Patch 7.28 First Takes
General
Elevated: Full disclosure, heading into patch 7.28 I was expecting sweeping changes to core game mechanics and a totally reimagined metagame. When I read that Icefrog barely nudged the economy, ignored the map entirely and only minorly tweaked most of the heroes I was pretty disappointed and this may affect my initial thoughts.
KawaiiSocks: First thing I checked was whether they nerfed MKB. They did. Good patch. The new Aghanim’s Shard mechanic is certainly complicating things even further, but unlike neutral items it feels like it adds some depth to the game as well as cool new options. New items will take some time to figure out, but we finally have cast point manipulation from items, which opens a new, exciting set of doors.
New Hero: Hoodwink
Elevated: Hoodwink is an interesting combination of skills from other heroes. As a result, she feels kind of uninspired, basically borrowing several of the more annoying aspects from Windranger, Sniper and Witch Doctor. That being said, she is very strong and like most new heroes will need her numbers adjusted quite a bit. At the moment, it’s possible to flash farm, evade ganks, execute ganks, team fight, solo kill, push wave and scale into the late game as a right clicker. These are way too many strengths with basically no weaknesses. Every time a hero can seemingly do everything well and play in most roles it usually means the hero is way too strong and Hoodwink is no exception. Despite borrowing a lot of the kit, everything about the hero is well made and so overall I’d have to give Hoodwink a 7.5/10 for fun and execution. I can definitely see some fun combos with her.
KawaiiSocks: Really don’t understand the reasons for the hero's existence. I might sound like an old grouch, but there’s nothing unique about her. A more annoying and probably more powerful Windranger and Sniper hybrid isn’t something the game needed. Let’s also slap 3.6 Agility growth on the hero for some reason, why not, right? At least her starting and per level Strength make sure she won’t be too much of a nuisance. Though forest phase-walking and built-in evasion might disagree.
Game Changes
Elevated: The big story of this patch is the introduction of the Aghanim’s Shard. Somewhat playing off the lore of the Aghanim’s Labyrinth custom map we now have a consumable upgrade to every hero in the game (aside from Hoodwink). The 20 minute time restriction is a little awkward as many of the Shard upgrades are either really powerful or really memey, creating a pretty diverse impact at that moment in the game.
Some heroes will likely be defined by their Shard upgrade while other will pretty much just play as usual. All in all, it’s a pretty cool change that will give hardcore fans of the game even more to tinker with an optimize on every single hero. This also means that there will be a lot of really terrible builds and anyone relatively new to the game will struggle mightily with learning everything.
Personally, this is the first time I have read a patch and felt like I just don’t really care about learning half of the changes. I don’t really foresee much of the current meta shifting once people figure out that most of these creative builds are losing them MMR. In the long run, there will definitely be some hidden gems and cool interactions but the economy continues to slow the game and force carry-centric play around massive team fights.
KawaiiSocks: Found myself being weirdly optimistic about Aghanim’s Shards. This looks like a gameplay mechanic with player agency and the potential for counterplay from the enemy, rather than… you know, what we got with neutral item introduction.
Speaking of which, it looks like neutral items are now in some form of rotation. Some items are getting “cycled out” and it is distinctly different from the only correct option of “deleted Neutral Items from the game after realising how terrible of a game mechanic it is”, which is a shame, but we will get there eventually. Especially after players will see how unbalanced minute seven Chipped Vest and Possessed Mask can be.
The new actual items are kind of interesting though: the Armor mechanics weren’t touched, but it feels like there are a lot more scaling magic damage options. Eternal Shroud is just a masterclass in game design elegance. Witch Blade is theoretically very cool and can even bring some heroes into meta on its own. Mage Slayer on the other hand is kind of unconvincing. It should be renamed to “Tank Slayer”, since the best use for it I can think of is against heroes like Bristleback and Axe, not your typical Zeus, Lina, QoP who are going to die anyways, if you close the gap to them.
Elevated: Aside from the Aghanim’s Shards, most heroes got nothing or very minor tweaks. A few received significant work but a lot of it was reworks to a prior era of the hero (Lifestealer from Dota 1 anybody?). Several new items were introduced and a couple of them look pretty fun. For the most part though, the new items tend to be late game upgrades and fairly uncreative combinations to free up slots. The new Neutral items are probably the best designed parts of the 7.28 additions but most are either utilitarian or on the supremely wacky side (Giant’s Ring????). Item development seems to be where the Dota devs have taken the most creative liberty of late but a lot of them feel like the team just wrote down whatever made them laugh the hardest.
