart from trees (basically, where a courier might go); it still may take a few tries.

If Monkey King takes any damage, he will revert form (including if an attack that was launched before he takes a disguise hits him, he will instantly revert to his hero form).

True sight does not reveal Monkey King in disguise, but he can be right clicked or targeted under usual rules and cannot be targeted by things like Quelling Blade or Tangoes while a tree.

Wukong’s Command: Monkey King creates two circles of monkey units which attack for his damage up to once every two seconds. It creates a large arena in which he can fight for 13/14/15 seconds and also give him (and his minions). In total, 14 units are made. Monkey sentries do not block pathing. Monkey King and his warriors each get 50/70/90 for the duration, and the spell will automatically end if he leaves the ring.

This spell would pair particularly well with Black Hole, Upheaval, Kinetic Field, and Vacuum.

6. Talent Trees instead of Stats

Every hero in the game took major changes in patch Dota 7.00, because every hero in the game now has a personalized talent tree. Heroes can no longer upgrade stats instead of spells: instead, at levels 10, 15, 20, and 25 they can choose one of two upgrades unique to that hero (for example, bonus attack speed or bonus magic resistance). Like all leveling decisions, these cannot be changed later in the game.

It’s difficult to tell how this will impact play, but most heroes do not reliably pass level 15, and it’s difficult to image that many teams will successfully aim for the level 25 upgrade (which is usually a choice between two quite important options, such as Wraith King no longer needing mana to ult or adding 20% to his Vampiric Aura).

Every hero has these, but I don’t think you need to memorize them unless you’re playing at a semi-pro level. Just play with heroes and get a sense of what they can do with builds mixing each branch. For the most part, the options replace certain items that may be built (raw HP, attack speed, stats).

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One nice thing about this change is that it keeps supports far more relevant into the late game, where they have upgrades to their damage or survivability which they could not get before. That should help make more draft possibilities competitive after 45 minutes, although most games are over by then.

Ultimate levels now come at 6/12/18 instead of 6/11/15. That’s a bummer for supports who often struggle to get to level 18, but may help them in the mid-game. This means that levels 19, 21-24 give no leveling options. Just like with skills, talent trees can be skipped so that actual skills can be leveled instead.

7. Hero Reworks in Dota 7.00

Most of the hero changes in patch Dota 7.00 are fairly reserved, especially compared to major patches of the past. That’s presumably because all the changes to mechanics and leveling have fundamentally altered every hero at his or her core, so changing their spells on top was too much to balance. A few dozen heroes got smallish buffs, but here’s the heroes that got reworks:

Lycan: Howl is now a buff for 13 seconds that gives slightly less damage to allied units, but also provides 50/100/150/200 max HP for heroes (and less for non-heroes). Feral impulse no longer provides attack speed, but instead does much more damage at higher levels and provides HP regeneration passively.

Summoned wolves go invisible at level four and cripple at level 3, and they attack slightly faster.

This hero is still a pusher, but will work especially well with other pushing heroes, such as Nature’s Prophet. He can also provide a decent team fight advantage with an early howl, but a late howl will do very little.

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Necrophos: Death pulse has Sadist built in, meaning units give passive HP/MP regen when killed (even when not killed by Death Pulse). Death Pulse damage was reduced, but can now be paired with a new ability: Ghost Shroud. Ghost Shroud turns Necrophos ethereal for a few seconds and gives a 600 AOE slow aura for enemies. While in this form, Necrophos is healed for 50% more but takes 20% more magic damage. It has a fairly long cooldown.

Reapear’s Scythe no longer disables buyback or does extra damage with Aghanim’s, instead it reduces cooldown.

Omniknight: This hero took some heavy nerfs in patch Dota 7.00. He suffers a slight reduction to Repel duration with an increase in cooldown. He can no longer repel opponents.

Purification heal down at higher levels and the coodown is higher at early levels, although it costs less mana.

Techies: Land mines now do magical damage, can not be stacked, and are not revealed by true sight. However, they also do not go off instantly, instead revealing themselves when opponents are near and explode after 1.6 seconds of a nearby foe. Rename proximity mines, these are less a tool for instant kills and more a tool for sustaining damage at opponents. Despite being magical damage, they do still damage buildings at 25%. Quelling blade cannot destroy these mines, but they can be attacked down pretty easily.

Suicide Squad was replaced with Blast Off, which allows Techies to charge for one second, then jump up to 1000 units with a sizeable magic damage nuke. That nuke will also silence opponents in the area and deal 50% of Techies’ max HP to themselves. If Techies casts this with less than 50% HP, he will self-deny.

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Like Shadow Fiend’s Requiem of Souls, Techies can cast this from invisibility without revealing until the spell actually starts. If cast from fog of war, Techies is not revealed until he can be seen naturally.

Maybe most importantly, Stasis trap roots enemies instead of stunning but also instantly detonates. The trigger radius is closer (400 instead of 450) but the effect radius is a full 600. They also never expire but also do not give vision.

Treant Protector now has Nature’s Guise as a passive, noncastable spell which will automatically turn him invisible when he’s near trees for a duration, like Riki. When Treant attacks while invisible, he will become visible after the attack, and the attack will have a stun and cannot miss.

