While not quite the major balance patch that many were expecting after The International 2025 (TI14), Valve has at least dropped Patch 7.39e — which addresses some of the biggest pain points in terms of balance that were present at the world championship event just over two weeks ago. The update itself landed on the servers at around 6:30pm ET, and announced by community manager Wykrhm “Wyk” Reddy on his official social media channels.
To address the elephant in the room right away: yes, Helm of the Dominator nerfs are included in the patch notes, and not a moment too soon given how much it warped the metagame around itself at TI14. Other tweaks to items and heroes are also in the changelog, the most important of which I’ll be discussing in this article.
Dominate no more
It took longer than I was hoping it would, but finally, Helm of the Dominator has received some much-needed nerfs. Dominating a creep now costs 50 mana, which non-support heroes will probably find a little hard to swallow in the laning phase. Even the hardest of carries like Faceless Void and Anti-Mage were buying this item as a pseudo-Hand of Midas, but now that it costs mana to use, we might see such heroes refrain from buying it altogether unless their lane goes really well.
The Helm of the Dominator has become the item of the patch.
Here's why: https://t.co/ZNFD6hsuks
— Hotspawn Dota (@hotspawndota2) September 6, 2025
In addition to the mana cost, any dominated creeps will now move at 370 movement speed, down from the original 380. Not a significant nerf by any means, but the little things do add up — especially for creeps like the Centaur Conqueror or Hellbear Smasher whose active abilities require them to be in close proximity to enemy heroes.
Also, Helm of the Dominator can no longer be used to control another creep if the currently controlled creep takes damage from hero-based sources. This is similar to the cooldown built into Blink Dagger, even down to the duration of three seconds.
Before this change, it was pretty much pointless to chase dominated creeps around the map; you practically just had to concede that your creep waves and towers would be under duress at all times. But now, you can actually prevent your opponent from simply grabbing gold whenever the Helm goes off cooldown by hitting their creep. This should make it a lot more rewarding to spend time going after dominated creeps.
“Too little, too late”
At least, that’s what I think Wang “Ame” Chunyu is saying right now looking at the patch notes, because Outworld Staff just got nerfed to help Juggernaut become viable again — in a world where heroes could previously stop Omnislash (R) cold with the press of a button. The strongest neutral item of the previous patch now makes users invulnerable and immobile, instead of completely hidden or banished from the map for its duration.
What this means is that Omnislash won’t just end prematurely if Juggernaut’s target uses Outworld Staff and there are no other enemy units in the vicinity to jump to. Omnislash won’t deal any damage during Outworld Staff’s effect, but Juggernaut will continue hitting the target as normal. And while this does cut out quite a significant amount of damage from Omnislash still, the tail end of the ability will still catch anyone that doesn’t have another way to avoid it afterwards.
Sadly for Ame, this change comes at a time when he and the rest of Xtreme Gaming would have really appreciated it otherwise. Them letting Naga Siren through in the fifth game of the TI14 grand finals was still the bigger mistake, of course, but picking Juggernaut into pre-nerf Outworld Staff was the final nail in the coffin for them.
Kez lands in Captains Mode
It would seem that Valve have finally figured out what they want to do with Kez, who has been bouncing between buffs and nerfs for almost a year now. He will be in Captains Mode starting with Patch 7.39e, which could really spice up the start of the upcoming competitive season. Of course, they couldn’t do this without also including some tweaks to his kit in this update, but it’s clear that the developers think that he’s in a good enough spot now to let him loose in the competitive scene.
As a hero that can be played in either the carry or solo mid roles, it’s going to be very exciting seeing what the pros will be cooking with Kez in the near future. Heck, we might even see him picked in the ongoing PGL Wallachia Season 6 regional qualifiers, something that I’m really keen to see as a fan of complex hero designs like this.
Could we be looking at the new Invoker? We might not have to wait too long to find out.
Other changes
There’s a bunch of other changes here as well as I mentioned, which are mostly nerfs to the flavor-of-the-patch heroes from the previous version. You can check out the full changelog on the official Dota 2 website.
