With The International 13 now in the books, Valve has released a brand new Dota 2 patch that nerfs most of the most popular heroes from the tournament in some way.
The 7.37d patch notes bring quite a lot of changes for what is essentially a small balance patch. There’s no major gameplay changes that impact the whole game, just a ton of nerfs and a few buffs to heroes and items that have been either two strong or too weak. However, it feels like a bigger patch is still on the way sometime soon as a lot of the unplayed heroes from TI don’t get much love here either.
If you watched TI then the first heroes you are likely to search for in the 7.37d patch notes are Sand King and Lone Druid, two of the top heroes from the event. Sand King gets a big nerf to his Dust Devil facet, with reductions in radius, duration and banis damage from his talent. Lone Druid on the other hand also gets hit with a facet change, this time to his Bear Necessities, which was borderline broken in the last patch. Now stat bonuses no longer apply to items in the neutral item slots, and the stat bonus percentage increase has been dropped.
There are also some heroes I’d have expected to be hit harder than they have, with Luna being top of that list. She only gets a few small nerfs to her Lucent Beam damage, which seems like a very small change for one of the top carries at TI.
New hero Ringmaster, who likely won’t be new for much longer given we know another new hero is right around the corner, also gets a round of balance changes, likely gearing up for an appearance in the pro scene reasonably soon. His base strength and strength gain take a hit to make him less tanky, while his Tame The Beasts ability gets a major range nerf at later levels. His Escape Act can now be dispelled, which could make it fairly useless, and his ult gets radius and duration nerfs.
You’ll need to check out the full Dota 2 patch notes to see all the changes, but if you can think of a top hero from TI there’s likely a nerf for them somewhere. There’s also a handful of item changes you might want to read if all your heroes are currently in the balance bin.
The patch also brings with it the Crownfall Collector’s Cache II chest, which features 16 brand new sets for heroes, with a lot of them being voted on by the community.
It feels like the next Dota patch we get will be the one that brings the final act of Crownfall, which also comes new with hero Kez. We expect that to hit this month, but Crownfall has been delayed quite a bit over the last year so nothing is guaranteed.