Visage: Familiars are now units with normal regen rules, they also get the protection of Gravekeeper’s Clock if near Visage.

Both Underlord and Arc Warden were added to Captains Mode but took some heavy nerfs. Most pros I spoke to at Boston said these heroes were already underwhelming at their level of play, and they didn’t expect to see them picked often even if they were added.

Chaos Knight, Chen, Shadow Shaman, Invoker are all honorable mentions and should be investigated.

8. New/ Adjusted Aghanim’s Scepters in Dota 7.00

Antimage: Spell Shield now passively blocks AND reflects a spell once every 12 seconds (works as both a Linkens and a Lotus Orb). This does not block allied spells but is disabled with break.

Bounty Hunter: Shuriken Toss bounces twice on each tracked hero instead of once.

Chaos Knight: Allows Phantoms to be cast for an ally, like Weaver’s Time Lapse scepter. Also reduces ultimate cooldown by 20 seconds.

Crystal Maiden: Instead of upgrading her damage, Aghanims now applies Frost Bite to any unit in the Freezing Field for more than 2.5 seconds. This one seems very good.

Gyrocopter: Sidecar now attacks every 1.1 seconds instead of 1.2 seconds.

Invoker: Scepter cooldown now sets Invoke to 2 seconds at all levels.

Lion: Finger of Death Scepter AoE increased to 325 (from 300).

Nature’s Prophet: Wrath of Nature bounces no longer increases from 16 to 18 and does less damage to reflect a similar nerf to this ultimate without scepter.

Necrophos: Scepter reduces ultimate cooldown and has no other effects.

Phantom Lancer: Spirit Lance now bounces up to five times, creating an illusion on each bounce.

Riki: Riki can now go into a hero like Lifestealer, able to attack without being targetable. Also increases Tricks of the Trade by 4 seconds.

Sand King: No longer applies Caustic Finale to illusions, just heroes.

Shadow Shaman: Mass Serpent Wards attack 225 farther and attack two units at once. Even without scepter, this ultimate no longer does splash damage.

Skywrath Mage: Anytime Skywrath casts an ability, a different random target within 700 AoE of the original target will also be hit. Prioritizes heroes.

Slark: Reduces ultimate cooldown to 30 seconds and makes all friendly heroes within 325 units invisible while Shadow Dance is active.

Sniper: Assassinate is ground-targeted with 400 AoE which will lock onto all heroes and hit them even if they leave that area. Does 2.8 critical strike and procs headshot. Can be dodged and disjointed, and also gives targeted enemies an indicator during cast time.

Zeus: Zeus no longer gets damage boost, instead getting a new ability which summons a storm cloud anywhere on the map. That cloud will automatically cast Zeus’s current level of Lightning Bolt within 500 AOE every 2.5 seconds. It can be killed with eight attacks and has a 100 gold bounty.

9. Dota 7.00 Interface Changes: Drafting is different, teamwork is premium

It’s no surprise that the first changes you’ll encounter when booting Dota 2 reward teamwork; Dota has been shifting more toward teamwork since 2012. When entering a game, now you will have additional options for suggesting heroes to allies. If you do not select a hero by the timer count down, you will random.

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The planning phase now allows you to speak to teammates, highlight preferred lanes, place markers where you expect opponents to go, and put down markers where you want to put wards. You can also buy your items before the game begins.

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You’ll also notice that you have much greater vision due to a changed HUD. It will block much less of the screen, although it still needs some tweaks (for example, right now the display no longer allows access to the combat log as far as I can tell). When you click on an enemy hero, you can still control your own hero while looking at his or her information, and the minimap is resizeable.

For the most part, this may reduce mechanical skill cap but will also make the game much more accessible, especially to new players interested in getting their feet wet after years of playing League of Legends or Heroes of the Storm. I suspect old-guard players will end up happily adjusting to it after a few tweaks.

10. Under-the-Hood Changes in Dota 7.00

There were a lot of changes in patch Dota 7.00 to under-the-hood mechanics, such as a reduction on kill gold and a change for gold lost on death to be based on current net worth (very good for supports, very bad for heroes such as Alchemist and Antimage).

Dying to neutrals now has a minimum respawn of 26 seconds, so don’t do it unless you have to.

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One of the single largest changes in Dota 7.00 is that illusions now have a gold bounty and do only 50% damage to structures. Dragon Knight’s illusions don’t get Dragon Blood and no illusions benefit from Magic Resistance bonuses. Along with a change to Dark Seer’s ultimate, this change could hit him particularly hard, as opponents can actually farm gold by standing in a misplaced wall. It should also somewhat reduce the prevalence of Shadow Demon/ Alchemist/ Naga Siren carry strategies, although I’m not sure a small gold and xp bounty will be enough to deter these.

Get used to hitting the alt key frequently to check information such as ally health and mana. This is a habit old-guard players are already used to due to alt-spamming in Dota 1, which provided different minimap information.Dota 7.00 Dota 7.00 Dota 7.00 Dota 7.00 Dota 7.00 Dota 7.00 Dota 7.00 Dota 7.00 Dota 7.00 Dota 7.00 Dota 7.00 Dota 7.00 Dota 7.00 Dota 7.00 Dota 7.00 Dota 7.00