Valve Cleans Up Dota 2 With Patch 7.39 “Spring Forward”

To paraphrase a certain cartoon mad scientist, if I had a nickel for every time Valve dropped a major Dota 2 balance patch in the middle of DreamLeague this year, I’d have two nickels — which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it’s happened twice. And that’s exactly what just happened with Patch 7.39, entitled Spring Forward.

Dota 2 developer and publisher Valve Corporation decided to slip a nasty surprise under the pillows of each remaining team participating at DreamLeague Season 26, as they now have to contend with a massive list of changes right before the second group stage. This is nowhere near the first time this has ever happened, but it’s kind of funny how it’s always DreamLeague that sees a mid-tournament patch happen.

Spring Cleaning Part XII

As is tradition with Dota 2 every springtime, the game receives a big number of performance improvements and bug fixes, all of which are of course always welcome. Quite frankly, the game has performed poorly in terms of frame rate and stability over the last 12 or so months, with things really bogging down in games that go particularly late.

Dota now has improved performance — starting with improved boot up time, faster load times, smoother in game performance and higher frame rates. #Dota2 pic.twitter.com/ZxT7hRTcMJ

— Wykrhm Reddy (@wykrhm) May 22, 2025

I’ve yet to test the veracity of Valve’s claims in this regard with a full ranked game, but Patch 7.39 supposedly hastens loading times and increases frame rates across the board. As for bugs, there’s just way too many to list in this article alone.

Perhaps the most impactful bug fix in the changelog concerns yet another Smoke of Deceit glitch, whereby dragging one’s own Smoke of Deceit, selecting an enemy hero from the top bar, and finally dropping the Smoke onto the map would allow you to see if the opposing team has used a Smoke themselves.

Given that there was a Smoke of Deceit bug that caused a number of penalties and even an outright disqualification at the ESL One Raleigh regional qualifiers in January, this bug getting quashed in time for the DreamLeague Season 26 second group stage is good news.

Quality of Life Improvements

Patch 7.39 also brings a ton of new quality of life features and improvements to the game. My personal favorite is the ability to search for specific settings in the settings menu — which as a computer science graduate makes me incredibly happy. Being able to type in the name of a setting you’re looking for is one of the greatest things software developers have ever come up with, and the idea of it finally coming to Dota 2 is just exciting to say the least. It only took them this long, but at least it’s here now.

Spring Forward brings the major 7.39 update with hero reworks, map terrain changes & new neutral items! 16 new hero sets in Heroes' Hoard with Immortal items, Personas & more. Plus, a TON .. TON.. TON… of quality of life tweaks across the board! https://t.co/e9JpmeRivc #Dota2 pic.twitter.com/uVDqq4ohIu

— Wykrhm Reddy (@wykrhm) May 22, 2025

There’s also now the auto-deliver feature built into each courier as part of the patch, which is great because getting your items will now take fewer button presses and less brain power. Anything that makes it easier to get your hands on the items you bought with your hard-earned gold is a win in my book.

Oh, and there’s now an improved and expanded ping wheel, which grants players access to more granular messages and indications in the heat of battle. You can tell your teammates you’re on your way to a point on the map, or just simply to join them for a Smoke of Deceit play or something like that. More options is always great.

DreamLeague Nightmare

As I mentioned, the update includes a massive balance patch which will directly affect teams still alive at DreamLeague. And because balance guru IceFrog (assuming he’s even still that guy at Valve) isn’t afraid to shake things up in the middle of a major tournament, the hero and item changelog is as long as Dota 2 fans expect whenever something like this happens.

The first thing I did upon getting to the gameplay update section is hit CTRL+F and type “Morphling” into the search box — and boy was I not disappointed in what I saw. The hero’s strength gain has been reduced dramatically, down to 2.6 per level from the previous 3.2. Attribute Shift (D/F) now also converts his stats at a slower rate, which should make him less unkillable from here on.

Morphling was the most broken carry of the previous patch, so seeing it finally get what it deserves for its crimes puts a real smile on my face. It was just so damn hard to kill Morphling previously, so these nerfs should help knock the hero down a peg or two. I don’t know if it’ll be enough to remove Morphling from the metagame at DreamLeague, but at least the hero should terrorize pubs less frequently now.

Moreover, the Ironwood Treant facet has been removed from Nature’s Prophet! I talked about how conceptually broken the facet and talent combination was just yesterday, so it’s a huge relief to see it finally gone. No longer will a creep that destroys my base in 10 seconds or less haunt me in my dreams.

It’s been replaced by a different facet called Nature’s Profit, which spawns a money tree in place of enemy heroes that die within a 750 unit radius of Nature’s Prophet. The money tree in turn spawns bags of gold over time, which any hero can pick up. It’s probably as silly as it sounds in practice, so I’m looking forward to what the pros can do with this new toy.

There’s tons more balance changes in here like new neutral items and whatnot, so make sure to check out the full changelog on the official Dota 2 website.