KawaiiSocks: Hero changes were definitely quite minor, Aghanim’s Shard aside. Several things did stand out, however: Elevated talked about Alchemist being one of the most important heroes in the game, and he did receive some pretty crazy buffs. Not to actual power level, but rather late game scaling, so it could be really fun. Bloodseeker can now be a DPS core once again, it feels. In some specific matchups, certainly, but the option is great. Vector-targeting Ice Wall on Invoker is probably going to be bigger than people think, while Leshrac got a very scary new Aghanim’s right after players finally started experimenting with the old one. Overall: many new things to consider and first impressions are probably wrong. Though while the balance of power didn’t change drastically, there are many, many new things to test out, which is a perfect holiday present.
Closing Thoughts
Elevated: Overall, the patch provides some fun theory crafting and plenty of room for experimentation but is significantly less earth shattering than most of the recent post-TI updates.
KawaiiSocks: Ditto. Agree that the changes aren’t as drastic as we are used to getting around this time, but for some reason I feel like it’s a good thing. Even in the previous patch, after almost six month of it, we saw professional players finding something new to play with and abuse. Maybe longer patch cycles with clear communication is the future of Dota? I certainly wouldn’t mind, as long as neutral items are deleted somewhere along the way.
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First!
Arent towers further away from river or is it only my impression? I didnt play yet, only checked map quickly and it seemed it is (but maybe those are the night changes(?), so only the vision looked different?
OK, it seems "the issue" is only night vision early. Shame, it would be great to have back the roaming meta with towers slightly further away from each other.
The random hate on neutral items is kind of surprising, especially from someone who literally wrote weeks ago that "overall there is nothing inherently wrong with the system". They provide unique variations on builds in a way I find fairly interesting.
Trident shouldnt have been removed. Fish Bait on Slark is too much situational.
Dota buff: "we need a new ranged hc"
Valve launch's a new ranged mobility scaled hero.
Also Dota buff: "there's no necessity for this op hero"
Dota buff : "Does Lion need rework"?
Valve : Hex unit movement speed reduced from 140 to 120
lol you got them there @SkullCker
I honestly ho back and forth on neutral items from game to game, but the most recent batch just feels wrong. Tier 1 items shouldn't be game-changing and both Chipped Vest and Possessed Mask are. They essentially allow certain heroes to skip full items. Blade Mail was used as a farming tool in the previous patch on some heroes, most notably Spectre, and Chipped Vest might suddenly be enough for her to farm non-ancient neutrals and maybe go Yasha/Diffusal Blade/Manta without sacrificing much farming speed while also becoming a lot more of a threat. Guess that's why the hero was nerfed in the same patch as they introduce the vest, but... is it really the best idea to introduce something potentially problematic and then nerf the potential problematic interaction? Just irks and baffles me.
Same with Possesed Mask, but on a much bigger variety of heroes. Any carry can now skip Morbid Mask and go jungling come minute 7 IF they get the Mask. If they don't and the enemy does, well, good luck: the enemy carry just won 900 gold against you without any interaction whatsoever, cool.
Aghanim's Shard is also kind of bloating the game, but it is doing it in a predictable manner. It leaves room for actual counterplay and can be solved by planning. Some neutral items, as discussed previously, just do too much. They are also the more interesting ones, for sure. Things like Spider legs, Minotaur Horn, Flicker etc. are game- and matchup-changing, which is precisely why I personally have a problem with them.
New hero... dunno. Looks like WR 2.0, even in terms of visual design. Maybe that's why I am so salty)
I would like to disagree with Elevated. Slower paced meta is welcomed, and is what made dota fun again. THe peak numbers of players Dota reached, was during 6.83, which was very slow-paced, late-game oriented patch.
The push for faster-paced, brawling-style, teamfighting heavy deathballing meta that has been in the game since 7.00 is what lead to the playerbase losing 30% in about 2-3 years
The changes they made to Lifestealer is straigth up the worst changes they could possibly do to him, they took his best skill into a 1400 gold price item, and gave him a free orb of venom instead which aint even the orb of venom atall (cause it doesnt have the same damage per second). and reworked his aghanim into a single target riki's tricks and trade. i mean what the Actual F*** is wrong with icefrog and his team? seriously, just what is this type of nerf?? the hero was already in the shit tier, now that they litteraly cut off his open wound and turned it into an item, what can even this hero mean during laning phase???? the mana increase on his abilities since he no longer has open wound is so stupid aswell, it forces you to get an item like soul ring during laning stage...
