Dota 2 Patch 7.39d – Pre TI Balance Patch Brings New Cosmetics

The pre-International cogs are now moving, as Valve have just dropped Dota 2 patch 7.39d — which includes both a balance patch as well as some cosmetic items ahead of TI14 in September.

The patch itself comes as little surprise after both the Esports World Cup and Clavision Masters 2025, and knowing that TI14 is just around a month away now. I’m a little disappointed that it’s not a number patch, but I’ll take anything that shakes up the meta even a little bit.

Anyway, here are the changes you need to know in Patch 7.39d:

Sister’s Shroud evasion nerfed

Oh my god, I almost thought this day would never come. The initial evasion on Sister’s Shroud has been reduced to 150%, down from 200% in the previous patch. The duration of the buff itself is now down to five seconds, where it was eight seconds previously.

Sister’s Shroud was such a get-out-of-jail-free card at both EWC and Clavision Masters, so it’s great to see it getting watered down as such. It was incredibly frustrating to play against both at the pro level and in pubs alike, where support heroes that were supposed to be dead to rights would get away thanks to a single roll of the dice.

Personally, I’d rather see this item gone altogether, but for now, these two nerfs will have to do.

Two premier offlaners gutted

Queen of Pain and Undying have been the bane of every carry and hard support player for a while now, but nerfs to key elements for these two heroes should help balance them out.

For Queen of Pain, the lifesteal radius from her Succubus innate ability has been cut in half to 150 units. Coupled with the nerfs to Blade Mail’s damage reflection, simply going in with Blink (W) and popping Blade Mail is much riskier.

As for Undying, the zombies spawned by the Rotting Mitts facet will now die if he dies. This all but eliminates the possibility of him getting post-death kills, which is great because the damage output from the zombies themselves is frankly way too high.

Nature’s Prophet’s laning phase takes a hit

Here’s another nerf that took Valve way too long to implement. Nature’s Prophet would always (and I mean ALWAYS) win his lane from the carry position thanks to the healing from Sprout (Q) when combined with the Soothing Saplings facet.

But now that Patch 7.39d has greatly reduced the healing outpu, playing against this leafy dude should stop being such an exercise in futility. I mean, when the healing at level 4 is down to 25 health per second from the previous 50 per second, he’s going to have more trouble staying healthy.

His stock was getting way too high in the previous patch anyway, so he absolutely deserves this nerf. The reduction to his agility gain per level is the icing on the cake, though I’m not too sure a reduction of 0.2 per level will be enough to take him out of the safe lane altogether.

Phantom Lancer on the rise?

Maelstrom and its upgrade Mjollnir will no longer deal bonus damage to illusions with their Chain Lightning passive. This is a huge change, as someone like Phantom Lancer won’t just get hard countered so easily.

Phantom Lancer did see some limited play at EWC, but not at Clavision Masters — the latter being unsurprising given how unplayable the hero has been for a long while now. PL himself didn’t get any buffs this patch, but being less susceptible to getting destroyed by Maelstrom buyers should help him a lot moving forward.

Not quite the Battle Pass

So now that the most significant balance changes are out of the way, let’s talk about the new cosmetic items. It’s not the TI Battle Pass that we’ve all been hoping for, but what Valve are calling Quartero’s Curios is at least something to help tide us all over until, well, whatever it is that they might be cooking up for TI14 — if there is anything.

Quartero is, according to Valve, a “completely trustworthy new character who wants nothing more than to sit on the main menu of Dota and give you free cosmetics while you play games”. Sure, whatever you say, Gabe Newell.

Anyway, it’s all true: the cosmetics in Quartero’s Curios are all free. All you have to do to earn them is to complete games of Dota, which will earn you experience points. You get a new item at certain level milestones, which you can claim at the home screen. Ez.

Valve did mention the possibility of a major in-game event in their announcement, saying that “[Quartero will] happily slide aside to make room” for whenever that happens. If it’s not a Battle Pass, then I’m certainly hoping Aghanim’s Labyrinth is making a return ahead of TI14.