Months ago people complained about his feast, and the danage he lacks, and now they litteraly just stole it from him, gave it to bloodseeker which was already on the top of the mountion...
i hope they rethink this idea...
/\ haha
Like what happened to Snapfire, same may happen to hookwink. The first skill acorn shot is already so op, its like upgraded luna glaives, with no damage reduction, with slow and further range. Bushwhack does 360 aoe damage with 2.2 second stun, scurry is an overpowered windrun, sharpshooter is another overpowered sniper's ulti. Basically no point playing windranger or sniper as you already have a much better ranged carry/support. What we will see these few days is instaban and instapick hookwink, followed by counters to hookwink.
Actually the patch is not too bad aside from the one and only annoying hero that everyone wants to pick. Stuff that needed a nerf were nerfed and stuff that needed some buffs were given the buffs. What is important is to take advantage of the buffs and possible new builds. Rise of the mages.
Nerfs that we will see in the next few weeks:
Acorn shot cooldown increase, mana cost increase, and bonus damage change to reduced damage.
Bushwhack damage decreased by 50%, aoe decreased, cooldown increased and cast range decreased.
Scurry evasion decreased, mana cost increased.
Sharpshooter, damage decreased and cast range decrease.
@positive_player - I think that it is just with people growing older and there are not new players coming (or staying) anymore - or not in the numbers to replace those, who played for years. It happens to all games - WOW, starcraft, dota, lol, CS and others as well - it creates fanbase and it slowly drops.
Honestly I was waiting for this patch to make big changes to the game. It feels exactly the same as before the patch.
Finally I am loving this game again hope it stays like this. I don't want to say about the new hero but the new neutral item and Aghanim's Shard make every match more interesting be it I we win or lose.
First of all, Valve - what are you smoking? You have made a second Chen "no damage abilities" hero from Lifestealer who's a worse version of Wraith king without Disabling, Damaging, Farming, or Catching ability with low base damage growth and low armor. I am sorry, what?!
Second of all - can you finally make up your mind what OD should look like? Hero was bad already (same as Naix) and you've taken out his AoE farming ability and Slow.
LS nerfed bad I agree. the mana increase beside that orb of venom skill is a joke.
Sven-Spectre nerfed as I guessed.
was expecting more buff to Slark but they didnt :(
I agree that the new hero has no reason to exist, and provides nothing new to the game. Top it off with cringy furry crap. The hero is beyond broken, not like I've successfully been able to play it yet though. I really like the Aghs shards, but still wish Icefrog would delete neutral items. Too much rng imo. If you get bad drops and your opponents get good drops, it's feels really bad.
Furries have been in DOTA since day one.
Enchantress
Meepo
Brewmaster
Bristleback
Earthshaker
Slardar
Naga
Ursa
Slark
Phantom Lancer
Wyvern
Jakiro
Magnus
Furry game? Always was.
I think valve nailed this hero. It isnt too hard to counter and its balanced in my opinion after nerfs.
Uninspired is a good word for this hero. Its very lackluster and I can't see why they would add it. If anyone has realized most new heroes they would usually add a new mechanic. Dark Willow fear, Pango Vector ability, Monkey King Tree hopping. It seems that idea took too much time out of them and they became uninspired in general. Not going to lie, I hate the artwork for hoodwinked but it's irrelevant now.
Her W doesn't even feel integrated into the game very well. Her Q is ONLY unique because it's physical damage and her ult is not bad for a spell but doesn't warrant a new hero.
To me it seems like their way of balance now is to give us more options New aghs, Talents, Neutrals, Shards and then worry less on the "boring" mechanical parts of the hero (Movement speed, cast point delay, etc). This also may be to make balancing less focused. The amount of options they are putting in the game make it where you don't actually have to completely "Balance" something if this makes sense. They can do minute tweaks to items, shards, talents, aghs and see if players can find a way to find balance in the game. It also seems that Talents are becoming just for extra buffing to abilities in case you need them in certain games. While the Agh shard is a way to add those unique ability changes. (For example Wraith Kings lvl 20 talent now being a shard).
Essentially instead of praying for patches, they might be hoping to make the game so dense that it is more of the player decision of what hero choices they make rather than following a smaller variable of meta. Which I don't know how to feel about it and when will it stop? Will we get 3 agh shards now? Will we get outpost items? Like how many more decisions and options will you put in the game till you think the game can fend for itself?
лул блять, ало патч с экономикой подвезут позже.